Against Racism and Oppression: August 2006 Archives

Every now and then Unitarian Universalists engage in a hairsplitting argument, is it classism, or is it racism?  This is related to that other non productive distinction making argument, does the oppression of poor women stem from class or patriarchy?  Round and round the argument goes, and the liberals can't decide which oppression is more oppressing for y'all poor folks.

In the United States, race oppression has always been part of the domination system and related to class oppression.  The social system that gave rise to both class oppression and race oppression was and is patriarchal.  That social system has historically privileged heterosexuals, and institutionalized a double standard relative to propertied class male conduct and female conduct, as a result it sexualized the relation of propertied classes to the oppressed non-propertied classes.

Class oppression and gender  oppression are both pillars of the dominant power elite within the social system.  It is absurd to reduce one to the other, or to separate one from the other.  Attempts of feminists of the dominant and aspiring classes to combat "sexism" without dealing with class has trivialized feminism, so that today we have privileged women who actually believe the slogan "you have come a long way baby" - and act on such  narcissism in a society where African American and Native American women see their men humiliated and their families destroyed -and rationalize this betrayal by the claim that such racialized class violence are not "women's issues."

So what about race and class?  The form of racial oppression that has become institutionalized in the United States arose out of the breakdown of the old system of class oppression in the British North American colonies in the seventeenth century.  To make a long, and complex story short and simple, the English arrived with a laws about servitude that had served them well across the pond.  The English considered themselves to be a race, different and hostile to the Irish race (and other Europeans as well.)  The psychological and cultural differences between the English and other peoples were explained by "blood" rather than enculturation.

Concepts of race as applied by the English elites to the Irish was to consider the Irish to be "savage" and incapable of civilization, but when the English encountered the Africans and the indigenous Americans these people were considered even more savage than the Irish.  In Virginia in the 1670s, the "excluded" of the colony (including African and Irish) formed alliance (against the Indians in the case of Bacon's Rebellion) and engaged in resistance and revolt against the plantation owners.  The revolt was suppressed by violence and the elite began to create a new system of rule to prevent this alliance from ever happening again.  The concept of Whiteness was invented and institualized in the decades that followed.  In the new racist order the Irish (and poor English) were still poor and oppressed, but now they were "racially" the same as the planters.  They were to consider themselves superior to the African descended peoples and to be enemies of the indigenous peoples as well.  Subsequent immigrations of Europeans reveal the same patterns, the Swedes were called "honkies" by the Anglos, but they learned English and became white.  The peoples from southern and eastern Europe were racially oppressed and then made white through assimilation as well.  Whiteness in contemporary America means "not colored" and "not racially oppressed" but for many people of European descent that has come at the price of forgetting ones distinct heritage.

(As a side note. In recent years Jews have become white, and white folks now talk about Judaism being a religion and not a race!  Since "race" is an invention of oppression, what that means is that the Jews are no longer to be racially oppressed (but they are to be religiously discriminated against!))

Race and class in the United States have functioned together to oppress the majority of the people.  The Irish were victims of racial oppression when they were oppressed as another race, and another form of racial oppression continued when they were seduced into giving up being Irish for "whiteness." The oppression of ancestor denial!  The Africans were turned into slaves (a form of class oppression) and after the end of slavery a caste system was established that perpetuated a division between "white" and "colored" working people.  Sharecropping was a class oppression but the white sharecroppers were lynchers and the Black sharecroppers were lychees.  In a twentieth century steel mill, the workers were all oppressed as "proletarians," but "Blacks" were janitors and laborers, and "Whites" operated the machines.

It can be argued that the Native American peoples were victims of race oppression but not class oppression.  That is true as long as "Natives" remained in their own distinct communities and those communities were self sufficient.  But most  people who identify as "Native" live outside of the surviving "Indian communities" today,  and they experience racism and class oppression and are victims of patriarchy as well.*  "Natives" not living in "Indian communities" are not counted by the administrators of the conquest (the Bureau of Indian Affairs) as not being "Native" at all, and yet they are subject to impoverishment and violence by racist institutions.

It does not make sense to a person of color who has experienced oppression to participate in arguments with "white identified"  liberals about whether a particular incident was a result of race, class, culture or patriarchy.  Incidents happen, and they happen within a context of a racialized class society that is patriarchal.  The idea that one can distinguish a classist incident from a racist incident from a sexist incident is to reduce these oppressions to bad attitudes, rather than to see them as interrelated forms of the same domination system.

Now my answer to the "white identified" liberal is not the one the UUA approved anti racist training program has taught us.  Make a conscious choice to overcome the formation process that has taught you to be white!   Become a human being of European heritage if you will.  Whiteness was and is a racist identity.ˆš  Your skin color, mortgage and diploma do not make you part of the elite, despite your illusions.  Join the human race and join with the struggle to  help end all forms of oppression, since they diminish all who would be human. If you have some relative privilege, use that power for the benefit of all.  Don't engage in narcissistic guilt about your "whiteness," or denial about your power.  It is our way of relating to each other that perpetuates both the elites and their ways of dividing us.  Each of us are either part of the solution, or we are part of the problem.

