First Parish Unitarian UniversalistHope Across the Divide
A sermon preached by the Reverend Diane D. Teichert
First Parish Unitarian Universalist - Canton, MA
February 24, 2008
I hope that those of you who live in Canton have been reading the recent four-part series of articles by your new superintendent of schools published in the Canton Citizen. He has provided a thoughtful, fact-rich, and ethically-based explanation of the financial crisis facing the Canton schools. In fact, these articles will be useful to inquisitive citizens of any town because, though the specific facts would differ, the causes and effects of the crisis are very similar, town to town. I clipped some of the articles and displayed them today on the table in the Parish Hall, next to the drum marking where to sign up for next Sunday’s drumming workshop.
I wrote to Superintendent John D’Auria just before I came down with the flu. I thanked him for his series on the need for an over-ride, but I said I was moved to finally write to him by his more recent column called “My Mis-Education” which appeared on February 14th. It is relevant to this sermon about White people today, in honor of Black History Month.
In it he described attending for the first time a certain colleague’s Christmas party. I’d like to read it to you.
Although the thought of enjoying [this colleague’s] company was appealing, I was anxious that I would not know many other guests. This concern, combined with the hermit-like persona that overtakes me as the New Year approaches, kept my excitement for this social event at a minimum. There was something else, however, that made this invitation a little more complex for me to both think about and now write about. I anticipated that I might be one of only a handful of white people in attendance. Therefore, I found myself anxiously ascending the stairs to my colleague’s home with a nervousness that I had not experienced since I was a kid. For a short while, I became a teenager again, trying hard not to appear self-conscious or out of place. It took an enormous amount of energy trying to appear nonchalant.
As I took a few deep breaths and delved into conversation, I began to relax and mingle with a few other partygoers. I met someone who grew up in Barbados and a couple who have family in South Carolina. I met others who visit their relatives in Bermuda over the holidays. Several of the people present shared what their post-college children were doing for employment. My wife and I picked their brains about the challenge of finding decent jobs and getting used to your children as grown-up adults. We learned about various forms of employment that engaged the work lives of these guests.
As I absorbed this palette of different experiences, my mind began to provide editorial commentary.
“I am surprised I am having a good time.”
“I can’t believe how much I have in common with this person.”
This self-talk, I now understand, came from the part of mind that housed my ignorance and prejudices and was reacting to the fact that for a long period of time, my wife and I were the only white people in attendance. I was finally able to recognize my personal review for what it was and this allowed me to enjoy the people I met in a less self-conscious fashion. Conversation flowed a little more easily. There were none of the long moments of silence that invite discomfort. I found myself laughing and enjoying my first taste of gumbo soup.
When we finally left, after staying much longer than our emergency evacuation plan called for, we both were smiling and happy to share pieces of conversation that each of us found interesting. And then I felt sad.
For despite all the coursework that I had completed and the books that I had read, my surprise at having such a good time at the party revealed the narrowness of my education. Why was this occasion such an unusual event in my life? Why isn’t such exposure to different races and ethnic backgrounds more of a regular occurrence?
While I might be theoretically in support of initiatives to support improved race relations, I have little to show for having any kind of genuine, daily relationship with someone outside of my own race.
The places where I shop, work and live are populated with people, who are, for the most part, almost all white. It is such an accepted and expected experience that I hardly take notice until the tables are reversed.
While I appreciate the fact that my colleague’s social gathering helped to make the invisible more visible, and to jar me out of a comfortable complacency, I was left feeling somewhat dismayed at my mis-education. My observations and reactions at this event uncovered some gaping holes in my learning.
Holiday parties will never quite be the same for me. While this single occasion had a significant impact, unless I consistently work at breaking free of fears and prejudice, I will keep traveling in a comfortable but limited circle of people.
As the new superintendent in Canton, I have often heard about the changing “demographics” of the town. The experience I had at my friend’s celebration makes me think about how fortunate we are to have an increasing diversity of people within our community. This diversity provides both a challenge and enormous potential.
Learning to understand and include a wider net of individuals in our personal networks involves hard work. If we are successful, however, we, and most importantly, our children, will be better equipped to effectively interact with the multiplicity of people and perspectives that the 21st century demands.
We have in our midst an incredible resource. Learning to see it as such requires a willingness to leave our comfort zones.
Doing so could lead to genuine learning and the possibility of enriching the education we provide our children tenfold.
