A Toxic Cesspool By Any Other Name ...

For my non-Unitarian Universalist friends (whom I still love anyway!), the faith tradition I serve is currently embroiled in what I'm calling a struggle for the soul of our faith.  I don't think that that's hyperbole.  I think at question is no less that whether we are truly the people we say we are (or, perhaps more accurately, whether we truly want to try to become the people we say we are trying to become). I've also said, elsewhere, that what is at stake is the question of whether the institution of the Unitarian Universalist Association is able to be the right "container" for the Unitarian Universalist faith.

As with all controversies, there are many layers to the one we're wrestling with.  They all stem from the charge by Unitarian Universalists of color (and some white UUs as well) to look closely at the ways our Association is part of, participates in, and even perpetuates (consciously or unconsciously) in the prevailing culture of White Supremacy in the US.  The use of the term "white supremacy" has become the focal point for part of this struggle.  (I could cynically say that it is so much easier to argue over what word to use rather than to look at the underlying condition the words are attempting to describe.)  Although there is for many, if not most, people who identify as white an immediate association of the term "white supremacy" with the ideology espoused by white supremacists, the term itself has for many years now been used by people doing anti-racism, anti-racism work to describe the dominant culture in our country which, I think unarguably, holds white lives, experience, perspectives, and norms as "supreme" (e.g., "highest quality, degree, character, importance, etc.).

There are those, though, who say that it is a mistake to describe the UUA as "a white supremacy institution" -- we're the good guys!  And to use that term for us will dilute its power when it's used (appropriately) to describe, for instance, the KKK.  It might also turn off people -- both inside and outside of UUism -- people who might otherwise join with us in the very real anti-racism, anti-oppression, multicultural work we are committed to.  Plus, it's insulting!  And there is a whole lot of injustice in the world out there, and for all of this brouhaha to come up now really distracts us from the real work.

I think all of these are really understandable reactions.  I admit to having them myself.  I also recognize, though, that one of the benefits of white privilege is that I, and people who look more or less like me, have gotten used to being able to frame the debate in ways that make sense to me, using language that "works" for me, and that don't cause too much discomfort for me and the kind of good-hearted, well-meaning folk I tend to hang around with.  But I've learned -- I've been taught -- that my insistence on these expectations of mine is, itself, a way of perpetuating the culture of white supremacy I denounce and claim to want to change. 

It's been said that no one can solve a problem with the perspective that created it.  I have been taught -- I am learning -- that when it comes to the task of truly dismantling the systems and structures of racism, I need to listen to the experiences and perspectives of people of color, who are, after all, far more intimately in touch with the problem and who will therefore see more clearly its needed remedy.  So, when people of color say that the term "white supremacy" is the most accurate term to use -- in part, no doubt, because it makes me and people who look more or less like me extremely uncomfortable -- then I know that I need to listen.  And I need to not listen to the voices of my expectations to be able to do and say what I want.

All of this I write as a preamble to something I wrote a little earlier today:

A Parable

There once was a man who considered himself in pretty good shape. He began to feel a little unwell, so he went to his doctor. 

"I'm sorry to tell you," she said. "You have cancer."

"Cancer? I can't have cancer! I eat healthy foods. I don't drink or smoke. I take more than the recommended 10,000 steps a day. I can't have cancer -- maybe indigestion, but not cancer!"

"That's all true," the doctor replied. "Even so, you have cancer."

"But if I go around saying that I have cancer, the people I've been trying to convince to live a healthier lifestyle will say, 'See? He got cancer. Why should we do anything different if Mr. Healthy over there got cancer?'."

"That might happen," the doctor agreed. "But think of much less influence you'd have if you ignored your own cancer and let it kill you."

"But cancer's such a scary diagnosis. I don't want to have cancer! Can't we just say I have indigestion?"

"Of course you can," the doctor said, "but if you refuse to acknowledge your cancer you won't be able to treat it effectively."

Nothing she said could change the man's mind, so he left his doctor's office in great anger, seeking someone who'd diagnosis him with indigestion.

Pax tecum,

RevWik
 

What's Possible: now the eyes of my eyes are opened

I.

