Sunday, March 2, 2008

"Justice, Equity and Compassion

in Human Relations"

A Talk by Mim Neal

Namaqua UU Congregation

It has been 23 years since the Unitarian Universalist Association adopted a list of principles and spiritual sources as guidelines for its member congregations. As Barbara Fleming noted last week, this was a tricky business, since UU is a creedless religion and UUs are allergic to definitions.

But it was done and now both the association and its congregations are looking at them again – to see if we still agree. Today, and on future Sunday mornings, one of us will present her or his take on one of these principles. In this way, we can examine and talk about the values we share and how they might affect the way we live.

The first principle says that we covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Barbara and others commented this was a tough one. How, for example, can we value the truly evil? Or even the truly obnoxious?

In contrast, the second principle should be a walk in the park. Who’s going to argue with affirming and promoting justice, equity and compassion in human relations? We actually affirm this in every order of service. Look in the box. It says this congregation welcomes all persons without regard to age, gender, sexual orientation, race, disability, or other class of exclusion. No one in this room would ever deliberately engage in any of the evil “isms” -- age-ism, sexism, heterosexism, racism, or able-ism.

That’s why I was puzzled when I was asked to become one of the facilitators for Building the World We Dream About. Namaqua had been chosen to field test a new curriculum on race and ethnicity. This curriculum requires people to meet for two hours, twice a month, for a full year. Why on earth would we need to do this?  I, for one, have spent my whole adult life refuting all the isms that my parents and the larger culture espoused.

Through reading and participation in women’s spiritual gatherings (and, I might add, a bit of common sense) I have been able to personally refute the overwhelming patriarchy of our culture and religious heritage. Women can vote. Be doctors. Run for president. We are so over sexism.

And racism? I worked for more than 20 years with people of every race and most religions and dozens of nationalities. Race is largely irrelevant for me.

And it’s been at least 30 years since I found out about homosexuality and realized that sexual orientation made absolutely no difference in the quality and worth of individuals (including my oldest son).

Et cetera.

In my lifetime, I’ve seen these once unmentionable topics rise into mainstream consciousness. I’ve seen amazing changes in laws and attitudes. Part of me was (embarrassingly) like Dr. Pangloss in Candide, believing that ‘every day in every way, we get better and better.’

Well, duh. That’s what I wanted to believe. But the fact is, all these isms are alive and well and causing enormous damage to individuals and communities and our future.

As the Music Man might say:

Well, either you're closing your eyes
To a situation you do not wish to acknowledge
Or you are not aware of the caliber of the disaster.

Ya got trouble, my friends, right here,
I say, trouble right here in River City.
Trouble with a capital "T". . .

And that rhymes with me. Or rather it applies to me and, really, to all of us. I was, as the Music Man proclaimed, both closing my eyes to a situation I did not wish to acknowledge and not aware of the caliber of the disaster.

There are fourteen of us involved in the test curriculum on racism. Six of us, in pairs, take turns facilitating our sessions. The rest of the time we join the rest of the participants. With the possible exception of Alicia, we are no more enlightened than the others; we just get to read ahead.

We’ve been doing a lot of reading over the last four months. And a lot of talking and a lot of thinking. We’re about one quarter the way through the curriculum. We’ve worked together for about 16 hours and we are astounded.

We read incredible statements. Literally incredible. We don’t want to believe them. But when we work with them, discuss them and, in some cases, act them out, we cannot deny them. I’m going to repeat some of them today. I’ve chosen direct quotations from a paper called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” by Peggy McIntosh, and from the book Privilege, Power and Difference by Allan G. Johnson.

“Men are the cultural standard for humanity and women are just women.”*

“We live in a society that attaches privilege to being white and male and heterosexual and non-disabled regardless of social class.“*

“Whites are taught to think of their lives as morally neutral, normative, and average, and also ideal, so that when we work to benefit others, this is seen as work that will allow ‘them’ to be more like ‘us.’ ” **

“As my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color.” **

“I did not see myself as a racist because I was taught to recognize racism only in individual acts of meanness by members of my group, never in invisible systems conferring unsought racial dominance on my group from birth.”**

“White people are up to their necks in it just by being here. … What we don’t realize most of the time is that the ‘isms’ – sexism, heterosexism, able-ism, racism—affect more than women, gays or lesbians, people with disabilities, and people of color. They affect everyone, because it’s impossible to live in a world that generates so much injustice and suffering without by being touched by it. Everyone has a race, a gender, a sexual orientation, a disability status. Whether we like it or not, we all figure in the differences that privilege and oppression are about. … no matter who you are, the trouble is your trouble.”*

“Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.”**

Once I began acknowledging the truth of these statements, I had to deal with guilt. [It’s an automatic response; I’m a mother.]  But in the course of this course, I have come to realize, and here I quote again: “…we can be involved in a society’s or organization’s troubles without doing anything wrong and without being bad people.”*

That was a relief. I don’t like to think of myself as a bad person. I prefer to think of myself, as you probably think of yourself, as one of the good guys.

