WHAT WHITE PEOPLE CAN DO ABOUT RACISM

Good morning. My name is Sarah Duncan, and I am a white Euro-American. I'm going to speak to you this morning on the topic of "What White People Can Do About Racism." I will begin by defining the problem, and proceed on from there to what to do about it. I struggled a lot when choosing the topic with the fact that there would be people of color in the congregation today, but I know that one element of white racism is that for years whites have been telling people of color what they should do about their problem, rather than focussing on ourselves. We say things like "If we just help people in communities of color end the poverty and violence there, everything will be okay." Certainly that has been true of me. As a result, I decided to focus today on what white people can do about racism. Whether that will work for the people of color in the congregation I leave as an open question, and if it doesn't, I encourage you to tell me so after the service.

Before I began learning about how to become anti-racist, I had the vague idea that what I should do about racism was to volunteer in communities of color, do something to try to help solve the problem. I also knew that many people of color find the idea of white people coming into their communities in order to help them or fix things patronizing. Moreover, I tend to believe more in individual change- that the only person I can change is myself, and that by changing myself, the people around me will also change. But I didn't see how changing myself could have any impact on the problems faced by people of color in the United States. Little did I know that I and other white Americans are the ones who need to change the most where the problems caused by racism are concerned. Now let me say that the point of looking at racism this way is absolutely not to lay a guilt trip on anyone. In fact, guilt is often counterproductive where becoming anti-racist is concerned, because it is paralyzing and keeps us from acting. The point is to take responsibility for making changes in myself and in my community.

In his excellent book Dismantling Racism, Joseph Barndt points out that nearly all of the institutions, organizations, bureaucracies, and structures that affect people of color are actually controlled by white people. Just to give a few examples, think about who has written the textbooks, who runs the police forces, the banks, the news media. Mostly white people. So one of the things we white people need to work towards is learning to share all of that power and control. The other is using the power we currently have to change the structure of those institutions so that they reflect the lives of and confer benefits on people of color and white people equally.

An idea that encapsulates my understanding that I'm the one who needs to change the most where the effects of racism are concerned is to borrow a term from 12 step recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous and describe myself as a recovering racist. Joseph Barndt suggests this way of thinking. I am recovering because I will be working for the rest of my life to heal the racism that is inside me, as well as rooted in the structures of US society, and I am racist for two reasons.

First I am racist because, although I find this extremely painful to acknowledge to myself and to you, I have thoughts and feelings which are racist. Second I am racist because US society is structured in such a way that even if I personally had no racist thoughts or feelings, I would have many unearned privileges not afforded people of color, solely on the basis of having white skin. Peggy McIntosh details some of those privileges in an article called "White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack." They include things like knowing I can go shopping without being followed or harrassed, knowing my children will learn positive things about members of their race in school, seeing members of my race portrayed positively the majority of the time in the media, being able to rent or buy housing in an area where I wish to live, and so on.

Let me tell you a story that illustrates white privilege that comes from my friend Jemima, who is from India. Jemima worked for a time in a hardware store in Albany, NY. When she started working there, she was instructed to watch the African-American customers because they were likely to steal. She decided that since everyone was already watching the African-Americans, she would watch the white customers. She caught white customers stealing on two separate occasions, and both times, the store owner let them go. In one case, he excused the customer's stealing because, he said, the guy was new to this country and didn't know any better. Had the customers been new to this country from Africa, the police would have been called and the matter pursued. Jemima also witnessed the store owner telling African-American applicants for jobs that the positions had already been filled when this was in fact not the case.

Unfortunately, I don't think these stories represent unusual events, and I don't think this happens only in Albany. White people were given the benefit of the doubt when caught stealing, and had access to a job in the store that African-Americans did not have. Because I am sure that such occurrences take place all the time in US society, I believe that unless I actively work for all people to be given the privileges we white people take for granted, I am a racist. It is not enough to be neutral where race is concerned. In the case of situations like the one Jemima encountered in the hardware store, the store owner needs to be told that such behaviors are unacceptable, and if he or she persists in those actions, the store should be boycotted and picketed. If we think we've never witnessed such occurrences, we must open our eyes and look at what goes on around us, including the racial makeup of employees at businesses we frequent. It is likely we will see ample evidence of racism when we do so.

I think I should pause here for a minute, since I'm throwing the word racism around a lot, and define it. One definition of racism is prejudice plus power. Prejudice is distorted opinions about other people based on some aspect of their identity. Racism is unequal treatment of people based on a prejudice. If you don't have the power to affect the other person's life, it's prejudice, not racism.

Another thing I've learned about racism is that in US society, it is a collective problem even more than an individual one. It is fully possible to have an organization in which every member of the organization is personally as anti-racist as it is possible to be, yet for historical reasons about the way the organization was built, as well as the influence of the way other institutions in US society function, the organization is racist. Our church is a great example of that. Even though I am sure the members of this church would be the last people in the world to be deliberately racist, all of our paid leadership is white. Thus there is racism in the structure of our church despite the lack of deliberate racism on the part of individuals in the church.