In preparing for this sermon, I asked myself how I was doing at what the Superintendent called “breaking free of fears and prejudice.” I reviewed in my mind all the neighborhoods I’ve lived in since graduating from college. I traced them starting in Baltimore in 1974, Atlanta and Decatur Georgia in the early eighties, and for eleven best years from 1983 to 1994 in a long-time integrated little neighborhood of single and two-family homes in the City of Medford, Massachusetts. It adds up to 18 years in Black or inter-racial neighborhoods.
But it was in West Medford that I put down my anti-racist roots, got to know my neighbors black and white, which included lawyers of both colors as well as welfare recipients of both, and everything in between. I sent my daughter to a young Black woman’s home day care, knocked on doors to recruit black families to her preschool, and helped organize an alternative public elementary school with a specifically multi-cultural agenda. And, that’s where, in 1992, after what the media called a race riot in the high school, I got involved with starting Medford Citizens for Diversity in Education, and found myself learning how to be a white ally in support of what the black parents wanted in the aftermath of that riot.
I thought we needed Anti-racism training for White parents. They wanted systemic change: the hiring of teachers of color in the high school, where there were NONE! The success of our effort to advertise the openings in Black-owned papers and traditionally-Black colleges and to minority students in schools of education, monitor the applications, ride herd on the superintendent, and welcome and support the EIGHT staff of color hired the very next year is something I am very proud of and know could not have been accomplished without me.
But, when it came time for our daughter to enter middle school, knowing I was soon to enter full-time ministry and have less time for community agitation, we visited the depressing, drab middle school she would have to attend, where the art room was a mess, the encyclopedia in the library dated to the mid seventies and whose White male principal was charged and found guilty of molesting female students the very next year, we exercised our white privilege, sold our house and moved into a smaller house in a higher income White community, leaving Black families behind who maybe could have afforded the move, but not the loss of Black identity for their children that would come with such a move.
Maybe some of you live where you do for similar reasons, like wanting the best education you could get for your children and a home you could afford?
In these thirteen years living in a mostly White (11% Asian) town and in these ten years serving a mostly White congregation in a 92% White town (these are 2000 Census figures), I have increasingly lost my anti-racist identity, I’m sad to say.
Why did I let that happen?
I find that being in White settings, the systemic advantages of being white and the systemic disadvantages of being of color, are not so apparent to me. We tend not to notice our race advantage when we’re the only ones there, and so my involvement in dismantling the structures that support racism has subsided. Basically, it’s just laziness, a white privilege.
And, I’ve discovered that without daily interactions with people of color, there’s nothing to remind me of the nearly instinctive racial prejudices I share with the vast majority of Whites in America, just by virtue of growing up here. (Beverly Tatum says it’s like breathing smog all the time, the smog of racism, you get so used to it if you’re White, you don’t notice it, but it’s not good for anybody). If I’m not reminded of these prejudices, I don’t work to undo them. It’s just laziness, a white privilege.
Some of you, on the other hand, perhaps many of you, work in racially-mixed (say, at least one-third minority) settings—maybe you could raise your hand? [perhaps ¼ did]. You probably don’t feel lazy, do you? And how many work in settings in which you are one of very few people of your race? [no one did, including the one Asian woman present]. Do you feel lazy? I doubt it. And a few of you live in Randolph, which is more racially-mixed than any of the other towns contiguous to Canton. Do you feel lazy? I doubt it. It’s hard work, like the Superintendent said.
Early in my years here, we at First Parish did more on the issue of racism than we have lately, probably because of our Welcoming Congregation and equal marriage work, which I don’t at all regret! I remember when I first arrived as your minister, nearly half of the children in the Religious Education program were children of color, because of quite a few adoptions, plus there were two mixed-race marriages. I looked out in the pews and the adults were as White as you are today, but during Time for All Ages, it looked like the United Nations up here!
I recall realizing there must be issues for those children in the mostly White public schools in the area, and so I invited all of the parents involved together for several evenings of support and sharing. A large group came, and, indeed, issues there were! But, there were also joys.
For three consecutive years, we also held what we called Diversity Days: multi-day public events celebrating diversity and educating ourselves and the community about welcoming all kinds of families including mixed race and gay parents. For one of those Saturday events, we invited the Boston Community Chorus, an intentionally racially-mixed choir. We loved having them here! And I was in for a personal treat because among them I spotted, on the top row, the man who had inspired me to join as he organized Medford Citizens for Diversity in Education, someone I’d come to truly admire! And never expected to see in our sanctuary!
But, just because both adults and children here are almost entirely white now, does not mean there is nothing to do about racism here. We have an opportunity, as mostly Whites, to explore White identity in a safe setting. We need NOT be lazy!
