Tag: whiteness

Free or Human?

.Reading time 11 minutes.

A Call for Real Change in Unitarian Universalist Religious Expression

There is no pendulum.  Donald Trump has more in common with the worst ethical qualities of Thomas Jefferson than most of the presidents of the previous 100 years.  This is exactly who the United States has always been.

The new Unitarian Universalist “values” are primarily concerned with what it means to be “free” and less concerned with spelling out a religious commitment to being “human” in plain language.  In UU space, the priority is always assuring that one has the freedom to interpret, to pick and choose and to apply values as one sees fit.  One also has the freedom to opt out entirely as evidenced by the number of congregations and leaders who still insist on using the “old” Seven Principles.  This obsession with freedom goes back to some of the history of liberal Christianity and the “free church” where the primary concerns for leaders in the early 19th century was establishing a religious expression that mirrored the still recently liberated United States.  The hallmark of early Unitarianism that survives in modern Unitarian Universalism today is this centering of freedom and how freedom is assumed to be an essential element to participation in society.

Unless you were/are black.  It is not my intention to leave anyone out of this initial framing, it is simply that my research focuses explicitly on the exchange between blackness and whiteness.   My research demonstrates that it is an unquestionable, historical fact that “freedom” in the United States has always been and continues to be more accessible to someone if they possess some combination or confidence of whiteness, maleness, (see the recent pardons of January 6 criminals), heterosexuality and a fully able body.  But the unique tension between blackness and whiteness, while representing only one tension among many in the United States, informs all the other tensions because of its global breadth, economic impact, and model for violence.  Case in point, the N-word (a word that originated as violence in the Americas[1]) exists in every language on this planet.

Unless you were/are black…while many Unitarian Universalist scholars are quick to point to antebellum abolitionists and Civil Rights Era allies, the vast majority of Unitarians and first gen Unitarian Universalists in congregations were not marching or protesting or in the streets.  They sat and listened to their highly educated ministers in their comfortable paid-for pews and de-facto segregated communities.  This was true even with Black Lives Matter in 2015; the overwhelming response was to hang signs…not to put bodies on the line.  To be clear, this way of being was not because people didn’t care.  Many people in UU congregations have cared deeply and passionately throughout all the struggles between whiteness and blackness for a few centuries.  But UUs were always free to express their solidarity, rage and compassion only as far as they felt comfortable doing.  They had agency.  The way they expressed caring about the bodies of black people being enslaved, lynched, mauled by dogs, or beaten by police for peacefully protesting, has always had to be processed through the great organizational expression of Unitarian freedom: congregational polity.  Freedom in process has regularly taken center stage before action.  Because Unitarian Universalists are always looking through a freedom lens, freedom is also projected as the priority on to those being oppressed.  Neither Unitarians nor Unitarian Universalists will dictate that people show up or believe in a certain way, or idea because when Unitarians moved, creed, dogma, Jesus and God out of the building, they gave those seats to the lofty goal of “universal freedom.”

Unitarian Universalism needs to stop operating from a place of intellectual safety and find itself in the vulnerable spots between harm and the actual bodies who are most in danger.

But Unitarian Universalists do not understand the complexity of what it means to speak of “freedom” beyond a patriotic, liberal label.  The Unitarian Universalist focus on freedom makes the same assumption and speaks a shockingly similar language to the most conservative ideologue: that “everyone” has access to freedom.  Freedom is the foundation of the meritocracy argument.  No one wants to argue with freedom as a principle.  This means that the foundational assumption behind UU “values” is the same assumption that is cancelling DEI.  But sadly, making an assumption about a universality of freedom as either a reality or a goal, has the potential in our current climate to be more than just naïve…it could be lethal.

