Oliver Clark, the man who McCain said probably didn't know what Fannie Mae was before the financial crisis (at Tuesday's debate).
Recently in Against Racism and Oppression Category
By Tim Wise with additions by Jacqui C. Williams.
For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are
looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will
help.
White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin
and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a
personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents,
because "every family has challenges," even as Black and Latino families
with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible,
pathological and arbiters of social decay.
White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like
Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with
you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot
shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a
great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.
White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years
like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then
returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.
White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller
than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."
White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while if you're Black and believe in reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school, requires it), you are a dangerous and mushy liberal who isn't fit to safeguard American institutions.
White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people
immediately scared of you.
White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an
extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union,
and whose motto is "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or
that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to
come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.
White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the
work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to
vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child
labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely
question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college and the fact that she lives close to Russia--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.
White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because suddenly your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."
White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your
political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a
typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being Black and merely
knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.
White privilege is when you can take nearly twenty-four hours to get to a
hospital after beginning to leak amniotic fluid, and still be viewed as a
great mom whose commitment to her children is unquestionable, and whose "next door neighbor" qualities make her ready to be VP, while if you're a Black candidate for president and you let your children be interviewed for a few seconds on TV, you're irresponsibly exploiting them.
White privilege is being able to give a 36 minute speech in which you talk
about lipstick and make fun of your opponent, while laying out no
substantive policy positions on any issue at all, and still manage to be
considered a legitimate candidate, while a black person who gives an hour
speech the week before, in which he lays out specific policy proposals on
several issues, is still criticized for being too vague about what he would
do if elected.
White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose
pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological
principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're Black and friends with a Black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates
America.
White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a
reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a
"trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word
answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question,
or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.
White privilege is being able to go to a prestigious prep school, then to
Yale and then Harvard Business school, and yet, still be seen as just an
average guy (George W. Bush) while being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then Occidental College, then Columbia, and then to Harvard Law, makes you "uppity," who probably looks down on regular folks.
White privilege is being able to graduate near the bottom of your college
class (McCain), or graduate with a C average from Yale (W.) and that's OK,
and you're cut out to be president, but if you're Black and you graduate
near the top of your class from Harvard Law, you can't be trusted to make
good decisions in office.
White privilege is being able to dump your first wife after she's disfigured
in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you're black and married for nearly twenty years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called "terrorist fist bumps."
White privilege is when you can develop a pain-killer addiction, having
obtained your drug of choice illegally like Cindy McCain, go on to beat that
addiction, and everyone praises you for being so strong, while being a Black guy who smoked pot a few times in college and never became an addict means people will wonder if perhaps you still get high, and even ask whether or not you ever sold drugs.
White privilege is being able to sing a song about bombing Iran and still be
viewed as a sober and rational statesman, with the maturity to be president, while being black and suggesting that the U.S. should speak with other nations, even when we have disagreements with them, makes you "dangerously naive and immature."
White privilege is being able to say that you hate "gooks" and "will always
hate them," and yet, you aren't a racist because, ya know, you were a POW so you're entitled to your hatred, while being black and insisting that black anger about racism is understandable, given the history of your country, makes you a dangerous bigot.
White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and
experiencing racism and an absent father is apparently among the "lesser
adversities" faced by other politicians, as Sarah Palin explained in her
convention speech.
And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow
someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because a lot of white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.
White privilege is, in short, is a problem that white people can't see unless they overcome their own denial. White privilege is not seeing your white privilege.
Recently on an anti racism list serve, a contributor attacked the idea of identity group caucusing, and argued that the idea of
white privilege was divisive and we should just all get together and talk about our "racism free" world to be. Many others responded, this was my contribution.
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The purpose of identity caucuses has to do with the soul work of transformation. Native American Indians in the UUA have found that some questions of internalized oppression and the face of racism can best be discussed and ministered to by people who have similar experiences. The experience of doing anti racism work has shown that identity based caucuses are the best support for people as they ask and process questions relative to this work.
So the idea that caucusing is way to minimize offending people is mistaken. It is a way to help us all learn to talk without defensiveness about how racism oppresses us (it oppresses whites by internalizing habits of domination, which alienates them from their brothers and sisters of color.)
I will continue to caucus with Native American Indians even after the arrogant preaching of some on this list, because decades of experience has shown me that this is the most effective way to work so that Native Americans are equipped to struggle and flourish in the UUA. Caucuses of People of Color are also necessary to do similar work, and build unity and we have found these work to promote empowerment. Those who object, do not seem to object on the basis of experience in the work, rather they make pronouncements like "we can never have unity if people meet separately." This is ex cathedra, not based on experience. It comes out of someone's head (ideology) and not out of practice (praxis.)
