| Usher's Response to Board Statement Regarding Racism at GA |
Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 03:06 AM PDT
Contributed by: EDavid
Views: 5000
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ADMIN'S NOTE: We at FUUSE are dedicated to providing a safe space to all UU youth and young adults to process and discuss issues important to our community. Part of that commitment involves providing both sides of any issue, whenever possible. The following statement is one person's account of the events that happened during the closing ceremony in which the writer, a woman of color, discounts racism as the motive for the ushers' and minister's response. Regardless of readers' opinions on this matter, FUUSE wants to acknowledge that racism and prejudice were present at GA and continue to be a problem in the larger UU community. We would also like to ask everyone who comments on this or any FUUSE article to abide by the reasonable guidelines set down in the FUUSE Covenant and to seek out support from our dedicated and talented Ally team whenever appropriate.
MESSAGE FOR PAUL RICKTER:
Dear Mr. Rickter:
I read your open letter to those who attended GA this year with special interest. You see, not only am I a person of color, but I was also privileged to usher for most of the large events.
I was one of the ushers at the Closing Ceremony, and therefore it was interesting to read about the incident that I witnessed first-hand. You stated:
"We have been disturbed by reports of other unfortunate incidents during General Assembly within our own Unitarian Universalist family, in which some UU youth of color were made to feel that they were not welcome. There was an incident outside the hall during the closing ceremonies at the Fort Worth General Assembly. Based on the reports of witnesses, the incident involved several UU youth of color, a UU adult who questioned their right to be there, provoking an angry response from the youth, a UU minister who intervened in support of the adult, and another white youth who defended the youth of color and verbally attacked the minister, who responded in like fashion with similar inflammatory language."
For whatever it's worth, here is what initiated that event.
I was ushering in the balcony and was greeting and handing out programs at the far right entrance. You will remember that many people came in after the program began, since many had gone to get dinner before it started. It was therefore not unusual that three young black persons walked in about 15 minutes after the program had begun. What was unusual is the manner in which they were dressed and their body language.
I have been a school teacher and school counselor for 25 years, so I know that, in the kid's vernacular, they were dressed in "gangsta'" fashion (low slung, oversized clothing, bandanas on head, wraparound sunglasses, even though it was evening, etc.). I must admit that my first thought (since they were not wearing their name cards) was that perhaps this might be local youth that might have seen some of our protests during the week and came to check us out. I had not seen them at any of the other programs.
Instead of looking for a seat, they stood in the walkway separating the lower balcony from the upper balcony and watched the program for about 10 minutes, then they began walking toward the center of the balcony. I smiled and them and offered them a program. Only one of the young men stopped and reached for one, after which he took two steps to follow his friends and made a big show of throwing the program on the floor. Then they proceed toward the next entrance, where this same young man asked that usher (Brenda) for a program, and proceeded to do the same thing.
At this point, my husband Jim (also an usher upstairs) went over to them and asked them if there was a problem. I later found out that the youth replied, "What's it to you, Man?"
The induction of the candidates was beginning, so Jim suggested that if they were not interested in watching the program, perhaps they should go out into the lobby so they would not disturb others. Although the three youth proceeded down the stairs to the lobby, another young man, (Brian Kuzma) came down from the upper balcony and proceeded to scold Jim for being a "Racist" and anti-youth. Jim suggested they go discussed this in the lobby since it was disturbing the audience. They went down to the lobby, and at this point, the young man who had been disrupive came in again at my entrance (without his friends). Again, he asked me for a program. Again, I smiled and said I hoped he would keep it this time. He mumbled something, took the program, pitched it to the floor, and proceeded toward the other usher.
At this point a woman who happened to be standing in the walkway came to me and said, "Those guys are obviously trouble-makers and need to leave."
I told her that Jim had already called the head usher on his radio and the situation would be handled. As we then turned to the center entrance, however, the young man had gotten another program from Brenda, and was now tearing it up and throwing the pieces down.
Mr. Rickter, I have worked with youth for 25 years, and I know when I am being "baited"-- so I knew that he was itching to be confronted, something I was not about to do. But the woman who saw all this walked up to the young man and asked him what his problem was. He replied, "Get out of my face, bitch." Another man overheard this, and so we all followed the youth to the lobby where Brian proceeded to argue with everyone that we were acting "just like the Fort Worth police." The woman and man kept trying to explain to him that it was the behavior of the young man (and not his race) that being called into question.
At this point, other young people that had been out in the lobby the whole time began screaming and crying that everyone was being unfair! Then, some of the youth sponsors, as well as people from the Planning Committee came on the scene, so I went back to my post where the ushers were being told to block people from going into the lobby until things were calm.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Overall, I 'd had such a wonderful experience at GA the previous days that the whole incident was like a splash of cold water. I was especially sad to learn that the young man who incited this was "one of us." I couldn't understand why he would choose to be unruly and disrespectful and disrupt the closing ceremony. I am told it was because he was harrassed during the week, but I cannot understand why he would feel that it gave him license to take it out on the whole group.
Believe me, having grown up as a person of color in Texas, I would be the last one to be an apologist for racist behavior. But this was not the case in this particular incident. The youth will need to understand that they, also, need to examine what I perceive as reverse racism, on their part. It was an unfortuante incident all the way around. As you say, I hope we can all learn from it.
Esther Ford, Member
Live Oak U-U Church
Cedar Park, Texas
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 07:26 AM PDT |
Ok, I'd like to hear from everyone who has told me how I don't get it and how
the youth involved were just trying to be good UUs and attend the ceremony.
How should the ushers have reacted?
Is there a way to get a PoC to stop tearing up peices of paper and throwing
them on the groud without being a racist?
Or is letting teenage People of Color do whatever they want the only non-
oppressive solution, no matter the effect on everyone who is just trying to
watch the ceremony, and audience that would include, presumably other
teenage people of color?
CC[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: chutney On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 09:41 AM PDT |
<em>Only one of the young men stopped and reached for one, after which he took two steps to follow his friends and made a big show of throwing the program on the floor. Then they proceed toward the next entrance, where this same young man asked that usher (Brenda) for a program, and proceeded to do the same thing...
At this point, other young people that had been out in the lobby the whole time...</em>
Please, someone, anyone, tell me this whole thing wasn't just a set up.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: DJ DC On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 10:10 AM PDT |
CC-- From this witness account, the ushers acted as best they could; it seems that a lot of the people on the periphery of the incident that helped it boil over.
However that doesn't mean racist stuff wasn't happening at GA, especially aimed at the youth. Like we said earlier things don't happen in a vacuum. I'd like to know what the youth were reacting to, why they were acting that way. What happened to thme that they thought this was a viable form of "protest."
Chutney, no this wasn't a set up so let's not jump to conclusions.
Like I said people on the periphery of the event seemed to make it boil over, sort of like the last post. I'd like to remind everyone about Ethan's last post that we "nobody here has enough info to judge *anybody* involved in this situation, and that any attempts to do so will only result in hurting folks in this community." So I'd liek to make the same plea that we limit this discussion to their own experiences without judgement. My biggest fear (and I will give voice to this in hopes to avoid it-- NOT to make it come true) that this discussion DEVOLVES to an "I told you so!" arguement. Again no one knows the whole story. Facts are still coming out and no one knows anyone elses motives. It seems that a lot of people on the outside looking in did not help an already tense situation. Let's not repeat history.
Thanks everyone-- and thanks to FUUSE admins for trying to be balanced in its coverage.
---
"Come the rapture can I have your car?"--Bumper Sticker
My FUUSE journal-- "Inane Drivel and Other Niceties"[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 10:13 AM PDT |
Again, I think even the title of the thread is making the judgement that the issues were primarily rooted in racism and that no other factors are worth mentioning.
I take it the editors at FUUSE don't know this for certain?
CC[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: EDavid On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 10:18 AM PDT |
The title of the article includes the term 'racism' because that is the term used by the UUA Board of Trustees statement to which this is a response. The FUUSE Admins make no judgement whatsoever about what prompted the events in question and have posted this simply for the benefit of community knowledge.
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The answer lies in love and not in war...[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: chutney On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 10:18 AM PDT |
| "nobody here has enough info to judge *anybody* involved in this situation, and that any attempts to do so will only result in hurting folks in this community."
You're right. My apologies. [ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 10:28 AM PDT |
It's still a judgement and I don't know that the UUA board was really much better informed than we were.
"Alleged racism"
"possibly racially-motivated incidents"
There are A LOT of ways to say this. The fact that the UUA picked on that makes a judgement on the incident doesn't mean that we have to repeat that judgment.
CC[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: djones42 On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 11:34 AM PDT |
FUSSE Admin,
In your posting of this, you left off the date and time of this response was sent to Mr. Rickter.
On the UUA website, the Open Letter is dated July 6, 2005 with no time.
You posted it on FUUSE Wednesday, July 06 2005 @ 03:38 PM EDT
I posted the response from the Usher as a response to the BOT letter on Fuuse last night with the following original header….
>>>>>----- Original Message -----
From: Jim or Esther Ford
Sent: Wednesday, July 06, 2005 8:47 PM
Subject: Incident at Closing Ceremony
MESSAGE FOR PAUL RICKTER:
Dear Mr. Rickter: …<<<<<
It is interesting that a response 5 hours after the posting of the open letter on FUUSE, and presumably this is close to the other postings on the web, took 7 days to become public.
I am not suggesting that it was intentionally delayed. I am commenting that communication via email and blogs can take a long time. If Mr. Rickter did receive this letter from the Usher on the same day he published the open letter, I think an effort to verify the authenticity of the Usher’s letter should have been made and then it distributed as widely as the original open letter.
To verify authenticity, I mean a single call to the head of the Ushers or the GA Volunteer Coordinator or someone else who could confirm that Esther Ford was an usher at the closing ceremony and the she is the person she represents herself to be in the letter.
Doug Jones
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| Authored by: djones42 On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 11:45 AM PDT |
The title of the letter was "An open letter to UU youth of color and UU people of color who attended Fort Worth General Assembly and the broader UU community"
It was not "a response to racism at GA"
The letter is somewhat careful not to lable the "closing ceremony incident" as "racist".
I agree with CC, it is subtle and powerful how the title to the FUUSE posting flavored the conversation. Even when we try to be neutral, it is hard.
Doug Jones[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Jeff Wilson On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 11:45 AM PDT |
Last week, I thought that this incident rather looked like one of racism, but not having all the facts, I felt it was better for everyone to withhold that very inflammatory judgement. Now, I think this incident rather looks like a set-up, but not having all the facts, I still think we need to keep a tight rein on our conclusions. I really hope it turns out not to have been a set-up, because not only will that personally disappoint me to a deep degree, it will deal a major blow to efforts by young people and/or minorities to be taken seriously with actual discussions of discrimination in the future.
CC, I agree with you that the title of this thread shows obvious bias. But I don't know if it can be changed at this point and anyway it's a minor thing.
I don't think I've learned anything about UUs, youth, or racism so far from all of this. I already knew that racism exists to some extent in UUism, I already knew that we young people have been enculturated to jump to conclusions and act self-righteously, and I already knew that people tend to judge situations (especially hearsay ones) based on their previous commitments and personalities, not on a rational, measured attempt to gather all the facts.
It does look like there is genuine blame to go around for all sides, both the various participants at GA and all the second-guessers out here in cyberspace. I really wonder now if this incident was racist in nature on the part of the adults and hope more details come out soon. And I hope some good comes out of this debacle but in the end I doubt it will.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 11:59 AM PDT |
DJ is right. The only place where the word "racism" even appears in the UUA statement is:
<i>After one of those past incidents, the UUA Board of Trustees committed to provide safe space to process issues and concerns around oppression and racism and chaplains who could help facilitate reflection, discussion, and learning. </i>
And FUUSE leadership is asking US to be constructive and unbiased?
CC[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: HaggisInDaEvenin On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 12:10 PM PDT |
My own personal view, especially seeing the Ushers response and talking to quite a number of people, is this:
At General Assembly, there were racial tensions, intentional and unintentional racism going on inside our community, and upon our community from without.
At General Assembly, around the time of closing ceremonies, there was pre-existing stress, due to (for some people) a weeks worth of marginalization, and experiance with racism, in addition to the stress that GA provides us to begin with.
These set the stage for needing but a catalyst to boil over. There are wrongs all around in these stories, and just as many people trying to do The Right Thing.
The best we can do from this situation is learn from it. I'm not interested in blame, nor judgement. Those will not be helpful, and do not further our movements along the road from Calgary, nor on the roads to safe, welcoming, spiritual havens for ALL in St. Louis, Portland, and Ft. Lauderdale.
Every post I've read in these discussions gets filed away in my internal drawer of things to consider for the planning of GA next year, of the con I have to run in November, of my next blog post.
My plea in these discussions is that everyone learns something that benefits themself, and their relation with one other person in this world.
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~Donald Wilson ~ http://www.donaldwilson.info ~ http://www.uuhosting.net
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| Authored by: SafetyBear On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 12:18 PM PDT |
For a second, I thought that somehow Usher (the music artist) heard what was going on at General assembly and decided to respond... That just shows how out of it I am right now.
I've been watching this develop since GA, and reading the points of discussion on Fuuse since either of the articles were posted. I cannot say the details matter-- they do, especially for the group of individuals involved.
However, as an onlooker, I find that my role is not to debate the validity in these points of view, especially in community setting-- doing so would discract from productive conversation, because there is no way of telling which views are true or false. Neither is it my role to judge. The only role I have is to ask questions (which appear in this scenario) that provide answers productive toward working against racism in the future... whether or not this situation was caused by racism.
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Nadya C. E. Hand[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: dodgermask On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 02:25 PM PDT |
Just wanted to say this before there's any banter between people that were there. Perspective is reality, just beacuse you didn't see things the same way doesn't mean they didn't happen. Different people have had alot of different circumstances lead up to their individual actions at any given point in time.
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YARRRRR I'm a Pirate![ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: EDavid On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 03:03 PM PDT |
This is of course a tricky issue- the reason the posts were labeled and posted as they were was to try to disseminate official information about events that led to painful yet ambiguous threads on the FUUSE message boards and an article entitled My Response to the Shit at GA that did a lot to stir up emotions but said nothing of the details of the events that lead to it.
Before the Board of Trustees Letter was made public, FUUSE responded with this article: Painful end to GA 2005 with the promise that as soon as there was official information to share, we would post it.
I was not privy to the usher's letter before getting it from the same listserv as djones42 and posted it as soon as I was able.
I want to add that the closing ceremonies were not the only event labeled as racist- there were many incidents including a number of times white UUs mistook UUs of color for porters and service people in the various hotels and the treatment of our youth of color certainly needs to be examined within this lense, regardless of the details of the closing ceremonies debacle. ---
The answer lies in love and not in war... [ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: DJ DC On Wednesday, July 13 2005 @ 03:32 PM PDT |
I still like the idea that Usher the musician knows
something about all this! :D
Take that, Rewind it back, UU's got the info to make yo
booty go...