What Unitarian Universalists continue to miss is that freedom in the United States context is the ultimate “master’s tool”[2]; freedom is embedded in and fueled by the assumption of whiteness.  This is what the history of Western “liberalism” tells us.  Freedom within the nascent “liberal” United States was never about inclusion or difference.  It was about the freedom to be considered “normal”, and in the case of the United States, the measures of normality were established as one having a proximity to whiteness, maleness, wealth and Christianness.  The legacies of the last 250 years of immigration policy are the most striking examples of this.  The United States has always been hostile to anyone or any group that was perceived as being incapable of assimilation…even within whiteness.  This is why we speak of an amalgamating melting pot and not a stew.

Unless you were/are black…

Right now, and going forward, Unitarian Universalism needs to be more than a pseudo-theological representation of a (not-so) invisible whiteness empowered by universal freedom.  Even the rhetoric about “liberation” is failing us.  Unitarian Universalism needs to stop operating from a place of intellectual safety and find itself in the vulnerable spots between harm and the actual bodies who are most in danger.  Unitarian Universalism can do this by adopting an Embodiment and Humanity Agenda as part of its religious framework.  Ironically, because of the same polity that obscures decision making behind white freedoms, the congregations and organizations of the Unitarian Universalist Association have the power to tell each other that they are willing to declare that it is impossible to have freedom without first having humanity.  Again, to the example of blackness as the canary in the coal mine, the greatest crime of African enslavement and segregation and the extrajudicial killing and imprisonment of black people over centuries has been that before any freedom was/is usurped, the affirmation of black people as fully human beings has been constantly denied.  Before any kind of liberation, black humanity must be acknowledged.  Liberation frameworks, while useful, can also reinforced the power of oppressors.  Black people, women, people with disabilities…and yes, white people…are first and foremost fully human.  It is humanity that becomes free…not freedom that becomes human.  It may seem like foolishness that this needs to be said, but in a world that is literally willing to attempt to erase the fact of transgender humanity, obviously, it does.

This is a crisis moment where bold actions could save lives.  As a religious institution, with all the rights and privileges of such an institution in the United States, Unitarian Universalists have the ability to make human embodiment (woman, trans, black, disabled, etc.) a non-negotiable and explicit part of our religion. As was trying to be done with the 8th Principle, language needs to be focused; Unitarian Universalists need to state their commitment to human embodiment plainly without the shroud of academic, word salads and over-intellectual jargon.  If it is what we are thinking, now is time to say it plain:

Unitarian Universalist religious belief begins with the full and unquestionable humanity of all people regardless and inclusive of how they are embodied.

As an institution with roots in the colonial founding of the United States, no one can question the religious pedigree of Unitarian Universalism.  Clarifying the religious commitment to embodied humanity gives Unitarian Universalism a way to make any anti-embodiment legislation a violation of religious rights.  If a high school can put in place a policy based on the “religious freedom” of an instructor to not use someone’s given pronouns, it needs to be made crystal clear that misgendering someone can be an even more direct violation of the student’s and parents’ religious freedom.  Above all, it is a violation of that child’s right to humanity.  This should be the work of Unitarian Universalism today.

–ALD

 

[1] Randall Kennedy, Ni**er: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word, Revised edition. Twentieth-anniversary edition (New York: Pantheon Books, 2022).

[2] Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, Crossing Press Feminist Series (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 2007).

“Meta” Supremacy

.Reading time 8 minutes.

The self-conscious approach to dismantling white supremacy reinforces white priorities thereby affirming white supremacy.

From The Guardian
Māori Party co-leaders Rawiri Waititi and Debbie Ngarewa-Packer say that officially changing New Zealand’s name to its indigenous version, Aotearoa, would unite the country. Photograph: Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images (image, caption and full article appears in The Guardian – 9/14/2021)

Having a person of color on your board, on your staff, leading your organization, etc. will not solve your diversity problems.  In fact, my own experiences over the years have indicated that this approach as the sole answer to the question of diversity, creates many more problems than it solves.

What is more, “dismantling white supremacy culture” sounds great and challenging in the best kind of way that white liberals like to be challenged, (finite, well defined goal, etc.) but it is not the actual issue.  The issue is how organizations continue to answer to cultural priorities that are affirmed by whiteness and one’s proximity to the power of whiteness (regardless of race) and the way in which this proximity is the driver of the larger social narrative.