Those who pronounce that anti-racism work that recognizes relative privilege, designed blindness, and works to unite people with different experiences relative to domination and oppression by forming alliances based on their common interest in overcoming racism is "primarily divisive" and does "great harm." But decades of praxis belie this declaration. What experience can be cited to back up his ideological assertion? I can point to thousands of individuals who have found their voice and become effective workers in our common effort. Every year we see hundreds more.
To my white allies, I am your Indian ally.. While we do get together and talk about our common work, I have work to do that must be done with American Indians and People of Color and I support my white allies efforts to get together and do the work that only they can do. Caucuses do not prevent people from getting together, caucuses empower people with understanding of themselves and the work that they must do, so that when we get together, we can be mutually productive in creating beloved community.
The Journey Toward Wholeness, the UUA's anti racism effort did teach tens of thousands of Unitarian Universalists about why it is necessary to struggle to overcome white privilege and did encourage people to recognize that this is a struggle and we must form alliances to overcome racism. But the UUA doesn't have a doctrine, rather this was an analysis based on the best practice of effective anti racist trainers.
We learned a lot in our work and we made modifications and updated our analysis and improved our training. This is so different from ideologues who have doctrines to teach. This is praxis in struggle, we are a learning community.
In a speech by Richard Trumka to the Virginia State Labor Convention, the top ranking labor leader lays it on the line about how racism is harmful to white workers, and that there is no reason not to vote for Barack Obama. He tells the story of a woman who is under the influence of racism. For a major labor leader to directly confront racism among white workers in this fashion is a breakthrough.
Paul Rasor in his essay "Liberal Theology and the Challenge of Racism" which is his contribution to Soul Work; anti-racist theologies in dialogue argues that deep in liberal theory there is an antipathy toward community. Community is seen as restricting the individual and their must be an articulation of rights of the individual, in order to protect the individual from the mob of community. Rasor argues that in order to advance our work of deconstructing racism and other forms of oppression we must renew liberalism to recognize that we are primarily social beings, and it is in supportive community that individuals are able to realize their selves.
"Our efforts to become genuinely anti-racist are hampered by another liberal ambivalence that history helps to make clear.This ambivalence surfaces as we begin to learn the importance of of community in anti racist work. Liberals want to create a strong and inclusive community, but we often want to do it without giving up anything, with letting down the barriers we erect around ourselves in the name of individual autonomy. We wade into te waters of community up to our knees, but we're afraid to let go of the dock and plunge in with our whole bodies. . .
"Our deep seated fear of community, when combined with our tendency toward formalism and abstraction, leads to a deep fear of otherness that we have barely begun to recognize and address. Fear of the other manifests itself in such liberal ideals as autonomy, self-reliance, and the like and prevents us from seeing we are truelly social selves.
"Liberal political and social theory, too often echoed in liberal religion, tends to protect the individual from the community, from true engagement with the other. This kind of negative freedom tends to produce a constricted sense of self. But a love-based understanding of the community would extend the individual and expand the self outward toward the other. This sort of re-conception of community seems essential if we are serious about our anti racism work."
Unitarian Universalists love to claim that they emerged from the Puritan tradition, and have a long history as liberal Christians. Understanding Christianity then would seem to me to be a necessary part of understanding Unitarianism and Universalism. Our religious forebears were participated in the conquest of North America, and sent missionaries among Native American Indians. We should know something of this history lest we become participants in the denial that characterizes dominant culture response to the American genocide.
George Tinker is an ordained Lutheran minister and on the faculty at Iliff School of Theology in Denver, but he no considers himself a Christian. He found that he could no longer associate himself with a Church that was so involved in the colonial enterprise of conquest of the Native American Indian peoplles. Tinker states that 'perhaps the most fearful aspect of the church's complicity in the conquest of the native peoples in the latter sense is that it always happened with the best of intentions.'
Missionary Conquest; the Gospel and Native American Cultural Genocide is Tinker's full length treatment of the role of Christian missionaries in the destruction of America's indigenous peoples. He studeies four missionaries; John Eliot, Junipero Serra, Pierre-Jean De Smet, and Henry Benjamin Whipple. These men are held up to this day as cultural heros for white America. But the results speak for a different interpretation, what they did was destructive for communities they impacted, what ever the sentiments they proclaimed.
Tinker examines the policies and the results of those policies and shows how the Christian Church contributed to genocide.
John Eliot, a prominent Puritan, was a full of colonial arrogance, viewing the indigenous culture as inferior to his own, and seeing the Natives as under the influence of the Devil. Junipero Serra's California missions were in an integral part with the oppressive Spanish colonial efforts to enrich Spain. The French man Pierre-Jean De Smet, a Jesuit, who was so self involved in his rational, Catholic theology that he thought nothing of mocking the rituals and practices of the indigenous people who he encountered. . Henry Benjamin Whipple, the first Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, worked to take the land from the Indians in the northern plains so that they would be forced to adopt the European way of life.
