Video is here: https://media.oregonstate.edu/media/t/0_uxj5pqlk
Colorful Spice Communion I designed that miraculously always comes out tasting good.
Good morning. It’s really been a treat being here and knowing some of you over the last 2 days. As new policies are taking shape in our UU communities from the crisis we have gone through and are still going through, we can easily forget that culture is trickier to navigate and change. And over the last few days, we as a church, have had to unravel what our welcome really means.
I come from the Philippines, a country with 7,641 islands now. We thought we only had 7,107 until our scientists discovered 534 more islands last year. More beaches, more fun! Our land size has always been bigger than the United Kingdom or New Zealand. We have been host to an estimated 1 million American immigrants, many of whom are overstaying. Perhaps this is the reason that the number of Americans renouncing citizenship has risen at least 18 times the figures of 2008 . I mean you discover beaches with warm weather, and if you learn to stay away from the very very few islands that do get storms, you might even renounce your whole life just getting lost with a people so hospitable. We don’t live in opulence but we live in abundance, where people treat you no different for your uniqueness, that is, with lots of questions and curiosity to be in relationship with you.
"The US government decided to increase the tax for renunciation of US citizenship over the last few years, even before Trump. “America charges $2,350 to hand in your passport, a fee that is more than twenty times the average of other high-income countries. [What, you thought only communist governments want to keep their citizens inside, misinformed and ignorant?] The U.S. government has collected over $12.6 million in fees since the fall of 2014, after hiking its fee to renounce citizenship by 422%.”[1] The Philippines has been a target of US media, keeping us a secret from others as a favorite place for high-flying Americans. Big named Hollywood stars hide out there. Do we build a wall? No! We’ve had a long history of welcome.
About 70,000 years ago, humans have walked our lands. Then we lost so much of our history, but we have relics like in 900 AD we had Sanskrit in our writings and even now it lives through our language, in 1200 AD Arabic languages came to us. Ours is an Open Sea Spirituality. But no, we are not doormats.
When the first colonizer, Ferdinand Magellan came, he was immeidiately killed. And we have been kicking out colonizers a dicator and a plunderer --- the Spanish, the Americans, the Japanese, fomer presidents Ferdinand Marcos, and Joseph Estrada only in the last 100 years. Yet despite this, we have welcomed more than a thousand Jews fleeing the Holocaust, half a million Vietnamese fleeing your war in the 70s -- we put them in the beautiful island of Palawan. And many more refugees had been welcomed, the Russians, the Chinese, the Koreans, and recently, the Rohingya Muslims from Burma --- all 6,000 of them who had been starving at sea for 2 months. Many Americans who seek refuge in our country are retirees and some are at risk of homelessness, and Americans don’t like to have refugee status. They don’t even want to be called immigrants, they invented the word expats.
Our colonizers failed to see the sophistication of our radical hospitality. Yet now we call for radical hospitality to defeat present evils. Our colonizers saw our communal living and said we had no sense of self. Now under threat of fascism, you call on all to test boundaries in shaping beloved community. Our colonizers saw different tribes and thought we lacked order but empires soon learned as they toppled around the world that diversity is what makes us ungovernable and resilient.
A few days back, Huffington Post reported, “More than 50 social justice organizations have united to form a new coalition to combat injustice and fight for equality on behalf of all marginalized groups. The newly-formed group called “The Majority” includes organizations like the Black Lives Matter network, NAACP, Fight for $15, Indigenous Environmental Network, Black Youth Project, Dream Defenders, Asian Pacific Environmental Network, Familia: Trans Queer Liberation Movement and more. Together, they plan to unite activists across all fields to rally around shared values and intersecting struggles.”[2] I didn’t hear “The Majority” in your discussion in the Justice Council yesterday. I’ve started drafting this resolution for GA to mandate the UUA to start this multi-stakeholder movement. I’m glad someone else beat us to it. And I do hope the UUA becomes part of it.
I’m not sure I am the Filipino you are used to hearing or the if this is a picture of the Philippines you had been used to. There’s more. The Philippines gender gap, male versus female in opportunity, literacy, and leadership, has become so close to equal, with males moving closer to the level of women that, according to the World Economic Forum , it is 7th in rank on top of the world along with Scandinavian countries and Rwanda.[3] Our literacy rate is 95%. Our hunger problem has gone down to less than the hunger problem in the US. I’ve forgotten the figures but you can look it up --- it’s not an alternative fact. People seem to forget that about 1 million drug users, addicts and dealers surrendered and were not killed. Why do you think the US media with prizes and all would blame Duterte for 7,000 deaths? Because he doesn’t like colonialism and the oligarchy.
