Racism and Anti-Racism in 2007

a sermon by Reverend Lynn Thomas Strauss

Unitarian Universalist Church of Rockville, January 14, 2007

First Reading

“Harlem” by Langston Hughes.

What happens to a dream deferred
Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over
Like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?

Second Reading

“The Fire Next Time”, James Baldwin, 1963

“This is the crime of which I accuse my countrymen, and for which I and history will never forgive them, that they have destroyed and are destroying hundreds and thousands of lives and do not know it, and do not want to know it.”

“Love your neighbor as yourself.”
Love your neighbor. Love yourself.

It all comes down to love. Racism, sexism, homophobia, all hatreds can be best understood by thinking about love and the barriers to loving.

We all suffer interior barriers to loving ourselves and others. And our country, our society has instilled and institutionalized additional barriers.

We all suffer wounds of the color line. We all struggle to put our faith in diversity into action. Therefore, We must teach ourselves, train ourselves, open ourselves to thinking differently about difference….to think differently about how to love ourselves and how to love our neighbors. To do this we must begin to live in the real world.

The world is no longer black and white. The real world is mixed and getting more mixed. Mixed race, I mean. Actually, it’s been that way a long time, though whites are slow to notice. Here in Montgomery County we are lucky, many of us have chosen to live here because it is so diverse. And we haven’t made that choice just because we’re good liberals, we have made that choice because our families are mixed too…or perhaps not yet, but soon to be mixed.

And we have made that choice because of our religious and ethical values. We Unitarian Universalists really do value and celebrate diversity. We don’t always get it right, and one can certainly hear unintentional racial remarks in UU coffee hours, but we really intend to value and celebrate and make room for diversity.

This congregations is diverse. It may not be immediately obvious, it may not be the favor of diversity you were hoping for. But we need to celebrate who we are. Everyone is invited to our celebration of the Lunar New Year. Because much of our diversity is Asian, we will have much help in creating this special cultural celebration.

Our reasons for pride in diversity are not always so pure or so clear. Too often we think we celebrate diversity as a way of helping and including someone who is different from us. Too often our longing, our reaching out to welcome people of color, people who look different, is an act of do-gooding.

We White Euro-Americans and forgive me here for a moment, I must speak to the whites among us…we don’t really understand our own inner task. We want to be lifted up by words of MLK, Jr…. of Langston Hughes, of James Baldwin…we want to be included in the message and balm of the Negro spirituals…and yes, we have had a place, played a part in the civil rights movement…and in integrating our cities and our schools…and we want to applaud and be applauded for the good works we have done.

But there is another task…one that all of us raised on American racial prejudice face…we need to understand how we use difference to make ourselves feel better. How we use our do-gooding to avoid our inner work.

Our inner work, is to love ourselves, and to love our neighbors. Our inner work is to see our country and the world as it is…so that we can inhabit our world, our country, our county, our neighborhood as fully participating citizens…and by our presence to reality we might help in creating more justice.

As I explore this subject this morning I am indebted to many thinkers and writers and activists before me. To W.E.B. Dubois who first opened our eyes to the power of the color line. To Langston Hughes, who knew without doubt that America was his and he belonged to America.

To James Baldwin whose essays unveiled the scars of growing up black in America, to Martin Luther King Jr. who included people of all races in his dream for America and to my Unitarian Universalist colleague, Reverend Rebecca Parker, President of Starr King School of Religion who has written about the soul work that anti-racist work requires…

and to all my companions in the Journey to Wholeness work of the Thomas Jefferson District of the UUA with whom I worked over the years of my ministry in Tennessee…and to my young adult children who continue to teach me how the next generation lives with the prejudices of their day and more importantly how they sustain the rich diversity which they have inherited and continue to create.

One night this week, I carefully reread James Baldwin’s essay, “The Fire Next Time”. I recommend this re-reading to you all. Black or white, Asian or Latino, European, Middle Eastern, Canadian, South American or North American, young or old…there is a message there for you.

The first part of this small book is a letter, fictional I assume, that Mr. Baldwin’s uncle wrote to him when he was but 14 years old…on the hundred anniversary of emancipation. Uncle James writes in order to explain to young James the racial realities of the world into which he was born. He wrote: “The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they do and cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear.

And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.”

James Baldwin, a leading voice in the consciousness-raising task of the 1960s was telling Blacks that they must accept Whites! Amazing!

Forty three years after Baldwin wrote those words…we still find ourselves measuring, assuming, comparing, imagining, and even believing various inferiorities and sterotypes. Forty three years later, for all of our adult lives, we are still afraid. Forty three years later, we are still trapped in a history we do not understand.

Should the Churchill high school principle speak of race, either positively or negatively as a factor in school dynamics? Should the University of Michigan be forced by state referendum to end affirmative action admission practices?

Should US law schools be accredited if they don’t apply affirmative action to admissions decisions? What does it mean that an African American might actually be seen as a possible presidential candidate and that pundits suggest both that he may be too white, and too black to be elected?

Why does our society look upon mixed race children as more attractive?

Why do mixed race couples and families still stir up confusing feelings for so many?

