Prophecy, Resistance & Liberation Offered by Ellen Carvill-Zeimer

Transcription

1 Prophecy, Resistance & Liberation Offered by Ellen Carvill-Zeimer Sunday, January 16, 2011 West Shore Unitarian Universalist Church Rocky River, OH I grew up Unitarian Universalist in a mostly white town in New Hampshire. Growing up Unitarian Universalist meant a certain kind of remembering of Martin Luther King Jr. My parents and many of the members of the church were of a generation that marched for civil rights or wished they had. Although we children didn t remember Dr. King, the grownups did and so the services were infused with a kind of nostalgia for the 60 s and all that meant and grief not just over Dr. King but over all the ways the hope and exuberance of that decade seemed lost. And though no one ever said this out loud, what I heard was thank God for Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. Thank God that they stood up to racism and that we can live in a society almost free of racial prejudice. Sure, there are few wackos out there, but mostly we have overcome. Thank God we were on the right side of history. We were there, we stood up, we overcame. It s amazing, really, how much one can learn without it ever being said out loud. As a child, I learned that the Civil Rights struggle removed all legal and structural racism, that the playing field was really level at least based on the color of one s skin and absorbed a deep pride in our nation s history of overcoming oppression. If some darker skinned people remained poor it was because of the tragic influences of drugs or not knowing how to raise children. If the few African-Americans in my school were in lower academic classes it wasn t because there was any difference in capacity between white and Black, but perhaps because their parents didn t know as much as my parents did about reading to one s children and early childhood education. I didn t notice that I was tracked into the highest level even though through elementary and middle school I was constantly told I wasn t living up to potential. They were waiting for me to turn my brain on, I guess. But I didn t notice who didn t get that chance. It s possible that those King Sundays held other messages, that the preachers said something more pointed from the pulpit, but I don t remember the mostly unspoken deeper messages were just too loud. And so it wasn t until college that my eyes began to open. Because of who Unitarian Universalism taught me I was, I showed up in the places and to the conversations that opened my eyes. I saw for the first time the kinds of daily seemingly minor assaults students of color lived with, tolerated, to get an education on a mostly white campus microaggressions of not being seen, or of certain assumptions, or of cultural denigration. I saw how these added up to a tremendous emotional burden and an internal identity struggle. Then I began to see more: I saw the town police follow Black students through town at night, but not white ones. I saw town kids, high schoolers, drive past Asian and Black students yelling racial epithets. And I began to re-learn history. I began to learn the list of ways that centuries of discrimination, affirmative action for white people, created the educational and economic divides where the American dream is handed to some, possible for others, and denied to many. I began to understand that I hadn t made myself that my achievements built on my parents and grandparents and great grandparents achievements and I was the literal inheritor of the fruits of unjust policies. Like the ways my ancestors gained wealth from an economic system fueled by slavery and like the GI bill that paid for my grandmother s master s degree and helped her buy a house, while the bill s benefits were largely denied to black veterans. 1

