Unitarian Universalist Church of Arlington, VA
A diverse, welcoming community of open hearts and minds since 1948
Oma Cynthia's Race Rant
Maybe it’s how my liberal-radical parents raised me as a white kid born in 1940. But:
I’m seeing in our UUCA congregation a lot of blunders, confusions and wounds inflicted over what some call “the race issue.” This upsets me because it’s not necessary. And it distracts us from the devastating inequality, violence and suffering out there in our world.
I’ve been part of several institutions that became multicultural, much as UUCA intends. None endured the awkwardness and silent pain that we are experiencing. The main difference I see is this:
Those institutions (a university, a community action agency, and a campus ministry) all started with a similar premise, worded roughly in this way:
Every human being has been oppressed at some time in his or her life, and every human being has at some time resisted oppression. That gives us a basis for empathy with one another. We can build on that empathy across our differences. Most human beings want and try to “do the right thing,” to act in ways that create well-being for all. We are interdependent, and most of us know, deep down, that freedom and equality are good for all the human race, including ourselves.
That approach gives us room for a little experimentation, and for differences of opinion about HOW to go about becoming joyfully multicultural. We UUs could use some of that diversity of feeling here, I think.
Despite our UU principles of respect for individuality and the search for meaning and truth, we seem to have trouble tolerating differences of opinion—at least about race.
Some leading lights of our congregation have (in my presence) called us “conflict-avoidant.” We’re scared of getting in arguments and blowing our calm-and-cool self-image. That fear makes it hard to have free-thinking, spirited, creative and realistic discussions of race.
(Sometimes I feel like we’re all looking over our shoulders for an Authority to tell us what to think or say, or a Judge to shun and punish someone for having the wrong opinions or feelings.)
To help us out of this bind, and diminish future suffering, I offer the following perspectives based on my half-century of work towards equality—racial and otherwise:
• You can’t MAKE people’s feelings change to what you want, even by telling them it’s the right thing to do;
• Changing yourself to please other people rarely works for very long, EVEN IF YOU THINK IT SHOULD;
• We can all COUNT ON being patronized occasionally on these issues. As I finally figured out from my husband, people WILL feel patronized when somebody tells them something they already know, even if (at that moment) they were forgetting or disregarding it in the heat of a discussion;
• It’s probably not possible for ANY of us to do the right thing all the time, so we’d ALL better be prepared to say “I’m sorry” a lot, to thank the people who tell us when we’re wrong, and to practice laughing and crying at the same time;
• IF WE’RE WILLING to make mistakes and forgive each other, we can take risky, creative initiatives that are fun and teach us how to explore new territory together: how to be equals and how to make delightful productive use of our differences.
• Getting over our awkwardness TOGETHER will help us work well for a just, sustainable and caring community, hereabouts and worldwide.
I believe that most people of any shape, size or color ultimately want to be seen as both “the same” and “different.” We’re both fully human just like everybody else and also unique members of a particular family, faith, age group, gender, profession and tribe.
(I'm a grandma, á recovering alcoholic, historian, former massage therapist, genetic mutt and plain-old ordinary human being.)
Some days I’m likely to offend somebody by treating you as a respected fellow human being; other days I’ll offend by treating you as a respected member of a group “other” than my own. Either way, I’m prepared to hear objections, and to say “Whoops, sorry, and thank you for telling me how you feel.”
Have I offended anyone with this rant? If not, just wait for Part Two, on white privilege and victim consciousness.
I’m seeing in our UUCA congregation a lot of blunders, confusions and wounds inflicted over what some call “the race issue.” This upsets me because it’s not necessary. And it distracts us from the devastating inequality, violence and suffering out there in our world.
I’ve been part of several institutions that became multicultural, much as UUCA intends. None endured the awkwardness and silent pain that we are experiencing. The main difference I see is this:
Those institutions (a university, a community action agency, and a campus ministry) all started with a similar premise, worded roughly in this way:
Every human being has been oppressed at some time in his or her life, and every human being has at some time resisted oppression. That gives us a basis for empathy with one another. We can build on that empathy across our differences. Most human beings want and try to “do the right thing,” to act in ways that create well-being for all. We are interdependent, and most of us know, deep down, that freedom and equality are good for all the human race, including ourselves.
That approach gives us room for a little experimentation, and for differences of opinion about HOW to go about becoming joyfully multicultural. We UUs could use some of that diversity of feeling here, I think.
Despite our UU principles of respect for individuality and the search for meaning and truth, we seem to have trouble tolerating differences of opinion—at least about race.
Some leading lights of our congregation have (in my presence) called us “conflict-avoidant.” We’re scared of getting in arguments and blowing our calm-and-cool self-image. That fear makes it hard to have free-thinking, spirited, creative and realistic discussions of race.
