Sidebars Antiracism Primer Antiracism Timeline Antiracism Resource List The Controversy at GA Q&A With John Buehrens

B

ill Yager's racism insight sprang from a most mundane moment, at the supermarket meat counter a split second after the butcher finished with a customer and said, "Next!"

He was next in line. But the woman behind him called out her order, and the butcher looked right past him. He reports feeling invisible, as if he didn't matter. People of color experience disrespect like this far too often, but he is not a person of color. He's a kid.

An articulate 11-year-old with freckles, Yager attends First Unitarian Church of Denver with his mother, Barbara Yager. After the meat counter experience, he told her he thought he could understand how an African American girl in a book he was reading felt when a white storekeeper ignored her so he could wait on white people.

See also: Now I Begin to Understand: Personal Race Reflections The UUA Meets Black Power: BAC vs. BAWA, 1967-1971

"We were in the car," Bill recalls, "and my mom said, 'Did you know that just by being who you are, you get more privileges than other people?'"

Barbara Yager had learned about white privilege from sermons and conversations at First Unitarian, which has long had a deep commitment to coming to grips with racism, and now her son was coming to grips with his whiteness. She says he quickly grasped the concept of white privilege, which is central to the Unitarian Universalist Association's antiracism thinking, and its implications make him as uncomfortable as they do most white adults.

"He said, 'Mom, I just won't have anything to do with it,'" Barbara Yager recalls. "And I said, 'But you've got it, and there's nothing you can do to get rid of it.'"

Says Bill: "It kind of makes me mad that some people think we're better than other people. What I don't get is why. I'd personally like it if everything was even, that nobody was above anybody else."

The story of Bill's transformative insight is unusually dramatic because he is only a sixth grader. Similar transformative experiences--for whites and people of color, for people new to antiracism thinking and people long committed to it--now dot the continental map of Unitarian Universalism, where congregations have responded to the UUA's ambitious Journey toward Wholeness antiracism initiative.

That said, as antiracism proponents measure them, the dots are too few and far between. There are over 200,000 UUs in North America; by even the most optimistic estimates, not more than 5 percent have made a commitment to antiracism. (For a definition of this term as the UUA and many advocates use it, see the Antiracism Primer on page 31.)

In pursuit of enough dots on the map to create an army to fight racism in UU congregations and the UUA, as well as the wider world, the Journey toward Wholeness (JTW) initiative has a growing staff and budget and passionate volunteer supporters. Still, some believe the JTW will need the aim of a David to have a chance against the Goliath of racism that for five centuries has tormented North American culture and institutions--and helps define the identities of us all, regardless of our heritage.

Leon Spencer, a professor who teaches cross-cultural and community counseling, and a long-time Unitarian Universalist leader, says what makes racism so intractable is white middle-class people's fear that by coming to grips with it they might lose their identity and the privileges the culture has granted them.

People in the United States "don't want to think about racial issues, talk about them, or feel them," says Spencer, who a dozen years ago became the first chair of the UUA's Black Concerns Working Group and who in 1999 completed eight years as a UUA trustee. "The fear is that we might have to give something up."

JTW, which is managed by the UUA's Department for Faith in Action and monitored by a committee appointed by the UUA Board of Trustees, faces not only the resistance that Spencer describes but also growing pains and passionate UU opponents to its approach to fighting racism. According to a wide range of denominational leaders interviewed for this article, how best to fight contemporary racism has become the most contentious UU issue since a controversy about black power wracked the movement in the late 1960s. (See The UUA Meets Black Power on page 42.)

The name Journey toward Wholeness denotes a theological search for the integrity of humanity, for wholeness, with each person held sacred. The JTW agenda was shaped at the 1997 General Assembly, by a sweeping business resolution approved with only one dissenting vote. It calls for the UUA to transform itself, including "comprehensive institutionalization of antiracism and multiculturalism" and antiracism trainings for all Unitarian Universalist leaders, including ministers, religious educators, leaders of associate and affiliate organizations, governing boards, UUA staff, and theological faculties, and at future General Assemblies. "Whether or not a group becomes multiracial," the resolution notes, taking into account how few people of color belong to UU congregations, "there is always the opportunity to become antiracist."