*For example.  I cannot live life as a Cherokee, without living as a gendered person in gender equality and interrelationship.  To live in a patriarchal society is to experience oppression racially, culturally and as a man, because the demands of patriarchy are foreign to my ancestors ways of being men and women.  Thus given the linked nature of oppressions, I am oppressed by this culture's "sexism" and cultural racism.    Now that is not feminist orthodoxy, but that is why people of color reject feminist orthodoxy as being more about privileged white women than it is about being liberated yet gendered human beings.

ˆš I am an anti racist activist and was before the UUA training programs were invented.  I have never figured out this question: what is an white ally?

Doesn't the notion of "ally" imply that anti racism is something people of color do and "white" people help them do it?  Ten years of the UUA anti racism program and forty years of anti racist activism, and I still think that everyone must struggle to overcome this destructive and divisive social construction together.  But the rhetoric of anti racism in my religious community has been shaped by an analysis that sees no link between class and race, and seems to think the category "white people" designates an objective reality rather than a social construction with a history.

I continue to strive toward clarity.

What is a white anti racist?  Doesn't a commitment and years of activism to realize that commitment to anti racism undermine one's whiteness?  Just asking.

Before Bill Sinkford said no to orthodoxy,  just asking such a question was to invite stonewalling  with formulas from a trainer.  Privilege = class, and Power + prejudice = racism.  That was supposed to be an analysis!  And what do you say about the Latino housekeeper who is rapped by her African American corporate manager macho guy employer? Is she a victim of race, class, or sexism?  My answer, she is victim of all the above and so is he.

What is adult religious education?  Many of our programs seem like watered down college courses, we have UU history courses and Bible study courses.  Some of our programs are designed to enable congregational transformation, such as Weaving the Fabric of Diversity, or Welcoming Congregation.  I have taught Spiritual Autobiography Courses, and quite a few new UU workshops.    I think I have taught Adult RE on and off for forty years, beginning as a young adult, then a lay leader, and more recently as a clergy person.
Most adults want education that helps them solve pressing problems in their life, and so while there are people who want to study UU history, and some others who want to take a course writing a sermon, the married couples with children don't come out for adult religious education classes.  It isn't a high priority for them.  So my students have been mainly young adults, and older single adults, with a few empty nesters.  But when I have co-taught marriage enrichment workshops, the committed couples made arrangements to attend.  It was so important to them, that they organized child care, or in one case the church provided child care. 
But where to find a couples enrichment program aimed at Unitarian Universalists that functioned to build both relational skills and spiritual values.  We have a new curriculum (in field test stage) and it is downloadable from the UUA Web Site.  It is designed to be inclusive of all couples, it does not assume marriage or holy union or other formal commitment.  I haven't fully examined it yet, but I will.  I am impressed with what I have looked at. 
  Marjorie and I have received training and were certified by the Association for Couple's Enrichment and worked with a peer group of trainers associated with Andover Newton Theological School.  It will be good to see a Unitarian Universalist resource for this work.
From the web site describing the new curriculum: 
Principled Commitment [has been designed to] enhance and support long-term, committed relationships that reflect the values of Unitarian Universalist Principles. Unitarian Universalist congregations can provide a nurturing environment for interpersonal relationships, and our basic Principles provide an excellent framework to support and enrich marriages and other blessed unions between loving partners.
Principled Commitment seeks to deepen participants' ethical, spiritual, faith, and Unitarian Universalist identity development. This is accomplished through the theme and activities of each workshop. In addition, each workshop includes a guided meditation and suggested readings from Singing the Living Tradition. Facilitators are welcome to incorporate meditations and readings from other sources or to invite workshop participants to share poems and readings relating to each workshop's theme.

On August 7, 1964,  after an alleged incident with a North Vietnam gun boat  the Congress of the United States passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution:

The resolution gave President Lyndon Johnson broad powers in dealing with North Vietnam, including sending U.S. troops.  News coverage relied almost entirely on official U.S. government sources so Americans assumed the North had launched an unprovoked attack. Two courageous senators, Wayne Morse (D-OR) and Ernest Gruening (D-AK), provided the only "no" votes. (peacebutton.info)

The incident never occurred. The President lied to the people of the United States. *

What concerns me is the liberal's capacity to forget the lessons of history.  People continue to experience shock and outrage that Bush lied about Iraq's nuclear weapon's program.  The Weapon of Mass Destruction rationale was a hoax, and that hoax was exposed by the weapon's inspectors before the invasion - Bush, Rice and Powell's lies were demolished by solid evidence by scores of independent sources.  It seems to me that if one is outraged now that may indicate that you refused to look at the evidence before the invasion.

