Who Owns the White Supremacy Conversation? Are We Done?

This article was written back in October 2017.

Unitarian Universalists have been known for decades to be at the forefront of liberal religion, but in the first half of 2017, the UU Association (UUA) has been rocked by a series of resignations and exposés as Christina Rivera, board member, seized a truth-telling moment to call out the culture of white supremacy in this centuries-old faith tradition.  Not only was the board able to name the problem in a meeting last April 2017, pundits and pedestrians alike began to voraciously engage in meaning-making with several attempts to define and express contempt against dominant culture which continued even through the General Assembly of 2017 in New Orleans.  Still, the tension between theology and counter-oppression have been largely downplayed, with questions and opinions on the front being more about values and beliefs and operational questions were hardly even alluded to, such as what concrete transformational steps might be.

Should Unitarian Universalism enable the toxicity of the insular nature of American politics to seep into our faith that no longer belongs only to America alone? All Souls Tulsa’s website recalls, "Unitarian Universalism has been called “The Quintessential American Faith.” And "Some of the same people who founded this nation, also were among the earliest American Unitarians and Universalists." Perhaps it is time to ask how UUs still want an identity that has become limiting of religion and damaging of humanity.

The level of whitesplaining on what UU identity is assures me it is a colonial religion. The level of sterling names in theology along with MDivs and PhDs tell me this faith has been modeled after the corporate pyramid which has been modeled after empires, thus the term “corporate empire”, where there is a top and a bottom, and more importantly, the way to the top is paved with scarcity and not abundance. Leadership as a scarce commodity is the ideology.

It also tells me that this faith is not yet transcending belief as it cannot transcend culture. We have been too easy on ourselves to say we can take a Buddhist, an Atheist, a cult follower, and anyone else, so long as they adhere to our 7 principles and keep to our covenants. As I answered my mom who asked me if we took in Satanists, “Beliefs are of no use, it is practice we count on.  Even Satan will be bound and gagged in this church.”

But people of color continue to feel bound and gagged here.  As an Asian, I am saddened to have witnessed only about 3 instances Asians were made prominent in the whole week from Ministry Days to GA, and in all 3 instances, these Asians did not have a chance to speak their minds:  Rev. Leslie Takahashi was named moderator for the Berry Street Essay, which clips her opinionating powers. Sana Saeed was at the GA closing day worship service to read the words of Naomi Shihab Nye.  I, myself, was highlighted and introduced with much glee from the audience, but not to be heard.

Empire is clearly present and this is most evident in terms of who gets to define our faith and the center of our conversations.  Tribal pride still marks the rhetoric of Unitarians when on the pulpit, people still say, “UUs are about” one thing or the next.  The lack of cultural fluency is appalling for a faith that proclaims to be transcendental and inclusive.  It is like having left-handed language for the right-handed mind and they have no clue how relatively situated they sound.  The pretentious impartiality also known as objective or empirical language has seeped into our conversations.  And conversations are the units that make up right relationship.  Without partial positions out there disclosing our situatedness, there are no real conversations to be made.

DRUUMM’s Asian / Pacific Islander Caucus in the Bay Area met for the first time in 3 years last week.  To me, it feels like it has been silenced by the system into believing that it is doing collaboration work with the UUA when it does not even “harvest the power” of confrontation.  It has allowed the silencing of “other voices” in favor of white supremacy being “reduced” to black oppression.  However, giving Black Lives UU an enormous amount of resources and airtime barely scratches the surface of the complexity of white supremacy and its accompanying ills in the neoliberal hetero-patriarchal capitalist global hegemonic system. It is a feasible lie to equate white supremacy with black oppression because the latter is a monstrous historical injustice that has gripped the imaginations of liberals and caused unfathomable concern among its allies and resolving and healing it will be a huge manifestation of justice that will be felt far and wide.  But it will not even begin to unravel white supremacy.

White supremacy has been so downplayed in the last GA as almost equated with black oppression as it is not even clear how talking heads had been decided on in favor mostly of black and white leaders, with very few Muslims, Latinos, Asian / Pacific Islanders, and multiracial people. My question is why aren't we, the "others" in this binary, not siezing our seats from white people? Where are the muslims, for instance? Blacks and Muslims have long suffered direct violence in the USA, and even outside of the USA where Black or Muslim Americans are considered beneficiaries of US colonial power, benefitting from the higher currency value of the dollar, enjoying better purchasing power, and getting first dibs at American education and business.  

It is not just white people who have enabled the GA, the UUA, and our congregations; we all did. And I hope that is clear.   The main problem was that the negotiations for the seats at the table of power --- the board, the UUA staff, the committees were preempted. The co-presidents came out with an announcement of a great leap forward from the past in terms of percentages offered to people of color.  The Robert’s Rules of Order did not help to foster collaborative thinking in which a person with a conundrum could ask for consideration, disruption had to place, and a person had to offer solutions only in responsive resolutions which blocked confrontation of the major question that we all avoided to ask, “How do we share the table before us?”  Asking is confronting.  If we wanted to get the answers we have never heard of, we need to ask questions we have been afraid to ask.

----

The Rev. Tet Gallardo has been the UU Minister in the UU Church of the Philippines' congregation of Bicutan since 2013.  She was also the Balazs Scholar 206-2017 at Starr King School for the Ministry.  She currently serves the consulting group of the International Council of Unitarians and Universalists (ICUU).