Category: people of color

A Failure of My Faith

.Reading time 8 minutes.
white wooden boat adrift at shore under grey cloudy sky
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I have now watched the date that marks 400 years since Africans were first displaced to this continent in bondage come and go with no substantial acknowledgment by the Unitarian Universalist Association (well, we rang bells…that’s nice.)  I serve this denomination as one of all too few African American ministers and this lack of action is yet another reminder that in many ways, this is not my faith.  But I am not deterred.  In fact, I am determined that because of this minimal action, I will not let the same thing happen next year with regard to marking 400 years since the start of the aggressive and pre-meditated displacement in 1620 of Native people from the place that we now call Massachusetts.

I believe that the Unitarian Universalist Association and the United Church of Christ as the modern-day religious descendants of the Puritans who arrived here in 1620 must make a public acknowledgement of their role in initiating the devastation of Native people.  I also believe that as the religious body that formed and structured what would become the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the modern government of the commonwealth must join these two denominations in a public act of witness.

By 1620, Native tribes had already been poisoned by European disease.  But it was the Puritans who were then able to take advantage of this weakened position to squat on villages that had been previously cleared by dying tribes and to wield firearms (somethings never change) as a threat of lethal force to build their precious “city on a hill.”  Native people did not lay down without a fight (Pequot War, King Phillip’s War, etc.) but they were ultimately repressed by the English colonizers who had little or no interest in the original inhabitants’ continuing to survive according to their own customs let alone thrive.

…talk is cheap; repentance is dear.

There are those who will hear this call to action and resist any effort to acknowledge this history as a crime of humanity; and they may simply chalk it up to “progress”.  They may ask, how can we do this without then taking account of every one of the conflicts posed by European settlers to Native people.  They  may also retort with “but there was violence from both sides.” Frankly, I don’t give a damn because I’m tired of accommodating white fragility around this history.  I also know that if these three powerful (and supposedly liberal) entities continue to tacitly accept the forced removal, enslavement and genocide of the original inhabitants of this land as “progress” we will never get to a place of true progress; we will never truly recognize or resolve the ongoing violence of the Atlantic slave trade or the troublingly persistent second-class status of women.  In order to accomplish anything at all, we must begin at a beginning.

New England talks a good game on liberal values.  But talk is cheap; repentance is dear.  It is time for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the descended religious bodies of the Puritans (UUA & UCC) to pay up.

Inspired in this moment by the Jewish High Holy Days and the season of atonement, and the actions of the Collegiate Church of New York in 2009, the following is my imagination of what a joint declaration from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association addressing their role in Native displacement and murder might look like. Just to be clear, I am not Native or Indigenous identified and I cannot express the specific needs of those communities and I don’t intend to represent myself in that way.  But I am a minister in the lineage of the leaders who created this devastation and it is my obligation to call that legacy to account if my faith is ever to live up to my standards of racial, social and cultural equity:

A Declaration for 1620 Atonement

May it be understood:

The early colonizers of the region now known as the Commonwealth of Massachusetts intentionally sought to displace the original inhabitants of this land.

Motivated by their Christian faith, the colonizers approached their project of settlement with an assumption that their “work” was ordained by God.

The religious basis for the colonizers’ social and political organization was foundational to their efforts and created a justification of entitlement to their actions in peacetime and in war.

The Puritan movement created the principle social and political order for the colonizers.

May it be resolved:

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association (primary descendants and chief beneficiaries of the Puritan colonial project) recognize the year 2020 as a year of mourning and the beginning of atonement for the loss of life, the destruction of a way of life and for the stolen cultural autonomy of the Native people in this region.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association acknowledge their direct connection to the brutality inflicted on the Native people of this region.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association will seek reconciliation with the descendants of the displaced, enslaved and murdered original inhabitants of this land, but there will be no expectation of or obligation for this reconciliation to be accepted by the modern tribes.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association will collectively explore in consultation with Native people a system of full enfranchisement based on the needs and wants of the Native people.  This system may include but is not limited to financial, land and or educational reparations.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the United Church of Christ and the Unitarian Universalist Association will incorporate in their respective governing and spiritual documents an acknowledgement of this unrepayable debt owed to the Native inhabitants and moving forward will approach their efforts of government and faith development with humility and recognition of their role in the near destruction of the original people of this region.

-ALD

PDF Version: A Declaration for 1620 Atonement

Not Just Christianity, Not Just Crime

.Reading time 9 minutes.

BIDENWith the entry of Joe Biden into the Democratic race for the presidency in 2020, I feel like the field is complete.  Anyone else getting in the game at this point is most likely on the wrong side of the wave.  And so we brace ourselves for the debates, the unearthing of old memos and twitter posts, the previous bad life or policy decisions…and the pandering to diversity.