The resolution also urges individual UUs to examine "their own conscious and unconscious racism as participants in a racist society, and the effect that racism has on all our lives, regardless of color." Finally, it urges the UUA to work with international and interfaith organizations "in order to transform the racist institutions of our world."

By many accounts, this year is another turning point for JTW. Members of most congregations have had little direct experience with JTW so far, but lots of energy has gone into transforming the UUA's institutional core. As much has gone into refining the two-and-one-half-day antiracism analysis trainings for UU leaders and the introductory Creating a Jubilee World workshops that JTW offers congregations. Now, with revised curricula ready to go, JTW is working on plans to increase the number of congregational workshops it can offer.

Three years after the General Assembly resolution propelled the UUA onto the Journey toward Wholeness, how far have we come? How bumpy is the road? And where is it heading?

Exploring the lessons in Bill Yager's story, and in some other transformation stories of people and institutions within Unitarian Universalism may suggest some answers.

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Transformation Story: UU Institutions

T

he Rev. Melvin A. Hoover, director of the Department for Faith in Action, is fond of pointing out that creating antiracist organizations in the US is so difficult that it has never been done--yet. The UUA is working hard to be the first. The internal transformation will show up, for example, in religious education curricula and in the way this magazine is edited.

The association sends staff members and others in leadership roles to take part in analysis trainings so that antiracism understanding will inform their work; so far, more than 500 leaders and ministers have attended, from the board of trustees on down. Nowhere is structural transformation farther along than in the board.

"We will be sitting around the board table discussing just about anything," says UUA Moderator Denise Davidoff, who chairs the board, "and just about anybody will pipe up and say, 'You know, if I look at that through my antiracist lens, I come up with another way of thinking about that.' It's really extraordinary to me how that has become a part of the board's culture."

The board has established an internal assessment team to make sure that antiracism is taken into account in every aspect of its work. Davidoff, who has been engaged in Unitarian Universalist racial justice efforts for more than three decades, will step down as moderator next year confident that the board's antiracism sensibility is indelible. "When I am no longer moderator," she said, "they will still be committed."

A more structural change is in progress, too. Board members are drafting bylaw amendments to write antiracism into the association's most fundamental document. The board has also charged the committee it appoints to monitor the Journey toward Wholeness to take the lead in designing the next phase of antiracism efforts. The group, called the JTW Transformation Committee, is expected to report back this fall.

Here are reports on other parts of the institutional structure:

Administration and staff--The most significant step, says Executive Vice President Kay Montgomery, has been creating the Department for Faith in Action to oversee the Journey toward Wholeness and building the department's resources. The new department--which also includes the UUA Washington Office and the Office of Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Concerns--resulted from merger of the three smaller programs. It started life with 10 and a half positions; four years later it has 14. UUA President the Rev. John A. Buehrens says the department's budget--now $1,261,631--has been growing faster than any other department's in recent years.

Directors of all UUA departments and programs must take part in an antiracism analysis training. Other employees are offered one-day workshops. Annual performance evaluation forms have a line for comments on each employee's antiracism efforts.

The administration now requires UUA departments to include antiracism efforts in their annual plans and to use antiracist criteria when making decisions such as whom to hire or what to publish. In an ongoing strategic planning process conducted by the Executive Staff Council--the UUA's president, executive vice-president, and department directors--every proposed objective must be designed for maximum antiracism impact.

The Rev. Susan Suchocki, minister of First Church UU in Leominster, Massachusetts, a former UUA trustee who now chairs the board-appointed JTW Transformation Commit-tee, says she is impressed. "I see a real shifting in resource allocation," Suchocki says.

Nonetheless, several antiracism advocates interviewed for this article expressed frustration, wishing for broader and faster changes in the way the staff incorporates antiracism into its work. Robette Dias, an antiracism program associate for Faith in Action, for one, calls for an institution-wide transformation team. "We advocate this approach for congregations," she says, "but we don't do it at the institutional level."

Districts--The field staff in the association's 23 districts, who deliver a broad array of UUA services to the congregations, have taken part in analysis trainings, as have many district board members. Three districts have formed transformation teams to help congregations build antiracism understanding among their members. Several other districts and geographical clusters of congregations are considering similar approaches.