It’s not possible,

I said,

When I heard the news

Of the White Police Officer

Shooting

The Unarmed Black Man

Whose arms were raised

And whose back was turned.

It’s not possible.

It must have been a mistake.

It’s not possible,

I said,

When I it happened again.

It must be an aberration.

It’s just not possible,

I said,

When it happened again,

And again,

And again.

It isn’t possible

For it to be

What it seems

To be.

It’s not possible,

I said once more,

As Donald Trump

Emerged

Unscathed

Over and over again

From things that would have brought down

A greater man.

It’s not possible

That his candidacy will be taken seriously.

It’s not possible

That he’ll get the nomination

It’s not possible

That he’ll come even close to being elected.

It’s not possible

That he is our President-elect.

I live in such a protective bubble.

Some call it

White Privilege.

I’ve heard it called

White Innocence.

This morning

I’m calling it

White

Blindness.

Because …

Of course it’s possible!

This is the United States of America,

Where it was once fashionable

For some people

To believe they

Owned

Other people,

And to treat those people

Like property;

Where a childhood

Friend

Could become simply

A slave

When you reached your majority.

Of course it’s possible.

This is the land where people used to gather

To picnic

And photograph

The mutilated bodies

Of Black Men

Who were still hanging,

Sometimes smoldering,

From the lynching tree.

Of course it’s possible.

This nation was built

On stolen land

And the spilled blood of

The people who’d lived here

For 10,000 years

Whose cultures

Were a marvel

Yet who were seen only as

Savages.

We used to say

That a Black woman could be

Trusted

To care for your child and your home

But could not be

Trusted

With respect

Or the use of the same bathroom.

This is a land

Where The Other

Is vilified,

Demonized,

And sent out

With the

Sins

Of the people

Placed on their

Backs.

Of course it’s possible.

II.

I know

Not all of those

Who supported

Donald Trump

Shared his

Racism,

Misogyny,

Xenophobia,

His fear of

The Other.

Yet the language he used

Was the language of

Divisiveness,

Of

Fear,

Of

Anger,

Of

Hate,

And those who supported

Him

At least tacitly

Approved

of

That.

III.

Only the

Blind

Can still say

“It’s not possible”

Today.

Only the

Innocent

Can believe that

Good will

And a return to

Civility

Is all that’s needed.

Only the

Privileged

Have the luxury

Of being

Surprised.

There's too much to do ...

Why is it so hard to listen ... and hear?

Last night I attended a public forum hosted by the Blue Ribbon Commission the Charlottesville City Council called into being for the purpose of deciding what to do about the large and prominent statues of Generals "Stonewall" Jackson and Robert E. Lee.  Earlier this year a high school student started a petition to have the statue of Lee removed from Lee Park.  She wrote:

"As a younger African American resident in this city, I am often exposed to different forms of racism that are embedded in the history of the south and particularly this city. My peers and I feel strongly about the removal of the statue because it makes us feel uncomfortable and it is very offensive. I do not go to the park for that reason, and I am certain that others feel the same way."

Last night people from the community expressed their support, and opposition to, the idea of removing the statues.  Some others offered alternative suggestions.  The meeting was, to say theleast, "lively."

One moment in particular struck me.  A man who had grown up in Charlottesville spoke about how the statue of Lee was not only part of the physical landscape of Charlottesville, but the landscape of his life, as well.  He remembered walking through the park as a boy, his father stopping them at the monument to point out that the statute was considered "one of the finest equestrian statues in the world." It was clear that for him, the statue not only commemorates a Confederate General, it memorializes his childhood, his relationship with his father, and the pride he feels for the city he calls home (which, as he said, has something in it so precious as to be one of the finest in the world).

This speaker was white.  Other speakers, African Americans, spoke of other childhood memories -- memories in which they were told not to go into the park because they would not be welcome.  They spoke of the feeling they'd had that this imposing statue, so centrally situated in the city, was a clear and intimidating message to them of their place in the community.  As Zyhana Bryant, the high school student who initiated the petition said, many African Americans feel uncomfortable in the park, and many avoid it altogether.

