What's Needed is Transformation (and not just change)

This is the text of my newsletter column -- "Words of Wikstrom" -- from the April edition of the monthly bulletin of the congregation I serve.

This month’s theme is “transformation,” and as I sat to write I found myself curious about the difference between change and transformation.  The word change means, “to make or become different,” and it comes from the Old French changier, which means essentially the same thing.  Transformation is defined as, “a thorough or dramatic change,” and comes from the Latin word transformare, which refers to changing the form or shape of something.  An illustration of the difference might be that a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly; it doesn’t change into a better caterpillar.  Leadership experts sometimes say that “Changes fix the past.  Transformations create the future.”

As many of you know, the Unitarian Universalist Association is being forced to take a look at some difficult truths about itself.  Long committed to the work of racial justice, UUA staff is nonetheless overwhelmingly, and disturbingly, white (and cis-male ordained folk, but let’s save that for another time).  The Association breakers down its workforce into six categories, from Executives to Service Workers.  84% of Service Workers – the “lowest rung,” if you will – are people of color, as compared with only 17% who are white.  In none of the other five categories do people of color make up more than 11%, while in no other category do whites make up less than 75%.

Such a glaring disparity is not a coincidence, any more than the predominance of cis-males in positions of authority in our culture is a coincidence. Both reflect the working of systems of domination and oppression.  That’s the way such systems work.  That’s why systemic racism often is called “white supremacy” now, because it makes brutally clear that the intent of racism is to keep whites “supreme,” as in, “superior to all others, strongest, most important, or most powerful.” 

There is a difference between saying that an institution is infected by and perpetuating white supremacy, and saying that it is a “white supremacist” institution.  This distinction often gets lost on whites when an institution they are involved with is called out for its embodiment of white supremacy.  “What do you mean?” these good-hearted, well-meaning people will say.  “It’s not like we’re the KKK or anything.”  And that’s true.  Yet it can also be true – and usually is – that the institution is nonetheless complicit in perpetuating systems of oppression.  In our culture, an individual or an organization can barely help it – racism is the air we breath, it has seeped into our DNA, and it blinds us to its presence at every turn.

I began with differentiating between change and transformation, because nearly all attempts to “undo racism” really are efforts at changing things.  Some sensitivity trainings and workshops on cultural competency are offered, perhaps even mandated.  Statements of commitment are made.  If that commitment is real, there might be a change or two made to, for instance, hiring practices, but ultimately what results is a better caterpillar instead of the needed butterfly.  Another metaphor that makes the point is “rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.”

At the cluster event we hosted last month, “Showing Up: a racial justice conference,” I was introduced to a new (to me) term – prefigurative politics.  The idea is that an organization that’s working for change should be organized to reflect the desired change.  (In other words, “be the change you want to see.”)  The UUA is not organized – in philosophy or practicalities – like the anti-racist, multi-cultural, anti-oppression world we want to see.  And the sad truth is that as long as it is organized the way it is, the best we can hope for is change.  True transformation will elude us, and nothing short of transformation is what we need.

So here’s what a scientist might call a thought experiment: What would our Association look like if the experiences, perspectives, learnings, and expertise of people of color were at the center of things, rather than on the periphery?  What would the UUA be like if it were disbanded, and then recreated by, and primarily for, people of color?  I believe we’d see the caterpillar of white supremacy transformed into the butterfly of mutual liberation.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

PS – TJMC is an institution as well.  Just sayin’

This "White Supremacy Triangle" has been useful in helping people to visualize the breadth and depth of the term white supremacy.  Think of it as an iceberg.  Above the waterline are examples of overt white supremacist behavior, groups, etc.  Below the waterline are examples of behaviors which serve to reinforce and perpetuate systems and structures that maintain a "supreme" position for people who identify as, or are identified as, white.  Because of the dominant culture in which we live, whites "live and move and have their being," as it were, as part of a culture of white supremacy, whether or not they, themselves, are white supremacists.

You fix this shit ...

"You fix this shit ..."

This comes from an essay Anthea Butler wrote for Religious Dispatches, in which she responds to her editor's request for a piece about the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, and the five police offers who were shot and killed in Dallas.  She says, essentially, that she'd one writing for white people who are looking for a person of color to express the outrage, the power of the pain, that we white folks can't (or won't) express ourselves:

"I'm done saving you, good white folks.  You want Black people like me, who like you, to say the prophetic thing, and bail your ass out for not speaking up, for remaining quiet -- while you get your work, vacations, and scholarship done this summer."