Antiracism understanding has seeped so thoroughly into the district structure that when six new UUA trustees elected by the districts showed up for their first board meeting, in October, Davidoff was struck that all six "came on the board expecting to do antiracism work."

UUA committees--The board invites members of the myriad volunteer committees--bodies such as the Pamphlet Commission, the General Assembly Planning Committee, and the Congregational Property and Loan Commission--to antiracism analysis trainings.

Suchocki singled out the GA Planning Committee as a transformation story. When her committee initially brought up antiracism, "They all said, 'But we're not racist, we want to be inclusive, but we've got a task to do. We've got a GA to run; we know what we're doing; we have success; we don't need nor want to be bothered.'"

But after working with the committee as two GAs were planned, Suchocki cites successes including an additional dance--to Latin music--and a new caucus room for people of color, modeled on the youth caucus room.

Other UU institutions: Leaders of the UU Ministers Association (UUMA), the Liberal Religious Educators' Association, and Interweave (UUs for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Concerns), have taken antiracism analysis trainings, and all characterize themselves as gaining momentum.

UUMA President the Rev. Gary E. Smith, senior minister of First Parish in Concord, Massachusetts, says JTW leaders confronted UUMA leaders more than two years ago, asking, "When are the ministers going to take some leadership?"

In the last year, JTW has conducted analysis trainings tailored for ministers in six districts, and Smith says ministerial support has been warming up. To build on this, the UUMA is planning a conversation on antiracism before this year's General Assembly for up to 100 ministers. "We want to model what is being done well," Smith says, "to lift up some of the colleagues who have been doing wonderful antiracism work. We want to build on it."

Hoover, the Faith in Action director, welcomes this development, saying ministers' leadership tends to be crucial if congregations are to take antiracism seriously. He also reports that he is pleased that the UUMA and the religious educators are working cooperatively on the subject.

Patricia Ellenwood, director of religious education at the Unitarian Universalist Society of Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts, and president of the educators' association, said its board took part in an analysis training a year ago, formed an antiracism team, and has begun working toward transformation "from the inside out."

Ellenwood has a suggestion for making JTW work better. "We are starting at the top, trying to transform adults," she says. "It's much easier to transform children, if you have developmentally appropriate materials. That way, we won't have to be doing remedial work a generation from now. Initiatives aimed primarily at adults will not solve the essential problem."

Susan Gore, chair of Interweave, reports a surge of interest in antiracism after an analysis training for its board. One result is a program Interweave is planning for the June General Assembly in Nashville entitled Turning Boundaries into Intersections.

"One thing about being bisexual, gay, lesbian, or transgender," Gore says, "is that we can be of any race."

The wider world: Hoover says the depth of the UUA's antiracism commitment has won the respect of other denominations. Buehrens tells this story: "I went to the dedication of a new UU church building, and the local Episcopal priest said, 'I hear great things about what you guys are doing on racism. Can you send me some material?' If we persist in this path we are going to have greater influence beyond our own circles."

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Transformation Story: Leslie Takahashi Morris

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t was the first time Leslie Takahashi Morris had attended a meeting of the Thomas Jefferson District board. She says she went out of curiosity and didn't even know about the agenda item that would propel her onto the district antiracism transformation team.

"It's been a painful transition for me," Takahashi Morris says of the new racial understanding she has gained since. "The biggest transformation in my life before this was finding Unitarian Universalism. It was like a homecoming for me, very important.

"For a long time," she says, "I was a booster, a cheerleader, for Unitarian Universalism. Now I'm more of a loving critic. I do think we can make progress, but it's very slow. So many people have come in, have found this home, and they don't want to think they may not be welcoming because of their attitudes."

The 1997 meeting she attended followed defeat of a proposal to change the district's name after months of deep reflection and sometimes heated discussion on the part of UUs in congregations throughout the district, which encompasses North and South Carolina, most of Virginia, and parts of Georgia and Tennessee. Thomas Jefferson thought of himself as a Unitarian, so the district where he lived was named for him 40 years ago to honor his central role in shaping American democracy. But Jefferson also went to his death an unrepentant slave-owner, and many contemporary UUs were focusing on that.

Takahashi Morris's comments on the topic caught the ear of Leon Spencer, who was then the UUA trustee representing the district. He supported her for the 40-member transformation team, the oldest and largest in the UUA. She accepted and soon was attending a UUA-sponsored antiracism analysis training.