Rebecca Parker speaks of the mutation of racism…and in my experience I think she’s right…it doesn’t go away as an issue in America’s consciousness and behavior, it just seems to change with each generation. It doesn’t go away in our own awareness and responses to the world…how has racism mutated in you?

What doesn’t change are the undeniable fact that many African American men and boys grow up poor and are incarcerated at rates far out of proportion to the population. What doesn’t change is that there is inequity in health care options, in education options, in job opportunities, in exposure to crime and risk.

What doesn’t change is the fear and prejudice that so many hold toward Black young men.

What doesn’t change is the confusion experienced by many African-Americans about what it means to be Black. Why did the Washington Post feel it necessary to run a series entitled, “Black Men in America?” Obviously, there’s a lot more work to be done.

How can we be released from our fear and our prejudices?
How can we continue our inner work?

Continuing in his letter to his nephew, James Baldwin writes:

“The danger in the minds of most white Americans is the loss of their identity. Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun as blue as the oceans…and the sea aflame with hot gasses. You would be frightened because it is out of the order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one’s sense of one’s own reality.”

Baldwin is suggesting that by keeping people of color in their place, white Americans are able to keep their place at the top of society. This sense of where one belongs in the social hierarchy is crucial to one’s identity. Thus the debate of affirmative action continues.

When one’s place is upset …then one loses their footing, their security, their sense of importance. Therefore it is a great risk for those who are privledged to acknowledge or make space for others.

But keeping the narrow hierarchy from toppling is small thinking…it is small soul-constraining work to keep others from infringing on your space to keep others from grabbing your little piece of power. Thinking small doesn’t serve anyone. A theology of abundance is more healing than a theology of scarcity. Why can’t affirmative action be made more inclusive?

Because we think small we need soul work.

Building on the scholarship of Rebecca Parker, I offer three areas of focus for soul work : Conversion, communion and incarnation.

By conversion, I mean that we need to change our way of thinking about the real world. Most of us tend to see the world the way it used to be…or the way we want it to be, or the way it is in television and advertising. But if we were to truly open our eyes…we would see that the world is already diverse by race and language and culture. Generations past closed their eyes to existence of the Indians, to the presence of the Negro, to the contributions of the Irish, to the rich culture of the Jews, to the steady stream of immigrants that have made our country racially and ethnically diverse for a long long time.

We need to convert our thinking and experience to a global realization that is mirrored in our cities and counties. If we open our eyes, if we educate ourselves, if we learn who are neighbors are…our expectations and our thinking about race would change. So part of our soul work is head work- changing the way we think.

By communion I mean the longing to connect, to belong, to feel as family…to know that we are part of something larger than ourselves…to know that we are all family. This communion of heart to heart…of person to person and to the larger divinity is possible if we acknowledge that the differences we have learned to construct about people are mere projections…both positive and negative projections. Asian children are not better in math, bi-racial children are not all beautiful, Latino women are not all practicing Catholics, and Unitarian Universalists are not all tolerant or lovers of classical music.

Again we need a broader perspective. We need to see that skin color is simply skin color…that in all the ways that matter – people are the same.

Because we are individually so unsure of our own divinity…our own belonging…because we have such trouble loving ourselves…we project our fears, our limitations, our shame and guilt onto others. ..onto those who appear to be different. If we embraced the communion of souls, the Beloved Community of all people…then we would see only the beauty in each person. We must learn to withdraw the projections that we cast onto others.

We must do the work of healing and loving ourselves. So part of soul work is heart work. The work of love.

And finally, we need the incarnational event of social action…we need to put our bodies into the work of mending the split of mind and body, of healing the split of individual from community, the separation of neighbor from neighbor. We need to get out and do something.

To inhabit the real world, to live our faith, we need to participate as citizens and become agents of change. Many of us have done this in years past…there is, of course more work to be done. Soul work is also the work of our hands.

There is a Wonderful Wednesday on January 24th which will address one of the realities of our community…the struggle for a day labor center in Gaithersburg…Someone from CASA will be the speaker.

There will also be an Adult Ed course taught by Deborah Kahn using this book, Soul Work which is a collection of writings by UU’s about race matters today. And next year I hope that many of you will join in the local MLK events in our area.

The soul work I call for today is imperative: conversion of thought, communion of heart, incarnation of hands. The struggle must continue because racial injustice continues. There are young people being lost, living at risk, dying in gangs, needing a vision of a better world.

It is imperative that we learn to love ourselves.
It is imperative that we learn to love our neighbor.

I hope you will never let Martin Luther Kings’ dream of racial equality die. Following his example and the example of so many who have gone before us…I hope you will live out of soul work, strong in the knowledge that a single person can make a difference…and a faith like ours has a unique contribution to make.

I conclude with words spoken by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1967 at Riverside Church in NYC. Dr. King said:

“A genuine revolution of values means in the final analysis that our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Every nation must now develop an overriding loyalty to humankind as a whole in order to preserve the best in their individual societies. This call for a worldwide fellowship that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation is in reality a call for an all-embracing and unconditional love for all of humankind.”

So May It Be/Amen