I am currently navigating several professional spaces and situations, and I am in conversation with several different organizations that all hold “dismantling white supremacy culture” as a priority.  The problem is that for all their efforts to do so and even achieving some success in identifying and locating the sources of this specific problem, I’m not so sure that the overall efforts can stick.  You can hire the young queer, person of color to lead your effort, that’s nice.  But if they are required to answer to and fulfill white cultural priorities in order to be “successful” then no progress will be made.  You can have a person of color on your board, but if you only call on them to do cleanup in the wake of misplaced white priorities, their board presence is a failure.  You can invite a person of color to lead your organization, but if there is no appetite or capacity to follow their leadership or if their leadership is “invisible” because the environment doesn’t understand how to recognize guidance that comes from priorities outside of cultural whiteness, no change is possible.

I’m willing to make the bold statement that “dismantling white supremacy culture” is not the actual problem.  Something that can be labeled and packaged this tidily is too easy and as the title of this piece indicates, whiteness being tasked with dismantling itself is a pretty “meta” feedback loop (“meta” in the Urban Dictionary sense – https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=meta).  The real challenge for diversity comes from organizations, people, etc. that do not have real interest, capacity or understanding of what it means to embrace cultural priorities that sit outside of whiteness.  This is a problem for everyone, white and non-white and it is a problem for any dominant culture.  For example, if the only framework we have to understand the historical roots of European domination is based on being “post-colonial” that means we first have to accept “colonial” as some kind of starting point…and colonial is a framework defined by historical whiteness.  The gamechanger would be to instead understand what it is to be “a-colonial” that is, what it means to be defined entirely outside of the context of western historically oppressive systems of slave based capitalism and genocide and evolve outside of the assumption of whiteness as a defining dominant priority.

…although the dominant culture has a role to play in dismantling white supremacy, it doesn’t get to define what is built in its place.

This is a deep question.  For example, in many ways, African American culture is shaped by its resistance to white oppression.  White supremacy is a crucible that has forged in African Americans one of the most resilient, creative and arguably valuable and diverse cultures on the planet.  So, what then does it mean to define Afro-Americanness without or beyond the history of slavery?  Without the imposition of European Christianity?  Without the response to being globally dehumanized?

Native and Indigenous people around the world have powerful responses to these questions. For example, currently, Māori leaders of Aotearoa (New Zealand) are calling for a return to the native name of the islands[1].  Now that they have greater representation in the current dominant Western government, and as the original inhabitants of the land, it makes sense for them to self-define outside of the colonial name applied to their indigenous home.  Embracing this definition does not require anything from colonial progeny other than getting out of the way.  Just because Westerners have called it “New Zealand” for nearly 400 years doesn’t make it right[2].  Māori leaders have effectively infiltrated the Western structure for the purpose of making space to be defined outside of that structure.

When people of color are brought into leadership of traditionally or historically white organizations as part of an effort to create diversity, it cannot be that we are there simply to be the status quo in brown face.  If an organization is serious about diversity, it must first (before bringing in people of color to leadership) understand what kind of organization it is (culturally) and how it is defined by the dominant culture.  Then it must determine if it is truly willing to not just invite but accept and embrace the leadership and guidance of people of color, understanding that the prior dominant culture definitions will likely need to be significantly changed or even thrown out entirely.

Ultimately, although the dominant culture has a role to play in dismantling white supremacy, it doesn’t get to define what is built in its place.

–ALD

[1] Tess McClure, “New Zealand Māori Party Launches Petition to Change Country’s Name to Aotearoa,” The Guardian, September 14, 2021, sec. World news, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/14/new-zealand-maori-party-launches-petition-to-change-countrys-name-to-aotearoa.

[2] “A Brief History of New Zealand | New Zealand Now,” accessed September 19, 2021, https://www.newzealandnow.govt.nz/live-in-new-zealand/history-government/a-brief-history.