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"Come the rapture can I have your car?"--Bumper Sticker
My FUUSE journal-- "Inane Drivel and Other Niceties"[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Jedi Liz On Thursday, July 14 2005 @ 01:06 AM PDT |
First, let's keep in mind that there would be NO FUUSE if the fuuse admins were not as AMAIZING as they are, so let's play a little more nice, k?
So here's my 2 cents: the letter from the UUA indicated that there was racism at GA and that the purpose of the letter was to address it. Therefore, I believe that the way the fuuse articles were titled (which is always up to the individual posting it, which in this case was Erik, but fuuse has no "editors") accurately.
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"Space isn't man's final frontier. Man's final frontier is the soul." ~Arrested Development[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Thursday, July 14 2005 @ 07:19 AM PDT |
| I appreciate what the FUUSE folks do, but a big issue for me is the people who
jumped to conclusions before all the facts were in and I do think Erik was
among their number, and then claimed that the UUA board of trustees had
used it in their statement. Not really. The UUA letter is very clear in painting
the stuff with the cops as racist and NOT saying the issues AT GA itself were.
The only time the word "racism" appears in the letter is in the phrase "anti-
racism"
For what it's worth, I don't see the old people mistaking young people for
bellhops thing as such a big deal. Maybe I just look like a store clerk, but is
there any white person here who hasn't been mistaken for a service-level
employee half a dozen times in their youth? My experience is that it starts to
happen less once one hits one's twenties, though as I wrote on my blog, my
husband was just mistaken for a fish store employee about two weeks ago.
(By a nice looking gay gay who told the both of us how cute my husband is. It
was awkward.)
What I'd like to talk about is how quickly everyone jumps to the conclusion of
racism. If you notice my posts, I never say "racism wasn't an issue." (Though
lots of people thought that's what I was saying.) And I assumed that the
young PoC were innocently hanging out and indeed no one was really at fault.
Meanwhile, other people are writing:
About the UUA
The other night when I heard about this, I said "I wish I could say I was
surprized vy this." Apperently the UUA was a very racist organization. I'm not
surprized that some people are semi-racist in the UUA still. But this also
could of been a generation gap. Possibly the older person accusing the youth
assumed that they were causing trouble. No matter what, it wasn't right.
About people who dared to question that the incident was inherently racial
I’m a little disturbed by the discussion because it seems people are
trying to find loopholes to calling what happened a racist incident.
About my attempts to figure out what happen rather than just blaming the
minister automatically:
Burden of proof" isn't an issue here ... the underlying values and
assumptions that got us to this incident are the issue here.
(Y'all know I could go on, but you see my point)
I think this raises some questions:
1. If that lady hadn't written her letter, would our community still to this day
be considering the event racism, and indeed her a racist for being one of the
ushers involved?
2. Is that right?
My answers are "yes" and "no."
3. If we can be wrong on racism, is it really good of us to make the
assumptions we do?
4. Is the fact that if the lady hadn't written the letter, we would still be
thinking that the minister involved was a racist a problem?
What I'm getting at is that the vibe I'm getting is a "People should learn from
this. Old white people should learn not to be racist because they still
assumed we were bellhops" vibe not a "People should learn from this and we
should be a little less quick to judge people by the color of thier skin and
assume every issue involving PoC and non-PoC is all about race" vibe.
CC
whose Grandmother assumes ANY young person was put on this planet to
help her carry packages and help her up flights or stairs because young
people are supposed to be nice to old people, whether those young people
are offically bellhops or not, but thankfully was not at GA.
Grandma is rude, I admit. But she's not a racist. [ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Thursday, July 14 2005 @ 08:37 AM PDT |
OK, I'm going to put that last post in paragraphs to make for easy reading.
I appreciate what the FUUSE folks do, but a big issue for me is the people who jumped to conclusions before all the facts were in and I do think Erik was among their number, and then claimed that the UUA board of trustees had used it in their statement. Not really. The UUA letter is very clear in painting the stuff with the cops as racist and NOT saying the issues AT GA itself were. The only time the word "racism" appears in the letter is in the phrase "anti- racism"
<p>For what it's worth, I don't see the old people mistaking young people for bellhops thing as such a big deal. Maybe I just look like a store clerk, but is there any white person here who hasn't been mistaken for a service-level employee half a dozen times in their youth? My experience is that it starts to happen less once one hits one's twenties, though as I wrote on my blog, my husband was just mistaken for a fish store employee about two weeks ago. (By a nice looking gay gay who told the both of us how cute my husband is. It was awkward.)
<P>What I'd like to talk about is how quickly everyone jumps to the conclusion of racism. If you notice my posts, I never say "racism wasn't an issue." (Though lots of people thought that's what I was saying.) And I assumed that the young PoC were innocently hanging out and indeed no one was really at fault. <p>
Meanwhile, other people are writing: About the UUA<br><i> The other night when I heard about this, I said "I wish I could say I was surprized vy this." Apperently the UUA was a very racist organization. I'm not surprized that some people are semi-racist in the UUA still. But this also could of been a generation gap. Possibly the older person accusing the youth assumed that they were causing trouble.
No matter what, it wasn't right.</i><p>
About people who dared to question that the incident was inherently racial: <i><br> I’m a little disturbed by the discussion because it seems people are trying to find loopholes to calling what happened a racist incident.</i><p>
About my attempts to figure out what happen rather than just blaming the minister automatically:<br><i> Burden of proof" isn't an issue here ... the underlying values and assumptions that got us to this incident are the issue here.</i>
<p>
(Y'all know I could go on, but you see my point)
<p>
I think this raises some questions: <p>1. If that lady hadn't written her letter, would our community still to this day be considering the event racism, and indeed her a racist for being one of the ushers involved?<p> 2. Is that right? My answers are "yes" and "no." <p>3. If we can be wrong on racism, is it really good of us to make the assumptions we do? <p>4. Is the fact that if the lady hadn't written the letter, we would still be thinking that the minister involved was a racist a problem? <p>
What I'm getting at is that the vibe I'm getting is a "People should learn from this. Old white people should learn not to be racist because they still assumed we were bellhops" vibe not a "People should learn from this and we should be a little less quick to judge people by the color of thier skin and assume every issue involving PoC and non-PoC is all about race" vibe. <p>CC<br> whose Grandmother assumes ANY young person was put on this planet to help her carry packages and help her up flights or stairs because young people are supposed to be nice to old people, whether those young people are offically bellhops or not, but thankfully was not at GA. Grandma is rude, I admit. But she's not a racist.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: djones42 On Thursday, July 14 2005 @ 11:14 AM PDT |
Erik David,
Thank you for all you do to make FUUSE possible. Your choice to make post labels meaningful is very important. When I go to a members bio, it list what post they have made using this label. I am sure that in the future you may think twice about using the term “racism”. I read it for days with a little discomfort, however it was not till a comment by CC that it struck me that in this particular case, IMHO, it would have been better to not use it. Live and learn.
A quote from the letter…
“At General Assembly in Fort Worth, there were several incidents that reminded us that we have much work to do in our journey to becoming an anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and multicultural association.”
Is our association racist and oppressive or do we have some members that are not living up to the ideals we share as an anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and multicultural association? I for one feel that as an association, we are clearly agreed upon the need to be anti-racist and anti-oppressive within our association and to be activist to work toward the elimination of racism and oppression locally, nationally and globally.
Within an association of our size, we are bound to have instances of intuitional racism, individuals that inadvertently commit racist acts and unfortunately some racist individuals. As a community, we need to identify these instances of racism and through love, education and advocacy work to eliminate them. I personally believed the above quote inadvertently implies that the UUA, as a whole, can be viewed as a racist and oppressive entity because we still, and always will, have more AR/AO work to do.
Racism Exist. It will always exist until humans evolve past the need to divide the world into “us” and “them” so that “us” can feel superior to “them”. I believe the question is how do we deal with it. One way is to create beloved community that merges “us” and “them”. In other words, create an anti-racist, anti-oppressive, multicultural community. I believe that GA and the UUA is one such community. Not perfect without any …isms, but aware and proactive in doing the best we can.
Our Youth (and others) are raising the profile of AR/AO within the UU community. Ignoring it is not a valid response. Reacting to an “incident” as a community wide emergency gets attention. It has happened at least 3 times in the last year within our Youth community. And the last was in our GA community. However, past the value of raising the profile of the issue, these events have been very painful, resources intensive and not very effective in addressing the chronic issues.
So… I hope we come together as a beloved community and address the underlying chronic condition of racism and the other …isms. It seems that several actions are being taken.
Yours in faith,
Doug Jones
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| Authored by: Jimmy C On Thursday, July 14 2005 @ 06:09 PM PDT |
I think that the "Usher's Response" is critical to understanding the current crisis in youth and young adult programming surrounding anti-racism.
When I read it, I was like... "That really underscores everything that I have already posted about the problem of "anti-racism" efforts gone wrong in youth and young adult circles. To me, it seems that all innappropriate behavior by AR proponents is being ignored and that all responses to innappropriate behavior by AR proponents is being innappropriately viewed as "racist".
Chalice Chick is right on target when she points out that even this direct rejection of the anti-racism position on the event by The Usher is being downplayed as "not very significant" by AR proponents as well as the "let's all just get along" folks. And, I agree with Chalice Chick that The Usher's Response is a very important insight into the unnecessary problems that anti-racism programming is causing in the UUA. "The Usher's Response" will become a historical document in UUA history.
Remember, Con Con was squashed by UUA staff in favor of anti-racism programming, among other, less believable reasons. The Youth Office threw out youth spirituality in favor of UUA staff programming on anti-racism.
Remember, anti-racism folks have staged innappropriate protests not only at GA, but at Youth Con 2004, and at Con Con 2004.
Remember, there are widespread complaints that AR sessions are demanding that UU youth and young adults participants accept only a "feel your white guilt" and an "all white people are racists" and discard their own personal experiences of their struggles as whites who are in favor of anti-racism programming. One obvious flaw in AR programming is the idea that People of Color are not racist because they are oppressed. Megan Selby apologizes for her role in promoting innappropriate AR programming as an AR program leader, in the fall 2004 issue of the Synapse, available from the YRUU web page. But, Megan's efforts to draw attention to what is behind AR programming have gone ignored.
So, where are the POC and the White Allies who are engaging in highly innappropriate behavior getting the idea that it is OK to do this? I think it comes from the whole climate of AR programming in youth and young adult circles. I think it comes from the idea that the UUA president and the UUA youth staff and the UUA young adult staff support anti-racism efforts NO MATTER HOW INNAPPROPRIATE THEY ARE and NO MATTER WHAT THE COST TO YOUTH AND YOUNG ADULT SPIRITUALITY IS. Because, they don't stand up to irresponsible behavior by AR leaders WHEN IT IS HAPPENING.
Remember, the UU Youth Office tossed Con Con in favor of more of this highly innappropriate AR programming with support from the UUA Administration.
Do I think that the Youth Office, the Young Adult Office, and the UUA President condone the tearing up of programs at the Closing Ceremony at GA? NO. But, I do think that they are responsible for creating this climate of "ANYTHING GOES" if it is for the AR effort and that this is what is empowering the AR folks and the White Allies to act innappropriately, even if their actions are just trashing the schedule to hold emotional AR protests over every perceived slight against AR folks.
Where were our Youth Staff when the AR folks were staging innappropriate protests about perceived slights at GA and shutting down the dance so that no one could dance while AR folks were innappropriately expressing their pain? It seems like no voice of reason is present among AR proponents.
(At this time I would like to point out that UUA staff are being paid to push AR efforts. Being responsible about it may be perceived as being against AR efforts. Maybe that is why they don't try to bring a sense of responsibility to AR protests. It's more money for them.)
The fallout from AR programming by our UUA staff and their AR program leaders has been to empower AR folks in a way that is almost completely devoid of being responsible in any way for their own behavior.
Currently, there is an effort underway to disrupt Youth Steering Committee Control of the Agenda of Youth Council by AR advocates in an effort to make Youth Council "safe" for whatever AR advocates want. This is highly irresponsible empowerment of AR advocates in action right now.
But the UU President says that the Steering Committee is not in "right relationship" with the UUA and the Youth Council takeover effort cites this as a reason why they want to rid the Youth Council of Steering Committee oversight. So, they buy into this idea that the Steering Committee is not in "right relationship" and they are in league with the UUA president.
The UUA president has successfully overthrown a Steering Committee protest of filling the youth office staff only with AR leaders, as if nothing else is important to our youth.
But, the real problem is that the UUA president, and the Youth Office are not in "right relationship" with most of our youth, while they empower AR advocates among the youth, which is being done in a highly irresponsible manner, which is damaging youth spirituality at Con Con by dismantly Con Con among other things.
The values of the youth and young adult movement have been damaged by a new emphasis on values of empowering anyone and anything that has to do with AR programming at the EXPENSE of all other youth and young adult values, like grass roots spirituality, grass roots democracy, and intentional community. And, ironically this has damaged the long standing and deep emphasis on accepting any person regardless of race into these youth communities.
That's right, the AR efforts are actually making in MORE DIFFICULT to trust any AR advocates within youth and young adult circles. Youth and Young Adult Cons have been much better places for people of all races to come together than UU Churches on Sunday for the last 40 years. But that climate has been damaged by the current AR takeover of our youth and young adult circles.
AR programming has failed in UUA Congregations for lack of having any POC present. But, the UUA President construes the current crisis in youth and young adult circles surrounding AR Programming as a success story in a speech at GA, because there are, at least, a few more POC in youth and young adult circles than their used to be. Who cares that there is now a DIVIDE between AR advocates and most other youth that did not used to exist because of the innappropriate nature of AR programming and manipulation of youth and young adult politics in favor of the new "anything goes for AR advocates" AR programming.
I simply don't agree that when the youth advocated AR programming in 1992, creating this whole effort, that what they really meant was that Con Con should be shut down.
The UUA staff is so focused on our youth and young adult events because it is the ONLY place there has been any changes. But, most youth and young adults do not support the innappropriate behavior of AR advocates in youth and young adult circles.
The youth office says that it closed Con Con because of a lack of support from the youth for AR programming. But, the youth and young adults themselves refuse to voice their concerns about AR programming openly in the current climate, because it is perceived as being "against anti-racism" or "against youth programs" when all it is really against is this huge lack of responsible behavior on the part of AR advocates.
Now, we have "The Usher's Report". I believe that this may be the beginning of truly challenging the innappropriate nature of our AR programming leaders and their supporters. Our much needed AR effort could have been done responsibly, but it has not been done responsibly, and this has much to do with the gullibility of our own Unitarian Universalist white liberal thinking in regard to any and all AR programming.
