Dear White People
Offered as a short reflection one Sunday morning after a denominational conference to First Unitarian Society of Denver.
There’s a quote printed and sitting in one of the clear display frames right outside the doors of this sanctuary that I noticed a couple of days ago.
It’s attributed to Lilla Watson, an Aboriginal activists in Australia and reads:
“If you have come here to help me, go home. If you have come here because your liberation is bound with mine, then let us work together.”
And this very idea was the thread for me throughout GA. In workshops, worship services, and scattered conversations I felt a push toward a lens of collective liberation. The very UU conviction that we are an interdependent web of beings, and that your liberation is entangled with the liberation of an indigenous person on the literal other side of the world.
Or that when I participate in a #BlackLivesMatter action in Denver it’s not only because I want to help create more life-giving communities for people of color, but because I also need to dismantle white supremacy for my own sake, for my own liberation. Collective liberation says that white supremacy is toxic for us all.
One person who speaks and writes about this and popped up at multiple panels and talks at GA is Chris Crass. He’s a UU and has been an organizer and movement builder in multi-ethnic and multi-class coalitions for over 15 years. One of the things he is known for is offering white people tools for anti-racist work.
His final talk, which was really more of an extended conversation between him and the audience was called, “Developing Spiritual Leadership and Culture for Collective Liberation.”
The room was packed. People were sitting on the floor in the aisles and others were leaning in from hallway seats. For me, the image of this packed to the brim room was a pointed visual of a need or a hunger. I know I’ve been hungry for strong, white, anti-racist voices, especially people of faith, to join the larger conversation.
He said, and we said a lot of things that have stayed with me, but I will just share one. It’s a story about his own journey toward a culture of collective liberation.
In his late teens he was part of a radical organizing collective that worked toward liberation for all people. And one day, his girlfriend at the time and fellow activist told him she wanted to talk about sexism. “Oh yea, I hate sexism” he said. “No” she clarified, “I want to talk to you about your sexism.”
And Chris had a crisis of identity. His thoughts went something like: But I’m the one working for radical liberation, how could I be sexist. Sexism is real, but it’s out there.
At first, he couldn’t hear the critique in its larger context that described systems of patriarchy, cultural narratives that shape institutions, schools, family systems – systems that of course he was influenced by.
He described how difficult this confrontation with his own sexism was, but also that in that moment and the many moments of conversation and reflection and tears that followed,
time slowed down,
and as he said, “history opened up and became flesh.” Those moments of confrontation and expanding awareness became, in his language, a spiritual experience.
He began with a story about sexism, I think, because we’re all a little bit more comfortable talking about sexism, but he then shared a story about confronting his own racism, again, not just interpersonal racism, but confronting the reality that he has benefitted from and perpetuated systems fueled by white supremacy.
He described tough and raw and really uncomfortable moments, versions of which I’m sure he still has. But I think what he was offering to us is that when we’re in that moment of realizing our own unconscious perpetuation of oppression – either because it has been pointed out to us or because we caught ourselves, if we allow that sting just to be, we might feel time slow down and history become flesh.
And these moments we previously avoided may lead to a profoundly transformational and spiritual experience.