I have never met a UU that didn't care deeply about issues of discrimination. The UUA website has a page devoted to resources on "Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression, Multicultural (ARAOMC) Resources" which interestingly is not found under "Members" but "Leaders--Identity Based Ministries--Multicultural." Anti-racism workshops and ministries are plentiful, I believe. [ http://www.uua.org/leaders/idbm/multiculturalism/araomc/index.shtml ]
Yet, consider the uuworld.org article by Paul Rasor Spring 2010 2.15.10 :
If you were asked about the racial and ethnic diversity within Unitarian Universalism, what would you say? If you wanted to verify your impression or discover how much we have changed over the past decade, where would you look? Whom would you ask? I tried to find out, and I discovered that nobody really knows. The UUA simply does not collect the data that could tell us how we are doing. When it comes to our own racial and cultural identity, our policy seems to be “don’t ask, don’t tell.” I find this both troubling and puzzling in light of our commitment eighteen years ago to create a “racially diverse and multicultural Unitarian Universalism.”...
In 2008, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life’s U.S. Religious Landscape Survey generated demographic information about even small religious groups like ours from interviews with 35,000 adults. ... Its weighted numbers show that 89 percent of UUs identified as white in 2007, 3 percent as Asian, 3 percent as Latino/Latina, 1 percent identified as black or African American, and 4 percent as “other/mixed.” ...
the UUA’s Mosaic Project Report, published in 2009, tells us that 42 percent of UU youth of color are the only ones in their congregations’ youth groups, and another 44 percent are in groups that have only two or three. In other words, UU children and youth for the most part attend religious education classes and youth groups that are far less diverse than their school classrooms. The Mosaic Project concludes:
The Unitarian Universalist culture [our Youth and Young Adults of Color] experience may not be relevant to their life experiences. Even though many of [them] have been UUs from birth, feelings of being an outsider are prevalent.
The UU goal is not just to be anti-racist, but to be multi-cultural and multi-racial.
Recently, a visiting minister was giving a program at our church and about a dozen of us were helping set up the program, provide coffee service, etc. Of all of us helping out, I noticed the visiting minister stopping to talk to only one of us and thank her for helping out. What was so different about this one person? She was African-American.
Was the minister anti-racist? Clearly, yes. Was the minister post-racist? Clearly, no.
So my question is: What can we do as UU's to move beyond racism, to a place where being African-American or non-white in a UU church is not special, but just is?
"I have never met a UU that didn't care deeply about issues of discrimination."
ReplyDeleteEither you haven't met the U*Us I have had the misfortune to meet or you don't consider anti-religious bigotry to be discrimination. . . I know far too many U*Us who don't care at all about the anti-religious intolerance and bigotry that is found throughout the U*U religious community. For the record these U*Us who do not care at all about discrimination on religious grounds include UUA Presidents, other top level UUA administrators, UUA Trustees, plenty of U*U clergy and any number of "ordinary" lay U*Us.
For we of the "baby boom" generation, realizing that we're unlikely to reach that place in our lifetimes is a start. We need to get out into our communities and demonstrate our values through sustained action. In course of doing that, we will make person-to-person connections that will provide the opportunity for us to describe the value that we find in belonging to and participating in our UU congregations. Such conversations should, occasionally, generate interest in finding out more about UUs, and if those interested persons discover a sense of belonging based on shared values - rather than shared phenotypic characteristics or childhood enculturation - then we have a chance at moving in the direction that we seek. We need to work to create the conditions in which people - including "African-American" and "non-white" persons - discover what we have in common, so that they can then decide whether or not it feels right for them to move beyond historical categories of identification and join us in co-creating the UU future. Terms like "multi-racial" and "multi-cultural" are conceptual scaffolding that can help us to build that future: when we find that the scaffolding has become extraneous, we may be able to claim that we have moved "beyond racism". The work of rendering that scaffolding extraneous begins with determination to "walk our talk" in the larger community.
ReplyDeleteThank you Walle, for your thoughtful and incisive comment. I regret using "non-white"--it wasn't really what I meant. I agree with what you said but what about hypervigilance to race or gender or sexual orientation? Is it possible in our stiving to be open, welcoming,and "multi-cultural" that we are perpetuating differences instead of moving beyond them to what we have in common, as you said?
ReplyDeleteThat is an important question. It is distinctly possible that our framing is perpetuating the very thing we hope to transcend . Paul Rasor referred to the “radical inclusiveness” of the early Universalists, and I have heard numerous times that “we welcome all who come.” To me, these examples indicate an “inward” focus that I summarize as “if we’re welcoming, they will come.” Being welcoming and inclusive are certainly necessary conditions for enabling us to realize the vision expressed in the 1992 GA Resolution, but they are hardly sufficient. When we do have the opportunity to welcome individuals who appear to have the potential for increasing the diversity of our congregations, shall we welcome them for their inherent worth and dignity, or because their presence may help us to feel better about ourselves?
ReplyDeleteI think Victor Frankl provides a very helpful perspective. I have substituted “multiculturalism” where he has written “success”.
“Don't aim at [multiculturalism] -- the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For [multiculturalism], like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for [multiculturalism]: you have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long-run -- in the long-run, I say! – [multiculturalism] will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think about it." (from *Man’s Search for Meaning*)
I am drawn again and again to the UUA tag line, “Nurture your spirit. Help heal our world.” The former component speaks from the “inward” focus: “If you are marginalized, oppressed, wounded by a faith tradition, battered by the prevailing political/cultural dynamics, or otherwise in need of sanctuary and support, we welcome you. We will nurture your spirit.” That is truly well and good, but it is not enough.
Our capacity for nurturing spirits must also include the "outward" focus - ways for individuals to “help heal our world.” The two components are interdependent, and only seemingly separable. Engagement in community, in providing service to others, is essential to spiritual growth and to realizing our vision of a better world.