UU youth and Young Adults and their proponents have been very slow in acknowledging that not all AR programming is good quality programming or trying to do anything about it.
Jim Sechrest
By the way, the name of the Usher is Esther Ford. Even Esther Ford, who is African American, I believe, admits to having some preconceived notions of who the Closing Ceremony disrupters were as they walked in.
She writes:
"I have been a school teacher and school counselor for 25 years, so I know that, in the kid's vernacular, they were dressed in "gangsta'" fashion (low slung, oversized clothing, bandanas on head, wraparound sunglasses, even though it was evening, etc.). I must admit that my first thought (since they were not wearing their name cards) was that perhaps this might be local youth that might have seen some of our protests during the week and came to check us out. I had not seen them at any of the other programs."
We all have preconceived notions about what is happening around us. If we did not, we could not function. We all have preconceived notions of race, even PoC folks. We as humans are limited in our copacity to understand all things at once.
But, that is not a valid excuse for not trying to understand more as we grow. One thing we need to understand is that racism will always be with us in one form or another. Because, different races exist, there will always be preconceived notions in regard to race as there are in everything else. We can only hope to better inform our preconceived notions in regard to race.
I advocate that we better inform ourselves in regard to racism than AR programming is currently doing in youth and young adult UU circles.
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To be able think for yourself, independently of what others think... that is the greatest of all gifts.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Jedi Liz On Friday, July 15 2005 @ 03:25 AM PDT |
To CC and Doug Jones,
I understand your points of view that perhaps even deciding that the letter was "about racism" is jumping to conclusions. But I think there are also less vocal people here on fuuse who would be equally upset with the idea of calling it "may or may not be about racism," or something like that, since many, especially, I suspect, those who were there, have decided that it was racism.
I have. Far from certain, especially since I wasn't there, but I do know that people at least think it was about racism, and that, to me, makes it a racism issue (thus the letter regarding it was also about racism).
Is racism too harsh a judgement to make? Let me insert here a statement I posted as a comment on the other fuuse news article (I had just read the usher's statment, tho it wasn't up on fuuse yet): "it sounds to me like the adults in the incident thought the youth were misbehaving and the youth thought they weren't. It seems like an example of racism, not happening out of hate, but out of socially learned fear, that tends to cause white people to see things that aren't there and to become defensive and protective and people end up getting hurt. The hurt comes about particularly from distrust becoming visible where trust was assumed.
Like most incidences of racism, expecially within Unitarian Universalism, I hope white people like myself, involved or not involved, can reflect on and learn from this incident, and not punish eachother for our flaws."
Now, this is my opinion. Everyone has a point of view. I suppose you could call it a judgement, as Ethan seems to. But, like Howard Zinn says, "You can't be neutral on a moving train." I believe that insisting that Erik censor his point of view is like asking him to be blind.
Similarly, I don't think Ethan's request to refrain from passing judgement is fair either. By using words to describe a situation, we define our view. Is the alternative to not talk about questions like this at all? Or to only talk about them in a philsophical mad-lib, where you fill in the blanks? (although I do support sharing ideas without names, but thanks to this letter, that's out the window)
If those are the alternatives, I'd rather risk being judgemental. It beats silence.
I love you all, and i love that we are talking about this. Keep it goin! I look forward to your response.
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"Space isn't man's final frontier. Man's final frontier is the soul." ~Arrested Development [ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Friday, July 15 2005 @ 06:44 AM PDT |
OK, Liz, if this was a racist incident, what would have been a proper way to
react when the young people started throwing programs on the floor an d
tearing them up.
Given that that makes noise and they were in a ceremony, were people
unreasonable to ask them to cut it out?
And BTW, if FUUSE decides someone is a murderer before the verdict is in,and
writes that in a headline and he's found innocent, he can sue you for libel,
even if lots of people thought he was a murderer. That lots of people think
something is true is not a reason to declare it true without evidence.
CC[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Jedi Liz On Friday, July 15 2005 @ 10:28 AM PDT |
Ok, whoaaaa, CC. I clearly did not get across the points I was trying to make.
1. What I'm suggesting is that perhaps there wasn't as much a threat of disturbing the ceremony as the usher assumed. I could be wrong, in which case your question is completely worth discussing, but first and foremost, I believe this possibility is what needs to be talked about. Do you see the possibility of this being what happened?
2. I completely agree that libel is something the fuuse admins (again, NOT editors, this is more of a free-for-all news forum than any official publication, and deserves to be given due credit or lack there of as a news source) ought to be cautious of, since a lot of people read this site now. But in such cases, it is the duty of those in an editor-like position to decide what they think is fact and what they think needs to be retracted or whatnot. So, I'm sorry, but I believe the admins are doing their jobs exactly right if they only post on this site what they understand to be the truth. There can be dialogue about how they came to those conclusions, and perhaps persuasion on either side, but I respect them for taking a stand when they believe it is the right thing to do.
I understand that it's frustrating when a respected source with a lot of sway has a different opinion from yours. It can feel disempowering. Like they have all the power and you don't. Well, don't let that get to you. I know that UU circles tend to have major issues with power-divides, leadership being very visibly on one side and non-leadership feeling cut off and cut out. But that's what is so great about FUUSE. YOU can post a news article too. Make the truth yours. Don't attack the admins for usurping power which you still have.
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"Space isn't man's final frontier. Man's final frontier is the soul." ~Arrested Development[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: chutney On Friday, July 15 2005 @ 10:34 AM PDT |
| But I think there are also less vocal people here on fuuse who would be equally upset with the idea of calling it "may or may not be about racism," or something like that, since many, especially, I suspect, those who were there, have decided that it was racism.
Who cares what someone has "decided?" What about the facts? Just having an opinion on something doesn't warrant any respect. [ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Jedi Liz On Friday, July 15 2005 @ 10:39 AM PDT |
Sorry. Instead of "decided," I should have said "concluded, based on their understanding of the facts."
But you have hit the nose on exactly my point: facts aren't always so cut and dry. The facts of what happened can be completely and honestly the completely opposite depending on whose point of view you are using.
It is my opinion that evolution existed. It is my opinion that evolution is fact. Does that make it true? What about the existance of God?
ha. clearly, we should not get me started. ;)
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"Space isn't man's final frontier. Man's final frontier is the soul." ~Arrested Development[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Friday, July 15 2005 @ 10:54 AM PDT |
1. Ceremonies are in general are fairly quiet. I’m imagining myself in a ceremony where there are three guys walking up and down the aisles and tearing up pieces of paper. Could you watch a ceremony under such conditions? Wouldn’t you already be pretty disturbed? Seems to me like they were already being disrupted. Do the teenage people of color in the audience who are just trying to watch the ceremony deserve to be disturbed just because some dudes would rather walk around and make noise than watch? What if you’d studied for years to become a minister and someone was doing that at your ceremony where you are introduced to the UUA?
2. Newspapers have a “news section” and an “opinion section” because editors see the need for us to show what’s opinion and what's information. Had Erik, for example, used wording more like the UUA’s in the headline and posted “this incident was racist” as a comment, I wouldn’t have said word one about his editorship, only that he was jumping to conclusions. But we all bitch when some reporter on Fox news says something like “Today the president bravely stood is ground on the deeply controversial stem cell research bill. Despite furious attacks from angry Democrats, our courageous leader said…” We ask all the time for Fox news to just present the facts and leave the commentary to a specific time when it is labeled. I’m only asking for the same thing.
CC
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| Authored by: Charming On Friday, July 15 2005 @ 11:30 AM PDT |
Alright, I've tried to stay out of it and I may very well regret this after its all said and done, but I feel the need to make a point which is being left out of the discussion.
Race and perceptions thereof aside (and yes, I understand that this is seen by many as a race issue and I'm consciously choosing to not make any personal distinction), something that is missing since this particular letter was released is the issue of respect. Respect for the closing ceremony and those present, respect for the ushers who volunteer their time to hand out the programs. Or respect for adults (and this isn’t said to disempower youth, but rather to say that there is such a concept as respecting your elders). When I was a youth (not so very long ago) I would rather have thrown myself off a bridge than to cuss at someone older than me. I would even go so far as to say that there was a lack of respect for the people who had to clean up all the pieces of paper after the closing ceremony.
I've worked with youth for many many years and I can tell you without one second of hesitation that if a youth or really anyone had been doing what is reported to have been done in the "Usher's Letter" I would of said something to them. Now I hope that it wouldn't have escalated into a bigger scene, but I think that the basic premise of respect for people is important here. And before you say it, yes, I know that many of the Youth who identify as people of color had had many bad experiences at GA, but I would pose the question, "Since when does and eye for an eye really solve anything?"
My other question, and this is the one that I may regret asking because I can already hear the hailstorm, but please know that I ask it from a good place, and that I'm not trying to come down one way or the other on this...Would the discussion around the "Usher's Letter" be the same IF she had not identified herself as a person of color? This is not a question I want to debate with anyone, and I'm saying now that I won't engage in debate, but it’s more a question for thought and/or discussion.
Yours in Hope and Faith,
~A
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| Authored by: uuber On Friday, July 15 2005 @ 12:40 PM PDT |
| This letter is addressed to Paul Rickter. Did FUUSE receive authorization from Ms Ford to publish her letter on this site? [ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: EDavid On Friday, July 15 2005 @ 12:42 PM PDT |
FUUSE received the letter via a public UU listserv- as such it is in the public domain and fair game for FUUSE or any blog, etc
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The answer lies in love and not in war...[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: cm1165 On Saturday, July 16 2005 @ 03:48 AM PDT |
Just have some questions for everyone:
If the young people involved in this incident had been white and all the ushers had been PoC would there questions of racism? (Yeah that is right I said it.)
Is it possible for people to respond to rudness and vulgarity in a PoC without being accused of racism? If so how?
If there had been discrimination expressed earlier in the week, does that give ANYONE the right to act like a dick (if the usher's characterization of the behavior is true)?
Why should the usher's statment have any more or less credibility because she is a PoC? Is that not a judgment based soley on her ethnicity and therefore racist?
Just some of the thoughts that jumped into my head, but then again I am a white guy so it is probally all just subliminal racist garbage.
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Carter McNeese
I have "sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
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| Authored by: Jeff Wilson On Saturday, July 16 2005 @ 12:28 PM PDT |
Thanks to Philocrites, who first pointed this development out. Nancy Glass, a reporter for Religion News Service, has written a brief piece on the GA incident (actually, mainly on the UUA Board of Trustees apology), and it was carried by the Charlotte Observer today as "Unitarian Board Apologizes." You can read the story here: http://www.charlotte.com/mld/observer/living/religion/12147443.htm
Note that you have to sign up in order to read it; but for those of y'all unwilling to do so, just go ahead and use my sign-in: email = jwilson403@hotmail.com, password = charlotte1. I assume that will work.
For those who can't access the article for whatever reason, here is a summary. Glass succintly runs through the substance of the apology letter, with a few quotes. She mentions that some people were asked to carry bags and that some thought this was racist. Gregory Boyd, identified as "a black Boston University student who attended the meeting" (meeting = GA) is quoted as saying it is hard to unlearn racist behaviors and says he was upset by witnessing the program-tearing incident. Glass then paraphrases anonymous others who felt that the Board overreacted by apologizing. Esther Ford, the Usher, is quoted and her version of the story is summarized in about two lines. The article is balanced and leaves the reader to decide whether racism was actually involved.
On a side note, Glass contacted Joey Lyons to get some info on the story. He doesn't appear in the story as published, but maybe he did talk with her and can provide more details. [ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Saturday, July 16 2005 @ 01:09 PM PDT |
FWIW, she also interviewed me. I gave her much the same thing I've been
saying here all along. I'll stick the exact text up on my blog and I've alreaydv
stuck it at Philocrites.
CC[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Jeff Wilson On Saturday, July 16 2005 @ 09:58 PM PDT |
Just wanted to let y'all know that Joey Lyons has posted the text of the Glass article on his site: http://radicalhapa.typepad.com/my_weblog/2005/07/charlotte_obser.html#more
Posting the entirety of the the article on his blog may well have violated copyright laws, but as long as it's up take a look.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Jedi Liz On Sunday, July 17 2005 @ 12:51 AM PDT |
Thanx for posting the link, Jeff!
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"Space isn't man's final frontier. Man's final frontier is the soul." ~Arrested Development[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: CopperQueen On Sunday, July 17 2005 @ 06:07 AM PDT |
Nancy Glass contacted a number of people about the event, including me. But I
did not interview with her since I had nothing to say about the incidents at GA in
particular (not having been there). I did refer her to some other folks who were
there, however.
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Cada hoja soñaba un sueño diferente.
-Lorca
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Sunday, July 17 2005 @ 07:16 AM PDT |
FWIW, I told her I hadn't been there and referred her to people who had and
she asked me things anyway.
CC[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: cm1165 On Sunday, July 17 2005 @ 10:55 AM PDT |
I would think that as long as it is properly cited that it should not be a problem. I can't remember the specifics, but there is some rule (not law), say how that is to be done, but I am sure that it is fine. Thanks for the link.
CM
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Carter McNeese
I have "sworn upon the altar of God eternal hostility to every form of tyranny over the mind of man."
-Th[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous On Sunday, July 17 2005 @ 10:04 PM PDT |
As great as dialogue can be, I for one am so very tired of white people complaining about the GA incident (by calling what happened baiting, complaining about the cancellation of the dance, or once again reiterating their dislike for AR work).
If you have an issue with things - work to find changes. My own personal opinion is that our denomination will be full of whites who want to feel comfortable - and ANY anti-racism work that challenges that comfort will be wrong.
To complain about issues while not being in the midst of them is to complain about a bad call by the umpire from the cheap seats.
Personally, I'd like to see people who keep saying the same things (about AR work/Youth/Youth of Color and others) to present solutions to the problems they see.
-Scott McNeill
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bsm[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous On Monday, July 18 2005 @ 02:52 AM PDT |
Charming -
I'm wondering why you chose to disagree with the youth cussing at an adult, but not a minister with a youth? While I think more respect is needed in general, no offense is worse than the other - or that's my initial thought. Ministers are trained to be present and we hope they can rise above the need to cuss at anyone - and yes, they're human so they'll make mistakes. But did the youth have that institutional training? Don't we hold ministers to a higher standard - at least in relating to people in tense situations?
All -
My opinion on the subject (which is pointless, but I might as well throw it out there) is that neither version of the story is correct - and maybe others agree. Truth is perception and the perception for SOME involved (key words) is that the ushers/ministers were using privilege, power and race oppressive ideas to say that the youth needed to leave/didn't look as though they belong/etc. The perception for others is that the youth weren't respectful (well, they didn't behave the ushers/others would have asked them to behave - which may be a better wording) and therefore were causing problems.
