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Rev. Meg Barnhouse
April 14, 2019
First UU Church of Austin
4700 Grover Ave., Austin, TX 78756
www.austinuu.org
In advance of a church storytelling event the first weekend in May, we will talk about the power of our stories. We will talk particularly about the stresses put on us by the stories told about people with our particular identities, women, LGBTQ, people of color, white men, Etc. How do those stories shape us and put pressure on our thinking?
Call to worship
A HAT FULL OF SKY
Terry Pratchett
There’s always a story. It’s all stories, really. The sun coming up every day is a story. Everything’s got a story in it. Change the story, change the world.
Meditation Reading
THE NAME OF THE WIND
Patrick Rothfuss
Chronicler frowned. “Is that the one where the king sells his crown to an orphan boy?”
Bast nodded. “And the boy becomes a better king than the original. The goosegirl dresses like a countess and everyone is stunned by her grace and charm.” He hesitated, struggling to find the words he wanted. “You see, there’s a fundamental connection between seeming and being. Every Fae child knows this, but you mortals never seem to see. We understand how dangerous a mask can be. We all become what we pretend to be.”
Chronicler relaxed a bit, sensing familiar ground. “That’s basic psychology. You dress a beggar in fine clothes, people treat him like a noble, and he lives up to their expectations.”
“That’s only the smallest piece of it,” Bast said. “The truth is deeper than that. It’s…” Bast floundered for a moment. “It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.”
Sermon
We talk a lot about story in this pulpit. How events happen, and then we tell stories about what happened, to ourselves and to others. People experience the same event and tell different stories to make sense of it. The stories shape how you respond to the event. If someone is rude, you wonder if you did something to them. Maybe they were in pain, maybe they were tired. I’ve told you about my friend Pat, who, when cut off in traffic, says “Bless her heart, I bet she just got out of the hospital.” That’s one possible explanation. It changes how you feel about what just happened. If a bad thing happened some people will think it’s bad luck. Others will think the God of their understanding is punishing them for something. If someone sees a toddler crying, they might think “that baby is tired,” Someone else might think the parent is doing something wrong, or not doing something they should do. Someone without kids might think “When I have children, they will never behave like that.” The Karma Fairy laughs. My daughter-in-law posted a photo of my granddaughter crying. “She’s crying because her tongue is wet and I won’t let her keep drying it off.” No one would have guessed that story.
Today I want to talk about a different aspect of story this morning. Stories other people you grew up in a family with more than one kid, there may have been stories about each one of you. One is the quiet one, one’s the pretty one, one’s the smart one, one’s trouble. Family roles are assigned. Usually one kid is the hero kid, does everything right, gets good grades, doesn’t cause trouble. Sometimes one gets the “scapegoat” role, where, when something breaks its assumed to be their fault. When there is a fight, they are assumed to have started it. One kid sometimes is the family clown, where their humor diffuses tension, or distracts the rest of the family from something that might cause a fight. One kid sometimes has the “distractor” role, and they will sometimes develop a problem in order to give the parents something else to focus on besides their deteriorating relationship or financial situation. This kid’s problem is a semi-conscious try to pull the family together. If you were the hero kid, that story told about you that you never gave your parents a moments trouble, or that you were the smartest one, or the story that you were trouble – those stories can shape your life forever. We tend to re-create the roles we had in our families in our grown up families, in our chosen families, in our workplaces and in our church community.
What about stories that are told in the broader culture about us and our people, our identity groups? Studies since 1995 are showing that those stories affect us. This is called stereotype threat, or identity threat, and the stories cause stress if you are aware of them.
Girls are bad at math. Boys are bad at verbal skills. There are stereotypes about Black and Brown kids, sometimes borne out by statistics. There are stereotypes about Asians, sometimes borne out by statistics. Stereotypes about gay men and lesbians, stereotypes about older white men, about young brown women, angry black women …. What the psychologists found is that when you are aware of stereotypes about your group, you sometimes stress about being lumped in with the negatives about your group. You carry your whole group on your shoulders, or you are aware that you will be allowed fewer mistakes than someone else, or that you will not be given the benefit of the doubt.
Studies find that this awareness, this worry, interferes with some of the executive functioning of your brain. Updating, a skill of the part of your memory that is available for immediate work, is diminished. Learning new things is harder, the ability to take risks is suppressed. If a female student is treated in a sexist way by a male experimenter, she tends to do less well on tasks. When Slack students are told to do a task, and stereotypes about African-Americans are highlighted, they tend to perform less well than Black students who didn’t hear the stereotypes mentioned. When, before an experiment, men are reminded that the stereotype is that men are not so good at verbal skills, they do more poorly on verbal tasks than men for whom this stereotype isn’t highlighted.
In progressive circles, now, white men might be worrying about not talking or acting like “a typical white guy.” People of color might step on their expressions of anger and outrage. I’ve heard friends talk about not wanting to come across like “that angry Black woman.”
POEM I WROTE TO MY BLACK AND BROWN SISTERS:
by Rev. Kristen HarperMy beautiful black, brown, sister with your
Nonconforming grace and rhythm radiating soul.
You with the big deep brown eyes and piercingly fierce gaze.
You with the long, short, curly, straight, locked crown
You in all your regal baldness.
I know what lies beneath that controlled voice, that diminished expression
I can see behind the veil of servant, of surrogate.
I feel the anger, the sadness, the frustration, the slow death
of shrinking, of trying to become small so other’s won’t be intimidated,
won’t be afraid.I know the depression of stuffing, pushing down the roar of righteousness
the roar that claims our humanity, our value, our right to name the truth. I see your goddessesness, your divine love,
the depth of your black, brown brilliance.
I hope someday you will too. See the
years of survival not as a test-but a testimony,
to a stubborn love born from generations of strong black, brown sisters –
Mothers who refused to give up, grandmothers who passed down
more than recipes of arroz con polio, tandoori or fried chicken.
Sisters, many sisters and aunts who held one another up, reached out a hand, shook us when we needed to wake up.
My beautiful black, brown sister with your
doubt, and your brokenness, and your dusty knees …
You are loved.
How do we counter this? The studies show that derogation works with some people, sometimes. It’s the old “consider the source” tactic. If you can think derogatory things about the person or people thinking bad things about you and your identity, you do better. Constructive behavior works also, where you just put your head down and do an amazing job. Some people try denying their identity group, or its importance to them.
So what is the take away from all of this? It’s natural to be a bit dimmed, a bit daunted and slowed down when you are worried about the stereotypes about one of your identities. When you see black and brown kids not doing as well at school, consider that one of the factors is this identity threat, that they pick up all kinds of subliminal cues about how teachers, administrators, other kids, and society at large “stories” about them.
Hearing and seeing positives about your group helps a lot. If you’re a Black woman in a STEM field, lifting up Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, the women who were calculators for NASA, whose work helped the US land on the moon. If you’re a Latinx kid, knowing about Latino scientists, journalists, authors and warriors can help.
I don’t know if history erases the accomplishments of women and marginalized people on purpose, but it has a tremendous effect. The recent photograph of a black hole was taken in large part through an algorithm created by Dr. Katie Bouman. It only took the internet a day or two to notice that her contribution was downplayed, that she was an unnamed grad student in some stories, and that the right wing corner or the net began claiming that a white man in the lab was the one who really wrote the algorithm. He shut that down quickly. That’s an ally.
Hold in mind the proud things about your identity. Know the proud things about other identities. The stories are strong. Tell all the stories, dig them up, hold them in your hands like smooth stones, reminding yourself of your strength and power. Then go shining.
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