"The first day, I almost couldn't stay in the room," Takahashi Morris recalls. "At first I thought I'd just been to too many trainings"--she runs a nonprofit leadership program on human relations and had spent 30 days in similar trainings that year--"but then I figured out that my discomfort came from the fact that this was a setting that mattered so much to me: my church.

"I'm biracial, half European American, with ancestors here dating back to the 1600s, and half Japanese American. My life is impacted by my father's internment in World War II. I've had to come to terms with many uncomfortable conversations with people at church who said essentially racist things. This denomination is so important to me that I was willing to overlook them, but I'm not any longer.

"It won't be a quick fix. My fear is that we'll do the assessment way too soon and JTW will be judged a failure, that people will come in with a yardstick and say, 'Well it's been two or three years, have you ended racism yet?' This is work for a lifetime, not a project."

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Transformation Story: Congregations

T

akahashi Morris's congregation, the Eno River UU Fellowship in Durham, North Carolina, was the site for the pilot test of the Creating a Jubilee World workshop a dozen years ago; it has been immersed in justice issues since before antiracism became part of the UUA's vocabulary. The First Unitarian Church of Denver, which Bill Yager attends with his mother, is another of the dozen congregations that JTW leaders regard as pacesetters.

Few of the hundreds of smaller UU congregations have made such strides with JTW, but many are working on racial justice issues.

"I am always startled when I visit a congregation or see a church newsletter at how pervasive this work is, whether they call it JTW or not," says Moderator Davidoff, whose travels take her to congregations across the continent.

One small congregation that has taken a big step is the 89-member First Church Unitarian Universalist in Leominster, Massachusetts--it has written antiracism into its covenant. One factor in this--but hardly the only one--is that Suchocki, chair of the JTW Transformation Committee, is its minister.

"It was not without some controversy," she says. "Particularly because it's a very beautiful covenant about beauty and truth and goodness and a democratic, nurturing community. Suddenly you want to put in there 'antiracist, democratic, nurturing community,' and there were a lot of conversations.

"At a parish committee meeting, the persons who were reluctant said, 'Well, maybe we could just say "tolerant in our acceptance."' A person of color who was a member of the parish said, 'You're just going to tolerate me? That's not why I want to be here. I want to know that you're going to be walking beside me, and with me, and we're going to be working together to be an antiracist community.' About four people sitting around the table went, 'I get it, I get it.'"

Members from more than 200 congregations have taken part in Creating a Jubilee World workshops in the dozen years since the pilot workshop at Eno River. As the JTW focus shifts to congregations, Hoover, the Faith in Action director, says the number should rise. A first step for many congregations has been conducting a JTW Sunday program with a special fund-raiser split two-thirds for the congregation's racial justice projects and one-third for UUA grants for urban ministry. One hundred congregations took part in the first JTW Sunday in 1999, and 140 signed up for the program this year.

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Transformation story: Robette Dias

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hen Robette Dias found Unitarian Universalism by taking a job as director of religious education for the UU Fellowship of Sonoma County, in Santa Rosa, California, she was already comfortable with antiracism thinking, which includes an analysis of who has power over whom. But she was suspicious of religion.

"I first learned about power analysis at the University of California at Davis," she recalls. "It was the time that they were ending affirmative action admissions, and I got a grant and did a research project on admissions policy. So when I came into the UUA, my mindset was compatible."

In 1997 Dias, as a volunteer, joined a continental team working to shape the UUA's antiracism processes. She and other new members from a variety of racial backgrounds wished to broaden the UUA's understanding of who is affected by racism. "They were still talking just about African Americans," she says. "They weren't inclusive."

Since then, Dias has joined the Faith in Action staff and the JTW Transformation Committee and has been elected president of Diverse Revolutionary UU Multicultural Ministries (DRUUMM), an organization for professional UUs of color. She has made a big impact on UUA thinking about racism, and in the process she herself has become transformed.

"So many of my prejudices about other people of color have been shattered," she says, "finding that our differences aren't so big after all.

"As an Indian person, I've been so suspicious of organized religion, and Christianity in particular. Some of the trainings I attended were in Christian settings, and this was a huge challenge. But I've found out that Christianity isn't what it's been made into. Jesus was a great change agent, a great prophet."