I have to join the choir of those that was not wearing a namebadge when I entered closing ceremony - and am fully aware that my white skin ensured there would be no problem. This past week, at a UUSC workcamp, a middle aged white woman from a suburb of Boston forgot her wallet on the way to the airport. The security folks let her on with no problem at all. As much as we (all of us) would like to remind the youth that respect is called for - we should remind ourselves and others than respect for the youth is called for. This isn't about youth empowerment - it's about treating others the way you wish to be treated (on all fronts).
I have to say, however, that I feel like a lot of the dialogue has been centered around making sure the people accused of racism were cleared. There has been considerably less conversation about whether or not the accusations of how the youth acted were true. However, if the youth was disrespectful/etc - would that make racism acceptable? I'm not saying this is the case - merely a hypothetical.
Is it okay to assume that youth of color are not UUs, even if they look "gangsta"? In a religious community that is designed to respect everyone's inherent worth and dignity - including the actual gangsters and the ones that society labels "gangsta" - why does appearance define legitimacy and worth as a member of our religious community?
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bsm[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Monday, July 18 2005 @ 07:20 AM PDT |
One more time...
If people who assume that someone tearing up a peice of paper in
a quiet ceremony might become disruptive are racists, can I sit
next to y'all in the movies and do it?
I don't know about the dance and frankly, don't care. I really don't
know much about AR work, although the response to this incident
doesn't do much to reccomend it as questions even as simple as
"How can a white person teaching a class white a student of color
is being disruptive handle the situation if polite verbal requests for
good behavior have been ignored?" are totally unanswerable and
a "Don't bother me with the facts, I've decided it was racism so I
must be right" attitude is prevalent.
The impression that I have gotten from the people here is that
being 100 percent non-oppressive in every concievable manner is
FAR more important than being fair. And I don't think that's right. I
think that if we raise our kids to believe, for example, that if they are
late for work and the boss yells at them, the proper respose is to
cry "racism," then we are really damaging their chances of ever
breaking glass celings and attaining careeer success, because, to
be frank, even people who win discrimination and harassment
suits have trouble getting hired anyplace else. You don't want to
explain "My previous boss yelled at me, so I sued him" to job
interviewers. (A friend of mine who won a perfectly justified
sexual harassment suit has been facing this. Her entire industry
heard about it and no one wants to hire her for fear that she will
hear someone tell a dirty joke and sue the company. Is this fair?
Of course not. It really sucks. But it's the way the world works right
now and I'd be doing a big disservice to you if I told you differently.)
I'm a woman in a town with a very strong old-boy network, and I've
faced a couple of things that I wouldn't wish on you. I know they
are wrong. But I also know that I'd rather get ahead than get angry.
(That having been said, I haven't forgotten the guy who
perpetrated the worst incident I've faced. One of these days, I
might be in a position of power over him and I will make him
seriously sorry if that ever comes about. )
Ultimately, I'd say the key to minimizing/ending racism is for
minorities to attain power themselves. Issuing demands that UUs
either let teenagers of color behave however they want or be
called racists is emotional extortion and while it has worked OK so
far, it will ultimately be quite damaging to the teenagers involved.
and to the well meaning UUA folks who go along with it.
One thing that AR work seems to have in common with several
other UUA social justice programs that I have an issue with is that
it seems to be all about TALKING about things without ever
requiring people to DO anything. Call me an old school liberal, but
I'd say that people become less racist when they meet PoC who
are well-educated, have good jobs and seem enthusiastic about
participating in things beneficial to society. So my view of good AR
work is work that focuses on tutoring for kids who need it, job
training for adults who need it, charity work that gives everybody a
healthy appreciation for the fact that some people have it worse
than they do, and being straight up about the fact that they will face
unfairness, but everyone does to some extent, and getting up in
someone's face about a problem isn't always the best way to solve
it.
I grew up in a rich area and the PoC I went to school with that I've
run into tend to be in law school or medical school. They got there
not because they never faced racism, but because they had rich
kid advantages like Daddy's friends and SAT classes. So let's do a
little less talking and a little more working when it comes to giving
people advantages.
But that involves actually getting off our discussion-happy UU
butts, and that is somethng we often have problems doing.
CC
(who is after all, sitting on her own butt and talking about a
problem rather than doing something to solve it, so it's not like
she's immune.)[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: DJ DC On Monday, July 18 2005 @ 12:47 PM PDT |
I needed to take a step back from the racism talk. A friend of mine, who left the UU movement because of hating having to deal with racism in the YA community, once had a conversation about trying to explain to other people. We came to the conclusion that it’s like trying to tell people that there is a wolf right outside the window when others don’t see a wold but they see a tree, which is what’s happening here.
CC—a lot of what we’re talking about here is not about excusing stuff but trying to understand where people are coming from. For example, you mentioned earlier that from your experience ceremonies is a solemn and quiet event that such a disruption would be obvious. However the GA closing ceremony are actually loud and very packed (3000 people). No one except for the people in the immediate section knew about what was happening—which is one reason why people were so upset the dance was cancelled: because they DIDN’T KNOW WHY? So coming from your experience it makes sense why you would think they were being disruptive to EVERYONE; but if you understand it from those who were there you’ll understand a different perspective. And the different perspective is what many of us in the AR trainings are trying to get across to everyone: understand different perspectives.
Part of AR work is to get people to 1) understand the pain that racism causes, especially to people of color; and 2) to understand how people’s actions, including white people’s—inadvertent or otherwise—can contribute to that pain. Does that mean I think all white people are racist? No. Do white people inadvertently contribute to racial pain? Yes. Part of the reason it is inadvertent is that white people don’t know the triggers that can set us off, don’t know the history (the full history) of how racism works and changes in this society, how some actions can continue to cause divisions among all peoples. Does this mean that white people need to be PC at all times? No—I even hate the term PC. But it does mean that until white people learn this stuff, there will be more pain caused. It does mean that white people need to understand things from the people of color’s perspective, understand where the pain comes from, understand how it affects them.
Here’s an example. A reporter was describing his time interviewing people on the streets in the Middle East (I don’t remember the country offhand—though I think it was Iran—but I’ll say Middle East out of my own forgetfulness). The interviews went well and he always wanted to thank them with a gesture of goodwill, in this case a “thumbs up” sign. He never understood why these just friendly interviewees would suddenly get furious at him when he made the sign. He later found out that in that region/country the “thumbs up” sign is the same as the middle finger in the USA. So a single gesture made out of ignorance of the local culture/customs became EXTREMELY offensive.
It’s hard to explain that, yes, if you’re black and a person expects you to carry their bags, it is racism. I’ve been confused for people who work at a store all the time, but no one has ever expected me or ordered me to get something out of the back room. It’s hard to explain how historically blacks were expected to only be working menial jobs often meant to service white people without writing an entire book. But white people need to realize that this is also history that we carry around with us. One of the benefits of being white (one of the white privilege) is that whites don’t have that extra baggage of negative stereotypes and prejudices that is foisted on people of color and that follows us and dogs us all the time. Worse yet, that expectation has been taught and somehow imprinted on society, so it’s not like it’s ONLY a personal slight; it becomes the opening of an old wound. When someone expects us to carry their bags for them even if we’re not a valet, all that gets touched upon. Again CC—this is why we can’t answer the question what to do in your teaching hypothetical. It’s because things don’t happen in a vacuum, and therefore there is no one cookie cutter solution.
Being fair also means realizing that two different can’t be treated the same way. My sister is learning disabled and she needed a different way to learn things; the NYC public education system only had two ways of teaching so she was in danger of failing out until we got her into a private school that can tailor its teaching to her needs. So yes in the class we need to at the very least talk to the student to try to find out what the heck is going on. Were the kids wrong in tearing up the programs and being disruptive at that time? Yeah, but I would like to know why. What was going on that made them feel that tearing up a program would be the best solution? If we learn what was going on to them, maybe we could provide a better solution that’s more effective and less polarizing.
All this time, even with the information in the letter from the usher (which I’m glad was put out there so more eyewitness information can be known), I still am willing to say that racism played a part in the stuff. The letter from the UUA talked about racism at GA. From what I read of the letter, they didn’t isolate the closing ceremony as being the only event—although a majority of the focus of subsequent discussion concerned the closing ceremony. I know there were other moments at GA where people of color were uncomfortable, including me, because of something that was said or done. Was it blatant and intentional racism? No, I felt it was unintentional and ignorant. But would I still consider it a racial incident, mainly because there was a lot of pent up anger from the week and before (the youth were there a week before GA in Ft. Worth and I’ve been told there were racial problems at that time, too). So the apology shouldn’t just be aimed at the closing ceremony at a whole but also at the other incidents—reported or not (as a POC ally I know not everything was named in that letter)—that contributed to racial tension at GA.
I am very concerned for all the pain being caused at GA. As much blame there was to go around, a lot of pain was caused as well. I’m trying not to take sides as it were, but I am concerned with what is the nature of the pain being caused (on all sides, but especially with the people of color because their pain is traditionally marginalized), and what could have been done to release the pressure before this blew up.
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"Come the rapture can I have your car?"--Bumper Sticker
My FUUSE journal-- "Inane Drivel and Other Niceties"[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Monday, July 18 2005 @ 03:37 PM PDT |
OK, if the kids who were tearing up programs were still annoying just the people around them, that's still annoying people. I was in a modern dance performance yesterday and a kid with Downs Syndrome behind me was loudly commenting on the action. Might not have been loud enough to annoy everyone in the room, but it was still irritating to someone who was just trying to watch the dance. I tolerated the noise and even smiled at the mother when I left because, hey, it's a kid with downs syndrome. You can't expect any better.
I have higher standards for teenage UUs.
(And I do understand your perspective that they were trying to distract 50 people rather than 3000. I just don't see why that matters.)
As for issues that made PoC uncomfortable, I'm sure there were. I'm also sure there were times when women were uncomfortable and wouldn't doubt that there were times when men were uncomfortable. I don't question that there were times when fat people were uncomfortable. I'm sure there were times when gay people were uncomfortable. Ugly people? yes. Little kids? Probably uncomfortable at some point. Non-native speakers of English? Certainly. People in wheelchairs? You bet.
Imagine old people, humiliated that they were too frail to even carry their own clothes for a weekend now doubly embarassed that in front of everyone they'd gotten some attitude from a kid whom they thought would help them.
Let's say it together.
They were uncomfortable.
Life is uncomfortable.
So why is the perspective of color the only one that matters? Are we training people to not ask women to do secretarial-type tasks? Are we training people to make sure to ask fat people to dance so they won't feel left out?
I think it's safe to assume that we aren't training people to help old people with their bags so they don't feel so helpless.
I'd love to hear you tell, say, a fat lesbian old lady how lucky she is since she never has to deal with stereotypes since she's white.
Also, the letter clearly states that an usher (likely an usher of color since it was the letter writer's husband, though of course we can't be sure) actually asked the guys if there was a problem.
The ushers tried talking to them.
They walked away.
I had a religion professor whom I really liked who wrote a book on envy one year. I had several classes with her and the effect on her was striking to watch. As the year progressed, she became more and more fascianted with the subject and more and more things started to be about envy. She told us about how the problems CLinton was having were about envy. The Bosnian conflict was about envy. Sports were about envy, grades were about envy. The reality TV shows were about envy... You get the picture.
We started to joke that she saw the world through envy-colored glasses.
I think UUs see the world through race-colored glasses.
This stuff is going to happen as long as we see the world this way.
Let's face it. Rude people will always be with us. Some of them will be white. Some of the victims will be black.
If we make a big fuss over slights this minor, we will always be making a fuss.
CC
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| Authored by: DJ DC On Monday, July 18 2005 @ 04:50 PM PDT |
CC-- I'm not talking about being made uncomfortable
I'm talking about being INSULTED. Uncomfotable is
something people can deal with; being insulted is
much different. It's not that ONLY asking black youth to
carry bags is bothersome, but it is INSULTING when
they are EXPECTED to carry them. If people ONLY
perceive blacks as there to serve others then we've got
a problem. If we perceive that UUs are ONLY white
(which is at the heart of some of the other problmes,
maybe not necessarily the closing ceremony), then we
are insulting those people of color who ar UU, including
some that have been for life like myself. It's a little
insulting to ask a person of color who is wearing a GA
name tag and chalice T-shirt "if they are here for the
GA?" (which did happen). it's insulting not purposefully
but out of ignorance. But imagine a bunch of those little
insults being piled up on one person over the course of
a week.
Let's say THIS together: IGNORANCE HURTS.
And this is exactly what I mean by looking at another
person's perspective. You might see it as a minor
infraction, but to people of color it is a big deal and is
insulting. I'll even go as far as to say it's insulting to
consider someone's feelings no big deal; their pain is
real to them and we need to recognize it; not diminish it.
we need to take in other people's perspectives to avoid
the problems and KNOW when our actions are being
insulting. I for one was very insulted to know how FAR
AWAY the accessibilities room was from the main
entrance. Elders and disabled people had to travel the
entire length of the convention center jsut to get the
thigns they requested (scooters, etc). It was annoying
for me so I KNOW how the elders and disabled must
have felt.
One part of AR trainign (though it's somethign needed
to work up to more) is "linked oppressions." As certain
things oppress people of color, so it can be applied to
GLBT's, women, disabled, etc, --with minor differences
(and it's important to understand those differences).
That's a part of the learning that needs to be stressed
more as well. but if we have such a hard time agreeing
about race, it's hard to get to the others as well (not to
mention the whole class issue which upholds ALL
oppressions). We need to understand the pain of ALL
oppressed and marginalized groups, know what is
insulting so we can avoid it. We can't remove
landmines unless we know where they are and what
they look like.
Yes the fact that the kids walked away is disheartening
and insulting. I'm not saying they aren't to blame for that
and yes they should have acted with more respect. And
their actions didn't help matters. But after hearing some
of their stories I at least understand why they were so
mad.
p.s. I argued about the size of the group because I
wanted to point out something that "Ceremonies are in
general are fairly quiet. I’m imagining myself in a
ceremony where there are three guys walking up and
down the aisles and tearing up pieces of paper. Could
you watch a ceremony under such conditions?" I was
pointing out was the ceremony was different than what
you had in mind and thought it was, and that people
could still watch and did.
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"Come the rapture can I have your car?"--Bumper Sticker
My FUUSE journal-- "Inane Drivel and Other Niceties"[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Monday, July 18 2005 @ 05:18 PM PDT |
Ok, you're saying that y'all haven't "gotten to" oppressions of any other type?
Could that be because you are too busy dealing with such minescule issues when it comes to race?
Shall those of us who still get paid 77 cents to the male dollar wait in line until you guys are done investigating cases of unequal nametag enforcement?
As I mentioned in the other thread, people who don't wear their nametags don't get much sympathy from me. I'm an event planner. I do this stuff professionally. When you chose not to wear a nametag, you make the volunteers' lives harder.