Actually that's rather good news for those of us who are prone, as I am, to feelings of guilt and helplessness where racism is concerned. It is very easy using that yardstick to tell when there is racism going on, and to figure out what to do about it. Again, our church is a good example. When I started coming to the church five years ago, there were very few people of color in the congregation. Clearly something we were doing wasn't working. Since then the church has been working in many different ways toward becoming anti-racist. We have a diversity committee, there was a retreat this past winter, there are religious education offerings, and our services have more elements in them from African-American and Latino/Latina cultures. The result of this work is that there are more people of color in our congregation. Based on this result, it is clear that what we are doing is working, although we still have plenty of work left to do.

Last semester I took a course from Dr. Cheryl Giles, a wonderful African-American professor at Harvard Divinity School. Professor Giles was able to create an atmosphere in which the white people and the people of color in the class could talk honestly and openly, and often with a lot of pain on both sides, about racism. We also watched The Color of Fear, a documentary which followed a group of eight men of color and two white men, also talking openly and honestly and with great pain about race.

One of the things I learned from the documentary and from the people of color in my class is that people of color are tired of having to educate white people about racism. They are tired of having to convince us that it really is that bad, that they are not the ones with most of the power in the situation, and that we white folks need to take more responsibility for fighting racism.

One of the best ways we can take that responsibility is by educating ourselves. At least for me, this involved a certain amount of pain, because I had to look at the fact that many people and institutions I love are racist. This included myself, my immediate family members, and my denomination, to name only a few. On the other hand, the pain of giving up my illusions that those people and institutions were all-good was balanced by growth in all kinds of different areas, especially in terms of self-acceptance and letting go of ideals of perfection.

I began educating myself about what I could do about racism by reading and taking classes. I have included a list of some of my favorite books in this morning's bulletin, and I urge you to take that portion of the bulletin home with you rather than recycling it. I have also listed a web page where I've posted this bibliography, and an e-mail address as well as a paper mail address. I hope that anyone who has favorite references on the subject will mail them to me. I will post the additions on the web page, or if you send me a self addressed stamped envelope, I will mail you the updated list. I have put Paul Kivel's book, Uprooting Racism, at the top of the list because it may be the single most useful book I have read on any subject in my entire life. I urge you, if you do nothing else to educate yourself about anti-racism, to go out and read this book today.

In addition to reading and taking classes, we can educate ourselves by looking at ourselves, our families, and the institutions of which we are a part. I spoke earlier about the fact that I have racist thoughts and feelings, something I wish were not the case. Until recently, the only way I knew of to deal with those thoughts and feelings was to tell myself how bad I was for having them and try to squash them. Which did no good whatsoever, and which I knew was not working. What helped me find an alternative, however, came out of the reading I've done. Linda C. Powell, an African-American professor at Harvard University's School of Education, writes in a collection of essays called Off White of a visit she makes to a model high school, which is almost completely white, and has a less than 10% drop-out rate. It is clear to her that the school is so successful at keeping students because, as she writes, "this school had every at-risk program known to humankind, including food programs and a support group for students in abusive relationships, and the students in this school did not get labeled in order to receive this support." She writes of her belief that the community was able to offer the students such programs without treating them as though they were deficient because of something she heard at a public meeting, when a speaker mentioned quote "the really troubled Black families who lived 150 miles away"close quote and said that "they had difficult problems." Powell makes the point that projecting "difficult problems" onto people of color who lived elsewhere freed this community to do whatever it took to meet its students needs without labelling those students in a negative way.

What I realized from this and other things in Powell's article is that part of what racism does is to create scapegoats, people onto whom whites can project parts of ourselves we aren't comfortable with. It allows us to see ourselves as not having qualities we don't like, something many of us do in order to try to feel okay about ourselves, although I don't believe feeling better about myself at someone else's expense ever actually works in the long run. So having come to that understanding, now when I find myself having a racist thought or feeling, I ask myself "What's going on here that reminds me of a part of myself I'm uncomfortable with?" and the more I am able to explore that question, the more the racist thought or feeling fades away. Again, it's about letting go of needing to be perfect, and acknowledging and accepting parts of myself that I may not always be totally comfortable with.

In addition to looking at ourselves, another way white people can educate ourselves about racism is to look at our families. First of all, we can look at how we learned to be racist. In my case this was painful because I had to look at the fact that even the more emotionally healthy of my two parents, my Mom who everyone always said was such a nice person, made bigoted remarks throughout my growing up. It is hard to let the illusion of the Mom who is good in all areas of her life die. However, this kind of learning is helpful to the process of unlearning racism, and also helps me to understand that another source of the racist thoughts and feelings that go through my head is the bigotry I heard growing up.

We also need to look at how the structures and institutions of US society were formed and perpetuated in racist ways. Our denomination comes to mind. I like to think of Unitarian Universalists as leaders in fighting against racism, yet I recently saw an article somewhere that mentioned "that New England Unitarian racism." Although it is true that UUs have done much to work against racism, we have also done much to perpetuate it, something you can learn more about by reading Mark Morrison-Reed's book Black Pioneers in a White Denomination. Again, the illusion of perfect goodness has to die and the taking of responsibility has to take its place.