People who say that "Black Lives Matter" is an unnecessary slogan, who say that the problem it purports to address is one more of perception than reality, who say that it is inherently anti-police and, more generally, anti-white, are missing the point.  It's not just because Black people are more likely to be stopped by police in situations where whites would not be.  It's not just because black people -- especially young black men -- are shot and killed by police disproportionately.  It's not just because the rates of incarceration are so out of balance that it is not only infuriating, it's disgusting and embarrassing as well.  It's all of that, yes, but it's also more than all that.

Last night was a case in point.  A white man said that his fond memories of the statue of Robert E. Lee ought to be -- need to be -- taken into consideration when determining their ultimate fate.  Left unsaid, though no less clearly communicated for that, was that the painful memories of people of color ought not to be considered.  His memories matter.  Their's do not.

And until white Americans are able to really hear, respect, acknowledge, and be moved and changed by the lived experiences of African American, and people of color more generally, then we need to keep repeating that Black Lives Matter.  Until the contributions of African Americans to this country are recognized as being fully as important as those of white Americans -- even when doing so displaces the historical narrative celebrated in the dominant culture -- then we need to keep repeating that Black Lives Matter.  Until we realize that if the "heroes" of white America are not "heroes" to people of color then they are not our heroes, we will need to keep repeating that Black Lives Matter.  Until we -- white Americans -- fully acknowledge (not only with our words but in the way we live) that they -- African Americans -- are not "other than" the us we claim to be as a nation, we will need to keep repeating that Black Lives Matter.

Black feelings matter.  Black memories matter.  Black history matters.  Black lives matter.

Pax tecum,

RevWik


Yesterday, on the blog of the congregation I serve, I wrote a post expressing my thoughts about the issue of what to do with these statues.

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

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

To Wake or Not to Wake

On Monday I said that I would write more about the extraordinarily book Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates.  Coates is a national correspondent for The Atlantic, and the recipient of the National Magazine Award, the Hillman Prize for Opinion and Analysis, and the George Polk Award for his writing.  His first book was the memoir The Beautiful Struggle, and he gained prominence in the mainstream media for his 2014 cover story in The Atlantic, "The Case for Reparations."  Of his most recent book, Toni Morrison wrote:

"I've been wondering who might fill the intellectual void that plagued me after James Baldwin died.  Clearly it is Ta-Nehisi Coates.  The language of Between the World and Me, like Coates's journey, is visceral, eloquent, and beautifully redemptive.  And its examination of the hazards and hopes of black male life is as profound as it is revelatory.  It is require reading."

I couldn't agree more, especially with her assertion that it is -- or, I would say, should be -- required  reading.  Coates's writing is both beautiful and brutal.  His analysis is clear and challenging, painfully so.  He writes of his respect and admiration of Malcolm X -- his example and his rhetoric -- and again and again while reading Between the World and Me I felt as though I were reading the words of  Malik el-Shabazz himself.  Perhaps his description of his feelings toward Malcolm X can better describe what I mean:

Malcolm was the first political pragmatist I knew, the first honest man I'd ever heard.  He was unconcerned with making the people who believed they were white [a phrase Coates uses again and again] comfortable in their belief.  If he was angry, he said so.  If he hated, he hated because it was human for the enslvaved to hate the enslaver, natural as Prometheus hating the birds.  He would not turn the other cheek for you.  He would not be a better man for you.  He would not be your morality.  Malcolm spoke like a man who was free, like a black man above the laws that proscribed our imagination.  I identified with him. (p. 36)

Coates, too, shows no sign of wanting to make those of us who believe we are white comfortable.  And he doesn't.  With his unflinchingly honest description of what it has meant to him to be black in America, and his biting analysis of where we are and how we got here, those of us who believe we are white who read this book will be extremely discomforted.  I found myself weeping over much of what I read, sitting convicted by much of the rest.  It is no hyperbole to say that I was hanged, broken-open, by the experience of reading this book.  And reading this book is an experience.

Americans believe in the reality of 'race' as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world.  Racism -- the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them -- inevitably follows from this inalterable condition.  In this way, racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature, and one is left to deplore the Middle Passage or the Trail of Tears the way one deplores an earthquake, or a tornado, or any other phenomenon that can be cast as beyond the handiwork of men. 

