Will We End Racism? by Paula Cole Jones, Feb. 21, 2010

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Will We End Racism?

by Paula Cole Jones, Feb. 21, 2010

         Unitarian Universalist ministers and leaders have been calling us into diverse community for a long time. Where are we in relationship to that call?

         I want to offer you a frame for this morning’s service. That is of two places to hear these words, or two different ways to relate to the church. One is to be centered in a dominant cultural view. The other is to be centered in a multicultural view. Observe yourself. When do you agree and when do you feel challenged? Which cultural center is shaping your response? Imagine that each person in the room has a camera and is choosing how to frame a picture. Who is in your frame? What does the future that you project look like in this church?

         Unitarian Universalist Association President, Peter Morales, provides statistics to help us frame the future of our congregations. He says in the United States 75% of people who are 70 years and older are white. Of the people who are 10 years old and younger, 75% have non-European racial and ethnic identities. In the next 10-20 years there will be a dramatic shift in the identity of the US population. Are we ready for this change? Will we continue as is, only to react when we are in crisis or change is inevitable? Or will we build congregations right now that are designed to relate to and minister effectively to a diverse membership and diverse community? Once there was a teenager who left his home in rural Louisiana and traveled to northern California to live with his mother and step-father. Others who had moved to the area told him and I quote from his writing,

            “…never…tell people you came from the country. Best to say you don’t know a thing about picking cotton, or watermelons and all of that country stuff… And you came from New Orleans—and never say N’awlens. It’s New Orleans, which he tried to do for several months—until someone asked him about Bourbon Street [and he didn’t know anything about it]. He realized that to go on lying to others meant lying to himself. Not only was he lying to himself, but he was also denying knowing the others, the ones he had left, and wasn’t that the same as denying who he was?”

        The author, Ernest J. Gaines, was writing about the point when he decided to live an authentic life and to honor the people from where he came and their stories. That put him on the trail to becoming a great American writer. He wrote the “Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and “A Lesson before Dying.” The passage I shared is from an essay named, “A Very Big Order: Reconstructing Identity.”        The task ahead of us is to reconstruct the identities of our churches.

        Ending racism is a very big order! Can we do it? I believe that we can end racism in pockets, meaning, in discreet groups of people with identifiable systems and locations. I do not believe that we will end racism in this country, but we can reduce the number of places where people accept things the way they are as just normal. And I do expect to see this happen in my lifetime. I believe that we can end racism in your congregation and in my congregation. The question that you must ask yourself is not “Can we end racism?”, but “Will we end racism?”

        All Souls Unitarian Church, in Washington, DC, has been working to end racism and to sustain the multiracial, multicultural community. Some have said that All Souls is unique. To think of us as unique is to obscure some important truths about who we really are. As we heard in Ernest Gaines’ story, we at All Souls intentionally “reconstructed our Identity”.

        A look at three ministers in All Souls’ history will help you to understand who we really are. Rev. A. Powell Davies, a strong believer in religious freedom and justice, grew Unitarianism in the Washington area, which resulted in the highest concentration of large UU churches in the country. Yours is one of them. Rev. Davies also was a leader on desegregation in the 1940’s and 50’s. His successor, Rev. Duncan Howlett, suggested toward the end of his ministry that church leaders consider an African American minister. Acting on the belief that all souls are welcome, the search committee went outside of the denomination and in 1969 the church called their first African America minister.

        Rev. David Hilliard Eaton, an ordained Methodist minister, but a Unitarian Universalist at heart, continued in the prophetic church tradition. Eaton’s ministry was a test of All Souls’ commitment to multiculturalism and a shift into seeing community from the multicultural frame. With Eaton, the congregation took Unitarianism into the community and brought the community into the church. In an interview Rev. Eaton said, that “The people who stayed with the church as it became multi-racial had a lot to be proud of. When [he] first came to All Souls in 1969, the church was 90-95% percent European American. A year later, the board passed a resolution to become a multicultural congregation. For the next 5 years, they worked very hard to do just that.” Rev. Eaton even had a TV show to further the church’s outreach. The church building became home to many community organizations and a growing number of people of color made All Souls their spiritual home.

        To say that we are unique implies that our story is so different - that others cannot produce similar results. And that is to miss the golden nugget. All Souls did in 1970 what other churches are just beginning to do 30 years later. We are not so much unique as we are mature in building a truly inclusive community. We have defined our role as a liberal church community “to bear witness to and to practice living as the human family, whole and reconciled.” In the language of Rev. Jacqui Lewis, who describes herself as a Christian Universalist, “The role of the church is to practice the reign of God on Earth.” And in the language of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. the role of the church is to build the “Beloved Community.”

        We still have to work to eliminate racism and other oppressions; but you can’t eliminate what you cannot see. When we are operating from the dominant cultural frame, it can be difficult to see how racism and other oppressions work. So, if church is working well for you, you might be filtering out the information that contradicts the notion that things are fine the way they are. The person sitting right next to you or in the pew behind you, or the person who did not show up this morning may be have a different impression of the church.

        All of us have bought into a set of Western middle-class rules. Now I am not saying that the rules shouldn’t exist or that they are good or bad…just notice that they are there. We have internalized so many of these rules that we do not realize how many ways we insist that people conform to the existing cultural arrangement. Constantly reinforcing the rules becomes a barrier to change. If you want to change the culture, you have to re-examine and change the rules.

