"Your Huddled Masses" - the Reverend Alison Hyder

June 29, 2003 - the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House of Provincetown

O I see flashing that this America is only you and me,
Its power, weapons, testimony, are you and me,
Its crimes, lies, thefts, defections, are you and me,
Its Congress is you and me, the officers, capitols, armies, ships,
are you and me,
Its endless gestations of new States are you and me,
The war, (that war so bloody and grim, the war I will henceforth
forget), was you and me,
Natural and artificial are you and me,
Freedom, language, poems, employments, are you and me,
Past, present, future, are you and me.

I dare not shirk any part of myself,
Not any part of America good or bad,
Not to build for that which builds for mankind,
Not to balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the sexes,
Not to justify science nor the march of equality,
Nor to feed the arrogant blood of the brawn belov'd of time…

I am for those who walk abreast with the whole earth,
Who inaugurate one to inaugurate all.

READING: Emma Lazarus - “The New Colossus”

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Sermon: “Your Huddled Masses” - Rev. Alison Hyder

I heard about an interesting study about diversity and discrimination a few years ago. Rosabeth Moss Kanter was discussing how minorities are perceived in the workplace. Kanter found that if a sub-group is less than 15% of the total, they are viewed in stereotypes. They have little impact on the culture, whether it’s a workplace or a church. Their power comes in making allies within the more powerful group. But the really interesting information is that when a minority gets to be over 15% of the whole, the majority group suddenly perceives them as being much more numerous (and more powerful) than their numbers suggest. They are seen as being more aggressive and more of a threat, and they are much less likely to gain support from individuals in the majority. All of a sudden the minority are seen to have their own culture and relationships, and their former allies become resistant to inclusion and change. Backlash is inevitable. When a minority group reaches over 15%, the majority always overestimates both their numbers and their influence. When people are seen as the authors of change, the larger culture begins to fear and blame them for their own problems. [Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Men and Women of the Corporation; Sharon Welch, “Sweet Dreams in America”]
That is one reason why diversity is so hard to achieve. We all say we want it, say we want more families or more people of color, for instance, but the fact is that if the demographics shifted, if the demands for more children’s programming here increased or we were asked to change some of the music we sang or the order of service to accommodate – oh - people who spoke Spanish or came from a different religious background, we would most likely resist. We would find a way to discourage the newcomers and try to keep them from power. We’d exclude them from conversations, use language that alienated them, and ignore their suggestions. And eventually they might leave.
This dynamic occurs throughout U.S. History. When an immigrant group is small in number, they can often exist relatively sociably on the fringes of their society. They develop a niche, and are viewed condescendingly but benignly, like the Northern blacks were before the great migrations of the 1920s and 30s brought African Americans out of the South. Their population in industrial cities increased and threatened the balance of power. There were repressions and race riots. You can discern this history in movies, too, in such characters as the Italian bar owner “Martini” in the movie “It’s a Wonderful Life.” He is portrayed as quaint, not necessarily bright, but honest and hard-working. He has his place. But let more of a group begin move in, let there be 20 Italian bars and restaurants in Bedford Falls, and it would be a different story. All of a sudden the new culture would become conspicuous. And the minority group would become threatening: considered to be dangerous and dishonest, immoral, dissolute, lazy, dumb. They’d be accused of harming the culture, taking away jobs, causing a delinquency beyond Mr. Potter’s dreams. Unless they could assimilate and hide. Lose their accents, change their names. And then a new group would come along and the cycle would repeat, over and over again.
Other countries have come to this situation much more recently. As global borders erode they are rather unprepared for their own racism and xenophobia. But we in the U.S. have managed to institutionalize, to codify, this dynamic into our structures. We absorb others’ cultures without changing the underlying systems of power and control. We market America, and it sells.
Jews came to this country as early as the 17th century. Most of the early Jewish settlers were from Portugal and Spain. Some became successful merchants with a widening influence in society and were grudgingly accepted. But then the 19th century saw an explosion of immigrants – Irish, Bohemian, Chinese and Scandinavian. Huge numbers of German and Eastern European Jews arrived escaping pogroms and persecution, seeking the right to live and work. There was great resistance to these immigrants, who were relegated – as always – to the most dangerous and difficult conditions: mining, sweatshops, and factories, living in crowded and dirty tenements. Established American society stood in shock and dismay – and repulsion at their foreign ways.
But not all people rejected America’s promise to the world. In 1883, a group of people were trying to raise funds to build a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty, so that this gift could be accepted from the people of France and placed solidly in view. They asked Emma Lazarus to write a poem for the event.
Emma Lazarus was a prominent fourth-generation New York Jew, a poet and friend of Ralph Waldo Emerson. She was well established in both literary and social circles when she was moved by the plight of the persecuted Russian Jews. Thinking of the immigrants she had met at settlement houses, Lazarus wrote the words that expressed their hopes: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Famous, inspiring lines, but they were to sink with barely a trace for 20 years. In 1903, long after the Statue of Liberty was erected, after Emma Lazarus died at age 38, private donations were made to have a plaque with her poem mounted in the statue. And it wasn’t until the 20th century that France’s gift, the statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World,” would become the “Mother of Exiles,” and that the United States began to understand both her responsibilities and limits in the world.