If you're asked if you belong at the event, and you're not wearing the tag that proves you've paid for the event that the event planners told you to wear lest someone stop and ask you where your tag is, the proper response is not to cry "racism" because the volunteer was mean enough to ask you. It is to get back to your hotel room and get the tag.
I'm sorry it's a long walk. But you're the one who forgot your tag. Not the volunteer.
Is it possible that the usher lady didn't have any problems with being bothered because she actually followed the rules and wore her nametag?
CC
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| Authored by: Charming On Monday, July 18 2005 @ 07:23 PM PDT |
CrackerJackKid: you are right it isn’t appropriate for anyone to cuss anyone out, minister’s included, and I’m sorry I didn’t make that point. Thanks for the catch.
On another note regarding people who have issues with the way we are doing AR work. Here’s the thing, that’s what it is “the WAY we are doing AR work”, NOT that we ARE doing it. Just a point of information, there have been many people, including some really strong leaders within the movement who have presented questions to the appropriate channels about the way we do AR work, and that we seem to have moved away from the linked identities that DJ DC mentioned. I regret to say that most of those people have felt run out of the movement. Run out, because when they posed the questions of IF we can do this work with more attention and accountability so that it doesn’t create “entitled victim-hood, a huge amount of unproductive white guilt, a dismissal of liked oppressions, and no real life tools to use” they were labeled and called directly in some cases, “racist, not a REAL UU, and not willing to do the work.” I stand before you as one of those people who have been labeled as such. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, that’s the beauty of our faith, but my truth didn’t matter, my truth was taken from me and labeled, and I’m not alone in that.
When this fact, that people were leaving the movement because they felt alienated was said in a meeting, the response was “I don’t care how many people leave. Enough people of color have left, that if White people can’t handle it, then they can go”, and this was from a leader who identifies as a person of color. My question is how productive is this line of thought on either end? It’s sad when we don’t live our faith all the way around.
Currently the UUA has been bringing a local Boston organization called “Visions”, to provide AR/AO training’s to the staff. Overall the feedback from these trainings has been wonderful. Many young adults have attended the trainings and have expressed a huge desire to use their model in doing the work continentally. People said that this was productive for many reasons, including the emphasis on Linked Oppression, and the feeling that people were being given tangible tools to look at their own internalized racism, their own feeling on prejudice as they have experienced it, and ways to challenge it outside of the UU world in everyday life. I have attended these workshops and found them to be amazingly helpful and insightful, and I’ve walked away feeling better equipped to do the hard work of living our faith. I hate to say it, but after years of attending AR work at YA conferences I’ve only ever come away asking for ways to really put it in practice and feeling like no matter what I did, it would never be enough.
I don’t think those that are concerned with HOW we are doing AR work are concerned because they don’t feel comfortable. I know for me, it’s not about comfort. My concerns stem from asking for years, to be given real life tools to fight racism, to have a strong acknowledgment of how oppression in general is a problem. My concerns stem from a place of knowing that unless we are going to close the doors on any new members to our association the hard work of AR and AO will never be done. As long as our society at large continues to be racist, sexist, ageist, ablest, homophobic, classist, and all the other awful things that are a part of our world, the work will always continue both within our Association and outside of it. I worry that we present this work like there is some sort of viable end, but I fear my friends that there isn’t. People looking for a faith like ours will continue to come through our doors and with them they will bring their own truth, their own experiences, and their own concerns. I believe strongly in this work, but I also believe that the way things are right now, is creating a chasm that is so large that we can’t jump it. This issue is so much bigger than GA, and has been going on for so much longer than just the last month.
So CrackerJackKid, I don’t have the solution, but before solutions can be found those who question HOW (not why) we are doing things need to feel like they have a voice that matters too, and for clarification, they aren’t all white people. We aren’t living our principles and purposes on many fronts and I know that for me, it is saddening and disheartening, and I’ve questioned my place within the YA movement because of it and I know I’m not alone.
DJDC: Thank you for acknowledging the oppression that occurred to others while at GA. I was enraged at some of the accessibility issues that occurred, and I know that there is work underway to help facilitate that those kinds of things don’t happen again. The reality is however, that they will. Well-intentioned people will make mistakes, will not realize what they are doing or not doing, and the cycle will start over, because that is part of life. This is part of the NATURE of oppression, and I personally feel that we need to be looking at, breaking down and working to change that NATURE.
I would like to say that the only reason I feel safe at all in saying any of this, is because I feel like I have nothing left to lose. I feel like my faith has abandoned me for asking questions and challenging some ideas. I am deeply saddened by that, and I do feel lost, because I truly believe in the Principles and Purposes. I know that there are many others who don’t feel safe enough within our continental movement and within our congregations to say these same words. So my friends I’m asking now in a last ditch effort, please don’t silence and guilt those who have questions. Its only by asking questions and receiving them with an open heart and assuming that they come from a good place, no matter the color of their skin, the creed of their faith, or the ability of their body that we will EVER be able to live our faith. We all come to the table with a different sense of truth and most importantly as a people of FAITH.
Yours in hope,
~A
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| Authored by: FunkyEthan On Monday, July 18 2005 @ 08:29 PM PDT |
OK, once again folks are trying to figure out a way to figure out whose behavior was "justified" in the situation at GA, based on not enough knowledge. ChaliceChick, I want to respect your right to freely question, because I am sure many others have the same questions/concerns as you. I think any anti-racism program which can't answer your questions is an inadequate one.
That said, sometimes it feels to me like you're asking questions to prove a point rather than to acquire knowledge. You have been making some pretty broad assumptions about things you don't know about in order to fit the points you're trying to make... (The "quiet" closing ceremony was not in fact quiet; you've hyped up the significance of the tearing up of programs, which you don't factually know was noticed by more than two people; you have portrayed the people asking folks to carry bags as elderly, when you have no such information, etc. All of these things paint a picture of someone who has decided what she wants to believe, despite not having enough information to make a judgement.
Again, I'm not trying to make you stop asking questions, but sometimes it seems like you want to play devil's advocate, and I'm not sure you understand how much that's hurting some people. The fact that you essentially implied that People of Color should just 'suck it up' and deal with their 'discomfort' probably didn't help matters, either.
Based on the theme I see running across all of your posts, the question/statement I see coming up repeatedly is, "What can I do so that I don't get labeled a racist?" and "It's not fair that someone who is trying hard not to be racist can still be labled a racist, especially when they were being provoked." Despite the oversimplification, is that pretty much what you want to know/say?
As I said on the other thread, I think labeling people or actions as "racist" is problematic, because it is such a loaded word. When we do that, we get the kind of bicker-fest we have seen on this thread. I could give you a flawless argument for both why it was totally the usher's/minister's "fault" OR for why it was the youth's "fault". How does that help anyone?? Then we go back and forth, arguing and further polarizing things instead of learning anything... and even though it's usually the white people (or the men, or the expensively-educated folks, or the straight folks) who end out "on top" of such a polarization, both sides end up dragged down below where they were before.
It's much more helpful and productive for me to understand racism (and all other oppressions) as a systemic and cultural issue that hurts everyone and is unfair to everyone. Like DJ DC said, all of these 'isolated events' are highly contextualized and do not happen in a vacuum.
CC, In an earlier post you asked how to address a potential incident in your SAT(?)-prep classroom. I responded by trying to say that it's not so simple, and threw out a bunch of questions to consider about the situation. You answered them -- but I didn't ask those questions because I wanted an answer which I could evaluate and judge right or wrong. I asked because they are the same things which I would ask myself in that situation. And ultimately, I would have to make a judgement call *knowing full well* that I might end up being labeled a racist.
So to answer the question I think you're asking, there is no magic formula for avoiding being called a racist if you're white.
And, as I seem to hear you saying, that seems really unfair. But as I said in an earlier post, RACISM ISN'T FAIR TO ANYONE.
You bring up sexism -- sexual harrasment in our UU Young Adult circles is pervasive. I have seen women fend off unwanted advances, and I have seen men get aggressively attacked for making what they thought was an innocent comment, joke, or innuendo. (My apologies for the straight-gender-binary thing - I'm trying to keep my example simple.)
Neither situation is "fair", but as a man struggling against my own internalized sexism, I know that I'm taking a gamble every time I tell a risque joke or 'make a move' to cuddle with a woman. What has changed over the years is that I am much more careful about figuring out the 'odds' (context and history) before I take that 'gamble'. I also try to understand the 'stakes' in that gamble -- the potential hurt and breakdown in someone else's safe space (not to mention me possibly being labeled a harasser) if I lose the gamble. I also find that having a positive history of with someone increases the likelihood that the relationship will endure some hurt and misunderstanding if the gamble fails.
So in your classroom, you can and should try to get all the info you can, and work on those relationships, before you make any kind of gamble (or before you are forced into a situation where you *have* to take a gamble...) Ultimately, though, you don't know how your actions will be perceived by others. You could do/say the exact same thing in two different classes and get two different results. And that's not fair, but that unfairness is not your fault or your students' fault, it's racism's fault, which is why we work so hard to understand it and work against it.
Thanks,
Ethan
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Ethan Field - Your heart is an organ the size of your fist; Keep Loving! Keep Fighting![ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous On Monday, July 18 2005 @ 10:30 PM PDT |
Charming –
I think that some folks who are challenging the way we do AR work are actually challenging it the process. However, some comments in this and other threads have made abundantly clear that some folks are challenging the fact that we do it – and my comments were reserved for them. I’m sorry if I wrote it ambiguously. What I actually said was, “(…once again reiterating their dislike for AR work).” I’m typing that again to explain that my issue is with the folks who discredit all AR work because they dislike the model YRUU or anyone else uses.
I, too, agree that changes could be made to the model and that any model of work should adapt over the years – but I don’t think we should drop AR work (and I’m not saying you think we should – but some of the comments by folks on here have called for it so that we can strengthen ourselves elsewhere).
I don’t know the situation of you and others being told you/they were “racist, not a REAL UU…” – I don’t know how someone disagreeing with you takes away your truth. Maybe you can’t work with whoever said that – and you shouldn’t because it seems as though that person/those people are an unnecessary waste of your energy. Also – lots of folks say what is/is not a “real UU” – whether you agree with the principles or not, pledge, etc. Does it make it acceptable to do that? No. But we have to deal with that and work through it, as we have to when, in AR work, we’re told the same thing. One person’s opinion is one person’s opinion and there is no creedal statement on anti-racism within UUism.
Also, as you say that you’re not alone in facing an AR movement that doesn’t respect you, etc – some People of Color aren’t alone in facing an entire faith, that they call home, that doesn’t respect them. We’re all struggling – together.
When you asked, at YA conferences, how to address racism/put things in practice what were you told? Have you developed ideas on your own? How has the “Visions” model told you to put things into practice?
And, while I agree it can be frustrating when there seems to be no end in sight – as someone who faces oppression on a couple of different fronts, as many do, it’s frustrating to know that oppression won’t end in your lifetime. Should the frustration of the person with privilege weigh more than the frustration of the oppressed? I’m not suggesting you think that or anything, I’m actually asking.
You said, “My concerns stem from asking for years, to be given real life tools to fight racism, to have a strong acknowledgment of how oppression in general is a problem.”
Why, in AR work, should the acknowledgement of all oppressions matter? In general anti-oppression work, I would agree that we need to acknowledge linked oppressions and identities – but isn’t anti-racism work about racism? The fights of People of Color are similar to the fights of other oppressed people – but only in that their fights about power. The histories and experiences are totally difference and we can learn a lot from sharing stories – but we can’t share the oppression.
I hear you saying that you wish to see an end, eventually, to AR and AO work. But I can’t see that as happening – closing the doors or not – because we don’t live in a vacuum. This society is an oppressive society and our work won’t end, for People of Color, Women, Queer folks or anyone that faces it. Why not embrace that and do what we can?
I don’t think that talking about issues that arise/experiences/stories is a bad idea – it’s the cycle we, as people and UUs, get into where we talk and talk but get to no action (which I felt was part of your comment). I want everyone to tell their truth – but the way this has happened on FUUSE has been detrimental and argumentative quite often. So let’s move past complaints about a cancelled dance and talk about more than surface level issues. Let’s (all of us, not just you and me) talk about real solutions to the real problems UUs are facing. But saying, over and over and over, that the youth were misbehaving or that the minister was out of line and not getting past those points doesn’t seem to progress the dialogue at all.
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bsm[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Charming On Monday, July 18 2005 @ 11:41 PM PDT |
| CrackerJackKid~ Finally I think we agree. Our form may be quite different, but our substance is virtually the same. [ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous On Monday, July 18 2005 @ 11:49 PM PDT |
Um, ok, so talking about these real deeply rooted issues in racism and oppression...
I believe I understand the idea of oppression including racism, sexism, classism, ageism, etc, and trying to fight it unilaterally. Perhaps a way we could do this, would be for PoC to fight racism, women to fight sexism, and non-rich people to fight classim, young and old to fight agism, etc on the forefront, and seek allies and support in each other.
I don't think any oppression is worse than another. Personal experiences caused by oppression, or institutionalized can be very painful, but oppression itself has no boundries or safe places.
I believe we need to work on the issues which affect us, and be allies to others who are working on their oppression issues, and not suggest that any one is better or worse than another.
Let's take the energy and power of our feelings and thoughts, and use them to build anti-oppressive movements.
Thoughts? [ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 12:24 AM PDT |
Again, my primary issue is that the assumption everyone made that the
minister's actions were racist. Ethan, you seem to think it strange that I
would be so concerned about being called a racist. Outside of this board and
Steve's blog, I have never seen a place where a charges of racism were
bandied about so casually. And Steve seemed to get that it wasn't the sort of
thing one casually says when all sorts of people got upset at him.
If a few of my students got together and called my test prep company and
said I was a racist, they would probably can me, even if it was the sort of
racism like we're talking about here where nobody can prove intent. Racism
leads to lawsuits and where there's smoke there's fire. I don't really depend
on my night job teaching but even so your answer is pretty chilling. It would
take a fuss about a hundedth the size of this one to get me fired.
I'm sorry, when I got here all I heard was "Boy, the UUA sure is racist." etc.
Nobody even entertaining the idea that they didn't have the whole story or
that the youths could have had something to do with it, to say nothing of
actually defending the minister or adults.
And now we have a religious news service article running that makes the UUA
look even worse.
I didn't know that the ceremony wasn't quiet and I'm not sure what kind of
ceremony it was if that was the case. I make a point of the guy tearing up a
program because it seems like a terribly rude thing to do and a pretty clear
sign that this person was looking to provoke a confrontation of some sort. It
is a clear sign of lack of respect for UUism and for our ceremony and it in
itself is an answer to the "maybe they were just wandering around and didn't
intend to be disruptive" question.