I hear this.  At least, to be honest, I'm trying to hear this.  It's hard as a person who was raised to think of myself as white to really  hear this.  Still, I'm trying.  And I think to myself -- what the hell am I supposed to do?  Damn.  how do you change the collective consciousness -- even more the unconsciousness -- of a country?  How do you "turn" the folks who see Donald Trump as, as Ms. Butler put it, "a savior"?

We're told that in Biblical times a prophet could speak out with such conviction that even kings would put on sackcloth and ashes as a demonstration of their heartfelt mourning and desire to repent.  Mohandas Gandhi would stop eating, and the people of India -- Hindu and Muslim alike -- would change their behavior out of concern and respect for the Great Soul.

Is there -- could there be -- such a prophet today?  Who do the American people love so deeply that they would pause in mid-battle for?  I'm not holding my breath for this kind of a solution.

But what can be done?  What can I do?  I know that "show up" matters.  I believe -- deeply -- that it makes a difference, when white folks help white folks to recognize -- to really see -- the racism that is embedded in our culture in which we move unconscious as a fish glides through water.  These things make a difference.  As does working to ensure the enfranchisement of people within historically marginalized groups.  As does writing letters to politicians, and signing petitions, and attending rallies, and getting arrested, and ...

And how do you change the collective consciousness of a country?  Because it's just not enough to change laws.  The ratification of the 14th amendment changed the status of African Americans ... except that it didn't.  The Voting Rights Act of 1965 ensured that people of color would have the same access to participation in the democratic process as anyone else ... except that it didn't.  (And to further drive home the point, this issue had already supposedly been taken care of back in 1870 with the ratification of the 15th amendment!) 

Yes, we can do anti-bias training for police officers, and it's important work.  Will it really address the implicit bias that is at work in every interaction?  There are so many things that we can do, yet I keep coming back to what seems to me to be a fundamental questions -- how do you change the collective consciousness of a country? 

"You fix this shit ..."  Who are better positioned to change an inherently unjust system than the people who benefit most from that system?  And yet ... how does a fish change the water in the tank?

I truly wish I knew ....

Pax tecum,

RevWik

A Lifelong Quest for Humble Competence and Competent Humility

I have been involved in anti-racism, anti-oppression, multi-cultural work for a while now.  In that time I have learned a lot about the history of our country that has been supressed and denied in the mainstream, both intentionally and unconsciously.  I have learned much about white privilege and the ways that it has created a pervasive system of racial oppression, which takes discussions of racism beyond the more observable acts of racial animous by mean-spirited people to a recognition of racism as "part of the air we breathe."  I have learned a lot about what it means to be a white person in a society that has made "white" synonymous with "human" so as to perpetually keep people of color in a state of otherness.  (This includes, but most certainly isn't limited to, learning about some of the ways I have benefited from these systems of oppression, and some of the ways that I continue to support them even as I, consciously, strive to dismantle them.)  

It is important to note that what I now claim to have learned are "learnings" only because of all that I didn't know before.  People of color have always known this stuff.  When I am shocked and surprised by some new revelation, it is "new" only to me -- whereas for me it is a revelation of a reality beyond my own lived experience, for people of color it is a daily lived experience.  (As the sign in the image above says, "It is a privilege to learn about racism instead of experiencing it your whole life!!!")  It is only because of the willingness, the courage, the compassion, the anger, the desperation, the hope, the need that has led people of color to share, to shout, their reality to people like me (e.g., White) that I can now say with the poet E. E. Cummings, "now the ears of my ears awake and / now the eyes of my eyes are opened."    And, of course, I still have a long way to go.  My eyes and ears close again, and I go back to sleep, so easily.

In all of this work there is a phrase that I have heard many times:  Cultural Competency.  It's often put forward as a goal, an ideal to strive for.  In a nutshell, the idea of cultural competency is that people in the dominant culture must to learn to be competent in their dealings with people from minority cultures.  This is because whites, or cis-males, or heterosexuals, or any other dominant identity swim in the water of our own culture so unconsciously that, like fish, we're not even aware of the water.  To us, in other words, our culture isn't a "culture" it's simply "the way things are."  If we want to deal sensitively and respectfully with people of other cultures, then, we need to be able to see them for who and how they are, rather than interacting with them as though our norms and assumptions are their norms and assumptions as well. 

