Against Racism and Oppression: December 2005 Archives

FUERZA is a diversified group of artists led by community artist and activist Mario Torero. Based in San Diego, CA, Grupo FUERZA grew out of the Chicano Park Art Movement of the 70's, influencing the cultural landscape of the San Diego region.

After 33 years of struggle, and considering the 500 years of Latin/Indian evolution, FUERZA is moving forward with the concept of re-joining the Aztec/Mayan Cultures of the North with the Inca Culture of South America, through the Concept of Aztlan. Aztlan is an Aztec/Mayan spiritual belief that the representation of our creator, Quetzalcoatl, would return to earth around this time as he has done every 500 years.

The legend conceives that the liberating spirit of Quetzalcoatl would arrive in the Promised Land of Aztlan, presently, the Southwestern United States. From there he would spread throughout the original anscestral lands, reuniting all indigeneous peoples of the Americas.

FUERZA's contribution to this reunification is to rejoin the indigenous peoples through an arts and cultural exchange.

Edmund Hamilton Sears, Unitarian minister and anti war activist helped define the meaning of the Christmas holiday with his carol "It came upon a Midnight Clear." The last verse has shaped generations of religious liberals understanding: "for lo! the days are hastening on by prophets long foretold, when the ever circling years comes round the age of gold: when peace shall over all the earth its ancient spendors fling, and the whole world give back the song which now the angels sing."

Sears wrote his carol as an anti war song. The United States had invaded Mexico as part of a premeditated plan to seize resources and extend the system of slavery. The United States had been engaged in a war of genocide against the indigenous peoples of this land, and its racist contempt for the people of Mexico was a logical extension of the exclusive covenant upon which the nation had been founded. Sears wrote his carol to protest the violence and imperial arrogance of his government. Sears was a Unitarian, and a real patriot.

This carol was his Christmas gift to his faith community and to other real patriots of his time. (Abraham Lincoln resigned from the Illinois legislature to protest the vote to call up the militia for the invasion of Mexico. Henry David Thoreau went to jail rather than pay his taxes to support this war. Sears had lost his pulpit due to the vicious criticism from jingoists within the Lancaster, Massachusetts congregation, but had been welcomed by the Wayland, Massachusetts congregation

My anti war commitment began in Unitarian Sunday School, and I have no problem asserting that while Unitarian Universalism may not be a pacifist church, we are a faith community that has a long, and consistent tradition of opposition to unjust war. Our present stance of opposition to the racist and murderous war on the Iraqi people is not because we have strayed from religion into politics as some who don't know our history would assert, on the contrary we are continuing a long tradition.

How do we discern a just war, from an unjust war? First, we need to understand that the political elite who runs our government has a long history of lying, rationalizing, and spinning their policies. What do I mean by long? I would go back to well before Independence was declared. My Cherokee ancestors had experience with the lies.

But what about now? How do we put an end to the "two thousand years of wrong" [Sears was referencing the betrayal of Jesus teaching by his followers.]

Let me suggest one resource that exposes the lies and spin of the modern war making elite. War Made Easy by Normon Solomon analyzes the deceptions of the government and media to mobilize the people of this nation into war after war.

Kari Lydersen writes: Last spring, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) won an unprecedented victory when their boycott and protests convinced Taco Bell and parent company, Yum Brands, to ensure companies from which it buys tomatoes will pay their field hands one cent more per pound and adhere to a relatively progressive workers' rights code. This fall, the CIW launched a campaign demanding McDonald's sign a comparable agreement, hoping that McDonald's, even more so than Taco Bell, could help raise wages and improve working conditions across the board.

Many Florida Unitarian Universalists had followed the struggles of the Immokalee Workers, and were elated with the agreement with Taco Bell.  But the tactics of MacDonald's is cause of great concern.

Read Kari Lydersen's article to appreciate this new tactic of corporations in their public relations war to appear to be "good citizens" while they seek to degrade the people who harvest the tomatoes, and other crops that make their business possible.

Many argue that people of color are more likely to be executed than white folk, and there is some statistics that confirm that observation.  Others argue that the racial differences that are evident in conviction rate for capital crime might be a function of class, rather than race.  The argument goes that white folk have more access to lawyers, and that is what makes the difference.

