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"Freedom Ring" by the Reverend Alison Hyder July 2, 2000 Unitarian Universalist Meeting House of Provincetown
Reading: Audre Lorde was a black lesbian poet and author. She called this reading "Bicentennial Poem #21, 000,000"
Sermon: "Freedom Ring" – Rev. Alison Hyder I remember when Martin Luther King was shot. I remember it because I did not know who he was. I was in 6th grade, standing outside my elementary school for a fire drill, and I asked one of my Black classmates – not a friend, my friends were the few kids who lived on my street, who I played with, not the children a few blocks away in the colored neighborhood, but still someone I knew, who I observed and talked to and wondered about – I asked her (somehow) why all of the Black children seemed so silent and sad. Some of them were crying. And she said that Dr. Martin Luther King had been shot. And I was jolted that someone so obviously important, who inspired such grief, was totally unknown to me. Suddenly a whole different reality yawned before me. Needless to say, I had not lived in a segregated town near a Black neighborhood with run-down houses and narrow streets, without thinking about it. Like most kids, I was conscious of differences. I thought about prejudice and injustice and privilege. I did my best to be nice, and fair, as I was taught. But though my parents were fairly cosmopolitan, they were not very political. The early civil rights movement passed me right by. But all of a sudden, I realized – I don’t know why, some leap in my conceptual thinking, some culmination of insights – that I didn’t know about Dr. King because I didn’t have to know. I had the option to know nothing about the lives of Black people, what was important to them, or how they lived. In school we had all learned about "America." Maybe it was an effort to homogenize us, to tell us all the same stories, the national myths about how we were founded, and by whom. We learned that the English puritans and pilgrims settled here with the ideals of "religious freedom." Years later a handful of English colonists fought for their independence, for their ideals of "democracy and equality." Later White people from the north and south fought the civil war over the issue of slavery and freedom. They did other important things, too – invented things, settled the west. That’s the stuff we all had to know. That’s what made us Americans. But the lives and history, the struggle and pain and triumphs of people of color were not taught. They were not considered important to our functioning as citizens. And all of a sudden that day in 1968, I understood my privilege as a White person in a new way. Society was organized to serve us. It wasn’t just about where I could live and others couldn’t. I benefited even when I wasn’t aware of it, in all sorts of unknown ways. The deck was stacked. Now, needless to say, most of this insight was subconscious at the time. I was no genius, and the subtle dynamics of racism were barely understood, even by scholars. Back then, we thought you only had to be nice, and everything would change. Even now, years after the civil rights movement, after the Black Power struggle, when Affirmative Action is considered unnecessary and passé, most people who consider themselves White are unaware of their own continuing privileges. Of course, not having to classify ourselves is one of them. When asked to describe ourselves, or others, we hardly ever list "White." It’s normative, so it goes without saying. So we rarely think about it. It’s not that we want to be Black, mind you. In one of his routines, Chris Rock, the Black comic, talks about how angry White people are these days, complaining that they’re losing everything. "We’re losing everything! We’re losing everything!" "Like what?" he asks. He goes on, "There’s not a White person in this room who would change places with me – and I’m rich! That’s how good it is to be White." Everybody laughs, because he’s right. Think about it. White people can go for most of their lives and not have to consider their race as any kind of factor in their lives. We can think of ourselves as individuals, not as characteristic of a group. As White author Peggy McIntosh writes, "I can swear, or dress in second-hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race…I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race [and]…I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group." [Peggy McIntosh: "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack"] In the United States we are bred with a dominant ideology of rugged individualism and the American myth of meritocracy. We like to think of ourselves as getting ahead on our merits, on hard work or innate intelligence, or even charm or luck. Something specific and personal. But the idea that some of our success is accorded us because we aren’t Black - or Latina/o, or Indian – is hard to hear. It’s hardly a credit to us. We have an inborn advantage accorded us because of race. For many people this truth may seem like a personal condemnation – as if we didn’t deserve our positions, or our possessions – our lives. It throws the whole notion of individual accomplishment on its ear. We like to believe that our good fortune is justified - because we’re good people, nice, talented, intelligent, spiritual, hard-working. And very likely we are. But then, so are most of the poor people of the world, and so are most Blacks and Native Americans and Cambodians and Jamaicans – all the people this country wasn’t designed for. But if we’re White, we don’t have to think about it. Just who wasn’t rented our apartment before