But race is is the child of racism, not the father.  And the process of naming 'the people' has never been a mater of genealogy and physiognomy so much as one of hierarchy, (p. 7)

In all of the work I have done to try to understand the bubble of privilege in which I exist, and the systems and structures that privileged "my kind" while inescapably denigrating everyone else, I have never come across this analysis of race and racism.  Others have made the point that race is a human construct rather than a biological truth, yet Coates takes this idea and makes use of it in making sense of the history of racism, and its current incarnation, in ways that I have never encountered before.

I've said that his writing is both beautiful and brutal.  This passage should suffice as example:

Slavery is not an indefinable mass of flesh.  It is a particular, specific enslaved woman, whose mind is active as your own, whose range of feeling is as vast as your own; who prefers the way the light falls in one particular spot in the woods, who enjoys fishing where the water eddies in a nearby stream, who loves her mother in her own complicated way, who thinks her sister talks to loud, has a favorite cousin, a favorite season, who excels at dress-making and knows, inside herself, that she is as intelligent and as capable as anyone.  "Slavery" is this same woman born in a world that loudly proclaims its love of freedom and inscribes this love in its essential texts, a world in which these same professors hold this woman a slave, hold her mother a slave, her father a slave, her daughter a slave, and when this woman peers back into the generations all she sees is the enslaved. ... Never forget that we were enslaved in this country longer than we have been free.  Never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains -- whole generations followed by more generations who knew nothing but chains. (pp. 69-70)

As we read this book, especially those of us who Coates would say "believe we are white," -- "need to believe we are white" -- we are essentially voyeurs, for it is written as a letter to his fifteen year old son.  It is written in the context of all that has been happening that has lifted issues of race into the consciousness of white America in a way not experienced since the Civil Rights Era -- the murders of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, and all the others (including the often overlooked women such as Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Tarika Wilson, Kathryn Johnston, and Tanisha Anderson) who have been killed in recent encounters with police, as well as the near-universal lack of convictions or even accountability for the people who fired the killing shot.  He is writing in the age of Black Lives Matter and the defensively dismissive response of All Lives Matter.  Of those who would argue that there is no conscious plan or pattern in all of this, no conspiracy, Coates says:

But what one "means" is neither important nor relevant.  It is not necessary that you believe that the officer who choked Eric Garner set out hat day to destroy a body.  All you need to understand is that the officer carries with him the power of the American state and the weight of an American legacy, and they necessitate that of the bodies destroyed every year, some wild and disproportionate number of them will be black. (p. 103)

He notes that those of us who desperately want to be identified as white are able to continue to justify the Myth of America's commitment to freedom is our ability to forget our past.

The forgetting is habit, is yet another necessary component of the Dream.  They have forgotten the scale of theft that enriched them in slavery; the terror that allowed them, for a century, to pilfer the vote, the segregationist policy that gave them their suburbs.  (p. 143)

There is so much more I could say of Between the World and Me -- his descriptions of growing up on the streets of Baltimore, his experiences of what he calls "The Mecca" at Howard University, the murder of a friend at the hands of the police, the birth and raising of his sons, and ever so much more.  There are so many more passages I could lift up and out in the hope that at least some of it will be read.   I will end with just one more.  In writing of those who struggled, who laid down their safety and their lives, during the Civil Rights movement of the 50s and 60s he writes:

Perhaps that was, is, the hope of the movement:  to awaken the Dreamers, to rouse them to the facts of what their need to be white, to talk like they are white, to think that they are white, which is to think that they are beyond the design flaws of humanity, as done to the world. (p. 147)

I return to Toni Morrison's assessment -- that this book is, should be, needs to be required reading. And digested.  And shared.  Widely.  I believe -- more accurately, I suppose, I hope -- that if it were those of us who are so ensnared in the Dream that we don't even know it as such will indeed be roused.  And, being roused, might be able to work with all those who need us to work with them to change the reality behind the Dream.

Please.  Read this book.  And then lend it so someone.