And, certainly, the Canton school superintendent, when he used the code word “demographics,” is telling us that increased diversity in the public schools is being seen by some in town as a problem rather than a resource, and he is asking for help. We need NOT be lazy!
In her book with the great title Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? Beverly Daniel Tatum, who is African American (and currently President of Spellman College in Atlanta, the oldest historically Black college for women), tells lots of rich stories from her experience working with school teachers, college students and her own two sons around racial identity issues. I highly recommend the book.
It’s not only about schools, either. Even in the corporate cafeteria, Black men and women may be sitting together, and for the same reason. It’s due to racism, and it’s complex. Even mature adults, she says, sometimes need to connect with someone who looks like them and who shares the same experiences. Even more so it is true for adolescents who are in the midst of figuring out who they are, and racial identity in a racist society is certainly going to be an important piece. If there are no or very few professional staff of color in their school, their peer group is all they’ve got!
Tatum tells about giving a speech “Interrupting the Cycle of Oppression” to the national staff gathering of a large social change organization. Just before she was introduced, a Black man spoke at the microphone to announce that the next morning there would be, for the first time in that organization’s history, a caucus for Black staff. She gave her speech, to a warm welcome. But, “immediately a visibly agitated White woman stood up, and asked, ‘How would you feel if just before you began speaking a White person had stood up and said there would be a breakfast meeting of all the White people tomorrow?’ Tatum replied, ‘I would say it was a good idea.’” (p.89)
In the White caucus we could have here at First Parish, what would we say about how it feels to be White in a racist society?
Tatum says “most of the White people I talk to either have not thought about their race and so don’t feel anything, or have thought about it and feel guilt and shame.” I would add, many of us feel powerless. And, remember the emotions we named earlier in the service when we recalled our first race-related memory?
But, Elaine Pinderhughes, Professor Emerita at Boston College Graduate School of Social Work, herself an African American therapist, writes, “White people have as great a need to feel that their racial identity is positive as do people of color. The task for them is to find out what they need to do to achieve this.” (from Understanding Race, Ethnicity, and Power: the Key to Efficacy in Clinical Practice quoted on-line at http://www.euroamerican.org/editorials/quotes.asp).
Tatum writes, echoing what I said about why it’s hard to be anti-racist if I am both living and working in White settings, “For Whites, there are two major developmental tasks in this process of achieving a healthy sense of White identity based in reality, not on assumed superiority. One is the abandonment of individual racism and the other is the recognition of and opposition to institutional and cultural racism.” (p. 94).
These two tasks are what White people can and should do on our own, lest we be getting lazy. And the rewards are great. When I lived in West Medford, I could feel in my heart and mind, even in my soul, wherever it is, that I as a White person was growing a healthier identity. I felt happy. I didn’t feel shame, guilt or powerless. When I made mistakes, I apologized, and we kept going. The relationships were so rewarding!
I like to think our choice to live where we did, my involvements there, and how I grew because of them, are part of why my daughter is the person she has come to be today: a young adult working comfortably in a multi-racial setting for an organization whose purpose is addressing systemic racism (and fraud) in mortgage lending practices.
Tatum writes, “A major benefit of this racial identity development process is increased effectiveness in multiracial settings. The White person who has worked through his or her own racial identity process has a deep understanding of racism and an appreciation and respect for the identity struggles of people of color. When we see strong, mutually respectful relationships between people of color and Whites, we are usually looking at the tangible results of both people’s identity processes. If we want to promote positive cross-group relations, we need to help young White people engage in the kind of dialogue that precipitates this kind of identity development just as we need to help youth of color achieve an empowered sense of racial and ethnic identity.”
As Unitarian Universalists, we have a theology that supports these two tasks: we believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person, including ourselves, even those of us who are White! And, we know we are profoundly, intimately and ultimately connected with ALL other people, including those sitting in another part of the cafeteria or, for that matter, worshiping in a different house of worship. We know we are ONE. There is a unity to life, in our theology— the Spirit of Life is the same for all.
We all, each of us here, we all have a sphere of influence and it is in that sphere of influence in which our faith calls us to be agents of racial progress. First, our sphere is within ourselves, to abandon individual racism, and then our sphere extends outward—our family, neighborhood, work setting, school system, metropolitan area, and beyond.
And, together, as a community of faith we have the potential to have an even larger collective sphere of influence, if that is where our passion for justice directs us.
Any of this takes courage. Whether we act as individuals or as a congregation, it takes courage. Let this community of faith be a source of courage, a place to which we return each week, for the fortitude and the hope to carry on. Amen!