In Fellowship

I went to the fifth grade in the most integrated elementary school in Michigan. It was located in the corner of one of Detroit’s northwest suburbs.

There were the kids, like me, whose ancestors had immigrated from Europe to the United States or Canada several generations ago–kids whose families had come from Poland, from France, from Italy, from Germany, from Scandinavia. There were first-generation immigrant kids from Russia and Eastern Europe, often Jews fleeing the Soviet regime. There were some Orthodox Jews, although most of those kids went to a hillel, or Jewish day school, associated with one of the three large synagogues within walking distance. There were African American kids, the children of Detroit’s African American middle class, who had moved out to the suburbs for the same quality of life and good school systems they offered white families. Most of the white Catholic kids, often from French Canadian families, lived in the next suburb over and went to the Catholic elementary school. I remember a few kids from southeast Asia, especially Vietnam. There were not many kids who spoke Spanish as a first language–it was much more common to hear Russian. I remember standing in the warm vestibule on winter days with my classmates, waiting for the doors to open in the morning, and trying to work out between us who celebrated what holidays, and why.

In fifth grade, students were randomly assigned to homerooms where we did our academic subjects, and then traveled as a group to things like music and art. When we moved over to the middle school next door in sixth grade, we began going to tracked academic classes: high, middle, and low. This continued in high school, which drew from that one square mile my elementary school had served plus two other suburbs.

By the time I was taking honors classes in high school, there were no African-American kids in my classes. More than ten percent of the population of Oakland County, Michigan is black, but not in my high school classes. I had one African-American teacher throughout my education–she taught advanced English at my middle school. In retrospect, I can see how much grief she had to put up with from the entitled white students in her classes. I remember one Russian immigrant student in the honors track, a year behind me in high school. He stood out from his compatriots because his English was so good, which seemed to be a prerequisite to study college prep material. I went from attending the most integrated school in the state in fifth grade to an almost entirely native-born, white cohort in high school in the same district seven years later.

Despite the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous statement that Sunday morning at eleven o’clock was the most segregated hour in America, my Unitarian Universalist church was one of the most integrated places I went every week. It was (and remains) nowhere near as black as the suburb where it makes its home. Southfield is more than half African American, and I would guess that around ten percent of the members of my home church are black. Still, that meant that I got to know African American adults and kids as equals, role models, teachers and companions in a way that was not available to me in other parts of my life.

I remember going to a Tigers game just a few years ago with my white friends, and seeing an African American member of my church standing outside Comerica Park, handing out flyers for his brother-in-law’s business. He gave me a bear hug and we talked for a few minutes. That experience of crossing a racial line, of seeing a black man as a friend in downtown Detroit–I could not have had that experience if it were not for my church.

I’m lucky my Unitarian Universalist church helped lower the barriers of race between me and my brothers and sisters of color. Unitarian Universalism has struggled with race relations for a long time. More than 200 Unitarian Universalist ministers answered the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King’s call to join him in Selma in 1965, to march on Birmingham for civil rights. But by 1968, the racial unrest throughout the country had made such simple black and white alliances more difficult. Malcolm X was calling for black separatism. Riots in Detroit and Newark killed 66 people. Leaders of African American communities wanted white people to support them on their terms.

In the Unitarian Universalist Association, too, African Americans were beginning to assert their leadership in ways that made many people, both white and African American, uncomfortable–the way radical steps forward often do. In 1967, after the urban riots, a denominational official called an “Emergency Conference on [the] Unitarian Universalist Response to the Black Rebellion.” Participants were not democratically elected. As soon as the conference started, 30 of the 37 black participants withdrew to form the Black Unitarian Universalist Caucus. The formed a list of demands, which they presented ultimately to the Association’s Board of Trustees. According to historian Warren R. Ross, “The core demand was that the board establish a Black Affairs Council…, to be appointed by the Black Unitarian Universalist Caucus…and funded for four years at $250,000 a year. The funds would go for grants to fight political repression and economic exploitation in the black community and support black cultural expressions and community education (45).”

This may sound intransigent, but it was an attempt to make the Association live up to its antiracist goals. A group of African American leaders were demanding self-determination within the Unitarian Universalist movement, and the funds with which to do it. They were saying to the Association, which was integrated but still predominantly white, “If Unitarian Universalism wants to support rights for black people, then let black people be in charge. Moreover, let us be in charge of the money to make it happen, and trust that black leadership will live out the Association’s anti-racist goals.”

However, things weren’t so simple. The Unitarian Universalist Association’s board rejected the Black Unitarian Universalist Caucus’s demands. A rival group formed, Black and White Action, which espoused a less radical agenda. The General Assembly, the annual gathering of church delegates, voted to fund a Black Affairs Council for two years (with a total of $500,000)—against the Board’s wishes—but during the second year the allocation was reduced as part of massive budget cuts in the Association. All the groups involved argued about whether those cuts were the result of institutional racism, or a simple lack of funds. Many African Americans left Unitarian Universalism after this controversy: some because they felt excluded from the power structure of the Association, but others because the rancor and infighting alienated them. All the advocacy groups—the Black Affairs Council, its supporting groups, and Black And White Action—had ceased to exist by 1972.

In 1996, the Unitarian Universalist Association began to re-engage with issues of race in a purposeful and institutional way. Many churches went through the curriculum Journey Toward Wholeness. The Association began working with Crossroads Ministry, an organization dedicated to doing anti-racism training and work with organizations. They ran into difficulty, however, around theology. Crossroads is a Christian organization, and defines racism as a kind of original sin. Now, before that language turns you off, listen to what they mean.