RevWik


P.S. -- The most recent issue of UU World magazine includes a transcript of a discussion that took place among five Unitarian Universalists of color about Ta-Nehisi Coates's book Between the World and Me. 

A Hole in the Myth

Let's begin with an assertion:  there is a "dominant culture" which describes reality in one very particular and specific way and which casts itself as normative.  Joseph Campbell once said that the myths of other people are stories that they tell to try to make sense of the world; our own myths are, "the way things are."  This is true of the story told by this dominate culture.  It is, simply, reality, and all other expressions of reality are compared to it (always in terms of the ways they do not measure up).

Further, let's stipulate that this dominant culture (which we could also fairly call a dominating or domineering culture) reflects the historic perspective of white, male, land-owning (that is to say, financially secure), well educated, heterosexual, able bodied, males.  This is quite specific.  One could even say limited view of the world, but that's the way dominant cultures tend to work.  The ones who are "at the top of the heap" get to describe what the world is like.  (In part, to be sure, to justify their position at the top of the heap, and also to protect and reinforce it.)

There is nothing all that radical in these assertion, except to those who are so entranced by this story that they truly can't see it for what it is.  There are, I'm afraid, more of these than I would want to believe, yet to many of us -- and certainly to the people with whom I run -- this is a clear truth.  We might call it "institutionalized racism," "white privilege," "sexism," "classism," "ablesim," and all the other isms that exist in our world.

Yet there is a paradox in this assertion, this story, this myth.  There are many, actually, but I want to focus in on one.  In the early days of this century, director Spike Lee coined the term "super-duper magical Negro" to describe a character in movies like The Green Mile and The Legend of Bagger Vance.  The "magical Negro" is an African American character in an otherwise Eurocentric movie who comes along and helps the main (white) character through the sharing of his deep wisdom, spirituality, and even, in many cases, his actual mystical, magical powers.  Matthew Hughey describes this figure in a 2009 article in the magazine Social Problems, "Cinethetic Racism: White Redemption and Black Stereotypes in 'Magical Negro' Films:"

"[His] powers are used to save and transform disheveled, uncultured, or broken whites (almost exclusively white men) into competent, successful, and content people within the context of the American myth of redemption and salvation.  It is this feature of the Magical Negro that some people find most troubling.  Although from a certain perspective the character may seem to be showing blacks in a positive light, he is still ultimately subordinate to whites.  He is also regarded as an exception, allowing white America to like individual black people but not black culture."

This character, this trope, is so prevalent that a list on Wikipedia has examples going back to 1946.  Some of the characters listed are no doubt debatable -- Morgan Freeman as "God" in Bruce Almighty and its sequel Evan Almighty, for instance, serves essentially the same function and has many of the same characteristics as George Burns' "God" does in Oh! God.  Yet whether any particular character should or should not be on the list misses the real point -- there is a list!  And the prevalence of this character points to the paradox I'm thinking of -- within the dominant culture there is the implicit awareness that on its own it's not enough.

In Ta-Nehisi Coastes's extraordinary book Between the World and Me he says:

"Even the Dreamers -- lost in their great reverie -- feel it, it is to Billie they reach for in sadness, and Mobb Deep is what they holler in boldness, and Isley they hum in love, and Dre they yell in revelry, and Aretha is the last sound they hear before dying."

Coates is saying what has long been known even though rarely admitted -- the dominant culture, who he calls "the Dreamers" (those who believe in and are privileged by the "American Dream"), realize that something is missing, theat they are in very real ways lost and in need, and that the missing something that will help in addressing that need can only come from outside itself.

What makes me bring all of this up is a realization that dawned on me recently while watching the new movie The Intern.  Another aspect of the specifics of those who are propped up by and who perpetuate this dominant culture -- along with being white, male, etc., etc. -- is that they are young.  The dominant culture in the United States worships the young and presents the young as being as normative for what it means to be human, as it does well-educated, financially secure, able-bodied, heterosexual white men.