2 But what made me despair the most was learning all the ways in which it seems nothing has changed. I don t mean to say that the Civil Rights struggle did not change the United States! The decades long movement to reverse overt legal discrimination combined with a dedicated, calculated, mass movement of resistance did change us. Martin Luther King Jr understood that the success of the nonviolent resistance movement was mainly in reversing legal segregation in the South, achieving the legal victories on the federal level, and giving African-Americans a new vision of themselves and a new political voice. After witnessing the power of King s nonviolent movement we and the world will never be the same. But, King also saw everything that hadn t been done. By 1967 it was painfully clear that the federal government would not act to forcibly implement the new laws. It was also painfully clear that many whites who cheered the nonviolent protests against Bull Connor were not willing to support the realization of real equality. King saw in the cries of Black Power and the riots in the North the bitterness that comes from a dream promised, but then denied.1 Then, as now, there was a stark gap between Black and white incomes, between Black and white wealth, and between Black and white unemployment rates. Then, as now, the majority of white Americans did not see the structural racism keeping Black people from catching up. Then, as now, policies which concentrate poor people of color allowed corporate exploitation. Then, as now, the majority of children attended unequal and mostly segregated schools. Then, as now, the socalled level playing field ends up handing better educations, better jobs, better mortgages, better 1 My source for Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. s perspective on this period is Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? neighborhoods, better health care, better everything to those who started with the same advantages. Martin Luther King Jr. saw those structures that maintained these inequities, in education, in real estate practice, in banking, and more. In the last three years of his life, King turned his attention from the legal and obvious discrimination to the persistent, structural differences in class. He saw connections between billions spent on a war to kill brown skinned people and an unwillingness to spend billions to end poverty here. His attention to the war and to poverty was not welcome not welcome by the whites who had supported him, not welcome by his African-American colleagues who felt he was undermining their cause, and not by the government who saw him as an increasingly dangerous radical. But King saw that the gains made weren t enough to really change the conditions under which the majority of poor African-Americans lived. To give them legal rights, but to deny the changes which would allow them to benefit lead only down the path of self-destructive despair. So, I am haunted by these last few years of King s life. We tell our history of support for the Civil Rights movement, but our support seems to have fallen away with the other white liberals as we Unitarian Universalists were shaken by our own internal conflicts between the ideals of integration and the ideals of Black Empowerment. We tell of all that is gained, but we don t often speak of all that may have shape-shifted, but has stayed so much the same. Because the gaps in income, in wealth, in college graduation rates, in health, in unemployment remain stubbornly in place and 2

3 And so, each year, on King Sunday, part of my mourning is for the ways we haven t yet followed King s prophecy, King s truth telling. Prophets are those who speak their truth whether it s convenient or not, whether it s wanted or not, whether anyone listens or not. Prophets preach liberation, freedom, and resistance to oppression escape from Egypt s bondage and delivery to the Promised Land of possibility. Prophets are always resisted resisted by the Pharaohs of this world and by those many multitudes who don t want to change. We know this. We know the prophet s message of liberation faces great resistance resistance even inside us. If we are to celebrate and remember King s life, let us do so by hearing the prophet s message for our ears. King reminded us that Jesus said ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. For there is another way to understand the intersection of prophecy, resistance and liberation. To follow the prophet is to find that the truth will set us free. To follow the prophet is to find that our liberation lies in resisting. Our spiritual liberation lies in the prophecy of truth and the resistance of oppression. I mean, when we live in ignorance we are not free. Even if the truth hurts, it leads to liberation. We can live our lives ignoring racial injustice, ignoring the crushing reality of poverty and wealth disparity, ignoring climate change, ignoring environmental racism or we can live with the great joy and freedom there is to be found in trying to make a difference. We may not succeed, we may often despair, we may even lose friends or alienate family. But what I find in King s life is that a life spent following truth and justice is more spiritually liberating than a life spent trying to ignore the gnawing sense that there might be something wrong and we might have something to do with it, even might be benefiting from it. That gnawing sense of wrong, buried under false history and rationalizations is where I think what we sometimes call white guilt comes from. I know that paralyzing feeling all too well. It s a feeling that really only protects us from looking too hard at the truths we might otherwise find. And it s a feeling that evaporates when we stop resisting what we might find if we look. We might discover that the subprime mortgage crisis revealed that African-Americans are still exploited by the lending and real estate business. We might discover that the criminal justice system continues to disproportionately incarcerate African-Americans, each juncture of the legal system repeating what we already know about the drivingwhile-black phenomenon. The end result is a huge impact on Black families, Black incomes, and Black children. We might discover that every time we turn around there s more injustice to be found, injustice against every non-white group in America. When my partner and I became foster parents we had heard the accusations of systemic racism. Digging deeper in the research literature I discovered the same kinds of biases that create a racist criminal justice system. Doctors and teachers are disproportionately more likely to report abuse and neglect of Black children than white. Black children are more likely to be moved from foster home to foster home, which is traumatic and exacerbates the problems they already face. The more traumatized a child, the harder it is to maintain placements. Black children are then less likely to be adopted and more likely to stay in foster care until they turn 18 and age out which is a nice way to say they often become homeless. As foster parents we have picked up two babies at the hospital. Same hospital. One baby came home with a bag of presents from the hospital, another bag from Summit County Children s Services, and a third from the hospital social worker s intern. The other baby didn t even have a shirt. One was Black and one was white. Guess which one. One was cooed over by all the nurses. One the nurse called 3