But in the course of this course I have come to realize, to acknowledge, that I am part of a bad system – a system that systematically chooses winners and losers, depriving the majority of the people of the ‘confident action’ that would enable them to realize their full potential.

‘What is she talking about?’ you might be thinking. ‘What system? I don’t know about any system? Yes, you do. We all live in the system that makes each of the following nine statements true. 

• I am a white person: I have been raised to believe that my country, and indeed the civilized world, was created by white people.

• I am a white person: I can turn on the television or read a newspaper and see people of my own race widely represented.

• I am a white person: when I go to the supermarket, most of the food reflects my cultural traditions.

• I am a white person: Whether I use checks, cash, or credit cards, my skin color does not work against the appearance of financial reliability.

• I am a white person: I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

• I am a white person: I can remain oblivious of the language and customs and creations of persons of color, who constitute the world’s majority, without feeling any penalty for such oblivion.

• I am a white person: I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children’s magazines featuring people of my own race.

• I am a white person: I can be pretty sure that if I ask to speak to ‘the person in charge,’ I will be facing another white person.

• I am a white person: I can assume that my neighbors will be decent to me and that my race will not count against me in a court of law.

That’s the system. The cultural consensus that not only allows those nine statements to be true but also reinforces their truth in both custom and mass media news and entertainment. It’s the system – the larger society – that is the problem. Allan Johnson compares the system to playing Monopoly.

I have a grand niece, Emily, who will be twelve years old in May. She is in a gifted and talented program, she ice skates competitively, acts in school plays, speaks fluent Spanish, plays the clarinet, grows her hair and gets it cut to donate to cancer patients, and is generally the brightest, sweetest, kindest human being I have ever met.

Until she plays Monopoly. When she plays Monopoly, she is greedy and mean and does everything possible she can to win. 

Of course. That’s the purpose of the game.

And that’s the point. Each of us can get caught up in the game, in the system. Simply accept the ‘rules’ and act accordingly.

Actually, that is a pretty easy thing to do in our largely vanilla communities. According to the 2000 census, both Loveland and Berthoud are more than 90 percent white. Fort Collins is 82 percent white. The next largest group, in all three communities, is Hispanic-Latino, at 8 to 10 percent. Asians and Blacks are about 3 percent of Fort Collins’ population and less than one percent in Berthoud and Loveland. Native Americans are less than one percent in all three cities.

We could ignore other races indefinitely. OR we could acknowledge that the rules of the game are unacceptable.

None of has to play the games that discount the worth of other human beings. We don’t have to be condescending or paternalistic. We don’t have to laugh at jokes made at the expense of others.  We can stop assuming that blacks have rhythm and gay men are hairdressers and women are mere accessories for car commercials. When a salesperson turns to wait on you instead of the Hispanic woman who was there first, you can point out that the Hispanic woman was there first and should be waited on first.

None of these actions will transform the entire American culture. None of them will transform centuries of privilege and oppression into some idyllic society. But each of them can erode the system, just a little.

Mahatma Gandhi once said that nothing we do as individuals matters, but that it is vitally important to do it anyway.

Every time we get beyond media-reinforced stereotypes, we get a little closer to true communication, to true community.

And if we cannot transform the larger society, we can at least change our own community.

We, the members of the Namaqua Unitarian Universalist Congregation, can start by listening to non-European music, hearing non-English words, and moving in non-white suburban ways.

We’ve done some of that this morning.

We will be enriched by the process.

I don’t think the second UU principle needs any amending. Affirming and promoting justice, equity and compassion in human relations is something we not only can agree to, we also can learn how to do it better. And I can’t think of any better place to learn than right here in this community.

Amen, Shalom, Adios, and Blessed Be.

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Closing Words:

Let us become co-conspirators,

eager to mend a society torn by oppression and privilege.

Let us, individually, and as a community,

affirm and promote

justice, equity and compassion in human relations.

                                         * From Privilege, Power and Difference by Allan G. Johnson

                                        ** From White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack by Peggy McIntosh