This morning I was introduced to a new phrase that, as sometimes happens (if we're lucky), really deepend my understandings.  In 1998 two doctors in California coined the term "cultural humily" in their paper, "Cultural Humility versus Cultural Competence:  A Critical Distinction in Defining Physician Training Outcomes in Multicultural  Education."  In its article on cultural humility, Wikipedia summarizes the distinction that Drs. Melanie Tervalon and Jan Murray-Garciá in this way:

"Cultural humility was born out of the medical field for medical educators looking for a new way to frame multicultural understanding for new health care professionals.  It was introduced as an alternative to cultural competence, which has many negative connotations.  Competence assumes that one can learn or know enough, that cultures are monolithic, and that one can actually reach a full understanding of a culture to which they do not belong.  Cultural humility can also be associated with cultural sensitivity, which encourages individuals to be thoughtful when considering culture.  However, sensitivity does not touch on the necessity of learning, reflections, or growth.

The Wikipedia article continue (drawing on the work of Lisa Asbil):

Cultural humility incorprates a consistent commitement to learning and reflection, but also an understanding of power dynamics and one's own role in society.  It is based on the diea of mutually beneficial relationships rather than one person educating or aiding another in an attempt to minimize the power imbalances in client-professional relationships.  There are three main components to cultural humility:  lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique, fix power imbalances, and develop partnership with people and groups who advocate for others.

I am commited to such on-going learning and reflection, to keeping "the eyes of my eyes and the ears of my ears" (and most importantly, my heart) open.  I will no doubt make mistakes -- lots of them -- as I find myself tripping anew over that "invisible backpace."  This is why Drs. Tervalon and Murray-Garciá's concept of cultural humility appeals to me so much.  Once again, people of color have shown me a new way of understanding what is needed of me, as a white person, if I am really serious about dismantling racism.  I cannot express my gratitude.  But I can express my commitment to doing my part and encouraging others to do this hard yet oh so important work.  As the song has it, "We'll get there.  Heaven knows how we will get there.  But we know we will."

Pax tecum,

RevWik

A Note About the Video:  Woyaya was written by Ghanian drummer Sol Amarifio, and is the title song of a 1971 album by Oisibisa, a musical group of Ghanian and Caribbean musicians.  It was frequently heard in work camps throughout central West Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.  "Woyaya," like many other African scat syllables, can have many meanings.  According to the song's composer, it means, "We Are Going."  (from the information provided about the songs in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal Singing the Journey.)

From everydayracism:

Emmett Till & Tamir Rice: Two innocent black kids murdered 59 years apart.
Both juries refused to even indict, let alone convict, white criminals who were clearly witnessed committing the crimes.

I just read a powerful op-ed piece by Charles Blow -- "Tamir Rice and the Value of Life" -- from last January's New York Times.  This post is an expansion of the response I published to Facebook:


My younger son turns 12 in two days. Tamir Rice could have been him ... except, of course, that he's white. Actually, he is biracial but he takes after his Irish birth mother so completely that, as he used to say, his "brown skin is on the inside."  To look at him is to see a wee lad from the Emerald Isle.  But he belies the notion of clear and strict racial categories, like his older brother who's brown skin is "on the outside" (for him it's his white skin "on the inside").  White ... Black ... those divisions don't hold up too well in a world as multi-hued as ours.  And yet ... And yet it took a police officer less than 2 seconds to decide that this brown-skinned boy was enough of a threat that he felt justified in shooting him, and perhaps even worse, he felt justified in rendering him no aid as if this little boy was disposable.  And why?  Because he was Black, and we have been conditioned as a society to see Black men as more dangerous than White men.  Study after study after study demonstrates the reality of implicit bias -- the unconscious attitudes that, "affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner."  You do not have to be consciously racist to have these unconscious attitudes shape your behavior.  As they most certainly did in the minds of Officer Timothy Loehmann and his partner Frank Garmback on that November afternoon.

Do you want to know why people are shouting "Black Lives Matter" rather than the more universal "All Lives Matter"?

If Tamir had been white, the uproar of outrage at the shooting, the callous treatment, and, now, the lack of indictment of the officers involved would be deafening.  But it's not.  And it's not because those who are shouting the loudest are as easy for white America to dismiss as was the life of this little boy. It is so easy for us -- white Americans -- to nestle down all snug in those safe places we create for ourselves -- those sanctuaries, both literal and metaphorical -- in which we can cocoon ourselves and listen only to our own reality.