it was given to us? How come the store clerk sees us before the Black person with us? In what ways do we gain? I can turn on my TV at any moment and see people who pretty much look like me. The majority of novels and histories in a bookshop are written with my culture and language in mind. I can stroll through a store – or walk through the woods – without arousing any suspicion or being watched. I can go into any drugstore and find appropriate make-up, or hair-care products that will suit me. If I need to complain to a store manager he or she will probably be White. No one will deny me a bank loan or refuse to rent to me because of my race. I didn’t ask for this system, I don’t want it, but I still benefit from it. Now, see, I know some of you are thinking …" yes, but I’m gay, I’m a woman, I’m disabled, I’m trans…what about that? I’ve been discriminated against, ostracized, beaten up." And I am not denying either your oppression or your pain. No one should be the target of hatred or harassment. As Audre Lorde says, there is no hierarchy of oppression – no one’s suffering is any better than anyone else’s, any more important. But I do say that if you’re white, in most cases you’ve still got the wild card to play. And you know it. Viscerally, at least. The rainbow rings that some of us wear – the 6 metal rings on a chain – were designed by David Spada as Freedom Rings, to symbolize independence and tolerance of others. But each of us has to make a conscious choice about who else we include in that circle. Who is this freedom for? Does it encircle only our own select group, or all of humanity? It’s not enough just to proclaim our own liberation and pride. Freedom demands responsibility, action, compassion. We are compelled by our principles as Unitarian Universalists, our belief in every person’s inherent worth and dignity, to treat everyone with fairness. But fighting racism is trickier than that. Racism is more than prejudice, more than bigotry. One of the definitions of racism is "a system of advantage based on race." People of color can certainly be bigoted, and many are. But we don’t live under their systems, their institutions. They haven’t been allowed the power to create racist systems that affect our ability to function. So we didn’t create the problem – we’ve never owned slaves, we weren’t alive during reconstruction, we’ve never thrown rocks at anyone, our parents are immigrants. We’ve never told a racist joke, and we’ve never laughed when someone else did, or remained silent when others made a disparaging comment. We’ve always hired people of color, and supported civil rights, and we inquire about fair banking and loan practices before we chose our bank. We live in a mixed neighborhood and support minority–owned businesses. Uh huh. And what else? Of course we have a diversity of friends of color. And we’re in and out of each other’s homes all the time, trading books and music and food. Even with all that - racism is still a White issue, a White problem. Whites benefit from the structures of racism even when we don’t want to. We do all the time, no matter how "color blind" we are, or how powerless we think we are. My mother came to this country with her family when she was 11. Even though they were Jewish, and had poor English skills, they immediately became White when they passed through immigration, and accorded levels of access and privilege that generations of African Americans have not yet been granted. Most of your ancestors did too. They left Italy or the Azores or Ireland, or Poland. Most of these immigrants didn’t see themselves in the struggles of African Americans, or build labor unions and coalitions with them. They quickly learned what "Nigger" meant, the stereotypes and bigotry. No matter where they were from, they identified as Caucasian as soon as they could. And benefited from it. They may have lost some sense of ethnicity and heritage along the way, but they became "Americans." Many of us don’t know our ethnic origins, the foods and languages and religions that inspired and sustained our grandparents before they joined the melting pot. What else have we lost by being White? What are the costs to us? Most of us have been given a distorted and sanitized picture of history and politics, because the role of racism and violence has been minimized, and the contributions of people of color, like Benjamin Banneker, Mathew Hansen, and Fannie Lou Hamer, excluded, or their race, like Augustine’s – or Jesus’ - whitewashed. The role of White people is modified, often ennobled, and the voice of dissenters ignored. For instance, Helen Keller became a great social radical, an early supporter of the NAACP and labor reform. But all we hear about is how wonderful and brave she was, that she was both blind and deaf - not that she criticized the government and worked to end injustice. And we learn almost nothing about the lives and struggles of the disenfranchised, of sharecroppers and labor agitators. American history is a glorious tale of material progress and purpose. At the same time, we’re given a false sense of superiority and power, so that when things don’t go our way, we look for people to blame, to scapegoat. It becomes a habit to notice and distrust and avoid differences. So our lives become more fearful, and less rich and interesting. Racism distorts our sense of danger and safety. We are taught to live in fear of people of color, but often don’t see the ways in which we are victimized by other whites. And the fact is that people of color are in much more danger from us than the other way around, whether through hate crimes or harassment, through stress-related high blood pressure