Dismantling Racism

Rev. Meg Barnhouse
November 10, 2013

Racism is deep in the human DNA. Most peoples of the world have some other people they paint as lazy, oversexed, untrustworthy and stupid. Is there a way to heal that in ourselves?

Call to Worship

What we’ve started
by Betty Bobo Seiden

We are here today because we want our religious journey to include more than one holy land, more than one vision, more than one scripture….

We sing praises in many styles and in many languages.

We make a joyful noise unto whomever nourishes and sustains all life.

When we look around us here today we see the beauty of diversity – people of various sizes and shapes, heads of different colors and textures. We see an age span of several generations. We are aware of personality differences, of differences in perspective, of ancestors who represent every continent of our world.

Come let us celebrate our diversity. Come let us worship together.

Reading:

Exerpt from It’s Hard Work
by Rosemary Bray McNatt

… The truth is this: If there is no justice, there will be no peace. We can read Thoreau and Emerson to one another, quote Rilke and Alice Walker and Howard Thurman, and think good and noble thoughts about ourselves. But if we cannot bring justice into the small circle of our own individual lives, we cannot hope to bring justice to the world. And if we do not bring justice to the world, none of us is safe and none of us will survive. Nothing that Unitarian Universalists need to do is more important than making justice real – here, where we are. Hard as diversity is, it is our most important task.

Sermon: Dismantling Racism

It’s important to me to talk about racism. I don’t like to do it. One of the nice things about being white is that I really don’t have to think about it if I don’t want to. White is the norm. If I say “there were these two guys walking down the street,” you’ll probably picture white guys. Otherwise I would have said “there were these two black guys walking down the street.” Or “there were these two Asian guys walking down the street.” Dr. Thandeka, a professor at Meadville Lombard, a UU seminary in Chicago, asks her students to play the “race game.” All it involves is identifying people as white too. So you say “It’s that white woman over there.” Instead of just “it’s that woman over there.” Doing that, feeling its awkwardness in white company, brings it home how much whiteness is still the norm in this culture. I don’t have to feel guilty about it. It’s not my fault. I do need to be aware of it, though, if I want to be a smart person. I watch the news and I’m grateful that I could go into Barney’s in NYC and buy an expensive designer handbag, and security would not grab me outside the store and handcuff me while they check to see if debit card was legit. I could be driving out in the country at night and notice a pickup truck with a confederate flag on the front bumper behind me and have good odds that if I got into trouble, those fellows would stop and help me out.

I love watching BBC police shows, and I’m often struck by the differences in the behavior of the black police. I try to put my finger on it, but it’s hard to do. If any of you have noticed that, I would love for you to help me articulate what it is.

Peggy McIntosh is a professor of Women’s Studies at Wellesley College who turned her skills honed in looking at gender in our culture to looking at race. She began to write down things she noticed. Things she was able to do as a white woman. See what you think.

Peggy McIntosh

1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.

2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me.

3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live. 4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.

5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.

6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.

7. When I am told about our national heritage or about “civilization,” I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.

8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.

9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.

10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race.

11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person’s voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race.

12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser’s shop and find someone who can cut my hair.

13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability. 14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.

15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection.

16. I can be pretty sure that my children’s teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others’ attitudes toward their race.

17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color.

18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race.

19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.

20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.

21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.

22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world’s majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.

23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.

24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the “person in charge”, I will be facing a person of my race.

25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven’t been singled out because of my race.

26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children’s magazines featuring people of my race.

27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared.

28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.

29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me.

30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn’t a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have.

31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices.

32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races.

33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.

34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.

35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race.

36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones.

37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally.

38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do.

39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.

40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.

41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.

42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race.

43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem.

44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race.

45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race.

46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in “flesh” color and have them more or less match my skin.

47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us.

48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household.

49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership.

50. I will feel welcomed and “normal” in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.

She talks about her whiteness as granting her an invisible backpack full of visas, tools, maps, and codes that she can pull out as needed to make her way in the world. I thought that was interesting, as I had been raised to think that people of color were disadvantaged in that they didn’t have these normal things. I was not raised to consider that I might be over empowered by my whiteness, so that if I stay oblivious to it I might be doing damage.

Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies” (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $10.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181 The working paper contains a longer list of privileges.

This excerpted essay is reprinted from the Winter 1990 issue of Independent School.

John Scalzi is a sci-fi fantasy author who talked about it this way in his blog “Whatever.” Since I never did role-playing games, I had to look up a few terms.

Dudes. Imagine life here in the US – or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world – is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?

Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.

This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.

Now, once you’ve selected the “Straight White Male” difficulty setting, you still have to create a character, and how many points you get to start – and how they are apportioned – will make a difference. Initially the computer will tell you how many points you get and how they are divided up. If you start with 25 points, and your dump stat is wealth, well, then you may be kind of screwed. If you start with 250 points and your dump stat is charisma, well, then you’re probably fine. Be aware the computer makes it difficult to start with more than 30 points; people on higher difficulty settings generally start with even fewer than that.

As the game progresses, your goal is to gain points, apportion them wisely, and level up. If you start with fewer points and fewer of them in critical stat categories, or choose poorly regarding the skills you decide to level up on, then the game will still be difficult for you. But because you’re playing on the “Straight White Male” setting, gaining points and leveling up will still by default be easier, all other things being equal, than for another player using a higher difficulty setting.

Likewise, it’s certainly possible someone playing at a higher difficulty setting is progressing more quickly than you are, because they had more points initially given to them by the computer and/or their highest stats are wealth, intelligence and constitution and/or simply because they play the game better than you do. It doesn’t change the fact you are still playing on the lowest difficulty setting.