As for the old people assumption, let's face it. Modern luggage is pretty easy
to carry. Just about every peice of luggage made after 1980 or so has wheels
or is a backpack or both. And who other than an old person actually uses a
bellhop? What sort of hotels have bellhops? Very expensive ones and very
old fashioned ones. Hell, the last bellhop I saw was at the Ritz Carlton in DC
and he was wearing a tuxedo and a very tall tophat. And the letter implies
that there were several incidents of bellhop mistaken identity.
If there really were several incidents of bellhop mistaken identity (And I've
assumed there were all along) then I will happily buy you lunch in DC next
time you're here if you can honeslty tell me that they all involved people
under the age of sixty.
Judging by Charming's post, and judging by some of the responses I've
gotten over email (One from a lady with a pretty important sounding post,
who said she didn't bring up her concerns, which were similar to mine,
because she was afraid, and that anyone who does question anythhing about
AR work is called an oppressor and ignored.) We have some serious work to
do when it comes to the way we treat the people who ask questions.
You guys may be more advanced than I am when it comes to racial issues. I
can admit that, but unless y'all plan to only keep this completely within your
realm of the UUA, these are questions you're going to have to get used to
answering. "Is there ANY way I can not be racist, or are white people just
inherently screwed?" "Sometimes rude people are just rude. How come when
they are rude to someone of another skin color race is the only factor we care
about?"
"Why don't you care about (medium-sized issue about another ISM) rather
than (comparitively minor issue about racism.)?" Are just the tip of the
iceberg.
Maybe I do come off as contrarian. If so, I'm sorry. I'm sorry if anyone has
found my comments hurtful. They weren't intended that way. Still, this isn't
the last time some is going to ask you questions. And judging by what
Charming has to say, this isn't the first time that people who have asked them
have felt that anyone questioning the party line was treated as if they weren't
worth talking to.
CC[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: ZaRinahfied On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 12:59 AM PDT |
It's funny how this usher's account of why the boys were questioned is very different than the account that I heard the night of. I was told (and anyone else who was there that heard their rather timid explanation to the growing crowd) that the ushers were questioning the boys as to what they were doing there because two of them did not have badges on. and after they walked away they turned to another friend of mine (badgeless by the way) dressed quite differently to the boys indeed and asked who they were and what they were doing there and that the boys didnt look as though they belonged. The girl whom they asked did not know either of these ushers so it was funny how they assumed her belonging to the congregation and not theirs.
As to this usher not understanding why these young men would do this, there was most certainly TWO oppurtunities to find this out...there was a meeting that the people of color present attended during the closing ceremony (which i understand why she might not have attended since she was an usher on staff) but there was also another meeting in the radisson (on the same floor as a party i might add) that night which would not have been kept secret if she truly was concerned about what could have possibly hurt these boys enough in their own family to make them want to do this? She was after all a person of color as she said.
It was also rather convenient how she skipped a total section of important happenings before youth began "crying out the injustice done to them" something quite shameful actually. She made out the minister to be simply concerned when in reality, she made an attempt to attack a youth. verbally and, it seeeeemed, physically. a youth asked her what the problem was after the three boys left the building, and she repeated continually "those boys are trouble makers, they don't belong here" you see i also was an eye witness. eventually the youth gave up and walked away under her breath muttering "this is fucked up" not to the woman, not screaming, not in any disrespectful matter. to herself. it was not a personal attack to the minister nor the ushers, however, the minister apparently thought it necissary to say " what did you say? say that to my fucking face young lady" and then storm after her as though she was going to get rough. let's just say she had to be held back. i'm on the rough side but really it was apalling from a minister.
The woman also didnt mention that " they seem to be trouble makers" was said not only to the ushers but to the boys themselves. i would have told her to get the fuck out of my face too if i had been through everything they had. and possibly something a little more rude than that.
In conclusion i would like to ask ...should we really hold ripped up programs....pieces of paper to the equality of the well being and mistreatment of our own youth and congregation members?? is there any comparison at all? as far as i'm concerned...if i were those ushers and i knew what these boys had been through i wouldnt give a damn about torn up services. peoples SOULS have been hurt. i for one can testify that my SOUL was hurt when i felt as though my OWN family members did not accept me and want me there until they saw my badge. until i asked about plenary.
you know how in books people talk about piercing looks? the looks that i got from some of the white UU adults at GA (until they saw my badge) were so mean and so nasty that it made my heart skip and i wanted to cry. it made me feel like absolute shit.
no one is going to give a damn about ripping up a damn service when they are being disrespected in their OWN HOME and judged by their apparell and stereotypes of how the kids some lady taught acted. especially if i had been working my ass off for two weeks doing some really important stuff like those two boys have.
the point being....STOP GRIPING ABOUT THE DAMN SERVICES! YOUR OWN CHILDREN AND YOUTH ARE BEING HURT. OPEN YOUR EYES AND STOP MESSING WITH EXCUSES. OWN UP TO IT. EMBRACE US.
dont justify your prejudice!
it's impossible
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Love is all there is and you know you Love me.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 12:17 PM PDT |
One thing that I've learned in life, is that people tend to have different interpretations of words. So, I thought I'd throw out here the definition of racism:
1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.
(from dictionary.com)
Institutional racism isn't in the dictionary, so I'll try to define:
racism that people consciously or unconsciously participate in because it's how they learned to interact with others. It is also what is taught in schools, on tv, in music, and enters the daily fabric of our lives.
racist:
1. One who believes that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. One who discriminates or prejudges based on race.
It is my belief that racism doesn't have to happen in a vacuum. In other words, if young poor PoC are acting out, it could very well be a combination of prejudicies that occur. It doesn't have to be just racism by itself.
Also, races are not limited to PoC, as PoC could also be treating people of PoC or non-PoC in a discriminitory way based on their race.
I believe that most of it is not intentional. The more we understand how racism works on an institutional level, the more we can chose not to allow that influence into our own judgements. Unfortunately, if we aren't aware of it, then we don't have the knowledge to prevent it from influencing us.
Knowledge is power.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: ZaRinahfied On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 12:20 PM PDT |
where did you get poor from?
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Love is all there is and you know you Love me.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: FunkyEthan On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 12:35 PM PDT |
ChaliceChick,
I think your questions are good ones, and I partly tried to answer those in my last post. I am not and never will try to stop you asking those questions because they are hard ones and deserve good answers. But you're not spending most of your posts asking or exploring those questions which are relevant to you and all of us. You're spending most of your posts picking apart a situation you did not witness, which you don't know a whole lot about, and defending/criticizing people you don't know and have never met.
I would like to ask you once again, directly, to stop doing that. It's not helping anyone here, and because I don't really see it helping you all that much (correct me if I'm wrong). It *is* hurting people here (see DJ DC and Zarinahfied).
You *should* keep asking your questions about *your* life and possible situations *you* might face. Here are some attempts at answering the good and useful questions you asked in your last post:
You asked, "Is there ANY way I can not be racist, or are white people just inherently screwed?" I'd say we are not nearly as 'inherently screwed' as People of Color are in the world. I don't think white folks are *automatically* screwed in the situations like you describe -- like I said in my last post, for white folks, racialized situations are a gamble, and we can't control the outcome. I think the difficulty we have in those situations is an example of needing to give up some of our privilege and entitlement in order to help make the world less unjust. It's not entirely fair, but neither is racism.
You asked, "Sometimes rude people are just rude. How come when they are rude to someone of another skin color race is the only factor we care about?" Again, racism isn't fair; it comes into play even when we don't want it to. I don't think it's the only thing we care about (see David's post about linked oppressions) but it just happens to be what we're talking about here. If you want to start another thread about sexism or ageism, or how oppression intersect, go right ahead.
You asked, "Why don't you care about (medium-sized issue about another ISM) rather than (comparitively minor issue about racism.)?" How much I care about the situation at GA came from the 50-ish People of Color that were holed up in a room together on the last night talking about the pain that they had experienced all week (not just in two or three incidents that you keep trying to pick apart.) Many of those people are my friends and associates. I wanted to be there for them when they were hurting -- not to take sides, just to be supportive. That's what made it a *major* and not a *minor* issue FOR ME, personally.
I have actually been involved with anti-sexism work for much longer than I have been anti-racism work (though I'm not claiming to be any good at it...) I lament the fact that the UUA doesn't spend more time talking about sexism in our congregations, especially around fair compensantion to staff members. So I share your concern that other oppressions aren't talked about enough... but that still doesn't mean we shouldn't talk about race, too, and that's what this thread was about.
I think your passion is excellent, ChaliceChick. I think your intelligent, well-thought-out energies would best serve you and your community if you kept asking (and answering, for yourself) those difficult questions... instead of spending your time evaluating a situation you know little about, in a way that doesn't produce any solutions, and while people who were close to the people involved cry at you to stop.
Thanks,
Ethan
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Ethan Field - Your heart is an organ the size of your fist; Keep Loving! Keep Fighting![ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: FunkyEthan On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 12:37 PM PDT |
Sorry - and about casually labeling people/actions as racist: I agree that it shouldnt't be thrown around lightly, and that why I've posted *twice* suggesting that such labeling isn't useful.
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Ethan Field - Your heart is an organ the size of your fist; Keep Loving! Keep Fighting![ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 12:38 PM PDT |
It was an example. I don't think RF meant to apply it to the specific people involved. (Can we for one minute try not turning on one another at the tiniest of percieved slights?)
I suspect this idea will be unpopular, but I'd love to see a watered-down term other than "racism" for people who sometimes do things unfavorable to PoC without meaning to but who aren't David Duke. I think it would be a very bad thing for civil rights in general if the term "racism" were to be watered down to the point where when people heard it, they assumed it referred to something comparitively minor.
Right now, the word "racism" packs a hell of a punch. To me it brings to mind Alabama cops shooting protestors with firehouses, PoC being beaten for flirting with white women and employers who throw resumes from candidates with foreign names straight in the trash. I hear "racism," I think I'm about to hear about something very serious and malicious.
To those of us who use the term in a more specific sense, y'all using it for something more minor feels like crying wolf.
I'm aware now that to y'all, "Racism" can mean minor mistakes by well-meaning people. But while Ethan mentions he feels uncomfortable snuggling up to a woman when he's unsure of her affections, I think he knows that she's not going to jump up and scream "Rapist!" if he puts his arm around her. "Um... Let's not. I'd rather just be friends" and scooting away is about the typical response.
But making a well-meaning bad assumption and getting called a racist seems to happen pretty commonly here.
Is there another term we could use?
CC
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| Authored by: Anonymous On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 12:40 PM PDT |
Za,
I wasn't using the Usher example, I was just trying to use an example of multi-isms in it. Supposed to not reflect actual events. [ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: ZaRinahfied On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 12:45 PM PDT |
i dont know what you mean by turning on each other i was just asking because it wasn't clear. but thanks for your concern.
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Love is all there is and you know you Love me.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: ZaRinahfied On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 12:49 PM PDT |
exactly ethan and not just that one week were we talking about. nobody seems to understand the reaction. its not so much that what happened to those three boys was the worst racism we've ever seen, its the fact that: gee, this kind of shit has been happening since GA has existed. thats fucked.
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Love is all there is and you know you Love me.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: ZaRinahfied On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 12:57 PM PDT |
Perhaps a way we could do this, would be for PoC to fight racism, women to fight sexism, and non-rich people to fight classim, young and old to fight agism, etc on the forefront, and seek allies and support in each other.
my feelings on this is that there could be no worse way to do this. one thing that people don't understand is that we have got to stick together!! hasn't anybody else heard the story about the bundle of sticks? where the man is showing his daughter that you can break one stick apart, two sticks apart, maybe even three, but if you have 10 sticks, you cannot break them apart because they are too strong! we must all work together! we must! otherwise we will be broken. its not enough to just have allies we all have to work together for a common good!
i agree that there is no oppression that is better than another but what you're talking about is seperatism, and it is dangerous.
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Love is all there is and you know you Love me.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 01:06 PM PDT |
I do get what you're saying, Ethan. (Though plenty of the people who call the incident racist were no more there than I was.)
If you want stories from my life, fine.
One time, I was at an event. As usual, I distribute nametags and making sure that people are wearing them is part of my job. I looked over at a fairly powerful man whose name you might know if I said it and saw that he hadn't picked up his tag. Even powerful people wear their nametags at our events, so I walked up to him with his tag.
He had a drink in one hand and a dish of food in the other and told me to put the tag on him. As I touched it to his chest and smoothed it against his suitcoat, he made loud orgasm noises and said "Baby, you can do that to me for another half an hour."
Needless to say, his friends thought it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen and laughed quite loudly. I don't think anyone else heard as it was a noisy party but I don't know.
I was really embarrassed.
Now that is absolutely textbook sexual harassment. And it happened fairly recently.
I don't know if y'all would expect me to start a consciousness-raising session right there, dump a drink down the guy's pants or in any other way make a big deal of this, but I like my job and have no intention of doing any of those things. As I mentioned in a previous post, a friend who sued for sexual harassment now finds she can't get work because people assume she's overly sensitive.
I did breifly consider anonymously writing his wife.
What happend sucked, no question. I was an object, not a person and that never feels good. I don't doubt that some people on this board would say I was soulsick over what happened. Maybe they were right. But I got over it. Taking the immediate gratification of doing something dramatic and making a big fuss might feel great, but is not the thing to do if I want to have a career and actually get into a position to make change.
I really don't see an upside to making ourselves overly sensitive as people in positions of power often must put up with being insulted pretty much constantly.
Personally, I've been thinking of trying to do some work someplace for rape victims to get some perspective and remind myself of women who have real problems.
CC
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| Authored by: ZaRinahfied On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 01:16 PM PDT |
its not even so much being "overly sensitive" but if something like that had been happening to you everytime you went to work for 20 years or more then im sure eventually you would make " a big deal out of it " regardless of how much you liked your job. people can only take so much to a certain point. everything comes out eventually, and the longer you do nothing about it because you dont "want to make a big deal out of it" the worse its gonna be when it does get out.
so what if it inconveniences other people? if you are being hurt and disrespected you have every right to say what you need to, to make it clear that it was not okay. and if you don't and you bottle it up, it will just be a worse reaction when it gets out.
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Love is all there is and you know you Love me.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 02:24 PM PDT |
If you're saying that something as obnoxious as having someone make sex noises at you and you being laughed at by several people happens to you every day, I'm sorry but I don't believe you. I think you're exaggerating. If you're not exaggerating, get a new job because I've worked around all kinds of people and never even seen an office where public humiliation for anyone was a standard part of the work day.
Everyday slights are more subtle. Getting interrupted in conversation, having someone ask you to take messages for them when you know they wouldn't ask that of a man, hell, having your clothes more carefully scruitinized than a man's. Ever seen a man get a funny look for coming to work without makeup? Me neither.
