Philocrites

Chalicechick:

July 16, 2005 01:04 PM | Permalink for this comment

For what it's worth, Nancy Glass interviewed me for this story and this is what I told her.

> 1.  How serious do you think the incidents at General Assembly were?

Well, they are serious now.

> 2.  Do they indicate a larger tension around race issues in the UUA?

I'd say there are racial tensions everywhere.  We do have our own
flavor, though.

> 3.  If so, how does this tension tend to manifest itself?  If not, do you
> think this was an isolated incident?

We absolutely have racial tensions, but not in the sense that other
churches do.  I lived down south for awhile and down there small towns
have the "black Church of Christ" and the "white Church of Christ."
As a reporter, I once was supposed to do an interview at the "black
Church of Christ" and got lost.  People kept giving me directions to
the white church, even when I asked for the other.

Compared to those people, our race problems are quite minimal.

But they feel significant because we have developed such a heightened
sensitivity on these issues.  We want to be 100 percent non-oppressive
and our youth have taken this to mean that being non-oppressive
by any possible defintion is more important than being fair, presumably
because white people can never be fair to people
of color.  Not everyone feels this way, mind
you, but some do, and those people are vocal.

For example, I teach SAT prep classes at night sometimes and right now
there's a discussion going on with the young UUs about when students
of color misbehave in my classes.  The consensus seems to be that I
shouldn't yell at them, or really discipline them at all, because I
don't understand their background.

In my view, the real oppressor is the student, whatever his/her color,
who is distracting a bunch of other students who themselves are just
trying to do better on a test that could give them a better life.

UUs, like many religious groups in America, have a lot of respect for
Dr. Martin Luther King.  King said ""I have a dream that my four
little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their
character."

I do feel that the current trend among young Unitarian Universalists
is to encourage people to make different sets of judgement based on
skin color such as "This person is African-American and has probably
been tortured by white people her whole life, so it's really
understandable that she keeps kicking the student in front of her and
throwing balls of paper. I'll just ignore it and let her distract the
other kids rather than making her stop and being one more oppressor."
Dr. King and I would say that it's still wrong, though.

> 4.  All of this discussion over race among Unitarian Universalists sort of
> took me by surprise, given the denomination's reputation and history.  What
> do you think might be fueling discussions on this matter?

A few things. First of all, the people really enthused on this one
are, by and large, teenagers.  We respect our teenagers a lot more
than any other church I've ever seen.  We give them a big national
organization.  But they, as teenagers do, think they can be such
forces for peace as to eradicate racism even though they can't quite
get along with adults.   UU adults want their kids to feel empowered
to change the world, so they tolerate some things that other religions
probably wouldn't.

Secondly, the heightened sensitivity.  I will send along a copy of a
first-person account of the incident from one of the ushers.  To say
that no other church would have given this incident a second look is
to put it mildly.

Dudley M. Jones:

July 17, 2005 06:22 PM | Permalink for this comment

Dear Friends

Racism is tough to deal with. Our UU congregation recently had an interactive presentation by Professor Susan Fiske of the Princeton Psychology Department. It was shocking - she led us through some association tests that clearly showed we had really nasty racist material inside our heads. I found it disturbing - maybe I should have know better.

One conclusion: how about a little humility on this issue.

best wishes

Dudley Jones

Dudley