I worked for Accenture for 4 years, a company that repaired Obamacare --- can you believe that? Even Jimmy Kimmel made a joke on air once. (“Accenture unfucked Obamacare.) Accenture is in 120 countries and its clients include 90 of the top 100 global companies. And it is largest in Manila. And I was part of a team that would go to the US to tell Americans regrettably that they were losing their jobs to us. So I’m really still grapling with the concept of “privilege”.
Let’s talk about unraveling the tangled web we have weaved about our faith where we say we are welcoming and yet I see a majority of dominant culture. We say this is a welcoming faith, but welcoming to what? To people of different faiths only? How about people of different cultures, different styles, ways, and manners? So let me do you some really good service by being truthful and faithful to our covenant.
White "privilege", as it is defined here in the West, is regrettable to me, from the East, because it connotes being beneficiaries of racism and yet "privilege" has taken honorable connotations that whitewash the lives imperilled to make that happen. It is often told to me by a person who would like to subtly assert an ascendancy over me or peg me as recipient of mercy.
I don't see privilege with people living in a place of scarcity marked by competition, isolation, animosity, and fear. I don't see privilege in being the non-tasered, the non-penalized, the non-imprisoned, or non-ostracized. I won't call it privileged if you simply had human rights while others don't. Privilege is, perhaps I’m biased, being born in plenty and abundance where everyone is family and your neighbor is your friend, perhaps close to the seas where civilizations thrive, where women become presidents or fail and restart enterprises easily that they sustain families, and you don't need a $23 Trillion national debt to sustain this bubble. You have no idea how shocking to me are the number of diseases I need to get to know when I watch TV and all the advertisement sells medicines.
"White supremacy" to me is defined by a bubble of debt. There is no supremacy. You know this, I know you’re my allies. And it takes indebtedness to people of color / global majorities to sustain that bubble.
White fragility to me is defined by the inability of the white system of learning, defining, and knowing to see the standpoint of people in conversation. When we both say, "My mother is the most beautiful woman in the world", do we have to go to war? Or should we understand each other? Should I say, "For me" while you don't have to? See, there is a default.
Information on my country that comes through is incomplete. Your knowledge of the world is constrained by corporations. Your perception suffers gaslighting. Gaslighting is a tool used by predators and oppressors to keep their victims misinformed, powerless, and confused. It’s like having a lover that is keen on grand gestures of flowers, singing, and poetry, but does not make you feel safe and loved.
White people are gaslighted by the system. How can white people not see they are oppressed while their country is colonized by corporations with no loyalty to "America First".
And now our churches continue to resist change as people of color feel gaslighted. Our churches seem to gaslight people of color by minimizing our presence on the walls, in our hymnals, and on our art, denying just and due credit to the heritage of counter-oppression which brought us our 7 principles. Our churches seem gaslighting people of color by aligning with white people to make us feel like outsiders undeserving of bringing our lineage into worship, by telling us we are welcome but our style is not, that we are welcome but our ancestors are not, that we are welcome but our gods are not, or that our temperament is not.
Our churches may be gaslighting people of color by saying this church is about everyone who comes and beyond, yet do not act as a community against the invasions and the bomings in other nations. Our churches say that our principles are about respect for all beings and yet we can almost believe that the white race is the majority of the world by looking at who speaks at the pulpits, whose music is often sung, whose words are often quoted, whose poetry are often spoken.
Our churches are able to if they wanted to bring justice now by confronting these naked truths and creating a model of a just world within our churches now. Let us invite the truth in our churches, how about just inviting people to speak even if they are not members but they led a movement or a solution in community? How about just giving free spaces to people of color events of any kind? What are we afraid of? That people of color do not know how to handle power? Or that people of color have no competence in leadership? Dear friends each of us, you are one of many races, not one of us need be most of all. It is time to unravel the comfortable assumptions weaved at the expense of justice.
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[1] Erratum: I had said the tax rose 18x. It should be the number of citizens renouncing rose 18x. https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2016/11/11/more-americans-are-renouncing-citizenship-but-not-over-the-election/#7ca89f5349b5
[2] http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/more-than-50-organizations-unite-to-launch-nationwide-social-change-campaign_us_58e3d002e4b0d0b7e1653798
[3] http://www3.weforum.org/docs/GGGR16/WEF_Global_Gender_Gap_Report_2016.pdf
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