Category: Race

Tag Along

.Reading time 8 minutes.
Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

I sent a friend a text message last night during Super Tuesday on March 5, 2024 that sums up what I think many black people and people of color voters might feel about the 2024 Presidential Election cycle:

“Watching white people decide the future of the country is not fun.”

Although this was arguably the norm in the pre-Obama era, it was less blatant and less existentially debilitating then.  Ignorance was a twisted bliss.  Particularly for those of us children of the Civil Rights Movement, there was at least the vague and performative indication that one’s vote as a black American (a long fought for right that was severely compromised in 2013) counted for something.  In 2024 however, it is simply a fact that whiteness, or really the various convulsions of whiteness are driving the politics and policies of the country.

White liberals are still congratulating themselves on Obama, whose policies by and large look like every other mid 20th century Democrat politician.  While physically so, politically Obama was not a black president.  Arguably, he shouldn’t have had to be.  Biden is a coda to Obama as well as a throwback to the Johnson/Nixon era touting an underlying message of universality and “gee can’t we all just get along”-ism that struggles against its tendency toward colorblindness and flattened playing fields.  In contrast, Trump actively courts Nazis, racist and homophobic radical Christians, and the KKK while making a place for blacks who really want to see themselves as white (I’m looking at you Sen. Tim Scott) and Latinos who already do when it is convenient (Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Marco Rubio).  They provide Emmy worthy theater, by playing along while not getting in the way…yet staying in camera shot.

But Emmys are given for fiction and our politics actually change people’s lives.  The phalanx of white men currently closing ranks around our national decision making is an odd mix of impotent liberals and rabid conservatives who have never had to consider gestation inside their bodies, or what it means to be the target for gun violence because from a distance you might look like someone, or being shut out of housing or jobs because you talk with sibilance. But they want to convince us that they really do have everyone’s best interest at heart, and we should all just tag along.

But tagging along with, that is “trusting”, someone who has no idea what a life lived outside of the safety of being a white penis holder has never served those of us without that embodied experience well.  Voting is more difficult now if you have brown skin, having a uterus is more difficult whether you identify as female, male or trans and I can already hear the key in the lock on that old closet door, ready to swing open to welcome the gays back in.  While the dominant white men in politics and academics see this as a natural ebb and flow of “society”, for the rest of us it is life and death.

Electing Barack Obama was the best and the worst thing possible for the United States.  It was the best thing because 220 years of white male rule seems like a lot in a country that is only 236 years old.  My goodness, not even Great Britain did that.  It was the worst thing because it exposed the reality of American ignorance about what representative government actually is.  Or maybe it just laid the true bias and bigotry bare?

Back in the day, one of the arguments against women achieving the vote as well as the argument against blacks having the vote after emancipation was that women and non-whites were not capable of holding the responsibility for civic duty.  This seems odd considering the rather central role women have in literally creating life and the fact that illiterate white men who led lynch mobs to wantonly kill blacks could vote.  The legacy of questioning the capabilities of non-white, non-male individuals is built into the system, codified in law and regularly reasserted in policy.

But in 2024, non-white is nearly dominant and non-male has been dominant for decades in this country.  If we look at the representative reality, neither Donald Trump nor Joe Biden should be president of the United States.  Not intending to be ageist, it is impossible to look at global demographics and international leadership without seeing them both as fossils. Neither of them will be capable of solving the crisis at the border because they have only literally flown in and flown out of that situation.  Neither of them can solve the problems of US involvement in international war because their experience of conflict is at existential arms length (more so for Trump).  Neither of them can understand the conflict in Gaza because their understanding of the region and the people involved will always be academic at best and trope based at worst.  These are not leaders for a modern world.

The United States is at a crossroads.  It is dragging its elderly politicians to places they are ill equipped to go.  It is silencing the voices of its diverse electorate through gerrymandered voting maps and restrictive voting policies, to keep the myth of a status quo happy.  Through what can only be called radical judicial decisions, it is enabling criminals and dismantling the one guardrail that we have.

There is a deep irony in that Trump is noted for regularly making the case to “take our country back.”  I would say he’s right.  But the people who need to act on this mandate aren’t at his rallies.  They aren’t white and they don’t stand to pee.  Women, brown people, immigrants, “minorities” of all kinds…that’s whose labor (both kinds) built this country, that’s who has kept it going, that’s who has always innovated and who has always made a way out of no way.  This is who needs to take it back.

It’s time for the white guys to tag along,…if they can keep up.