Racism gets bound up in institutions–like hiring practices that disadvantage applicants of color, or whatever policies caused my high school to feed more white kids into honors classes and more African American kids elsewhere in the school–so that those racist practices outlive the intentions of any individual in the system. An individual white person’s conviction that they are not racist, and their intention not to be racist, doesn’t stand up against the power of racism in the institution. Racism is a pre-existing condition in the system, like original sin.

This is actually kind of an elegant way of thinking about racism in America, because it helps us white people confront the problem of racism and our place in a racist system without having to think that the problem is only our particular opinions and actions. It shows us that what we are called upon to do is to work together, and with allies of color, to transform the system we live in to be more just, and more equitable for people whose heritage is not white European.

However, this approach has not worked as well as the organizers hoped. Having to accept one’s own racism, even if what we mean by that is our place in institutional racism, has been hard to the point of refusal for many white allies. The word is too charged to be easily redefined. And the comparison to original sin hasn’t worked very well in a Unitarian Universalist environment. Also, perhaps most tellingly, this approach has not made Unitarian Universalism any more racially diverse.

When Mark Morrison-Reed entered the Unitarian Universalist ministry in 1979, he was the eighteenth black minister in our tradition since 1888 (198). Eighty-nine years; eighteen black ministers. That is a dismal track record. Even now, there are a mere handful of African American ministers, or ministers of any ethnicity other than European-American. Ministers of color face a harder time being settled in congregations, even today.

I think it was widely hoped that electing the Rev. Bill Sinkford, an African American man, to be the Association’s president in 2001 would help propel diversity in our congregations. Bill was elected because of his experience serving our denomination and his skills in public leadership. But I would suppose that even he hoped that he might be able to lead the Association toward a more diverse future. Instead, our movement has seen almost no racial change since 1997. We are still more than 90 percent white (Rasor).

I heard Mark Morrison-Reed speak about these problems at General Assembly, the annual national meeting of Unitarian Universalist congregations, this past June. He pointed out that the one thing that seems to have driven multiculturalism in our ministry, at any rate, is the rising rates of college education among people of color, and specifically among African Americans. Unitarian Universalists have an average of seventeen years of formal education. The percentage of African Americans in our ministry mirrors almost exactly the percentage of African Americans overall who receive bachelors’ degrees (Reed “Multiculturalism”). Reed thinks the lack of racial diversity in our congregations is a function of the lack of class diversity in our congregations. I see this here in Plymouth. Sunday services at Starr King Fellowship are some of the most racially diverse events I attend in this area. But this area has a great deal more class diversity than racial diversity, and we don’t reflect that in our congregation. It’s something for us to think about as we plan for our future and future growth.

I also hear from Reed, both in the talk I heard him give in June and in the reading we heard today, that the division between the races is harming America. It is especially damaging to people of color, who face discrimination of all kinds, from the irritating to the catastrophic, everything from hearing white pop stars use the n-word to seeing ten percent of young black men in this country in prison. We need to find tools and pathways toward true multiculturalism that will allow us to live in peace and community with one another, embracing racial diversity as the gift it is.

The collection we’re going to take this morning will support strategic efforts within the Unitarian Universalist Association to support ministers and religious professionals of color. It will support development of the Building the World We Dream About curriculum, which will be available free and online to all Unitarian Universalist congregations. We could offer it here. The curriculum will address issues of class diversity as well as racial diversity. The money will also help support congregations in ministering to youth and young adults of color, to the very people we hope will live out the multicultural future we are dreaming of.

We may seem far away from this problem, here in this rural section of our largely white state. But our financial contributions will help work toward diversity at a national level. It will make sure that there are more opportunities to cross the class line, to meet each other as human beings whatever the color of our skin, to tear down barriers as thin as tissue instead of bricking up the walls between us. We can be proud that our contributions are supporting our Association to be the kind of religion we want to be a part of, and build the future we want for all our children, whatever the color of their skin.

Please pray with me.

Let us remember those who have gone before us in the service of the most holy.

Those who marched and protested for basic civil rights in Selma, Birmingham, Baton Rouge, and Montgomery; in South Africa and India; and in times and places forgotten where people have demanded fair treatment. Let us remember those who endured force without returning force; those who sat in jail to show that their incarceration was wrong; those who met physical force with soul force; those who hewed the stone of hope out of the mountain of despair.

Let us remember those who fought to end America’s most insidious of institutions, human slavery; those people of white and black skin who gave their energies and lives so that everyone might be free; those who believed that the horrors of war were preferable to the horrors of human bondage; those who let their love for humanity overcome their love for tribe, class or race.

Let us invite the spirit that animated these, our heroes and saints, into our hearts this morning. Let us call the same source of fervor and hope into our lives, that we might answer the call of duty and righteousness when we hear it. Let us remember that every small step we take toward the kingdom of God is a vital step in a long march toward freedom, equality and peace. Amen.

Sources

Morrison-Reed, Mark. In Between: A Memoir of an Integration Baby. Boston: Skinner House Books, 2008.

—. “Multiculturalism and Race.” General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association. Salt Lake City, 25 June 2009.

Rasor, Paul. “Berry Street Lecture.” Conference in Berry Street. Salt Lake City, 24 June 2009.

Ross, Warren R. “The UUA Meets Black Power: BAC vs. BAWA, 1967-1971.” World March/April 2000: 42-48.