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Transformation Story: UUA Antiracism Thinking

T

he seed from which today's antiracism initiative sprouted was planted 20 years ago, when Ronald Reagan was elected president and conservatism and the religious right were ascendant in the US. The agonies and triumphs of the Civil Rights era seemed distant.

It was a complicated time for Unitarian Universalism. Membership in UU congregations, plummeting for a decade, was finally showing signs of bottoming out. The Rev. O. Eugene Pickett, UUA president at the time, says that for a decade almost all the association's energy had been devoted to financial struggles, "survival, really."

Times were so hard that UUA departments had been consolidated, the staff for district work had been cut drastically, and the social justice department had been cut to only one person.

Since then UU church membership has been growing, and so has the commitment to racial justice. They have taken many forms over the years as thinking has changed dramatically, and often stormily. Racism excites passions, and passions have run high as people with differing perspectives have struggled to steer the course. Twenty years ago, the staff for racial justice was a fraction of one person, and it remained so for years; for a while, efforts to address racism operated under the limiting concept of urban concerns. Ten years ago, the resources had grown, but the focus was on increasing diversity, far from today's aim of dismantling institutional racism.

The storms are rarely visible from the church pews but passions continue to run high among JTW insiders, activist supporters, theologians, ministers with varying points of view, and the leadership group on the UUA staff and in volunteer committees. There have been an assortment of lightning rod issues:

Congregational polity: Many ministers and some other critics have complained that JTW violates the bedrock UU principle of congregational polity, in which each congregation is independent and no central authority can make rules. These critics assert that by setting out to transform congregations the UUA is acting like a central authority, not the service organization it's supposed to be.

"Leaders are elected by the people they serve, to lead," responds Davidoff, twice elected moderator. "If advocating seems top-down, it seems to me that this is the rule of leadership. If it seems like a good thing to do, why do you care where it came from? Do you want to have an argument, or do you want to do something?"

Many critics also assert that the JTW wants people to sign on to what amounts to a creed, a statement of faith in a particular approach to racial justice.

"People want to argue about semantics instead of reality," responds Hoover, "and that's what I want to talk about: Are you committed to having an authentic culture in which benefits and privileges are available to everyone?"

Black/White vision: The UUA's view of racism is rooted in the abolition movement; the civil rights movement reinforced it. In recent years, reflecting demographic trends, an increasing number of Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and others who have experienced racism have come into the UU movement to find themselves invisible in the UUA's antiracism thinking. The Latino/a UU Networking Association (LUUNA) has vocally sought to change this and still thinks the JTW leadership has work to do to take into account the experience of Latinos as people who think of themselves as neither black nor white.

"While we're trying to be more inclusive, some of the antiracism analysis has not changed," says LUUNA President the Rev. Patricia Jimenez. "In reality, almost everybody is a mixture. Where we don't even begin to go is the children."

Because of interracial marriages and adoptions, the children attending RE classes in many UU congregations are a far more diverse group than the adults in the sanctuary; immigration and intermarriage trends ensure that the overall population will become more diverse--and more mixed--in coming decades.

"As a chaplain," says Jimenez, "I work with families where one parent is black and one is white. How do you help the kids who want to identify with both of their parents, to love and honor both of them?"

Training issues: Several elements of the extensive antiracism analysis trainings conducted for UU leaders have inspired major contention. Until recently, the UUA paid the interfaith Crossroads Ministries to lead the trainings; to many critics the Crossroads-led trainings flew in the face of UU history, theology, and principles. Others have complained about the tone of the trainings.

"I wish we could be both antiracist and anti-righteous," says Gary Smith, the UUMA president. "There are people in the leadership of antiracism who are taking it upon themselves to say who is right and who is wrong."

But Smith allowed that the Jubilee World workshop conducted for his congregation in 1998 was very different in tone and has led to continued interest. He says it has inspired the congregation to form an antiracism task force and hold further antiracism events.

Meantime, JTW leaders have finished shaping a uniquely Unitarian Universalist analysis of racism; in December, Faith in Action and other UUA staff members, with no further support from Crossroads, began conducting analysis trainings based on it. The first staff-led training received uniformly positive reviews, unlike the contentious responses to the Crossroads-led trainings.