Now I could be an unemployed person who never gets interrupted as she talks to the walls of her empty apartment, but I think I'd rather roll with the punches and bide my time until I'm in a better position. Nobody cuts Ruth Bader Ginsburg off in conversation, after all.
And as much as I appreciate all the free psychoanalysis that one gets posting here, I'm not bottling anything up. Life gives us a set of tools for dealing with difficult situations. "Blowing up at somebody" is one of those tools, but it isn't our only tool. Other people pick the "burst into tears" tool. (Which admittedly could have been extremely effective in the situation, but I can't pull it off.) "Writing the guy's wife and assuming that will be punishment enough" tool could work, but I thought it was a little passive aggressive for my taste. I tend to like "talk about it, write about it, but otherwise keep a stiff upper lip and try to keep perspective on the situation" tool.
CC[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: ZaRinahfied On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 03:33 PM PDT |
you misunderstand me. i'm not talking about personal experience. it was an example, and trust me, my mom is the affirmative action officer at her job and she handles sexual harrassment, and some people do go to work everyday and get sexually harrassed. regardless, thats not the point.
nor was i being specific to you when i said bottled up it was a general statement to the reason that things at GA happened the way they did.
nobody is trying to psychoanalyze you, the reason we are posting here is for a reason not about your personal life but about the woman's response letter at GA so you should think about what people say in respects to GA, not yourself.
love,
Z
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Love is all there is and you know you Love me.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 03:39 PM PDT |
"my feelings on this is that there could be no worse way to do this. one thing that people don't understand is that we have got to stick together!! hasn't anybody else heard the story about the bundle of sticks?"
Za,
I originally had this same idea, except that if we stuck together, it seems like we'd need to get at the roots of all oppression (which is very difficult, otherwise, we get into debates about which oppression is it we are facing, and how important is each oppression / oppressive issue). So, I have this idea / vision / that if we all worked in our areas of expertise, that we could begin to see the parallels in the 'isms', and to affirm that amongst different oppression related groups.
It is my observation, that tensions, discomfort, pain, from oppression is making people defensive, offensive, etc., and I think that persons need a safe place to vent, without interfering with other people's safe places and work against oppression.
I also believe that we ought to be allies to each other, while working on issues of oppression, and if a bunch of people want to work on being allies to PoC instead of other oppression issues, that is fine. But if a person feels sexism / ageism is important, then that shouldn't take away from the importance of getting that work done as well.
Thoughts?[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: FunkyEthan On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 04:44 PM PDT |
Folks,
The idea of deciding how to work on one oppression or another has been around for a while. I have posted a short essay by activist Audre Lorde called There is No Hierarchy of Oppressions in the writings section. I think it speaks to the issues rainbowfeyler brings up.
I'll agree with Zarinahfied that if I've learned one thing from doing anti-oppression work, it's that men and women need to work together to end sexism, White people and People of Color need to work together the end sexism, etc. Part of the problem of the past has been seeing sexism as a "women's issue", etc.
But anyway, I'd love to see more disucssion on that in the comments on that essay, rather than on this already unwieldy and very tangent-ridden thread... :)
Ethan ---
Ethan Field - Your heart is an organ the size of your fist; Keep Loving! Keep Fighting! [ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: FunkyEthan On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 04:45 PM PDT |
Sorry! above I meant to say "White people and People of Color need to work together the end RACISM, etc."
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Ethan Field - Your heart is an organ the size of your fist; Keep Loving! Keep Fighting![ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Clyde On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 05:48 PM PDT |
Thanks to FunkyEthan for posting the Audre Lorde's essay RE. "Hierarchy of
Oppressions" it is a helpful essay.
I am not a youth, or young adult. I was in LRY in the 1950s and Student
Religious Liberals in the 1960s. So do the math, I am old, not even middle
aged. So take my observations for what they are.
Unitarian Universalists have learned to use the terms "racism, sexism,
hetersexism, cultural oppression and agism to designate relations of power in
our society, "institutionalized" ways of responding to one another. These
terms do not designate simply bad attitudes, or even bigoted behavior. We
have other words for those things. What Chalice Chick describes as
happening to her was a sexual assault. The man was what my generation
would have called a male chauvinist pig. His actions were based on the sexist
power dynamic. He was trying to put CC in her place. CC choose a response,
"don't get mad, get even."
If a woman (not Chalice Chick, a woman who was at the end of her patience
with sexual assaults and the sexist power dynamic) had experienced such an
assault and then had then gone to her church and wanted to speak to her
minister, and the receptionist had said "we make appointments here!" The
woman might respond with anger due to what had just happened to her. Was
the receptionist being sexist? No indication of that, she could have been
more pastoral, but she didn't know the background of the woman's agony.
Was the whole situation an example of the sexist power dynamic. I think so.
The UUA Board did a very through examination and found that our youth of
color experienced a series of insults (some coming from outside of our UU
community and some within.) No accusations were made, the board
described what witnesses reported and will continue to look at the facts
carefully. Nothing in the usher's report contradicts the facts that board was
dealing with, the usher only saw one moment in an unfolding drama.
How do we overcome racism, sexism, agism, and hetersexism, by becoming
aware of ourselves and our fellow human beings in the light of an oppressive
power relationship that was set up well before any of us was born.
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 06:07 PM PDT |
For what it's worth, I did call a minister friend after the incident to tell her
what happened.
She took the call :)
(And she basically agreed with my philosophy that I should not get mad, not
get even, but get ahead.)
I've gotten quite some private messages indicating that I've been too hard on
people.
Even more disturbing, I haven't gotten an email thanking me for taking a
stand on this and daring to question people's assumptions in almost 24
hours. (They were coming in pretty regularly for awhile there.) I'll allow that
people may feel that race-related incidents at GA were the scariest part of
this. Personally, I'm more scared by the fact that there were apparently a fair
number of UUs who were afraid to question the AR folks. Being afraid to
question one another eats the heart of who UUs are.
Now, I'll grant you that some of us white people might seem overly sensitive
about the possibility that we might be called racists. But again, to I think
most people a "racist" is someone who if accused of a hate crime might be
convicted. It's a nasty term and while y'all use it more lightly most people
don't. To see things labeled as "racist" meant different things to me and to
you, and if that fact that it took me awhile to really get that makes me seem
slow, I apologise for that too.
But again, you may want to look into another term.
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| Authored by: ZaRinahfied On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 07:29 PM PDT |
i totally understand where you're coming from RF
However,
OF COURSE its theres going to be debates and OF COURSE people are going to screw up and say the wrong thing and OF COURSE people need a safe space at times. Its not called "the struggle" for no reason! As UUs we try to take the pain out of everything when in reality you need painful experiences to learn!! you NEED them.
Also i think its a little far out to assume that racism is a person of color's "expertise" or that sexism is a womans "expertise". or that equal gay rights is a GBLTQ person's expertise. whos to say that thats how they want to spend their time? that makes it seem that as a person of color, or as a woman i have to spend all my energy on racism even if i know nothing about it, or sexism. and then where does that leave the white straight males? forced to be allies? If everyone works together we can work through each issue. sure it'll take twenty times more time but we will be twenty times stronger as well.
how do you think the civil rights movement was so strong back in the day? the black people didnt say ok we're going to do our thing and you white people i suppose can assist us. NO. thats not how things work. honest to god they needed to the support of white folks just as we do now. we need all people to be involved. regardless of color of skin. when we go to rallies or we go to fight racism are we going to split up into white folks and people of color? no, we would want to be together, but we wont know how to work in a group. the reason the civil rights movement worked is because they were ONE and they used all the PEOPLE not all the BLACKS or all the WHITES. all the PEOPLE. and it was that much more powerful.
as far as safe spaces go, safe spaces should always be available but you dont need a "safe space" environment to do the core work. safe spaces should be for if things get rough. and time to time i find that just because i'm with no white folks, doesnt mean i'm in a safe space.
love,
Z
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Love is all there is and you know you Love me.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Clyde On Tuesday, July 19 2005 @ 07:31 PM PDT |
Racism is strong word. We should not be in the business of accusing people
of being racist, we are all involved and we all victims of the racist power
relations by virture of living in this country. We should work together to
overcome racism and create a human way of being with each other. I look
forward to the day when there are no "AR" folks.
But, standing up to "the AR" folks? Who are we speaking about in this case?
The elected Board of the Unitarian Universalist Association. The elected
President? The elected Moderator? All of the above have been very open
about their commitment to the work of becoming an Association in which all
oppressions are overcome.
Standing up to AR folks! perhaps we are we talking about the General
Assembly delegates in three GAs that voted overwealmingly to commit to this
work. Given our commitment to the democratic process wouldn't the UUA
elected leadership and all of its staff be remiss if they didn't work as best
they could to overcome oppression. I want my UUA to listen to the GA.
And to learn from their practice. Sinkford has confessed "we made some
mistakes in how we implemented our anti oppression work, there is not one
way to do this work." (not an exact quote.) Good, let us learn and go forward
together.
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| Authored by: Anonymous On Wednesday, July 20 2005 @ 11:29 AM PDT |
Za,
I didn't say that persons oppressed are necessarily the experts, though with the way that I worded things, I see how one could interpret my words that way.
Let me try to say a different point, which I feel is important. That people who are fighting said oppression, must have people of that oppressed group as a part of the work. I don't think, for example, that White Allies can make PoC feel safe and empowered if we don't involve them and consider their viewpoints.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: danieldale On Wednesday, July 20 2005 @ 12:50 PM PDT |
Yes, people of all colors need work to erase racism, but ALSO sexism, heterosexism, etc. Women and men must work together against racism and on accessibility issues. When those who see themselves as not affected by the 'ism' attack it, we see both desired changes as well as the lessening of other divisions.
I am reminded of Pat Parker, who said, "If I'm asked for my black poetry, I read them my dyke poems, and if they ask for my dyke poems, I give them my black poems." My favorite pieces are "Where Will You when They Come?" from the 1979 March on Washington and "For the Straight Folks who Don't Mind Gays but Wish They Weren't so Blatant." Olivia Records, 1977
on an aside, are there minutes posted from one of the
end-of-GA meetings? I would like to understand the other affronts people face besides the luggage-toting issue.
In the Faith,
Daniel[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: ZaRinahfied On Wednesday, July 20 2005 @ 02:45 PM PDT |
I don't think, for example, that White Allies can make PoC feel safe and empowered if we don't involve them and consider their viewpoints.
i mean obviously, thats why i said everyone should work together. its humankind's battle not the POC's battle. its humankind's battle not the woman's battle. its humankind's battle not the GBLTQ battle. you won't have that problem if everybody works together. i think that sometimes white folks/allies are a little too self concious about their input on anti-racism. as long as power dynamics are kept in mind, everybody's ideas are helpful.
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Love is all there is and you know you Love me.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Wednesday, July 20 2005 @ 05:17 PM PDT |
One more terminology post, then I swear I will stop it, or at least move it to my blog.
According to the Shorter OED, the word "Racism" means:
(belief in, adherance to, advocacy of) The theory that all members of each race possess charictaristics, abilities, qualities, etc specific to that race esp. distinguishing it as inferior or superior to another race or races; prejudice, discrimination or antagonism based on this.
and
Racist: a person believing in, advocating or practicing racism.
Two points.
1. When people here say the UUA is racist, people who use definitions such as the one above see that as an extremely serious charge. I don't think the people who found my posts so hurtful quite understood the hurtful implications of what other people and in some cases they themselves had been saying. Were you to say that the UUA sometimes has problems with race or some other milder form, that would be less problematic. But implying that the UUA treats PoC as practically another species seems pretty unfair given how hard the UUA works to treat everyone well.
2. It's weird to me that the expectation is that PoC be treated differently. By the OED's definition, the teacher who assumes that a PoC acting out in class is reacting to societal forces and just speaks harshly to the white kid is the racist, not the teacher who speaks harshly to both. (The teacher who has a big discussion with any kid who acts out would not be a racist but also wouldn't have much time left to teach.)
CC[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: ZaRinahfied On Wednesday, July 20 2005 @ 06:51 PM PDT |
1. When people here say the UUA is racist, people who use definitions such as the one above see that as an extremely serious charge. I don't think the people who found my posts so hurtful quite understood the hurtful implications of what other people and in some cases they themselves had been saying. Were you to say that the UUA sometimes has problems with race or some other milder form, that would be less problematic. But implying that the UUA treats PoC as practically another species seems pretty unfair given how hard the UUA works to treat everyone well.
2. It's weird to me that the expectation is that PoC be treated differently. By the OED's definition, the teacher who assumes that a PoC acting out in class is reacting to societal forces and just speaks harshly to the white kid is the racist, not the teacher who speaks harshly to both. (The teacher who has a big discussion with any kid who acts out would not be a racist but also wouldn't have much time left to teach.)
oh gee where do i start
please don't compare the hurt that some POC's go thru when they feel ostrisized and unwanted from their UU family, to how white UUs feel about being called racist. yea its rather harsh and i'm sure it sucks but dont even go there CC its not the same at all.
Secondly, who do you think wrote that definition? the definition for racism that you used as an example is rather....limited so to speak. There is so much more to racism than that, which i'm sure you know. racism is racism....the term "racist" however i agree is a ruff thing to call someone. sometimes uu's fuck up and say something rather racist but i dont believe that makes them a racist. the fact that they said that proves that they are also a victim of racism in this country. I dont think you need to prove anymore points about calling the UUA "Racist" i'm pretty sure we've all agreed for a while now that labeling is unnecissary.
"By the OED's definition, the teacher who assumes that a PoC acting out in class is reacting to societal forces and just speaks harshly to the white kid is the racist, not the teacher who speaks harshly to both."
boy, what a statement. i understand your analogy, but not only does it not apply to the situation, i dont think the classroom is an appropriate comparison setting. nobody assumed anything about what kind of societal backround a PoC is dealing with, i dont know where you got that from. all of us come from different backrounds PoC and White alike, so i really dont think you have a point and if you do, you're not explaining it clearly. perhaps you could elaborate outside of an analogy.
love,
Z
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Love is all there is and you know you Love me.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: stevecaldwell On Wednesday, July 20 2005 @ 07:19 PM PDT |
It may be useful to check out the following resource from the UUA web site:
Understanding The Continuum Of Becoming An Anti-Racist Multicultural Religious Community
http://www.uua.org/programs/justice/antiracism/continuum.html
This continuum explores racism from historical, institutional, and personal dimensions. It also assumes that congregations and other religious communities may go through six stanges when engaged in this work. Here's a very brief extract of the descriptions of each stage that is copied from the UUA web site:
** Stage One Congregations - White power and privilege are seen as being normative - Individual white members have little or no substantive contact with persons who are unlike themselves - The institutionalization of racism includes formal policy, practices, teachings, and decision making at all levels.