(Sometimes I feel like we’re all looking over our shoulders for an Authority to tell us what to think or say, or a Judge to shun and punish someone for having the wrong opinions or feelings.)
To help us out of this bind, and diminish future suffering, I offer the following perspectives based on my half-century of work towards equality—racial and otherwise:
• You can’t MAKE people’s feelings change to what you want, even by telling them it’s the right thing to do;
• Changing yourself to please other people rarely works for very long, EVEN IF YOU THINK IT SHOULD;
• We can all COUNT ON being patronized occasionally on these issues. As I finally figured out from my husband, people WILL feel patronized when somebody tells them something they already know, even if (at that moment) they were forgetting or disregarding it in the heat of a discussion;
• It’s probably not possible for ANY of us to do the right thing all the time, so we’d ALL better be prepared to say “I’m sorry” a lot, to thank the people who tell us when we’re wrong, and to practice laughing and crying at the same time;
• IF WE’RE WILLING to make mistakes and forgive each other, we can take risky, creative initiatives that are fun and teach us how to explore new territory together: how to be equals and how to make delightful productive use of our differences.
• Getting over our awkwardness TOGETHER will help us work well for a just, sustainable and caring community, hereabouts and worldwide.
I believe that most people of any shape, size or color ultimately want to be seen as both “the same” and “different.” We’re both fully human just like everybody else and also unique members of a particular family, faith, age group, gender, profession and tribe.
(I'm a grandma, á recovering alcoholic, historian, former massage therapist, genetic mutt and plain-old ordinary human being.)
Some days I’m likely to offend somebody by treating you as a respected fellow human being; other days I’ll offend by treating you as a respected member of a group “other” than my own. Either way, I’m prepared to hear objections, and to say “Whoops, sorry, and thank you for telling me how you feel.”
Have I offended anyone with this rant? If not, just wait for Part Two, on white privilege and victim consciousness.
Comment
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Comment by Sharon G. Williams on January 22, 2010 at 1:39pm -
Is this conversation closed? Has anyone else read this statement besides the people who have already commented. If so, please comment and respond to what Cynthia has written if you feel like it.
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Comment by Bernie Hyde on January 4, 2010 at 3:39pm -
I'm with you, Cynthia.
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Comment by Sharon G. Williams on December 31, 2009 at 11:27am
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As the essayist Rebecca Solnit says: "Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war,(racism-that's Sharon's insertion), from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal... To hope is to give yourself to the future - and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable."
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Comment by Sharon G. Williams on December 29, 2009 at 3:14pm
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I like this quote - its not an anti-racist quote but it is about struggle and necessity of struggle. The point of Anti-racist work is struggle even if we don't get a victory or even understand the complete context of what we are doing...there is a kind of redemption in that.
“Nothing worth doing is completed in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing true or beautiful makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith. Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love.”
Reinhold Niebuhr quotes (American theologian, 1892-1971)
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Comment by Sharon G. Williams on December 29, 2009 at 11:55am
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Wow - I am grateful for this discussion because I am learning something about whiteness. I am probably going to get into trouble for this but, here goes -
As the dominant racial group, white people like personalize and universalize everything - our experiences and our worldview without seeing the prvileges we get from being part of the dominant group. We think everyone thinks and reacts to situations the same. We don't really have a structural understanding of racism and white supremacy and how it really does work to the detriment of people of color in our society and within our congregations.
Part of that has to do with our educational system and terrible way we teach history in this country.
Social justice "begins at home" and that there should be a focus on making sure that we are acting justly within our own congregation before looking outward.
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Comment by Judy King on December 28, 2009 at 1:32pm -
I like your unabashed and liberating point of view.
I too have for years been involved in interracial efforts and activities.
I never felt the awkwardness that we experience here lately.
It was always assumed that we were all on the same side. we each had
sensitivities. We felt great to be working together and mingling freely.
Here we are walking on eggshells for no good reason, in my opinion.
It was assumed that
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Comment by June Herold on December 28, 2009 at 11:37am -
Thank you Cynthia for this post. I also appreciate what the responding posts say. The "basis for empathy" approach is, I agree, a constructive, life affirming path. I think you mentioned in a conversation you and I had elsewhere that a skit (on going skits) during a Sunday service could be a way to visualize and begin to address a number of things that many of us in the congregation are having a hard time talking about. If not a skit, than some other devise, maybe a Reader's Theater approach that presents what has been said about these issues that have been both painful and also affirming. We could support the common basis of empathy by including antisemitic, homophobic and ageist comments that do occur (because of childhood/race identity) conditioning, despite intentional behavior to put an end to them. I think it's very easy for us to delude ourselves as liberals that we couldn't possibly be "ist" of any kind. Meanwhile, I do believe in the healing power of love and compassion. Conflict avoidance might be an outcome of prioritizing love and compassion over all else. Many of us (most of us?) arrive at this church in some sort of pain -- we might not even recognize that we are in pain. And as a welcoming place, it's easy to see why conflict is problematic. But silence is even more problematic. I love the song that the Chalice Choir sings often in which a lyric socks home the importance of walking in someone else's shoes -- I think it's a message I need to hear -- everyone? -- needs to hear repeatedly. It's not silly. It's prophetic that it comes out of the mouths of babes.