4 it. Guess which one. We didn t want to leap to any conclusions about the whole hospital, this could just be the difference between the NICU and the main floor, it could have been that nurse. Our sample size was too small for statistical significance. But then against all odds a Black woman stopped us one night in a restaurant. She though she recognized the little Black boy in my arms. She was right. She s a social worker at that hospital and she confirmed that what we saw happens often she tries to be there for the Black babies to do something to make up the difference, but she can t be there all the time. Racism begins to shape our lives from birth from before birth, from before conception. The truth is that racism is deeply pervasive in our society. We have only the choice to face this truth, listen to the prophecy, or to hide our heads in the sand and live in ignorance. I m not saying facing the truth always brings joy and comfort it can bring despair and gloom. But, the lesson I find in those last three years of King s life is that facing the truth, speaking the truth, following the truth, letting prophecy guide us to resisting oppression this is the way to spiritual liberation. King s language shifts in the last years of his life. He spoke less of love between people and more of hope and more of his faith in a God who is on the side of justice. His spiritual roots grew deeper. What King found and what I think we can find is that when we dig deeper, we find not just stories that are painful, we also find spiritual resources to sustain us and to kindle faith and hope, teach us compassion, and enable us to be even more courageous in our resistance. So, I believe spiritual liberation is to be found in truth, in prophecy. And spiritual liberation is to be found in resistance. In Jesus time to hear and to act were the same thing. If one did not act, one had not heard. And this acting leads to spiritual liberation. See, I have found one of my greatest temptations is to beat myself up for all the ways I am not perfect. I drive a car. I have not given all my wealth away. I benefit from racism and I can t figure out how to stop the world from granting me white privilege. You have your own list. As religious liberals, or maybe it s just white religious liberals, I think this is kind of perfectionism is a particular temptation for us. We want to live a life of perfect integrity and sometimes we go so far as to shame each other for not reaching the personal morality standard we believe we ourselves have reached whether that is in buying fair trade chocolate or the kind of car we drive or using the right language to talk about racism. Sometimes this means we don t act until we think we know everything and we have the perfect solution. Let go. We are all imperfect. We all contribute to oppression and environmental degradation. Perfection is just impossible. Instead, I believe spiritual liberation is to be found in action. Just do something, just do one thing more than yesterday. When we find a way to resist oppression it stops mattering if we re so perfect. When we accept that we ll screw up and we don t have all the answers and we ll put our foot in our mouth, but we act anyway, an immense burden of imagined responsibility lifts from our shoulders. This resistance allow us to work towards reclaiming ourselves as we might have been without the warping forces of oppression. So, I believe spiritual liberation is found in resistance. Here in this church we do this together. I know that you are not here to avoid the truth, you come to a Unitarian Universalist church because you seek truth and you are willing to learn new truths. We see ourselves on a journey, learning and growing and changing. You know that this congregation has chosen to commit itself to becoming an ant-racist, anti-oppressive, multicultural institution. That means we are trying to undo structures of all kinds oppression, we re trying to learn as much as we can, and we want to be a place where everyone feels 4

5 welcomed and at home. We know we re not perfect. We know we don t have all the answers. We know we ll mess up. We know we don t even know how to get to where we want to be. But we ve decided to act anyway. Because we re not perfect and because we don t know everything, each of us needs each other. We need a supportive community to cheer us on and pick us up when we fall down. We need a challenging community to show us new truth. We need each other to build a new way. 5