You can lose playing on the lowest difficulty setting. The lowest difficulty setting is still the easiest setting to win on. The player who plays on the “Gay Minority Female” setting? Hardcore.

– Blog: “Whatever”

There is a lot I don’t understand about racism. If I were to talk about all the things I don’t know, we would be here a lot longer than y’all want to be, so I will talk about some of the things I do know. I know that every group on earth is racist about some other group. Here is what they all say:” They are dirty and lazy. They don’t want to work. They are over emotional and their religion is strange. Their brains are smaller– they just can’t think the way we do, so they are better at hands-on work — as long as you tell them exactly what to do. They will hurt children and women.” Who is that talking? It’s the Japanese talking about Koreans, whom they traditionally have despised.

It’s the he Northern Italians talking about the Southern Italians, whose skin is darker than theirs. The Northern Indians hate the Southern Tamil Indians, whose skin is darker. In Sri Lanka the Tamils hate the Singhalese. Moslems and Hindus slaughtered each other in 1947, as Pakistan and Bangladesh were being partitioned off from India. More than a million Hindus and Muslims were killed during the partition. Malaysians hate the Chinese. The Serbs hate the Croats. The Czechs hate the Slovaks. In Africa, the Hutus hate the Tutsis and slaughter each other. Right now the Tutsis are in power, but that will change, as it has before. In Nigeria the Hausa hate the Ibo. Sunni and Shiite Moslems war with one another in Iraq. In Syria, there are families and clans that hate each other. In Darfur, in the Sudan, the Arab-identifying Muslim nomadic Sudanese are slaughtering the non-Arab identifying Muslim sedentary Sudanese. The Israelis hate the Arabs. Will it always be this way? What has to change?

The Arabs have a proverb: “Me and my cousin against the world. Me and my brother against my cousin.”

Racism is a global dynamic between people. Here is another thing. It’s more comfortable to think of racism as mean things individuals to do other individuals. Less comfortable to think about how the whole culture has been fixed, over time, to benefit the people who are in power.

European Americans have had most of the power in the economy and the government. We also have tremendous power in the schools and the service industries. Our first black president is experiencing a tremendous resistance and outrage from the powers, and it’s interesting to ponder how much of that is because of his race.

None of us in here wants to be racist. We don’t like to think of ourselves that way. But most of us do participate unthinkingly in white privilege. This is not something to wallow in guilt about. Wallowing in guilt makes you stupid and drains your energy. You don’t think well. You don’t want to face the people who don’t have the privileges you do.

White privilege is something to notice. This is not something non white people can or should have to help white people with. This is white people’s responsibility. In our UU churches, bless our hearts, it is not uncommon for the people of color who come in our doors to be approached about being on the anti-racism committee. It happens sometimes that when a black person joins the choir, suddenly the repertoire changes to include more gospel songs, even if that particular black person prefers classical, folk, or country. Dr. King had a dream that people might someday be judged by the content of their character. Let us work to be that change in the world, and judge one another that way, and let us make our own characters so real and kind that when we are judged that way, we won’t be found wanting.

Dr. King said in his “I have a dream” speech “we shall hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.” The racism in our world certainly could weigh on a person like a mountain of despair.

I have thought a lot about despair and hope. I’ve been wondering about that image of a stone of hope. It comes from the mountain of despair, so it’s made of the same stuff. How can that be?

The thing that despair and hope have in common is the vision of a better future. A necessary component of despair is knowing that things aren’t what they should be. To feel that, you need a vision of what things should be. Despair is when the vision of what should be combines with the weight of what is and threatens to overwhelm you. You can’t see how to get there. You can’t believe things will ever be better. Despair is giving up. The antidote to despair is that we just take a little piece of that mountain, and the piece we take is the vision of how things could be.

We all know that, if all you have is a sense of how things should be, you can be one miserable human being. In ancient Greek mythology, when Pandora opened the container and let all the evils fly out into the world, she slammed the lid shut with just one left inside. What was it? Hope. What was hope doing among the evils of the world? Hesiod said it was because hope is empty and no good, and it takes away people’s industriousness. Friedrich Nietzsche said ” Hope is the worst of evils, for it prolongs the torments of man.” Yes, hoping without action is foolish, if an action can be taken.

Rita Mae Brown says “Never hope more than you work.” That’s what those people in Ohio were doing. Hoping and working. That’s what the people who believed in Dr. King’s vision did. They held the vision and they worked.

Maybe stone is just the right material for hope. Dr. King did not say “Out of the mountain of despairs we mine a jewel of hope.” It is not something rare and precious we find within the despair, covered, held and hidden in there. Maybe stone is just the right value for hope. Stone is ancient, far more ancient than humanity, and it’s everywhere. It’s common. We can lose hope over and over and just pick up more anywhere. You can throw hope away in a fit of rage and loss of spirit, then just hack yourself off another piece. Maybe stone is just the right hardness for hope too. Hope has to be tough. One of my friends said at a twelve step meeting her sponsor handed her a stone and said, “Any time you feel like taking a drink, put this in your mouth. When it dissolves, go ahead and have a drink.”

We hold on to our hope. Find yours, and live with it in your pocket, in the palm of your hand. What do you hope for? We hope, and we do what we can do make things better. We reach out to friends, we pray, we meditate, we open our hearts to joyful events and sorrowful ones. We hope for ourselves, we hope for one another, we hope for this church, and we hope for our country.

Podcasts of this and other sermons are also available for free on iTunes. You can find them here.

http://itunes.apple.com/podcast/first-unitarian-universalist/id372427776