In the 1930s and 40s, Yugoslavian-American writer Louis Adamic, reporting on the persecution of European Jews, quoted Lazarus’ poem in most of his articles. He agitated for more liberal U.S. immigration policies, and proclaimed our country’s mission to rescue the oppressed. “This is what we are,” he said, “and what we can be: Hope, and freedom, and enlightenment and safety.” I don’t need to tell you what immigrants have done for this country. Most of you are descended from immigrants, your ancestors working to further the dream. But America had to be forced to be generous, had to be forced to change her self-image from one of isolationism to the defender of freedom and liberty, and to see itself as a haven and shelter to the desperate. We fear this role. We are suspicious of strangers. But we still hold out a promise. Now immigrants celebrate the Fourth of July with flags and picnics, with hot dogs and kim chee, samosas and tapas and coke, adding their own flavors to the holiday and recalling us to our purpose. For independence is a gift, and not a possession. To be guaranteed to one person, it must be shared by all, equally. “This America,” wrote Walt Whitman, “is you and me.” Whitman said,
“I dare not shirk any part of myself,
Not any part of America good or bad,
Not to build for that which builds for mankind,
Not to balance ranks, complexions, creeds, and the sexes,
Not to justify science nor the march of equality,
Nor to feed the arrogant blood of the brawn belov'd of time.”
We, each one of us, are the frightened immigrant – Somali, Cambodian, Czech – as much as we are the curious tourist or the weary activist or the student or healer. We are the public defender and the hunter, the short-order cook and the executive, Enron and Disney. We are Fred Phelps, hating what scares us, and suspicious of love. All are a part of our American identity, part of us, and we cannot claim our country without acknowledging the whole - the freedoms and the excesses, violence, greed, and all the faded dreams of fellowship and peace. We cannot shirk any of it if we are to have any hope of change. For each one of us is made up of parts, our identities as diverse and complex as a strand of DNA – as the United States itself. We are America. Maybe you’re a Swiss-Italian Lesbian accountant, a mom, sister and runner. Or a Peruvian Republican poet and dentist. Black and Jewish. Soldier and humanist. Mystic. Inventor. What part of yourself would you sever? Which of your characteristics could you deny without harming your soul? Suppression is dangerous. When we deny or repress some part of our nature, it can fester and grow under the surface. It erupts in other ways, in hatred and fear and rage, in depression and illness. This is true for our country as much as for us. It is hard to stand up straight when you are holding others down. It takes effort to keep secrets or to regulate behavior or to shun the outsider. Because the truth longs for expression, whether it is a story of abuse and terror, or the song of liberty stretching out her light. “The real death of the United States,” said Ralph Ellison, “will come when everyone is just alike.” Immigrants renew our country’s heart. They bring with them a knowledge of suffering and loss, and joy and determination. Having lost so much, they usually appreciate the simpler things. They cherish community, green grass, public education, work. They are not immediately caught up in the lure of possessions. Although they are bombarded with advertisements and offered credit cards and cell phones, they can still find pleasure in small gains. Mary Pipher wrote a book about the many refugees who have been settled in Lincoln, Nebraska. Pipher is a Unitarian Universalist, a counselor and author. She grew up in Nebraska, and has watched her town become increasingly diverse. Witnessing the problems immigrants have in adjusting to our culture, she became a volunteer cultural broker, helping farmers from Sudan, Kurdish families, students from Kosovar and Vietnam and Haiti. She teaches them about America, and tells them about toothbrushes, bus systems, and public parks. She takes them to the doctor and explains the American obsession with time. They in turn teach her about patience, about loyalty and courage and the many different faces of courtesy. Pipher relates a conversation she had with a refugee from Ethiopia. He told her that he had gone out to a local river and had caught many big fish. Thinking to be helpful, Pipher offered to let the man store his fish in her freezer, since he had far too many to eat right away. She says, “He looked at me quizzically and replied, ‘I have no need to store fish. I will give them away to my friends.’
“Over and over” Pipher marvels, “I have witnessed heroic altruism in newcomers. Poverty and crises allow people to help each other. Likewise, prosperity can keep us from knowing how much people love us and will help us.” [The Middle of Everywhere, pp 328-9] This too, is America, this generosity and tenderness, and this is what we would teach to our children and encourage in our community life. We learn it in this congregation, in our healing relationships and call to compassion. It is renewed through the eyes of immigrants. It is created through the courage of those who have stood up for their beliefs or taken a step toward their own liberation and integrity and wholeness. It is the product of justice and respect. It restores our hope. For when we embrace the differences in others, we learn to accept more of ourselves. Lillian Smith stated,
…I have become convinced that our right to be different is, in a deep sense, the most precious right that we human beings have, and the one most likely, if we hold do it, to ensure the human race a future. We need to treasure human differences where they are important… we need to cherish the unique achievements of various groups, to protect the unique talents of individuals, to value the various beliefs and ideas and abilities that seem to grow more easily in one culture than another. We may need them all for our survival – certainly, we shall need some of them one of these days, and we don’t know which we shall need the most or where they may come to birth.
…As we grow in wisdom, we shall learn more, but we, at least, know this much now: we know, however different, however good or evil, dull or bright, pleasing or obnoxious we may be as individuals, as human beings we share in a mystical sanctity. We are the handiwork of God, or if the word bothers you, of Something Big, bigger than we are, bigger than any race, any age, bigger than the Earth we live on. We are, somehow, related to ourselves, to each other and to this great source of All Life. We don’t know the purpose of human existence but even though unknown, this purpose and this relationship lay an obligation on us to seek truth and excellence, to value knowledge and insight, to grasp…and hold on to it. Quality is as important to the human race as is equality; we cannot afford in our struggles for human rights to forget this human obligation laid on us at birth: to grow in wisdom and honor and compassion. [Lillian Smith, The Winner Names the Age]
This Independence Day, this summer, let us be grateful for the life that ever changes and renews us. As we celebrate our diversity, may we learn to free ourselves – for wholeness, for wonder and for hope. And let us reach out to others, and find the gift of friendship that lies waiting for our approach.
So be it.

CLOSING WORDS: by Langston Hughes – “My People”

The night is beautiful,
So the faces of my people.

The stars are beautiful,
So the eyes of my people.

Beautiful, also is the sun.
Beautiful. Also, are the souls of my people.

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