I hope that readers of Cynthia's post encourage other members of the congregation to not only read it but to weigh in. Cynthia's broken the ice in a courageous, loving and thoughtful way. Our online church is a way to be more open to one another, making in person, in church interactions on this subject easier. Love to all in the New Year, June
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Comment by Stuart M. Whitaker on December 28, 2009 at 12:49am -
My Alma Mater has a tradition of asking a faculty member to deliver an "Aims of Education" address each year to incoming students. In 2001, this honor was given to a young black professor named Danielle Allen. In her address delivered just nine days after 9/11, Allen provided what to me is one of the most powerful formulae not only for education, but also for life in a wonderous and diverse world. Let me quote just one short passage:
"As students we invest ourselves in attending to the artifacts that the human spirit has throughout time left behind in the ongoing effort to encounter and account for the world. Our encounters with those artifacts—whether they are textual, musical, visual, or scientific—pull us beyond ourselves and the comfortable scenery of the world we take for granted. Through everything we read and study, we see how the world might be otherwise than we expect. This can be very scary. And we undertake this journey through foreign parts amid a crowd of strangers. As every course begins, we find ourselves in a room of people—teachers, fellow students—whom we do not know. We encounter one another, and our strangeness to each other, as much as we encounter alien times and places. Yet, if we are to come to understand those other times and places, to make sense of them, and to understand their relevance to our lives, we need to engage in the frankest conversation. To make progress, thinkers risk voicing half-formed ideas. They express doubts and disclose why they care passionately about particular questions. A thinker extends herself, when conjecturing an account of the world. We must, in short, speak honestly and unguardedly with strangers. This we can do only if we are confident that the others, the strangers in the room, will respond in kind—not with irony or mockery but with their own accounts and honest assessments of the ideas put forward. To have this sort of richly collaborative conversation, strangers must trust each other. At the beginning of every class, I ask my students to befriend each other, for we learn together best as friends. Laughter, shared, leads us into the necessary unguardedness."
We must speak honestly and unguardedly, says Allen, but we can only do so in an environment of trust. I don't know if Allen is a UU, but she certainly could be.
The first sermon I ever heard in this church was titled "Freedom of Belief - Now What?," delivered by Alison Wilbur Eskildsen on March 30 of 2008. Eskildsen quoted Francis Dávid, who was convicted of "innovative thinking" and died in a dungeion in 1579, “We need not think alike to love alike.”
Eskildsen proceeded to label all UUs heretics--but of course, she did so with pride that Unitarians and Universalists are able to choose to believe almost anything. Yet Eskildsen proceeded to explain beliefs and behaviors that are not permitted:
"If you don’t treat others with respect, if you objectify and speak hatefully of individuals or groups, you don’t belong here. If you don’t allow others to have a voice, if you preach injustice, if your actions go against the Seven Principles, you don’t belong."
Eskildsen had me sold on UUs with that single sermon. Now I don't know exactly what prompted your race rant, Cynthia, but I appreciate you bringing it up and out. Despite Eskilden's counsel, I have felt the conflict-avoidance to which you refer and have been told here on multiple occasions what and how to think and to say. Remaining true to our great traditions and principles is not always easy, but it is what we must do.
Finally, we can't achieve the diversity which people so often ask for by asking people to keep their thoughts to themselves, because to do so is to lose that very diversity in anonymity and mediocrity. We can only live comfortably with diversity when we understand that people among us will and do have opinions that are radically different from our own. We need to accept and welcome these differences without feeling threatened, without feeling personally attacked, and without feeling a compulsion to make the others believe as we believe.
Thanks for the instigation!
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Comment by Bill Fogarty on December 24, 2009 at 12:13pm -
Cynthia, thanks so much for your thoughtful observations and comments. There is much that I have been "processing" in response to your posting. I feel you have hit upon some important elements in all this work --- the need for open communication, and the need to be non-judgmental and forgiving. These are difficult tasks! I am looking forward to some good conversations with you on these issues.
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Comment by Sharon G. Williams on December 23, 2009 at 9:15am
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Thank you for initiating this dialogue.
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