The most contentious issue in the last year stemmed from a workshop called Why Antiracism Will Fail at the 1999 General Assembly. It was conducted by the Rev. Thandeka, a theologian who teaches at the Meadville/Lombard Theological School, the UU seminary in Chicago, and who is aggressively critical of JTW. Most JTW leaders are just as critical of Thandeka's thinking and are troubled that some Jubilee World workshops have been canceled or postponed by congregations that have heard about her presentation.

Says Davidoff: "People who don't want to think about white racism and white privilege can hide behind Thandeka's power wall. All they have to do is embrace 'It won't work' and reject it. It provides them with cover."

The Rev. Mark D. Morrison-Reed, cominister of the First Unitarian Congregation of Toronto, whose 1980 book Black Pioneers in a White Denomination helped renew UU interest in racial justice, takes a mellower view than many.

"To my mind," he says, "it's healthy that we have a diversity of opinions, consonant with our religious values. And it's good that we don't have a monolithic black-white voice. I find hope in the turmoil."

Resources: Hoover, the Faith in Action director, is the most powerful voice among many JTW supporters who assert that the UUA has not spent enough on fighting racism and other oppressions.

When Faith in Action was created, Hoover says, "We said we are going to need substantially more resources so we can take this into the congregations. The day came for us to do that, and the resources weren't there. We had folks all excited, all charged up. And then we wondered why we stumbled."

Adds Dias: "This is such a critical time right now. We don't have the structure to do the strategy and implementation work that's needed. I definitely think it needs more resources now."

The antiracism seed planted 20 years ago was a consultant's audit of racism in the UUA Board of Trustees and administration. Pickett, then UUA president, calls the audit's findings sobering. "They came in with 32 recommendations," he recalls. "They didn't give us very high marks." Pickett says that in two years 20 of the 32 recommendations had been followed, starting with the UUA's first affirmative action policy. "We were a pretty lily-white headquarters staff then," Pickett says.

Before the audit, he says, racial justice had not been in the forefront of the association's concerns since the black power upheaval of 1968-79. "It was still a sensitive issue," Pickett says, "but enough time had passed that we could take another approach."

Many urban UU congregations were struggling to stay alive, and as a movement to help them gathered strength, racism's impact on cities became a focus. The informal movement inspired formation of the Urban Church Coalition in 1979, and its leaders helped to push for the 1980 racism audit.

In 1985, a grass-roots movement at the General Assembly led to passage of a resolution recommending formation of a Black Concerns Working Group and urging the UUA Board of Trustees to begin a process leading to a racially and culturally diverse UUA. A year later, a group of volunteers was appointed and given a budget of $5,000. General Assembly resolutions in 1992 and 1996 prepared the way for the sweeping 1997 resolution that has so accelerated the Journey toward Wholeness.

Clearly, the UUA's antiracism thinking is a transformation story still in progress. "This thing is not called Journey toward Wholeness for nothing," Davidoff says. "The journey is what it's all about."

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Transformation Story: Leon Spencer

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ven an old racial justice hand like Leon Spencer has found himself transformed by his antiracism work. A big moment came in the same analysis training for the Thomas Jefferson District transformation team that got into the soul of Leslie Takahashi Morris. When asked about his experience, the words came tumbling out.

"The recognition in that moment, in that setting," Spencer says, "was that Leslie and I looked at each other and silently communicated. We were fish out of water, and we found water. It was knowing what my work is--it's not working with white people and privilege but with people of color. I was flooded with ideas and emotions.

"What some of us yearn for is a larger community of color," he says, pointing out how isolated people of color can be in largely white UU congregations. "People of color need an opportunity to talk together and to work on our own issues. How can we honor and express the gifts we have to bring?"

Spencer has worked since that day to strengthen the people of color caucus within the district transformation team and to extend its reach. His eight years as a UUA trustee behind him, in April Spencer is to become president of the Thomas Jefferson District, a stronger UU, he says, because of his transformation and new sense of direction.

How far have we come on the Journey toward Wholeness?

"We are changing, but it's hard to trust it," Spencer says. "We seem to make progress, but then we slide back. We've been doing this for a dozen years, but I'm telling you, we're just getting started."

Tom Stites is editor-in-chief of the World.

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