But lets look at it differently,  what if Tookie Williams had killed four African Americans?  Michelle Kroll writes that in California no one has been executed for killing an African American.  He goes on: "the fact that not a single person has been executed in this state for killing an African-American is consistent with studies across the country that show the death penalty is reserved primarily for those who kill white people. The California study, 'The Impact of Legally Inappropriate Factors on Death Sentencing for California Homicides, 1990-'99,' found that 80 percent of executions in California were for killers of whites, though non-Hispanic whites make up just 47 percent of all Californians, according to the 2000 U.S. Census. Those who kill whites are more than four times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill Latinos, and over three times more likely to be sentenced to death than those who kill African-Americans."

The United States as a society places more values on the life of some people than it does on the life of others.  Most white people are not even aware of this reality and coach their arguments about the death penalty without reference to that the justice system is not, and never has been "color blind." Many African Americans support the death penalty because they are terrorized by gangsters and drug users, but "Black on Black" crime is not a priority for the police and the prosecutors.

Inherent worth and dignity of every person!  That is an idea that not a part of the calculus of the District Attorneys of this country.  The death penalty can not be applied in a way that compatible with the first principle of Unitarian Universalism in a society that is racist.

The American Psychiatric Association, which publishes the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) periodically updates the classifications for disabling mental disorders, Shanker Vedantum writes in The Washington Post that "Mental health practitioners say they regularly confront extreme forms of racism, homophobia and other prejudice in the course of therapy, and that some patients are disabled by these beliefs. As doctors increasingly weigh the effects of race and culture on mental illness, some are asking whether pathological bias ought to be an official psychiatric diagnosis." One set of proposed guidelines written for discussion by California psychologist Edward Dunbar would classify those people whose functioning is paralyzed by persistent fears and worries about other groups as a form of psychosis.

Not all mental health clinicians agree. "I think it's absurd," commented psychiatrist Sally Satel. She objects that such a classification would allow hate-crime perpetrators to evade responsibility by claiming they suffered from a mental illness. "You could use it as a defense." But Gary Belkin, deputy chief of psychiatry at New York's Bellevue Hospital pointed out that pedophilia is considered a disorder by psychiatrists, but that does not keep child molesters from being prosecuted.

The word psyche is the Greek word for soul, and so with all due respect to the psychologists and psychiatrists, I have some observations as a theologian. The psychiatrists seem treat all mental disorders with medications. Would including bigots in the DSM mean that mental health workers would treat racism, misogyny, and homophobia with talk therapy or would we simply medicate bigots and pretend that the ideational systems and their institutional structures have been solved by treating the designated patients? In traditional theological terminology are the haters of others individual sinners, or are they participating in a culture of sin?

The Prodigal Sheep comments on this move to classify bigotry in the DSM: Maybe medication might make sense for some violent and extremely dysfunctional individuals who consent to treatment. But it also makes me wonder whether the treatment isn't worse than the disease. Pathological bias is a manifestation of a mind and soul not at peace with God and the world. Whether triggered or not by a neurophysiological disorder, it would seem that the most effective treatment for bias is not a prescription, but repentance. We are called by Jesus to turn away from our old thinking, to pour new wine into new wineskins, to love God with all our hearts and our fellow human being as ourselves, to be transformed by the renewing of our minds.

It's interesting to observe how society's view of homophobia and homosexuality are following opposite trajectories. Homosexuality has moved from sin to sickness to natural variation. Homophobia has moved in the other direction from acceptance as normal and even healthy, to a sickness. In my view we simply haven't gone far enough. Let's name patholigical hatred for what it is -- sin -- and develop an appropriate spiritual response.

This year perhaps as many as two billion people will celebrate at Christmas.  Not only in affluent North America and Western Europe, where we may think we own the holiday and have our special notions of how it should be celebrated.  It also will be celebrated in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America and among the poor Europe and North America.  In poor villages, in refugee camps, in soup kitchens, in homeless shelters, in prisons, in city slums, in the homes of financially strapped single parents in affluent suburbs people will hear the story,  sing the story,  and rejoice

Sharon Welch quotes Vine Deloria, Jr. "We are in the process of establishing a new kind of American identity, apart from the Pilgrim tradition and it is a very painful process of sorting out our values. We must not take any easy or superficial answers."

