“Ways of Knowing Race”
the Rev. Bruce Russell-Jayne, January 20, 2008

Reading: On Nonviolence, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

''I've seen too much hate to want to hate, myself, and I've seen hate on the faces of too many sheriffs, too many White Citizens Councilors, and too many Klansmen of the South to want to hate, myself; and every time I see it, I say to myself, hate is too great a burden to bear. Somehow we must be able to stand up before our most bitter opponents and say: 'We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you will and we will still love you. We cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws and abide by the unjust system, because noncooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good, and so throw us in jail and we will still love you. Bomb our homes and threaten our children, and, as difficult as it is, we will still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our communities at the midnight hour and drag us out on some wayside road and leave us half-dead as you beat us, and we will still love you. Send your propaganda agents around the country and make it appear that we are not fit, culturally and otherwise, for integration, but we'll still love you. But be assured that we'll wear you down by our capacity to suffer, and one day we will win our freedom. We will not only win freedom for ourselves, we will so appeal to your heart and conscience that we will win you in the process, and our victory will be a double victory.'

"If there is to be peace on earth and good will toward men, we must finally believe in the ultimate morality of the universe, and believe that all reality hinges on moral foundations."

Sermon: Ways of Knowing Race, Rev. Bruce Russell-Jayne
Remember the old adage, “In polite society, we don’t talk about sex politics or religion”? Whoever coined that should have included race in the list of taboo topics. Talking about race is almost guaranteed to raise your blood pressure. Yet, we can’t avoid it. Racial issues confront us every day here in Cincinnati, and racial politics were all over the news last week. With a mixed race man as a front-runner in the Presidential campaigning, we will once again have to examine our own ideas and feelings about race and discuss them with others. When we go deep inside we will probably find a mixture of feelings. Our society’s conflicted history dealing with race makes us wary to tackle this issue yet again. We may think, “I have looked at my attitudes, and I am not a racist – in fact, I am proud to say I support efforts to eliminate racism both on the personal and institutional levels.” Still, as UU minister Mark Morrison-Reed observes, “We do not stand above the social attitudes of our times, as we are prone to believe, but rather, flounder about in their midst with everyone else.”
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Before I start my discussion of the often tension-fraught topic of race, let me put you at ease just a bit. I assume you are not a racist. Really, I don’t know anything about your individual personal attempts to be non-racist, but I am going to start with that assumption. I suppose that makes me a people pleaser. It also puts me at odds with the methodology of one of the earlier UU sponsored anti-racism workshops in which white people were encouraged to admit that they were racists. While I admit that I, along with virtually all Americans, have experienced and felt racism at times in my life, I don’t feel that I am now a racist, and I’ll bet most of you would say the same thing. It has been important for me to understand what I have internalized about race, and the workshops helped my learning process. However, I feel having to call myself a racist as an entrance requirement into the work of anti-racism was counter-productive, to say the least. So, we will not start with that today.

Since that first antiracism workshop in the mid-1990s, the UU Association has broadened its programs of anti-oppression and anti-racism. Bill Sinkford, president of our Association since the year 2000, is the first African American to head a traditionally white denomination. He has lead a major effort to identify and eliminate any remnants of institutional racism in the UUA. UUs have made great strides over the years to be anti-racist and to support African Americans. As most of you know, through the efforts of Leslie Edwards, Sharon Dittmar and former minister Morris Hudgins, Northern Hills participated in special services honoring the Reverend W.H.G Carter, which fostered an ongoing reconciliation effort in his family and the Cincinnati UU community. For these efforts, we can be justifiably proud.