It is often said that becoming an anti racist involves transformation. In this series of excerpts from her Soul Work essay "A Struggle To Inhabit By Country" Rebecca Parker applies the theological concept of conversion through engaged action to point to the nature of anti racist transformation. "A person of faith, seeking out of love and desire for life to inhabit his or her country, needs to be engaged in incarnational social action. Activism returns one to the actual world as participatory citizen and agent of history. Through activism, compliant absence is transformed into engaged presence. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "This is my country. Love calls me beyond denial and disassociation. It is not enough to think of racism as a problem of "human relations" to be cured by me and others like me treating everyone fairly, with respect and without prejudice. Racism is more. It is a problem of segregated knowledge, mystification of facts, anesthetization of feeling, exploitation of people and violence against the communion/community of our humanity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "The habit of living somewhere else rather than here in a constructed "reality" that minimizes my country's history of both violence and beauty and ignores the present facts, keeps me from effectively engaging in the actual world. I have the sensation of being a disembodied spectator as structures of racism are recreated before my eyes. But involvement in the steps of conversion -- theological reflection, remedial education, soul work, and engaged action -- moves me from enclosure to openness."
Today there are front page articles in the nation's major newspapers, and on the cable news about the census bureaus report that in a few short decades the white majority will no longer be a majority. Latino/as, African Americans, American Indians, Asian Americans and other so called minorities will together constitute the majority, and America will then be a nation of racialized ethnic groups each of which is a minority. By the middle of this century the white population will be older than the population as a whole, and the United States will have 400 million people (it is a little over 300 million today.)
The Los Angeles Times puts it this way "[t]he white population is older and very much centered around the aging baby boomers who are well past their high fertility years," said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. "The future of America is epitomized by the young people today. They are basically the melting pot we are going to see in the future."
Historically Unitarian was a religion of the white elite, and after the merger the spirit of Unitarianism prevailed over the more inclusive and generous Universalist way of being religiously liberal. While there have been people of color in Unitarian and Universalist congregations in every stage of our history, those "pioneers in a white denomination" were exceptions to the rule, and did not motivate any concerted effort to reach out and seek to become more ethnically diverse.
In the late 1960s, because of the work of Unitarian Universalists in the civil rights movement there was an influx of African Americans into our congregations. These Unitarian Universalists while they saw the promise of religious liberalism also experienced the elitism and complacency of the white majority, and there arose a movement of African Americans and their allies to build Unitarian Universalism in African American communities. While this movement had wide support, it became divided relative to tactics, and the defenders of the status quo were able to turn back the effort.
Many Unitarian Universalists left the movement and the leadership settled back into self congratulation and complacency.
Again in the 1980s African Americans began to organize and came to the conclusion that it was "internalized racism" that was the main obstacle to Unitarian Universalism becoming more diverse. In the 1990s Unitarian Universalists resolved at General Assemblies to become more diverse and recognized that they must overcome their own cooperation with systemic racism to accomplish that task. While much has been done, and the African American initiatives provided an opening for other people of color to find their voice, we still have much work to do before our congregations reflects the ethnic and racial make up of the nation as a whole
Given my experience with working with congregations (currently Throop Unitarian Universalist Church in Pasadena, California), I believe that most Unitarian Universalists would support the work to become an anti racist, anti oppressive and multi cultural community if they were given leadership by their minister(s) and lay leadership. This leadership in turn will need support from the Unitarian Universalist Association providing excellence in programs such as Building The World We Dream About, and Now is the Time! Leading Congregations Into a Multiracial, Multicultural Future.
Five thousand years ago the indigenous people of Southern Mexico first domesticated corn, from a inedible progenitor teosinte. Thus began the agricultural revolution in North America enabling Native peoples of America to grow a surplus that would take through the winters. The land was now able to support a larger population of people, and the arts were able to be developed. A similar development had begun in Tigris and Euphrates Valley enabling Europe, African, and Asia to begin the journey toward civilizations. According to the Mayans. people are descended from corn.
Today the Mexican people derive at least 60 percent of their calories from corn, eaten as tortillas, tomales, and according to Wendy Call corn is fashioned in Oaxaca province into "baked totopos. A large, round cracker that stays fresh for months, the totopo represents local culture as much as maize represents Mexican culture. Baking totopos is a special skill, passed from mother to daughter to granddaughter." Oaxaca may be home to the widest diversity of corn varieties in the world, but Call reports that the indigenous farmers in Oaxaca are having increased difficulty finding a market for their corn. They are being undercut by the relatively cheap corn imported from the United States under the so called agreement called the North American Free Trade Agreement. While corn is being processed in the United States into biofuels, and the price of processed foods and fresh corn in the super market is making increasingly difficult for working people to pay their bills, corn grown in the United States is being used to undermine Oaxaca's farmers and the provinces economy.