** Stage Two Congregations - "passive club institutions ... insular and inwardly focused" - Racism in the congregation and in the larger society is never confronted. Some of the members of the congregation will declare, "We don’t have a race problem." - Social action programs tend to be direct service programs rather than programs of advocacy or institutional change - Such programs can be very paternalistic
** Stage Three Congregatations - multicultural institutions engaged in symbolic change - typical liberal mainline institutions in our society (universities, churches, progressive corporations, and government) - Such institutions pass resolutions and make policies to promote diversity and multiculturalism - A level three congregation has done little to change the continuing patterns of white privilege, paternalism, and control - It has made little or no contextual change in its culture, policy making, and decision making - It may want to be diverse but it doesn’t want to make fundamental change by taking on an anti-racist identity
** Stage Four Congregations - anti-racist institutions engaged in identity change - develops intentional identity as an anti-racist institution - The leaders of the institution begin to understand power in systemic terms and begin to make use of a systemic analysis of racism - The members have a new consciousness of institutionalized white power and privilege - Out of this awareness leaders make a commitment to dismantle racism and eliminate inherent white power and privilege.
** Stage Five Congregations - transforming institutions engaged in making structural change - restructure all aspects of institutional life to ensure full participation of people of color, including their worldview, cultures, and lifestyles - Diversity is valued and celebrated. Diversity is seen as a defining quality of congregational life – not only in membership, staffing, and leadership but also in structures of decision-making, policies, procedures, and programs - There is a movement to confront systemic oppression and become an advocate for oppressed groups. The leaders of the congregation commit to struggle to dismantle racism in the wider community and build clear lines of accountability to racially oppressed communities - There is an emerging understanding of the linkages of oppression – that one form of oppression supports another - Anti-racist multicultural diversity becomes an institutionalized asset.
** Stage Six Congregation - fully inclusive transformed institution in a transforming society - Most social differences have been transcended and there is authentic respect for all people as diversity in most activities occurs naturally - Such a congregation reflects the full participation and mutual power with diverse racial, cultural, and economic groups in determining its mission, structure, constituency, policies, and practices - The congregation allies itself with others in combating all forms of social oppression - Because of its commitment to dismantle racism, heterosexism, classism, and linked oppressions the congregation stands as an ally with marginalized individuals, groups, and institutions working to combat these forms of oppression
This may help with trying to make sense of the use of words like "racism" in the responses surrounding GA events.
If one person is assuming that "racist" or "racism" are only appropriate descriptive terms for Stage One congregations and communities, what would be the appropriate term(s) to describe Stages 2 or 3 congregations and communities? If "racist" and "racism" are too harsh, perhaps we need to come up with terms that are less threatening?
A similiar concern arises with homophobia discussions and there's a very similiar scale developed by Dorothy Riddle, a psychologist, for exploring homophobia and heterosexism:
Riddle Scale
http://www.wiu.edu/UCOSO/riddle.htm
The parallels between the UUA six-stage racism continuum scale and Dorothy Riddle's homophobia continuum scale are very illuminating.
Take care,
Steve Caldwell
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| Authored by: DJ DC On Wednesday, July 20 2005 @ 08:18 PM PDT |
Hi again. First of all I want to go back to an earlier post
from several of the allies to just basically say that we
should all remember the covenant we signed as a part
of FUUSE. This is not to discourage dialogue but to
enseure it stays healthy, and we are getting into a
realm of the discussions where people's feelings will
be hurt. Try to remember to respond to the queston
themselves and not attack the questioner.
Okay, one major problem with talking about racism is
that while authoritative books like the OED are decent,
they don't cover the whole of the definition. Honestly if
we define Christianity by what the dictionary says, we
DON'T get the full extent of it. In fact there really is no
clear authoratative definition of racism. (even some
different activist groups define racism differently, and
each definition often precludes HOW they fight the
problem). I can't go into all the definitions of racism, but
there is one that the UUA and the Journey Towards
Wholeness group uses and teaches throughout the
denomination. Breifly speaking:
RACISM = Race Prejudice + Institutional Power.
It's hard to get into this in a quick post, but basically it
means that while everone has prejudices, racism
exisits when those prejudices have the backing of
numerous institutional forces to harm, marginalize and
oppress a group of people. (Now if I missed something
in the explanation please feel free to add to that).
The second major problem, is that there ARE a few
different definitions of racism, or at least different
perspectives on it. I remember UUism being spoken
similarly in that we all look at god (or religion or faith)
from very different perspectives and points of view and
points of origins. So much so that we don't always see
eye to eye on relgion. This means each religion has
bits of the truth but not the entire picture so unless we
look at religion from ALL perspectives, we won't
understand the divine in its entirety. The same thing
can be said of racism. While some people see racism
as being events of active discrimination or defamation,
others see things in a more encompassing manner
which can include much more subtle actions and
statements. Understanding other people's definition
racism will help the conversation. At least we can
understand where people are coming from and get a
better picture of racism and such within our UU
community and society at large.
---
"Come the rapture can I have your car?"--Bumper Sticker
My FUUSE journal-- "Inane Drivel and Other Niceties"[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Wednesday, July 20 2005 @ 08:33 PM PDT |
I actually talked about a problem similar to this on my blog a bit ago. I got a
lady who works in my office who is a Mormon to define "sin."
She came up with something like "Doing things that the bible says not to."
And actually, the OED came up with a complex version of basically the same
definition.
But when UUs use the term, our version is usually wider, something closer to
"That which distances us from the force of good."
It's one of my beefs with religious language in services. We don't all agree
what it meeans and like with this discussion, linguistic differences can get
nasty if we don't address them.
I do agree that there is room for a wider definition of racism. But it might
behoove us to pick a word that is a little less loaded. If we call this wider
defintiion of racism something else, something we basically agree on and
save "racism's" power for the most egregious of circumstances, we can talk
about the finer points and keep the powerful term for when we really need it.
CC[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: CopperQueen On Wednesday, July 20 2005 @ 09:14 PM PDT |
Thanks, David. Also, I'd like to point out that I've noticed that UUs often get so caught up in disputing language that we forget the heart of the matter: the actions and behaviors that we are attempting to describe.
Whether someone takes offense at their behavior being caused racist is cause for concern - but no more concern than the behavior itself that promptd the calling. Para mi, the goal here is not to have a more precise vocabulary that we all agree on, but a community we can all live in joyfully. Part of getting there may be looking at language, but creating new words for ways in which we hurt each other isn't the ultimate goal, is it? Let's keep our eyes on the prize.
Again, thanks David.
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Cada hoja soñaba un sueño diferente.
-Lorca
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Wednesday, July 20 2005 @ 09:41 PM PDT |
Shrug, Here, there were lots of people commenting on what they percieved
as unfairness on the part of the ushers. I probably wouldn't have gotten
involved at all, except there seemed to be nobody presenting the possibility
that there was another side and that racism wasn't the full explanation.
Had I known that people were using "racism" in a way differently than I
understood it, I might indeed have stayed out of it. But hey, UUism is my
home too. And hearing the UUA called racist made me want to defend it.
CC[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: DJ DC On Wednesday, July 20 2005 @ 10:32 PM PDT |
CC-- Oh of course definitely defend away. It's important
to fight for and support what you believe and the places
that nurture it.
It's interesting to note though that it wasn't an outside
force that called the UUA or UUism racist-- in fact, CC
properly pointed out that "racist " wasn't used in the
original UUA apology letter. The way I read it, the UUA
acknowledging that numerous racial incidents did, in
fact, happen and that they needed to address it and
they also felt that all the events as a whole were
important enought to apologize for.
I find there is nothing wrong with taking personal stock
of the actions that are going on around in the
community (including an organization like the UUA
taking personal stock), and see if there was any way to
address that. Since our principles hold us to a "higher"
standard, when those standards fall very short it is
important to acknowledge it and see what ways can be
done to get back on track.
I don't think the UUA is a racist organization in the least,
however when multiple incidents happen that do have a
power and racial component it is important to see what
can be done to remedy that. I think all this is a part of
living up to our principles. It ain't easy.
---
"Come the rapture can I have your car?"--Bumper Sticker
My FUUSE journal-- "Inane Drivel and Other Niceties"[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Jeff Wilson On Thursday, July 21 2005 @ 02:40 AM PDT |
I definately prefer the OED defintion of racism. To me, racism means prejudices about people of other races, regardless of whether one has or exerts institutional power. I've never agreed with the idea that people of color can't be racist, which seems to often be a corollary of the prejudice PLUS power definition--it goes against my experience and understanding of the nature of prejudice. Frankly, I consider that sort of idea to be racist against white people, just like the idea I've heard kicked around that all white people are racist. Talk about a non-starter for building effective communities against racism.
But that doesn't mean we shouldn't acknowledge the prevalence of racist ideas in the culture at large and how oppressions interlink in so many nastily subtle ways. At least we can give a shout-out to Canada: they just legalized gay marriages! That makes four countries and counting. So even as we face set-backs and resistance on some fronts, there's progress on others, thank goodness.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Thursday, July 21 2005 @ 07:20 AM PDT |
Fair enough, though I do wish we could have worked it out with less fuss.
After all, I doubt that anyone here would question that the Presbyterians and
the Reform Jews (to pick two denominations pretty much at random) have
problems with nametag enforecement and situations that get out of hand at
their national conventions.
But we're the ones who look racist in papers across the country. I think we
may have cut off our own nose to spite our face there.
CC[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: danieldale On Thursday, July 21 2005 @ 12:01 PM PDT |
ZaRinahfied- sorry, I meant this for FunkyEthan's comment. agree with
everything you said- is that a first for this board?
what is this talk of a dance being canceled? I was in the exhibit hall most of
the time and am clueless.
in the Faith,
Daniel[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: DJ DC On Thursday, July 21 2005 @ 12:11 PM PDT |
Jeff-- I disagree, because it does bring in the nature of institutional power to the fore which is usually ignored. Yes people of color can be racist, but 1) in these days it's usually out of defense or a position of powerlessness that promotes that opinion; and 2)there insn't an institutional force behind them to enforce their views (in fact there's bigger institutional forces keeping views down and marginalized). However if there is power behind them it's a problem. Two examples, one historic and one recent.
Historic: look at the North African Moor's hold over Europe and how they used the same techniques the Eruopeans used against africans from the end of the crusades onward, just that the Moors did it first.
Recent: There is a American Indian nation in (I THINK) Lousiana that has co-existed and comingled with Blacks for hundreds of years. The nation received a reparation payment from the U.S. Government, but in order to receive any monies, the elders stated that people had to prove themselves 100% INDIAN, thereby excluding those who are mixed black and Indian.
Each of these are examples of racism in action, but the race of those in power aren't white. As the addage goes power corrupts; absolute power corrupts absolutely.
CC-- Again, this wasn't about nametag enforcement per se. I know you're an event coordinator and take that seriously, but that wasn't the main issue (although that's what people focused on). There were numerous incidents in addition to the closing ceremonies, including incidents that happened to the youth for one week prior to the start of GA, and incidents within and from without the community in Ft. Worth, as well as a lot of incidents that never made the light of day in the press. And I don't think we look racist if we ADMIT that racial incidents can be (and were at that time) a problem in our own house and are willing to step up and apologize for it. Again it's sticking to our principles and telling truth to power, even if we don't look so rosy doing it.
---
"Come the rapture can I have your car?"--Bumper Sticker
My FUUSE journal-- "Inane Drivel and Other Niceties"[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: ZaRinahfied On Thursday, July 21 2005 @ 01:45 PM PDT |
ok a couple of things...am i the only youth commenting on this? lol
danieldale- huh?
CC- I dont know that it was a name tag either seeing as how i never wore my name tag nor did most of the white youth i talked to and quite frankly i, nor them, ever had any problems with being asked what we were doing here.
DC- i think that people are forgetting that a lot of what institutional racism has to do with, is more the idea of keeping socioeconomic statuses the way they are. Just as Jeff said, racism exists in all racial groups and that is because the people at the top want to stay at the top, and what better way to keep people from banding together to make a difference than racism? If people of color keep thinking that white folk are there enemy or if white folk think that they are superior to people of color, then how are we going to make progress? That's why i am against the idea (again agreeing with Jeff) that the idea that white people are automatically racist is bull. Does anyone know how that idea got started? I'll tell you.
Back at GA in 1993 (apparently as an adult told me) some random black woman that was a non UU gave a talk about how white people are automatically racist by just being white and kept going on and on and on and on about white skin privilege. Apparently because of that JTW was created. i might be wrong there.
ANYWAYS. its one thing to be aware of the fact that yea as a white person, you have some privileges. but that's not the point. the point is WE ARE ALL VICTIMS OF RACISM so we need to fight it together.
A long time ago during the civil war, all the poor white farmers in the south were going to war to fight for who? the plantation owners. they couldn't afford plantations, but they sure didnt want those black people to be free. Another example from a while back. These dirt poor whtie people would go and watch lynchings and be happy to be getting rid of them black folks but as soon as then got home their children were STILL dyign and they were STILL starving and STILL struggling to make a living. The people on top were living it up though! If Black people (obviously i'm speaking outside of the uua) keep thinking white people are our enemies because of what happened hundreds of years ago, the people on top get exactly what they want. they stay up top. Condoliza Rice and all them too. its about socioeconomic status, but if Racism is what it takes, then they'll do it.
So i think we need to stop focusing so much attention on White Skin Privilege, a privilege is something you earn! white folks, what did you do to earn this "privilege". its not a privilege, its a lack of melatonin!. We need to start thinking about how we can band to gether and work TOGETHER.
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Love is all there is and you know you Love me.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Chalicechick On Thursday, July 21 2005 @ 02:14 PM PDT |
Ok, not just nametags. Other incidents.
You see my general point though. It's not like every religon/denomination doesn't have these problems.
But only our denomination made the papers.
I'm glad we address problems. I wish we didn't address them in such a dramatic where because I think otherwise cool potential members may assume that where there's smoke, there's fire.
CC
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| Authored by: ZaRinahfied On Thursday, July 21 2005 @ 02:51 PM PDT |
you could say that or another way you could say it is that nobody has been dramatic about the racist things that have been going on at GA's for years but this year we were dramatic, and this year people are aware, and this year (if we play our cards right) we may get somewhere...
---
Love is all there is and you know you Love me.[ Reply to This ]
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| Authored by: Jeff Wilson On Thursday, July 21 2005 @ 03:14 PM PDT |
OK, I'm sorry to clutter this long thread with what is a mostly off-topic reply. But I can't seem to figure out how to make new threads. Anyway, I'm wondering if anyone else out there is following the developments in the "civilian border patrol," such as the Minutemen? This stuff freaks me out, it seems obviously racist and likely to cause a whole lot of violence. But no one seems to be talking about it, am I just being paranoid?
http://www.accessnorthga.com/news/hall/newfullstory.asp?ID=94278
http://www.sacunion.com/pages/california/articles/5592/
http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2005/07/109906.shtml[ Reply to This ]
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