It is clear UUs are committed to racial and cultural diversity, and UUs have a long history of involvement in justice-seeking work. We like to tell about abolitionist Unitarians and Universalists before the Civil War and of UUs involved in the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. But, the story of the Reverend Carter, the fact he was shunned by white Unitarians, reminds us our actions over the years have not always been so on the right track. You may have heard of what we call the “Black Empowerment Controversy” of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The UU Association was making efforts to deal with racism when a very large rift occurred amongst those most involved over the goals and methods of the work. Good intentions weren’t enough, many blacks left our movement, and anti-racism work didn’t get going again for about ten years afterward. Since then, there have been a continuous stream of resolutions, task forces, and programs. We really are trying, but there is still much to do. Dealing with issues of race is a vast and complex undertaking, but it is possible for us to make progress.
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I tend to think of UUism as one of the most progressive institutions in America – often out in front of the rest of the country when it comes to anti-oppression issues. After trying so hard for so long, why haven’t we been more successful in our anti-racism work? Part of the answer to that question is that we are mostly white and we haven’t understood race issues from the perspective of blacks well enough at any point in our long history. The prevailing mythologies about black culture that white culture has used have been ill-informed and self-serving at best. But here again, things are changing. It is now possible for us, whites and blacks, to talk more openly with each other and to hear, maybe for the first time, how each of us experience race.

I became more optimistic about us improving race relations when I attended a workshop at 1st Unitarian Society in Chicago, a racially diverse congregation, led by UU Melissa Harris-Lacewell. The workshop and her book, Barbershops, Bibles & BET, helped me better understand some of the issues UUs have struggled with in trying to become more anti-racist. Melissa Harris-Lacewell is a professor of political science whom Harvard has now stolen from the University of Chicago. You may have seen her on Bill Moyers Journal recently. She is the featured speaker at next month’s Meadville Lombard Winter Institute. Her interpretations of the everyday talk and ideologies of black people can help whites and blacks to have more productive dialog, and I want to give you a quick overview of them this morning.

People construct a life narrative, a story of who they are based on their everyday lives and their histories. The forced separation of African Americans from Euro Americans during slavery created a covert reality for blacks which continues today as a distinct black public sphere and which continues to influence black thoughts and attitudes. In this sphere, blacks try to understand politics, identify who is on their side and who is not, and form opinions on issues of public concern. In churches, barbershops, news and entertainment venues, blacks construct meaning from their lives. From this black cultural space come narratives which form the basis for political ideologies - ideologies which contain deeply held convictions about truth and how things ought to be and which tend to bind people to specific social groups. Harris-Lacewell defines four distinct black political ideologies which compete for both black and white support for the outcomes they desire. She says each black ideology tries “to 1) help individuals determine what it means to be black in the American political system, 2) to identify the relative political significance of race compared to other personal characteristics – such as gender or class, 3) to determine the extent to which blacks should “solve their own problems” or look to the system for assistance, and 4) to determine the required degree of tactical separation from whites for successful advancement of group interests.” Black ideology explains how and why it matters to be black.

The four ideologies are:
Black Nationalism – rooted in insistence on some form of cultural, social, economic and political autonomy for African Americans;
Liberal Integrationism – that wants a society in which African Americans enjoy political, economic and social freedoms and rights of other citizens. It locates the source of black inequality in corrupt institutions but believes individuals can have good intentions and that cross racial alliances are both good and necessary;
Black Conservatism – which locates the source of black inequality in the behavioral or attitudinal pathologies of African Americans and stresses the significance of moral and personal rather than racial characteristics to explain unequal life circumstances;
and
Black Feminism – rooted in the recognition of the unique intersections of race, class, and gender faced by African Americans.” It sees these major systems of oppression as interlocking.

It is impossible this morning to go into these ideologies in enough depth for us to fully understand their nuances. However, from these brief definitions you can begin to recognize the underlying values for different black points of view. Blacks take from all of these belief patterns, and most individuals don’t fit into one of them all the time.

Of these four ideologies, Integrationism is the most closely related to American liberalism. Both share the notion that the American system works in theory but it works better for some members of society than others. It seeks to access the benefits enjoyed by the more privileged and ties the interests of blacks to the workings of American society. Black Integrationists attach importance to liberty and equality as benchmarks of the American Creed. They point to equality as the first principle of political action as opposed to most whites who tend to emphasize individual liberty. It is true that integration is a tactical necessity for blacks, but they remain wary of white institutions and white support for black interests. Historically UUs have mostly tried to work within the ideology of Liberal Integrationism. The UU Black Empowerment Controversy can be understood as a conflict between backers of two competing ideologies, Integrationism and Black Nationalism.

