A 1997 sermon by Martha Niebanck recalls Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley:
Breaking social rules, sometimes just even talking about our culture and the meanings of what we say and do takes courage. I had an experience this summer at Star Island that brought this message home. I still haven't learned all there is to learn from the experience.
Two weeks before I went to Star Island for a week with religious educators I was driving home from the Doolittle Home one Friday and went into Building 19. That's my Friday afternoon ritual. I saw a CD of Sweet Honey in the Rock, called Sacred Grounds and played it when I arrived home. The first song, "I Remember, I Believe" left me in tears the first time I heard it. I couldn't explain it but I was drawn to that song. I played it again and again for the next two weeks, imagining getting a singing group together to sing it for the talent show. In my past years at Star Island, I had always waited to be invited to sing with other people, so to initiate a singing group was new for me. I wasn't sure of the rules, the conventions involved in inviting singers, of ignoring the choir director, of getting men and women to sing together instead of the usual women's singing group. I didn't think about it consciously, but the sense that I was in new social territory gave me a vague uneasiness.
The theme speaker that week was the Reverend Marjorie Bowens-Wheatly, an African-American woman who is the affiliate minister at the Community Church in New York. She spoke each morning about the challenges of making our communities diverse. She spoke about the need for African Americans to define and control their own culture rather than to simply disappear into the white-western culture. What she said wasn't new to me but I got more and more uncomfortable about singing a Gospel tune in her presence. I proceeded with asking people to sing and one night, over dinner, I asked Marjorie to sing. She told me that she had taken lessons with Sweet Honey and that she might sing with us if she had the time. I felt encouraged to get the group together, assuming that Marjorie would teach us to sing it authentically. I thought to myself , "She would give it soul."
I got a group together, men and women, and we practiced, and we decided we were good enough to be in the musicale. I was learning how things got done in this new cultural context of Star Island. Marjorie wasn't able to join us until our very last rehearsal. She slowly walked into the room and asked a question. "How do you understand yourselves to be singing these words."
I swallowed hard, feeling embarrassed and uncomfortable and spoke about the theology of remembering and believing. I looked her in the eye and said, " I believe that I can, by singing this song, learn in my body the kind of courage and faith of the African Americans who have survived slavery." When I said those words I thought of myself as honoring those people and their courage. She didn't overtly respond with approval or disapproval but instead asked each person for their understanding. One man walked out of the room without a word, the others began to talk all at once, defensiveness in their tone. I heard my own defensiveness in my voice that sounded aggressive and pointed and realized that we were being forced to have a real conversation about something uncomfortable. Until Marjorie had the courage to break the rule of silence, we had practiced good manners and kept quiet about our understanding of how a group of Euro-Americans could sing this song with any authority of their own experience. In our discussion we learned that each of us had a sense of our own slavery or an oppression that a family member had endured.
But I make it all sound clear in my telling, when it was not clear in the moment. Some folks felt that we were being told not to sing the song. Some folks thought Marjorie was accusing us of being racist. There was anger and frustration and tears. The man who left told me," I come to Star Island to get away from arguments. I am in charge of how I spend my time and I didn't want to spend my precious hours fighting-even if it was a good fight. I just wanted to sing." Marjorie stood her ground, even as the second member fled the room, she insisted that we needed to talk rather than to keep silent. She insisted on breaking the rule of polite silence we had been practicing. She insisted on breaking the social convention that allowed us to borrow African American culture and use it for our own, undiscussed purposes.
Our conversation did not resolve itself but we agreed to sing anyway. I promised to introduce our singing with a statement that allowed the audience into our discussion. I said, " We are singing a song tonight that comes out of the suffering of slavery. It took us a week to have a discussion about how we have the right to sing it. We are doing the work of diversity that we came to Star to learn and we ask that you hear us sing and know that it is a prayer for our healing.
I am still in the process of learning from my experience at Star this summer. Today I am aware of the silencing oppression of good manners -the fear of making a fuss, going along with the status quo, in the service of behaving "properly." Like the hemorrhaging woman we are expected to stay in the privacy of our homes if we are bleeding.
The Reverend Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley taught me something about challenging the etiquette of silence.
Overcoming colonialism through faith and action.
Thanks for posting this, Clyde, and thank you for sharing it, Martha --
As we prepare to enter Kwanzaa starting tomorrow, I am reminded of the principle of Kujichagulia, or self-determination -- and that is what Marjorie exemplified on Star Island. I very much enjoyed my week as chaplain at Life on a Star I in 2005 ... and, I can say it took something for me to be true to my expession of ministry that week, instead of conforming to what I thought a Star Island chaplain should be.
I'm looking forward to seeing you, Clyde, and the others of us who will be there Saturday, as we remember the remarkable woman and minister that Marjorie was.
Comfort and joy,
Carlton
This discussion reminds me of what I see in my church. Instead of building bridges between our white church and the other churches around us (whether the African American ones, or even other white christian churches), we create diversity by adopting children from poverty stricken places like Haiti and Guatamala, or even adopting African Americans of racist parts of the US. A different take, I think, on social justice and the creation of diversity in our churches. Instead of fixing problems, new ones are created. I'm sure they Mean well.