We -- again, White Americans -- must make ourselves uncomfortable, disturbed, or, in Dr. Kings memorable word, maladjusted.  We must refuse to let ourselves be lulled into a safe and contented sleep that is, by its very nature, both a symptom and a cause of the problem.  We White Americans can turn off the ugliness of racism.  We have the freedom to set it aside, to insist on our "right" to a little peace and quiet.  This is a luxury and a privilege not, as we so often describe it, and entitlement.

To my White friends ... what can we do ... what can you do ... to keep yourself uncomfortable?  What can you do to keep the cancer of systemic racism in your face all the time?  These are not rhetorical questions, they are a real call to action.  A call for you, whoever you are reading this, to do something to make this struggle as real for you, as important for you, as necessary for you as it is for the family of Tamir Rice ... and the families of all those whose lives are very much uncomfortable, and unsafe, each and every day.

Pax tecum,

RevWik

Let's Not Get Distracted ...

One of the things that's difficult about having really substantive conversations about race -- one of the challenges of really facing and trying to deal with the issues -- is that it's so hard to get distracted by details.  I think that this is predominantly a white people's problem, and that we do it because the whole thing is so incredibly uncomfortable for us.  And we're not used to being uncomfortable.

Following the events in Ferguson and Staten Island a shout erupted across the country -- Black Lives Matter!  Black and browned skinned people were giving voice to a reality that they knew all too well but that was largely overlooked by white skinned folk -- the law enforcement and social justice systems are undeniably racially biased.  (I won't go into details to try to prove that point.  I'll let Frontline do it for me.)  This is a discomforting thing for white people to hear, because the ideal of a fair and impartial justice system is such a cornerstone of how we see (and experience) the world.  To hear otherwise shakes us from our complacency (and complicity).

Well, almost.  First we declare that "Black Lives Matter" is, itself, a racist statement.  The reality, we say, is that all lives matter, and that as long as we keep making it an issue of black and white we'll never get anywhere toward solving our problems.  The problem with that line of thinking, though, is that it's always been a "black and white" thing.  Black and brown skinned people have always known that their experiences and white peoples experiences are radically different; that we live in two different worlds, in a sense.  White people, though, don't feel comfortable with that because as things are our lives and experiences are the standard of ... well ... the way things are.  So we want to continually "broaden" the discussion to be "more inclusive," because to do otherwise would force us to recognize that the world isn't as "fair and balanced" as we believe it to be.

But there's another way that we distract from the real issue -- we make this a black/cop thing.  Sure, we say.  We'll acknowledge that there is a racial bias in the justice system, but we have to support our police officers.  They have an impossibly difficult -- not to mention dangerous -- job.  They're doing the best that they can.  And see?  The recent murders of the two officers in Brooklyn and the one in Florida (as of this writing) show us where all this divisiveness leads.  Sure, black lives matter, but so do "blue lives," and all this racial outrage has turned into "open season" on the police.

Do you see what happened there?  The situation we find ourselves facing becomes polarized as an either/or proposition.  If you stand in solidarity with the experiences of African Americans and other marginalized people then you necessarily are standing in opposition to the police.  (And vice versa.)   And, so, we get distracted -- the conversation becomes one of whether you are for or against the police.

But that's not the issue!  Sure, there are people who are angry at the police and who consider them "the enemy."  And there are certainly racist police officers.  But that's not the issue we need to be discussing.  The perceptions and actions of individual people can certainly be problematic and should be addressed, but we can not let that distract us from the real issue -- systemic racism.

Racism is so deeply embedded in this country that it's like the ground we walk on or the air we breathe.  Individual people don't need to be committing individual racist acts for racism to be still alive and well.  I would assert that the vast majority of police officers are not, themselves, individually racist and want to see the law enforced equally and justice to be fairly meted out.  But we have all be so deeply and powerfully trained to see black and brown skinned people and white skinned people differently that when split second decisions need to be made these unconscious biases and assumptions color the reaction.  Even not so split second ones -- a white person walking in a predominantly black neighborhood is, at first glance, assumed to be lost or their for a good reason.  A black person walking in a predominantly black neighborhood is, at first glance, assumed to be out of place and up to no good.  Even black and brown skinned people often have these two different reactions, because that's the way systemic racism works.  It's not a conscious thing; it's a conditioned thing.

In the days ahead there will no doubt be more violence directed toward police officers, as well as more incidents of police violence toward people of color.  I appeal to my white kinfolk, though, not to become distracted but to keep our eyes on the real issue.  Because all of us are hurt by racism, and these particularities we argue about are just symptoms.  As Emma Lazarus said, "Until we are all free, we are none of us free."

Pax tecum,

RevWik