All over Mexico trade policies are displacing people from agriculture who then become part of the Mexico's surplus labor force. Many of these people join the migration north to become America's undocumented work force. Read Wendy Call's article in Yes magazine on indigenous rights organizing and cooperatives for how Oaxaca's people are fighting back.
This is sermon by Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley (1949-2006)
When I was studying for the ministry, one of the expectations was that each week, the entire community would attend chapel (the worship service). Although I had been a Unitarian Universalist for more than a decade, I was still healing from the pain of my fundamentalist past, and I had not yet mustered the courage to attend chapel in this United Methodist seminary. But with the support of three Unitarian Universalist friends, one Friday toward the end of the first semester, I dragged myself to worship.
I wasn't sure what kind of message I would hear, but it was a week before exams, and I hoped for a place where I could center myself, and find some internal spiritual resources for the days ahead. To my surprise, there was no sermon. It was early December, and the entire liturgy focused on Advent, ending with a celebration of the Eucharist. Now I had not attended a Christian communion for over 20 years, but I tried to approach it with an open mind.
The prayer, offered by Dr. Mark Burrows, began with these words: "We, who are the children of Abraham and Sarah. . ." I don't recall the rest of the sentence, because in a split second, my mind went blank. It simply refused to be present to this experience that was sacred for most others in attendance. I began to weep-quietly at first-but a whimper soon turned to tears, then uncontrollable tears. My friends sat beside me trying to be supportive, but didn't have a clue what was so upsetting about that simple phrase: "We, who are the children of Abraham and Sarah?" I had no harsh feelings toward Dr. Burrows, but the moment I heard those words suggesting that I was a descendent of Abraham and Sarah, I felt the pain of exclusion.
My rational mind told me that the I should not take it literally; that the statement was merely a symbolic reference to our Jewish and Christian heritage. But that rationale didn't help. I simply could not get beyond the complex dynamics of race and class and gender in the biblical story. I knew the story of Abraham and Sarah in the book of Genesis, but I also knew the story of Abraham and Hagar, an Egyptian woman whose ethnicity and social standing made her an outcast in ancient Israel, a stranger in a strange land.
As a woman of African heritage, I identified myself as one of Hagar's children, and I wondered why she had not been mentioned in the prayer. Was she not worthy of mention because she was a slave?
According to the story, when Hagar's son Ishmael was about 14 years old, Sarah became jealous. Hagar had sacrificed her body and her beauty. She had postponed her life in order to give this elderly couple the gift of a child. And yet, Sarah was jealous. Here were two brothers, Ishmael and Isaac, whose childhood play was, no doubt, innocent of any social or economic distinctions. And yet, Sarah's worry about inheritance spawned her jealously, which led to a crisis in the household. In the end, Sarah threw Hagar and Ishmael out of the house-banished them to the wilderness, with no food and only a half gallon of water.
A woman and her son alone-out in the wilderness, homeless. No crisis hot line. No overnight shelter. No abuse counselor. She needed someone to hear her story, someone to help her figure things out-where she was going to live, how she was going to feed herself and her son. But there was no pastor, no prophet, no priest, no lay minister to help her figure it all out. According to the story, in the depths of her despair, an angel appeared at Hagar's side, and asked: Where are you coming from, and where are you going?
That, my friends, is a question we need to ask ourselves.
Where are you coming from, and where are you going?
Some say that the angel appearing at Hagar's side
was the voice of God.
Others say that it was the 'still small voice' within.
I like to think of it as Love's call, asking her to reflect not only on her dilemma, but on who she was and what she was doing with her life.
Love calls out to us as well, asking us to remember who we are -that we are beings connected to all being, connected to a process larger and more fundamental than our beliefs about the world
The first source speaks of the transcendent mystery and wonder of the universe asks us to call into existence that which has been forgotten: that we are not here to act as if we are brothers and sisters, but to remember that we really are brothers and sisters whose very reason for being is to love and care for one another.
This is the purpose of the church.
This is the work of the soul. Soul work is hard work, but it must be done if we are to be fully alive. One thing that makes it difficult is that it is transcendent-we must move beyond ourselves, to the place of empathy and compassion; to the place of hospitality-hospitality of the human spirit. This is what counters alienation, nihilism, and brokenness in the human family. Soul work. Compassion. Hospitality. It is the work of the church. It is our salvation. It is what ministry is-to save souls through hospitality of the human spirit. So may it be.