I think it is important to speak out, and to have a discussion. I think Marjorie's intervention was a force of speaking out, and took great courage. Martha was brave to continue the discussion, and not run away from it. Though, one conversation does not necessarily lead to understanding.
I think that the only way to have diversity, is to have each person express from their own history, express from their life, their story, their struggles. Sometimes, we say the words, but without knowing what it means, it is powerless. When it is someone else's story, it is ineffective.
Being diverse, doesn't mean singing African American songs. It means relating to other African Americans (and other people of other cultures), understanding their struggles with an open heart and an open mind. It means understanding our own struggles. It means being honest with ourselves. It is not just taking, it is giving.
Peace,
Morrigan (sent via Hafidha)
Marjorie's example is something I hope we would all aspire to. I remember when the first African-American faculty arrived at Starr King. One of them told me, "It is so quiet here. I feel like there is no room for me."
That quietness is not always, in itself, bad. But it is a part of white academic culture and it is related to that same polite silence that does not allow us to have the deeper discussion.
We fear conflict. We fear discomfort. We fear anger. We fear the hard questions that make us feel inadequate or insensitive.
Fear and silence perpetuate the status quo. Last night, in a replay of an interview with James Brown, who passed this week, Mr. Brown said, "The Black man will just never be free." (this from memory, so please excuse if I've mistated slightly) The (white) interviewer asked, "You still believe that?!" and Mr. Brown said, "Believe it? I live it every day!"
That's the status quo that we are not supposed to talk about. Those of us with privilege like to believe that racism is over, that we are not racist, that we already understand. We want to say, "I have felt oppression too" rather than "I have experienced privilege." We want to say, "I know, I know" when we do not know.
Marjorie's willingness to be "impolite" was a powerful act of breaking silence. It shows her courage AND her commitment to Unitarian Universalists and our UU principles. She was willing to stay in the conversation and educate, even when it was surely disappointing, painful, and hard.
My perspective.
As a white person, living in a white culture, white people have to believe that we have priviledges. We have choices. Because, then we have something to lose if we do not Obey. It is not just black and white. There is a lot of grey.
Because I am white, my daughter was stolen from me, and is now a slave. Bought and sold. Because white infants are in demand, and people who either want to save someone, (a very white thing to do) and because some are unable to be "normal" and have their own "2.5" children, they steal others'. They opress others, who are poor, who are women, who are vulnerable.
African American women, historically, because their babies were not in "demand" as white babies, were sentenced to poverty for having children, especially if they were not married.
Times are changing, though, and there is a new market for African American babies in Canada. The pressure is on now, because adoption is a big business.
This is now MY history, and MY struggles. It is the Women's Struggles, and Family's Struggles. It is Grey.
I will not be silent. Even if no one listens to me. Even if no one hears me. I will not be silent.
A few thoughts:
On the intervention: With race and racism so deeply and firmly rooted, keeping these conversations at the forefront is an ongoing and exhausting task. Persistence, persistence, persistence in the face of exhausting odds. I'm not sure about courage in this case, but I certainly admire Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley's stamina. I also admire her patience in the face of our obstinate insistence on ignorance of what is obvious.
On manners: I'm not sure that manners is a problem. In a context as the one described, manners would seem to demand exactly this kind of conversation, and silence seems dismissive and disrespectful. So manners often drive me to engage in race conversations.
On resistance: One response to "How do you understand yourselves to be singing these words?" was to characterize it as inviting argumentation. Ah, well. I'll concentrate on those who remain engaged. We spend an awful lot of time worrying about the people who walk out. One day, they will stay, too.
On privilege and being right: Do people of color suffer under this burden of having to be right, or is it just an obligation that comes with privilege? There often is no right in these conversations about race and racism. Within relational communities, I hope that my colleagues will more and less gently challenge my claims and point me in more fruitful directions. One source of my resistance to conversations about race flows from the risk of being wrong, of making mistakes, of being corrected. But being corrected, I may relinquish some privilege.
Martha,
I thank you for your courage to share this experience. It reminds me of the Native American saying, to understand someone, you need to walk a mile in their shoes. I think that your connection to the song put you in the shoes and what Marjorie invited you and the others to do is take 'the walk'. Anti-racism and Anti-Oppression work is complex and risky.
I know what I feel when songs of my culture are sung or played at my church. Many times my congregation has put the 'shoes' on but have not taken 'the walk'. I like your introduction it showed you went beyond the putting on the 'shoes' and took 'the walk'. I find that I do ask myself when the music choices have been made, why did you choose this?? Many times it does not make sense.
Thanks again for accepting Marjorie's invitation.
Kathleen :)
Thanks for telling this story. It's sad, though, that a person of color had to be the one to ask the question. People with race privilege (or any kind of privilege) need to be the ones asking about appropriation. It can not be up to "them" to make "us" aware, people with privilege need to be accountable all on our own.