and increased risk of diabetes, or lessened access to quality health care and police protection and adequate employment. But we’re the one’s who have been trained to fear. Some of us have lost relationships with White family, friends, lovers, because of fights or tension over racism. At the same time, relationships with people of color can be hard to maintain because of the presence of racism, the added stress it adds to our lives. It can seem very scary to have an honest and heartfelt conversation about race, whether within or across color lines. We are so filled with conflicting emotions, with guilt and fear, with memories of compromise and silence, of stupidity and embarrassment. We’re afraid we’ll say the wrong thing, reveal our ignorance or bigotry, offend someone, be judged. Dr. Bobbie Groth, a UU community minister, talks about being a reader at a poor, mostly Black, Milwaukee elementary school a couple of years ago. She read the students a story about a civil rights demonstration in the south. In the account, protesters were flattened against buildings by jets of water from fire hoses and attacked by police. A group of young people marches, though people are being beaten and bitten by police dogs. But at one point, the Rev. Charles Billips asks the police and firemen to let the children pass. The police chief ignores him and yells at his men to turn on the children with their dogs and hoses. But the men refuse. They stand stock still, some of them openly crying as they watch the children pass. Groth asked the children why some people marched, and some didn’t; why there were White people supporting the Blacks. They talked about freedom and love and doing the right thing. She asked them why some of the White people were afraid to do the right thing by giving Black people their rights? They answered variously, "They don’t know Black people, they are afraid." "Their parents taught them that’s the way it should be and they don’t want their parents to hate them." "They’re afraid other people will make fun of them." "They’re afraid Black people will take their jobs." "Somebody forgot to tell them that God loves everybody." These young Black children are already aware of the complexities of injustice, but more than that, their understanding of White racism is far more compassionate and human-centered than the prejudice of those who hate them. Throughout their conversation they imply that God created a beautiful world, and racism runs counter to God’s plan for love on earth. Of course, some of them might grow up to be more bitter and enraged, but maybe not. And they are hardly unique. Throughout my own experiences at Howard University and elsewhere, I have always marveled at how forgiving and accepting Black people are when White people are willing to make the effort. They may be secretly impatient at our naiveté, and frustrated at our slow pace, but most are more than willing to give us the benefit of the doubt. They have learned that the alternative is rage, and a deep despair and hopelessness that things will ever improve. We are all raised to be racist – to participate in the systems of society designed to advantage Whites. So changing that – even changing oneself - is not easy. Working through one’s own racism, really understanding what it means to have been raised in this culture of inequality and systematic discrimination is very painful work. You can expect feelings of guilt, of anger, and despair. But in the end it is enormously liberating process to free yourself from the fear and the paranoia and ignorance of participating in racism. You can begin just by reading some books. I’ve made a very informal bibliography of resources, which you can pick up downstairs after the service. There are books explaining how and why we develop our racial identities, about understanding and eliminating racism, and what adults and kids can do. There are books about the effects of racism on White people and on people of color. And there’s a very informal list of some novelists and poets of color with whom you might be unfamiliar. Sometimes just getting into someone else’s world really expands your mind. The boundaries of your nation lie within yourself. If you are really serious about uprooting your own racism, I urge you to find White allies and mentors, people who are going through the same confusion and guilt and despair and fear that you are, and the same exultation and pride in your progress. Of course, you need friends of other races, too, but this is our work as White people, and there may be times when your Black mentors have had too many stressors to be patient and supportive. There are seminars and workshops to help you along. Good work is being done. The journey will be hard, but if you persist you will rewarded with a new sense of worth and freedom and integrity, with amazing friends and a renewed vision. Dr. King said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." We are all connected in a circle of life, an interdependent web of caring and need. Whatever we pretend, we cannot base our own real happiness, our success, on someone else’s misery. It is a spiritual impossibility. Race has been the defining American issue since the first European set foot on these shores. We cannot fully celebrate the republic this fourth of July weekend, claim independence as a people, until we are ready to escape the cage of fear and guilt and restriction that racism demands. We cannot breathe deeply while holding someone else down. Stand up, then. Take heart. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
Closing Words: by Jane Wilson Joyce
Also see: Race and Racism: a starter bibliography. |