Understanding the philosophical underpinnings of these ideologies is an important first step toward having a more productive white-black dialog. It is also necessary if we are to make sense of politicians’ competing claims to be the best able to solve problems of race. In the democratic primaries we see three different politicians asking blacks to support them based on their interpretation of black needs and desires. It is up to voters to accept or reject those interpretations based on how well they relate to the realities of everyday living. The politicians appeal to ideological beliefs, traditions, and moral stances that resonate with blacks, and whites need to know them too in order to make sense of the political positioning.
Take Colin Powell for example. Many would describe him as the classic representative of black conservativism. He openly supported conservative social and economic policies. He established institutions designed to help African Americans move to a raceless American identity. He did not embrace traditional African American organizations or allow himself to be defined by established black leaders. Yet, even though most blacks see black Conservatives as the bad guys, in the late 1990s Powell was very popular with blacks. This was due primarily to his ability to make very strong claims to authenticity as a black. As I said, we may not be able to fit politicians neatly into one category especially if they intentionally reach out to people in other ideological camps.

Now we have a similar quandary in Barack Obama. Where do you think he is ideologically? Do you think he is a black conservative, a liberal integrationist, a little of both, or none of the above? I won’t tell you what I think because that would get a little too close to doing politics in the pulpit. Black Conservative Shelby Steele says Obama is hiding his true feelings from us so we can project on him what we want to see. I don’t agree because the evidence is out there and plain to see – you should go look for yourself. This year once again race is on the political agenda, and I encourage you to enter into conversations about race with both whites and blacks to help determine the credibility of claims made by politicians. It is important that neither blacks nor whites assume that electing Obama or Clinton or anyone else for that matter will solve all problems of race. But, having them as candidates does give us an opportunity to discuss race and to make progress in understanding each other.
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I hope that talking about the influence of race on political ideology can open us to talk more about how we experience race here at Northern Hills. It is important for whites to understand blacks better, and it is important that whites understand their own attitudes about race better. We need to make this a safe place to share our experiences with race. Just as black identity and experience is varied; white identity is not monolithic, either. Talking out our different perspectives on race is not racism, indeed it is the best way to combat it.
We have all been affected by race in our country. All of our stories have validity. No one can claim their story is more authentic because of their race or gender or class. The experience or viewpoints of white males is no more essential than that of black females or vice versa. Telling how we have experienced race and listening to others’ stories is the thing we must do to open our hearts to those who we see as different.
A few times when I opened myself to talk about race, I was met with rejection. Good faith attempts are not always accepted with graciousness. This is where we must rely on the strength of Dr. King when he said “do what you will and we will still love you.” When others doubt our motives or our ability to support them, we need to try to love them anyway.

Let us commit to making our fellowship a safe space for all of us to participate, to tell our stories without assuming they are privileged, and to listen with open hearts and minds to the stories of others. If we can do this, we will be on our way to becoming “An authentically anti-oppressive, anti-racist and multicultural UU church [that is an] equitable, pro-active, soul-transforming, prophetic force for justice.”
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I close with the words of the Rev. Mark Morrison-Reed, “Our history in regard to racial justice is brave enough to make you proud, tragic enough to make you cry, and inept enough to make you laugh once the anger passes. We also have a future. Today’s task is to learn from what was and move on. To move on will mean creating a vision for the future. May our concern for our faith and love for one another guide our efforts.”

Morrison-Reed, Mark. Quoted in “History and Retrospective, 1960-1996,” Journey Toward Wholeness, UUA (Boston: 1996) 43.
Harris-Lacewell, Melissa. Barbershops, Bibles and BET: Everyday Talk and Black Political Thought, Princeton University Press (Princeton: 2004) xxi.
Harris-Lacewell. 15.
Harris-Lacewell 19-20.
Harris-Lacewell. 25.
Harris-Lacewell. 25-30.
Harris Lacewell. 27
Harris-Lacewell. 73.
Journey Toward Wholeness UUA (Boston: 1996) 5.
Morrison-Reed. 46.