Another kind of education we can do about our own history is to learn more about our own ethnic backgrounds. I have tended to feel, as many white people do, that my own ethnicity is boring, colorless, or non-existent. There are two problems with this point of view. The first is that it can lead white people to adopt cultural practices that are not our own in a way that is either patronizing or constitutes cultural theft because we do not acknowledge or ask permission of the culture the practices come from. The second, and perhaps more major problem is the idea that my white culture is non-existent or neutral, that I don't have a culture while people of color do. This leads me to see cultural norms, values, and practices that are different from my own as inferior to my own. The norms, values, and practices of whites are seen as "normal," and anything else is seen as ethnic, and ethnic is seen as abnormal. White people are responsible for creating that perception in US culture, and we can also take responsibility for tearing it down.

I remember that when I watched the documentary The Color of Fear, one of the most poignant moments for me was when one of the African-American men talked about seeing another African-American man walk down the street in a business suit. He stated that he used to work in corporate America, and then said, "I bet he can't wait to get home, take off his suit, and be a black man again." As a lesbian, I often feel that I have to erase and deny certain parts of myself in the workplace, or my family, or the world at large. Hearing this man speak made me realize how much this could be true for people of color living in white Euro-American culture as well. It is for this reason that we white folks may want to start calling ourselves Euro-Americans, to emphasize the fact that our culture is not just normal, or the way it is, but is a culture and ethnicity just like any other in this country.

Another lesson I learned in the Cross-cultural Counseling class is that in order to work with people different from ourselves, we need to have a strong positive sense of our own ethnic identity. This is another way in which we can educate ourselves. I grew up believing that I was English, Irish, Scots, and a little bit of Dutch thrown in for good measure. I did not learn until I was in my early twenties that I'm three quarters German. At that point, I asked my mother's mother to tell me more about how our family came here from Germany. More recently, I discovered by asking my uncle on my father's side that there are fifteen pages of reminiscenses about my Grandmommy Duncan's life in Ireland before she came to this country. Even though my ethnicity as mostly German is not always easy to reclaim, it has been a lot of fun hearing family stories about where I come from, and I take a healthy pleasure in learning more about my ethnic background. One of the things I hope to do in the future is to research Goddess worship in ancient Europe, to see if I can reclaim that part of my heritage as well. I encourage you to talk to the older members of your family and find out as much about your ethnic background as you can. Certainly for me, it has dispelled the idea that being Euro-American is having no culture or being boring. Let me note here that this is another kind of privilege that Euro-Americans often have the African-Americans, in particular, often do not. Due to the conditions of slavery, records of family history are often difficult or impossible to obtain.

In addition to educating ourselves, the second thing we can do about racism is to act. As white people, simply because of the color of our skin, we often have certain unearned power and privileges that people of color do not. One way to subvert the system is to use that power and privilege on behalf of people of color. A white person might listen to another white person who advocates for people of color in a way that they would not listen to a person of color. So use that power. One example of a way to use that power is a white friend of mine who is a professor at Brandeis University. No one could have worked harder than my friend to achieve this professorship, and she has faced plenty of obstacles along the way other than racism. However, my friend is aware that had she been a person of color, she might not have had all of the opportunities that made it possible for her to get this professorship. Thus every time she is involved with a hiring decision at the University, she advocates for hiring a person of color, and does the extra work which, because people of color have fewer opportunities to become academics in the first place, is sometimes required to find applicants for the position.

The example of my friend brings up another important point about working against racism. White people who are in all-white organizations must do the best we can to think on behalf of people of color even when no people of color are present. And this goes back to my point about education, because the more we educate ourselves, the more possible this will be. When decisions are made, we must think about how those decisions would affect people of color, so that if people of color do join an all-white organization, it is a place they want to be part of. A simple example of this is something a white friend of mine said to me a number of years ago. I was at a meeting of a self-help group talking about how I was going through a dark time or a black time, I forget which word I used. Although everyone in the room was white, my friend pointed out to me that if a person of color had been in the room that use of language might have created an unwelcoming atmosphere, and that such issues might be part of the reason people of color didn't tend to come to our groups. Thus even though people of color were not participating in the group at the time, my friend thought about how my actions might affect people of color and advocated on behalf of them.

Paul Kivel's book is full of ideas about how we can fight racism. Among them are things like making sure the curriculum in our local school systems reflect the contributions people of color have made to the world, making sure the decorations in our homes and offices don't only depict Euro-American people and culture, monitoring the activities of our local police forces, speaking up when we hear other white people make racist statements, and so on. Here at our own church, we can make attendance at anti-racism workshops and RE offerings a priority, we can continue to include elements from Asian, African, and Latino/Latina cultures as part of our worship services, and we can work to hire people of color in leadership roles.

In my own life, I work as a web page designer and I am a Divinity School student. So far some examples of the way I have carried out my commitment to becoming anti-racist are that I make sure that the web pages I create have images of people of color in them, and that I am preaching this sermon to you this morning. Some of these examples may seem like small acts, yet I believe that small acts make all the difference in the world between an atmosphere that is welcoming and one that is not, between situations and cultural structures that empower people of all colors equally and those that do not. Of course big acts have an even greater impact.