I’ve already watched the media begin its campaign.  The “go to” face of immigration is a young central American mother (speaking in Spanish).  The stories about Muslims and Jews bracing for the aftermath of different kinds of attacks on their faith are out there aplenty. What gets me personally frustrated however is the default face of blackness in any election season as it tends to exclusively feature humble but well-spoken black folks who are invariably members of robust gospel singing churches.

But that is not all we are.  In fact, it is not all we have ever been.  Yes, there are powerful and deeply loving black communities that thrive around black churches.  But black churches in the United States have a rich and complicated history in their origins, with issues of sexuality, with gender, with economics and with healthcare.  As a result, they are not the only places where we thrive.  Black church experience is not monolithic or simplistic.  It cannot be boiled down to a meme or a trope.  Although African Americans are among the most “churched” in this country, there is a significant black population that prefers to attend diverse spiritual communities that are not exclusively black or Christian…if they attend any at all.

There are many black Atheists/Humanists who are happy to have no church.  There are parts of the country where most blacks are Catholic.  There is a strong tradition of black Episcopalians who are not AME.  There are a significant number of United Church of Christ and United Methodist black clergy and lay people and yes, there are even black Unitarian Universalists, like me. Not to forget about black Muslims, Jews, Sikhs, Hindus and Buddhists.  Black people in the United States are much more than a gospel choir footnote to a feel-good story on MLK Day.

The other stereotype pushed by the media and picked up on by candidates is black people and crime.  I can guarantee you that even back in the 1990s black people could have told you that the problem was not about crime or drugs, it was about social obstruction to opportunity.  Those laws were a band-aid on a heart attack.  A generation of black people were erased by those measures and now as there are efforts to help some of them out of the system late in their lives, formerly incarcerated people still face the same obstacles they faced when they went in 35 years ago: lack of access to employment, dismal healthcare, lack of education and cultural hopelessness inflicted by a society that sees incarceration as punishment and not a path to public safety through rehabilitation and restorative justice.

But there are plenty of black people who never touch the justice system, even though the statistics are framed to make one believe that black interaction with police is inevitable.  Every time a black person is shot and killed by police in an incident of profiling, we would do better to focus on the fact that it is a unique catastrophe rather than a common consistency of systemic failure.  There are plenty of black lawyers, and doctors and obviously by this election cycle, politicians.  HBCUs produce thousands of graduates every year who are not simply trading in their graduation gowns for orange jumpsuits.  The home health industry is dominated by professional and highly trained black (and Asian) women…ask anyone with an elderly parent.  Global Industry both on the corporate level and on the unionized worker level has large populations of black workers who want security, sustainability and safety above all…like anyone else.  We are not all swimming in a sea of crime.

Still, I don’t want to diminish the importance of historically black churches in getting us to today.  They were oases in times of widespread anti-black violence, and they are still community gathering points.  Nor do I want to diminish the fact that when crime and justice systems impact black people, the effect is decidedly more extreme for us than for any other demographic with the exception of Native people.  My point is that blackness, like other non-whiteness, has its own multi-faceted diversity…it is not just what creates diversity for whiteness.  We cannot let the next President of the United States ignore this.

The current election cycle has a great deal riding on it.  It is essential to delete Donald Trump from the equation of government and influence.  More than his individual actions, it is the lack of action by those around him who stand aside and let him “bull-in-the-china-shop” our government that we should beware of.  When he is gone (which will be soon), the rest of us will still need to recon with the Mitch McConnells and Lindsay Grahams who worked to normalize Trump and his blend of toxic masculinity and mob thug behavior.  If Democrats or anyone with a conscience really is serious about finding an antidote to Trump: The Sickness, they must completely reconceive of what it means to run for and then hold public office.  Trump won on a cult of personality squarely aimed at flattering male whiteness.  One look at the demographics of who voted for him, including the number of white Democrats who were willing to vote for him as a vote against Hillary Clinton is an indication of how well that strategy can burn through the institution when it is ignited.  As the wide Democratic field considers its own strategy, it must not play into that equation.  For me, playing into that game looks like shallow connection to black voters and other people of color through hot button issues that play well for hits and media likes.  The Democratic field of liberal and progressive candidates would do well to recognize that it must actually have a real relationship with the diversity of black communities as individuals, just as they must have a real relationship with Muslims, Jews, LGBTQ people, conservatives and even white people in all their diversity.  None of the Democratic candidates can afford to take for granted that their brand of “liberal” will automatically speak to black voters…without actually speaking to all black voters.

– ALD