And so we have not only "Magical Negroes" in our collective consciousnesses, but "Magical Old People."  Robert DeNiro's Ben Whittaker is a widowed retiree who is at first dismissed as too old and, thus, insignificant and inconsequential to the hip young people into whose world he gently and quietly enters.  Over the course of the movie, however, this obvious outsider comes to be recognized as a font of wisdom because of the experiences and knowledge he not only holds but embodies -- experiences, knowledge, and wisdom that these financially secure, able bodied, well-educated, straight (as far as we're told), young white people desperately need.  (He even, at one point, gives a feminist pep-talk to our supposedly awake and aware young heroine!)  In keeping with the trope, he comes into their world almost unnoticed and, once his work of salavation is accomplished, he disappears returning whence he came.  The film ends with Anne Hathaway's Jules Ostin discovering that Ben had inexplicably "taken the day off," that he was gone. In the final scene we see that he's returned to the seniors' tai chi class in which we first saw him.  To underline his role as Magical Old Guy, not only is he now no longer nearly comically going through the form, he is able to confidently teach it.  The original veneer of goof has been pulled back to show the guru.

Magical Negro.  Magical Old Guy.  The Magical Gay Best Friend.  Jamie Foxx's Nathaniel Ayers could be seen as an example of the Magical Mentally Ill Guy to Robert Downey, Jr.'s Steve Lopez in The Soloist.  Over and over again the myth of the dominant culture reveals within it the paradoxical myth that it is in need of salvation from the very peoples it denigrates.  And while the narrative device of the Magical Ostracized Outsider is offensive in so many ways, it may also be a sign of hope if seen for what it is: a recognition and acknowledgement that the heap is fundamentally and foundationally unstable, unable to maintain itself.  If understood widely enough, this myth may help to bring down the Myth it has been intended to support.

RevWik

PS -- I will write more in an upcoming post about Ta-Nehesi Coates's book Between the World and Me, but for now let me simply say that Toni Morrison could not be more correct when she calls it, "required reading."  I have never read anything like it -- ever -- and I truly wish that every (white) man, woman, and child in the United States could be exposed to its both beautifully and brutally honest truth.

To Be, Or Not To Be ...

I've recently been reading a book by Juana Bordas, Salsa, Soul, and Spirit:  Leadership for a Multicultural Age (New Approaches to Leadership from Latino, Black, and American Indian Communities).  This book as been read, and is being read, by UU congregations around the country as well as by Association leadership.  After all, we say we're serious about wanting to be a more truly multicultural community -- both at the level of the local congregation and the national movement -- yet Unitarian Universalism is steeped in Eurocentric history, assumptions, and norms ... so much so that for many of us it's hard to imagine that there's any other ("valid") way of doing things because we're so used to thinking that the way we do things is "the way things should be done."  If we -- White UUs -- want to move toward a true multiculturalism, then we're most likely going to have to open ourselves to learning some new ways of doing things.  (If only so that we can be more aware of how "our ways" don't resonate with anyone.)  Hence the interest around Ms. Bordas's book.

On FaceBook this morning I read a really insightful -- and no doubt for many a really challenging -- post.  It was written by a man named Chris Crass, and made me think of some of the things I'd read in Bordas's book.  First I'll pull out some of those quote and then, with his permission, I'm reprinting Chris' FaceBook post.

From Salsa, Soul, and Spirit: 

When you answer the call to become a multicultural leader, you commit to honoring the unique experiences and background of each person you encounter while connecting with the core human essence we all share.  (p. 199)

[T]he limitations of hierarchical pluralism:  "Dominant cultural values are at the top and are impermeable.  Everyone has to conform to them.  People who are different can come in and be included, but they must understand their traditions don't mean anything.  Their values are subservient and they must adapt."  (p. 203) 

Because Whites are often blind to their own existence as a group, as well as their advantages and privileges, they don't understand that business as usual is really doing business our way.  (p. 203)

Egalitarian pluralism is representative of all people in an organization, not just those who have traditionally held power.  Organizations must be willing to reinvent themselves by altering their language, structure, and methods of operation by welcoming diverse leaders to the table to share their perspectives and experiences. ... Changing structures, norms, and values, is the key to egalitarian pluralism and the foundation for multicultural leadership. (p. 204)

And here's the post that got me thinking:

To become an anti-racist church, the key question, for a white/white majority church, is not "how to get people of color to join the church", it is making a prolonged, spiritually-rooted, engaged commitment to uprooting white supremacy within the church and taking collective action to eradicate it in society.