–ALD

The Work

.Reading time 8 minutes.
Image by Oleksandr Pidvalnyi from Pixabay

Can we please stop branding what white Unitarian Universalists do in an effort to be anti-racist as “the work”?

I recently made reference to this language in a sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charlottesville, Virginia, so I feel like some explanation might be in order.  Throughout my parish ministry, I know that my frequently expressed frustration with this phrase infuriated some of my congregation in Cambridge and I know that my thinking directly contradicts some of my close and valued colleagues of color, but hear me out…

First of all, at its heart, this phrase is offensive.  Really, this is the most racially removed and impersonal way one could refer to what actually needs to happen around racial equity in the world.  “The work” makes it sound like a curriculum, which admittedly for some people, that is all it is.  “The work” also makes it sound like something you get a vacation from (you don’t) or that you can put down at will (you can’t).  This phrase makes what needs to happen appear to be some kind of well-contained, defined and finite set of actions that can be approached like a checklist and voilá…anti-racist!  That ain’t it kids…

Second, referring to any efforts to be more cognizant of people of color and their perspectives as work, makes us (people of color) the work.  It problematizes non-whiteness.  Does this mean that every time you see, speak to or interact with a person of color it has to be work? Why would any non-white person want to be part of a community where being in relationship with them is publicly called work?  Holy crap…

Finally, the entire framework is wrong.  Why are white UUs eager to do “work” when they could be having fun, learning a new cultural sensitivity, making a friend,…cultivating the garden of their world?  None of this is work.  This is life.  Building community around shared values, demonstrated through spiritual expression should never, in any way be about work.  Put down the agenda and get to know a person.

The universal acceptance of this language may come from the settings in which the more probing conversations about race happen in UU congregations, which ultimately reinforces my point.  If someone can only feel safe questioning whether or not they are a racist by going into closed, invitation only back rooms…then chances are y’all know the answer to the question before the plastic wrap is off the deviled eggs.  The only way to truly “de-racist” ones self is by actually being in the world, being in relationships beyond a closed group.  For white Unitarian Universalists, this means getting to know and love (not be served by or simply acknowledge on the street) some non-white people and diving in to life.  Sure, there are resources and books to help unpack stuff, I’ve even created some myself.  But that can’t be where the journey begins or ends.  The only real work that needs to happen is opening the creaky old doors of ones heart, taking off the imaginary cloak of white safety, completely throwing away Peggy McIntosh’s knapsack and being in actual damned relationship with people who aren’t cookie cutter, mirror images of everything one already knows.  Here’s a novel idea: live with us (non-white people), play with us, laugh with us, be part of the world that we want to build together, don’t keep expecting us to acclimate to or be absorbed by yours.

In stark contrast, this is what every non-white person in the United States has to sustain everywhere they go.  In many places, particularly Unitarian Universalist settings, non-whites are outnumbered sometimes 10 or 20 or even 30 or more to 1.  We can’t be preoccupied with conceptualizing our interactions with those who are different than us as “work”.  There aren’t enough hours in a day or that much life force in a human body.  We are forced to find (or at least look for) real connections and to have actual reasons to speak to people and to put effort into building something akin to what we hope will be authentic relationships.  Again, this isn’t work, it is life.  But it is also a habit for non-white people because so many of us have earned advanced degrees in “whiteness survival” so that we can put more energy into thriving.

Outside of the bubble, being a Unitarian Universalist is regularly a meme…a cultural joke.  Often when it comes up in pop culture, being Unitarian Universalist is a placeholder for having no commitment to anything or any clarity on anything spiritual.  Above all it is considered code for being a wealthy white liberal.  Disturbingly, the echo chamber within Unitarian Universalism, doesn’t have the appetite to challenge the reality on which this public image is based and that in turn reinforces everything that the critics say.

Unitarian Universalism should not be satisfied with representing the performative suburban safety and social responsibility of a Toyota Prius.  In a world that is challenged by well funded and organized factions and political dogma, racialized violence, gendered erasure and skewed understandings of which lives have value, Unitarian Universalism could be a place that is not at all for the faint of heart.  It could be an incubator for real courage.  Radical acceptance also requires radical and ongoing self interrogation.  Being a warrior for equity, demands that one can be comfortable with being uncomfortable with what makes others comfortable.  Putting yourself on the line to change the world requires letting go of the world as you know it.  That is scary.  If you need confirmation, just ask any non-white UU about the experience of walking into a new UU congregation.

Better than referring to anything about how UU values can function in the world as “the work”, why not call it what we want it to be…a celebration of a generative future we can actively dare to live today.

–ALD