I was stuck with this formulation. What is the Pilgrim tradition that Deloria argues is the source of the "old American identity?" It was a racialist identity. It was based on voluntary association with a covenant community, and by extension to society (Mayflower Compact was the Pilgrim's attempt to bring the non-convicted majority of Mayflower passengers into a covenant with the faithful who spearheading the venture. They had hired skilled workers, servants, and soldiers to support their colonizing effort.)

The limits of the traditional American understanding of democracy and who is part of the community is contained in the Pilgrim identity. And that identity is very much a part of the historic Unitarian identity. It is not uncommon for a Unitarian Universalist minister to talk of the Pilgrim's and Puritans as "our spiritual ancestors." And while we may be selecting only the covenant congregation, and the tradition of a learned clergy as worthwhile for our own time, there is a shadow side to that claim. The founders of New England believed that God had privileged them with a destiny, and they believed that the community that they were founding was a "City on a Hill." Much mischief has been done by Americans to this world as a result of those illusions.

Welch is arguing for an inclusive democracy, which she argues requires a move beyond "speaking for others." Liberation theologians assert that the spokespeople of the dominant culture assume that their values, and ideas are universal and apply to everyone. Men can speak for women. White people can speak for humanity. Americans can speak for the world.

I have seen communities transformed when participants begin to grapple with the question of identity, to see the limits of their old way of thinking of themselves, and begin to stretch themselves toward a new more authentic self. A new American identity? A new way of being a nation in the world? Beyond grandiosity and racialism? That is a vision that stretches the mind and the heart.

Check out:

"After Empire: The Art and Ethos of Enduring Peace" (Sharon D. Welch)

Bishop Sprong writes in his December 7th newsletter.

"I think that we have in recent years entered a "New Dark Age" in the Western world. It is marked by the rise of religious systems that seek to build security by encouraging prejudice against a designated victim. Both evangelical fundamentalism and the kind of ultra-conservative Roman Catholicism that is at present installed in the Vatican are publicly defined by their visceral and uninformed hostility toward homosexual persons. What the heretic was in the Middle Ages, the black in the days of slavery and segregation, and the Jew in Nazi Germany, the homosexual has become in the religious hysteria of our day. This kind of behavior is always a response to fear and to a rapidly changing world. Security-providing religion, which always requires a victim, is like a drug that carries us over the rough places of life. It is certainly not the wave of the Christian future.

Dark Ages do not last forever. . . ."

In fact Spong argues that the majority of religious people are already beginning to reject this fear based theology. As I see it reactionaries in the Religious Right are desperately trying to reassert power as the United States becomes increasingly more pluralistic and detached from old forms of social control. The majority of our fellow citizens will support progressive options if these are presented to them, in a way that respects their spiritual convictions. Religious liberals have a role to play in articulating a vision of our country that is both deeply inclusive of all people, and progressive in finding ways to overcome racism, cultural domination, classism, sexism and heterosexism.

Five days after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat the African-American community of Montgomery, Alabama launched their boycott of the city's bus system led by the newly formed Montgomery Improvement Association,  they committed themselves to these demands:

1.) Blacks would not ride the buses until polite treatment by bus drivers were guaranteed to them

2.) Segregation must be abolished on buses and a first come first served policy adapted and

3.) The employment of black bus drivers.

The bus boycott was immediately successful. Leaders had anticipated about 60% of blacks to participate in the movement, but at the end of day one it was predicted that there was nearly 100% cooperation. People had utilized other ways of transportation such as walking; using cabs, getting rides in private cars and some even rode mules to work.

"Western civilization, unfortunately, does not link knowledge and morality but rather, it connects knowledge and power and makes them equivalent. Today with an information `superhighway' now looming on the horizon, we are told that a lack of access to information will doom people to a life of meaninglessness -- and poverty. As we look around and observe modern industrial society, however, there is no question that information, in and of itself, is useless and that as more data is generated, ethical and moral decisions are taking on a fantasy dimension in which a `lack of evidence to indict' is the moral equivalent of the good deed."