But what concerns me is that after the liberal becomes outraged, "we were lied to",  they go in search of a Democrat that will replace him.  Lying to the citizenry is a characteristic of the entire political culture.  We must go beyond consumer politics, we must stop enabling a process by which "we chose" a pre selected candidate who tells us the lies we want to hear during his (or her) campaign.  To learn from history is to demand accountability,  to engage critically and assume that they are lying until they prove to you that they care about truth.

The Tonkin Gulf resolution was passed by Congress 42 years ago, the United States sent teen agers into Vietnam and they came back in body bags.  I knew too many of those soldiers to forgive and forget.  They were misused by a corrupt political process.  If we would only learn from history we would learn that "Power tends to corrupt, absolute power corrupts absolutely." The arrogance of Presidents is because of the power we give them with no accountability, and the result has been absolute corruption.  Those envisioned this federal republic were afraid that that would happen, and they tried to build checks and balances into the structure of the republic.  But they also assumed an informed and critical citizenry.  Perhaps we need to reconsider the building blocks of procedural democracy in our times, how can we hold power accountable?  A liberal religious political theology must take our experience with politicians that distort the truth seriously.    To be a prophetic religion we must address the corruption of our time.

*For those who believe lying to mislead people into supporting a war is a characteristic of the Republicans, Johnson was a Democrat.  We can document the lies of Carter and Clinton to justify military misadventures as well.  Lying to the public is a bi-partisan activity. Based on long observation of the American Presidents, Native Americans  would observe that lying seems to be part of the job description.  Now some citizens might resist the Native claim, even though the facts show deliberate falsehoods were spoken by President after President,  those who identify as "white"  seem to think that the "savages" weren't real Americans.

I wrote of the farmers and townspeople who contributed to endowment of the St. Lawrence Theological School,  that endowment having been converted into a fund that supports Unitarian Universalist theological education today.  Scott Wells of Boys in the Bands comments: "I wonder how many sold church buildings went, ultimately, into that fund too."

The law requires that not-for-profit corporations that are going out of business transfer their funds to another not-for-profit corporation with a compatible mission.  This prevents a group of "trustees" from driving all the members out of a church so that they can sell the property to Walmart and retire to the Gold Coast (that is the one in Florida not the one in Africa.)

Local congregations that vote to dissolve have in recent times ceded their assets directly to the Unitarian Universalist Association.  I know of congregations that have been the beneficiaries of funds held by the UUA, because the UUA puts aside such liquidation funds for future church starts in the same general geographic area.  Sometimes the liquidated church transfers its assets to another church.  I am sure that some failing Universalist churches in upstate New York gave their assets to St. Lawrence Theological School, as well as the Universalist State Convention.

But this is People So Bold!    So my readers expect just a little prophetic crying out at the powers of privilege and their abuses (without making any one feel guilty or bad about themselves.)

There were three Universalist Churches in an industrial city in the Northeast.  There was also a Unitarian Church.  The Universalist Churches served the workers and small business people of this city, while the Unitarians served the teachers and the owners of some of the larger businesses.  About forty years ago the mysterious panic known as "white flight" struck this city and each of the churches began to lose members.  In response to their losses the leaders of these four congregations decided to consolidate and sold their real estate in the industrial city and moved to a beautiful little hill in a suburb by the sea.  There they built a lovely campus and had enough money left over from the sale of the former inner city buildings to have what is now a sixteen million dollar endowment.  While ministers and members have proposed that given the source of their wealth they might return something to the nearby city (which is ten times larger than the suburb by the sea) in the form of a community ministry, or even a new church start, the "owners" of this endowment have declined these invitations to restorative justice, instead spending their inheritance on themselves and cultural uplift programs in their lovely little suburb.

Again I ask, what was the intention of the original donors?  What was the mission of the people who founded and endowed those Universalist Churches?  When they contributed their tithe from working in a mill were they thinking that one day their small contributions would roll into big fund and establish a new congregation - a little "city on a hill" that would witness to white middle class arrogance and self indulgence?  The law tells a failing congregation to turn its assets over to a not-for-profit with the compatible mission.  Does that just mean a self involved club that will celebrate "our Universalist heritage" with two named Sunday school rooms; one named for Ballou and one for Dix.

Scott,

lots of Universalist buildings (as well as Unitarian buildings) were sold and  the money realized now contributes to our present funds.  Some of that money went to the UUA, some to State Conventions, and a hell of a lot to consolidated congregations that are supposed to being carrying on their mission.

This is a true story, it is about one city and one suburb,  but it is so similar to other stories, that it might seem like I am constructing an archetype for a story with a moral.  No this story is not an allegory, there is no sweeping generalizations in this story, no moral for the kiddies.  Those were real workers and real shop keepers who just believed in Universalism.  What does that mean to us?  What is our mission? Who do we serve?