Our goal is not to have white people sit alongside a person of color so as to affirm that those white people aren't racist. Our goal is to build and be part of beloved community united to end structural oppression and unleash collective liberation in our congregations, schools, neighborhoods, workplaces and society.

Our goal is to join hands across the divisions of racism in our faith and in our communities, find and affirm our humanity in each other, and join our hearts and minds to the task of destroying white supremacy in every worldview, policy, law, institution and governing body of our society. 

For our churches to be places of healing for people of color and white people from the nightmare of racism. For our churches to be places of nourishment for people of color and white people about the multiracial struggles of our people to advance economic, racial, and gender justice and the continual process of overcoming oppression within the movement on the journey to end oppression in society. For our churches to raise our children, of all backgrounds, to be freedom fighters and practitioners of liberation values. 

For our churches to be spiritually alive communities of worship, learning from and contributing to liberation cultures and legacies. For our churches to be welcoming homes for people of all colors, sexualities, classes, ages, genders, citizenship statuses, and abilities. For our churches to regularly be inviting us into and preparing us for courageous action for collective liberation, held in loving community for the long haul. Let our theology and our churches be active agents in the world, to help us all get free, together.

Being the kind of community Chris is describing will take those of us who are used to -- have grown up in, find comfortable and "sensible" -- the mores and norms of the dominant Eurocentric culture to become uncomfortable.  The new, the unfamiliar is usually uncomfortable and we want folks to learn our ways so that they can fit in.  Re-read the second quotation form Salsa:  

"Dominant cultural values are at the top and are impermeable.  Everyone has to conform to them.  People who are different can come in and be included, but they must understand their traditions don't mean anything.  Their values are subservient and they must adapt." [italics added]

This is all true, of course, not just in the context of race.  If "we" want to be truly welcoming to young adults then we need to make peace with the fact that for many of them their phones and tablets are an integrated part of how they think and act in the world.  (This isn't true for all, of course.  No group is a monolith, but it is true for many.)  So "we" want to welcome "them," yet look askance when they assume that that welcome includes them being themselves.

(I keep writing"we" because I am aware that not all UUs are a part of the dominant culture and so it isn't actually true to talk about Unitarian Universalists as if we're all the same.  Yet there is a dominant culture within our movement and a majority demographic, so when speaking of and for that dominant perspective I'm putting quotation marks around "we" so as to remind us all that that "we" doesn't include us all.)

"We" say "we" want to be truly welcoming to people of all economic classes and yet, as one example, "we" still expect everyone to participate in the annual pledge drive as if everyone had the financial means to do so.  "We" say we want to welcome "them," yet in a myriad of ways most of "us" never even see "we" reiterate the message that "they" not as good -- useful, productive, valuable and valued -- as "us."

"We" want to be welcoming to people with a wide variety of abilities, yet don't see making our buidlings accessible as a priority.  

"We" want to be welcoming to transgender people, yet want to make sure that "they" use the bathroom that makes "us" feel most comfortable.

"We" want to be welcoming to families with young children, yet are unwilling to share space with little ones who are age-appropriately squirmy and noisy.  And while we're on the subject of families with young children -- "we" say that "we" want there to be greater integration of these families with the rest of the church community, yet prevent that very integration when "we" insist that "they" volunteer in "our" Religious Education program because none of "us" want to do so.

I could, of course, continue.  In each of these examples, though, the thing to see is that the dominant "we" want the more marginal "they" to conform to "our" expectations and example, and to ensure that "we" are not at all put out or discomforted by "their" presence.  "We" claim as a desire a more multicultural community -- something that's a change from what's true now -- yet "we" are not willing to be changed in order to make it come true.  To put it simply, though:  until "we" are, it won't.

Hear Juana Bordas again:  "Organizations must be willing to reinvent themselves by altering their language, structure, and methods of operation by welcoming diverse leaders to the table to share their perspectives and experiences."  A question for those who so blithely name "diversity" as a value -- are you willing to reinvent yourself?

Pax tecum,

RevWik