        The irony is that we can say we want change and diversity then unconsciously we work against our own vision.

        Last year I attended a Christian liturgical dance program. As one of the ladies came up to the microphone, she began her comments with “No test, no testimony.” Then she went on to give her personal testimony of dealing with illness. These words can serve as a reminder that the change we talk about requires struggle and persistence. It is easy to think that because we believe in liberal values, that we are on the right side when it comes to racism and oppression, but if we constantly reinforce dominant culture, then there is little room for authentic multicultural engagement. It is easy to say we believe in the UU principles because they are too rarely tested on matters of race. “No test, no testimony.”

        I want to give a personal testimony about how Western middle-class rules can work against what we say we want to change. Not long ago I was working with a UU congregation on deepening and organizing their approach to racial justice and inclusion. We had a very productive weekend. The trip had exceeded my expectations. I had been asked to observe the church on Sunday morning and provide feedback to the ministers. One of my observations left me, metaphorically, standing right in the middle of a puddle. I had commented on the casual dress of a lay leader. Although, I couched the comment as my preference, it carried much more weight than my preference. I knew that I was reinforcing the Western middle-class rules about professionalism, which is a judgment that comes from middle-class privilege. This act was a contradiction to my social justice values.

        How many times have you sloshed right through a puddle, splashing others without knowing or caring about it? Were you reinforcing the rules? When we find ourselves in one of these puddles, we might feel regret, embarrassment, confusion, or righteousness. How often do you avoid the situation, explain it away? That doesn’t take into consideration the damage that is done to the other person. The next time you step into a puddle, stop!! Notice your participation. How do your thoughts, words or actions minimize another person? Learning the lesson might help you to choose a different response the next time. It might help you to see how the status quo is perpetuated at the expense of diversity.

        Linda Stout, author of the Beacon Press book, “Bridging the Class Divide” and founder of the Piedmont Peace Project wrote,

           “Why haven’t we yet learned to build more effective multiracial, multiclass, organizations? We’ll begin to find some answers when we look closely at the invisible wall, or barriers that low income people and people of color often encounter when joining primarily middle class and white organizations. I had to become bi-lingual in order to be accepted in a middle-class world. Unfortunately, my first language—the English that I learned to speak as a southern, low-income woman—is not seen as ‘equal.’ If I talk the way that comes most naturally to me, people judge me as being unintelligent or at least inarticulate. We must learn to honor each other’s language.”

        Kenji Yoshino, an Asian American civil rights lawyer who is openly gay, writes about his life of trying to assimilate into the dominant culture in his book entitled, “Covering.” He says that members of the gay and lesbian communities should testify about assimilation. That this is one important contribution that can be made to the civil rights movement. In his words,

           “Diversity [was] truncated—either because the institution had selected individuals who naturally conformed to mainstream norms or because it had pressured them to do so.” He introduces the term, covering, “first identified by Sociologist, Milton Gordon as the demand for “Anglo-conformity.” Kenji says this “…is white supremacy under a different guise. Until outsider groups surmount such demands for assimilation, we will not have achieved full citizenship in America.”

        Yoshino reminds us of “passing” when someone is trying to look like they are part of the dominant group. “Covering” is when someone is suppressing parts of their identity to fit in. And I want to add the term, “pressing,” for the ways that we either coax or pressure people into conformity.

        UU minister, Darrick Jackson, shares his experience of self in the dominant culture institution. He says,

           “I have vivid memories of my first continental Unitarian Universalist young adult conference….we had divided into racial caucuses. This was the first time that I had ever connected with other Unitarian Universalist people of color over the issue of race. …someone asked the question “Is there anything you had to give up to be Unitarian Universalist?” I realized, that yes….I had given up my cultural religious experience. I missed the murmurs of “Amen” in the congregation. I missed singing from the depths of my soul. And I missed my religious community’s understanding of what it means to be an African American man. When I shared this with the other young adult people of color, they understood. Many had given up similar things. But what struck me the most was that every single young adult in that group had given up something. Every. Single. One.”

         Darrick also said that he asked white young adults what they had given up and they couldn’t think of answers.

        Will we eliminate racism? Whether or not you and I are willing will be seen in the small day to day interactions that we have and in our decision-making processes.

        My daughter’s friend was recommending Unitarian Universalism to her sister, who lives on the west coast. This Latin-American family was Catholic, but had not been associated with the church for a long time. Their interest is to find a new church home for the three children, who were asking questions on religious matters and also for the mother who needed to think about her own faith journey.

        My daughter’s friend was sure that her sister was looking for a community that was more open to the journey rather than one that would provide the answers. I wondered what it would be like to be discovering UUism for the first time. I wondered, would my guests find a community that embraced their family; and would they find a church that they would trust to shape their children’s religious experience?

        It is my hope that they will find a home in Unitarian Universalism.

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Bennett Minton on Our Church's Constitution

Rev. Mary Reading a Story About Friendship

Phyllis Dogan and Ann Ulmschneider: Three Readings

Wonderful World by UUCA Dancers

Part 1: Will We End Racism?

Part 2: Will We End Racism?

Lori Rottenberg Sings "My Lord What a Morning"

Benediction and Clerestory Choir Singing "Higher and Higher"

Photos From The Service