First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis

Matthew Johnson, Intern Minister
First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis
February 10, 2002

Journey Towards Wholeness

For almost forty years, we have used the language of a dream to express our aspirations for racial justice—"A dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed." There is a deep longing in the human soul for freedom, for equality, for human kinship. This is the vision we share, but we do not always live up to our own best hopes. I know I haven't. I've gone long periods of time without thinking about ending racism, and without doing anything about it. Less so much since I moved to the south side of Chicago over two years ago. But still sometimes. It is easy to forget about racial discrimination, to worry about something else on any given day. I know that I am not alone in this room on this count. I know that I am not the only one who has needed forgiveness for not speaking up at a racist comment, for making assumptions, for allowing, as Lena Williams described in our reading, black people to be invisible to me. For those of you in this room who are not white, who have children of color, it is not so easy to forget, I know. For those of us whose reminders are farther away than our own being or our own family, it can be a struggle. We are well intentioned. But we are indoctrinated by a racist society, keep apart from each other, and so unsure of how to escape the weight of history.

During Malcolm X's first trip to Africa, he has the realization that "if racism could be removed, American could offer a society where rich and poor could truly live like human beings."

If racism could be removed, Malcolm says. If that, we could do what Lena Williams asks us all to do, whether we are white or black, Asian or Latino, Native or some combination—to see difference without making judgments about a person's character based on that difference. If racism could be removed, we would take a giant step towards our shared dream—equality and freedom for all. If racism could be removed! If racism could be removed, we could all more truly live like human beings. Such is the dream. A dream of freedom denied, distorted, and debilitated by racism.

And yet the dream has propelled us; and yet we have made progress. We are learning. This progress did not happen by chance, and was not the product of long-term social trends. It happened because individuals and communities of dedicated people acted. Because people worked together and made a difference. This truth has not faded away because racism has faded from our alleged national consciousness. It is still the case that we can change the world, that we can overcome.

But we cannot do it by ourselves. The journey is too long and too difficult for us to walk alone. The great civil rights leaders—Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., they had organizations, networks of supporters. Even the so-called Lone Ranger worked with a partner. Most importantly, we cannot do this work alone because the work is all about building human kinship. It is about creating what Dr. King called the Beloved Community. It is relational work and we have to do it in relationship with other people.

I believe that it is this notion of working together that is the key to the journey towards wholeness, the struggle for racial justice. It we pay attention to how we are together, how we organize ourselves, we may find ourselves rising to the challenge and creating in the way we fight racism the kind of community we'd like to have when we've won.

To know what shape our anti-racist work needs to take, we need to know something about how racism functions. There are thousands of explanations, all with their merits. Let me share with you the one that works for me.

Think of a cycle. We begin with racial inequity, better known as institutional racism. Institutional Racism is the fact of racial discrimination and disparity in society. It results from a convergence of historical disadvantage, prejudices, and neglect. It is observable, measurable. The fact that only ten percent of youths in the Twin Cities Metro Area are African American or Native American, but seventy-six percent of homeless youth are members of these groups—this is evidence of institutional racism.

This institutional racism leads to separation. It creates and perpetuates segregation. It means that people of different races often don't live near each other, don't worship together, don't hang out with each other. Even in integrated schools—like the high school I went to—people of different races usually don't interact.

This separation leads to ignorance. We who are white don't know what it is like to be invisible, to be treated differently because of the color of our skin. We often don't understand the culture and even the language of minority groups.

Ignorance leads to fear and indifference. Its all too easy to fear what you don't understand and even easier to be indifferent when you just don't know. That fear and indifference allows and is the cause of institutional racism. And actual racists—mostly trained that way by their parents—keep this wheel turning with the grease of stereotypes and hateful violence.

So, we've got to stop the wheel from turning, not at one point, but at all four. And we can do it by forming coalitions.

Engaging in coalition work means that we cast our lot with those in the struggle, that we learn from other organizations as they learn from us. It means that everyone brings to the table their own history, their own culture, their own resources, and no one is expected to set that aside for the sake of the common goal. Coalition work is work that is stayed on freedom, born out of the wisdom that we can covenant together without having to be exactly the same. It is the same insight behind our free covenant together as a religious society.

Coalition work can take a lot of forms. I'm the young adult representative to a continental Unitarian Universalist coalition that includes the organizations of young adults, youth, people of color, women, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender people and our allies. We are working together to make our own organizations more aware of each others issues, to examine the way our various identities are linked in the struggle for freedom and in our own lives (many of us fit into more than one group), and to be a force for change in our congregations and the wider association. We've just begun, but the work is so exciting, so empowering, because we all share a vision of justice, and we are learning so much from each other.

Coalition work allows us to tackle institutional racism because it means we hold ourselves accountable to each other. We can influence public policy, provide services, and deploy our resources without being paternalistic because we'll be in relationship with communities of color. And by bringing more people into the struggle, it multiplies power like many streams forming a mighty river.

Coalition work mitigates separation because it teaches us that we are not so different. All of us here, whatever our race or ethnicity, have been pained by racism. In different ways and to different degrees, we have all been denied the freedom and dignity we could have if racism and oppression of all types were removed. Our experiences are not the same. But they are not so different that we cannot begin to understand.

Coalition work helps us to be OK with pluralism, to celebrate diversity, to combat ignorance. In a coalition, you learn to listen, to appreciate the spiritual and justice-seeking power of, for example, the spiritual "Ride On, King Jesus," without any expectation of making it your own.

Most important, I believe it is coalition work that will allow us to replace fear and indifference with courage and love. We can be stronger when we know we don't have to make this journey alone, we can be brave in the face of oppression when we link ourselves with others, and we can grow in love for all our brothers and sisters when we have made a commitment to another person to share the struggle. This is not the kind of thing where you snap your fingers and it is so. Friends, if only it were such. But we must do this work, we must enter into coalitions, partnerships, relationships.

Not easy—but is anything worth doing ever easy? If it were easy, we would have already done it. But, as I overheard Kendyl say recently, the trick is not making yourself perpetually happy, but making sure that what makes you unhappy is worth it. This is the source of true joy; giving your energy and time and money for the sake of a wider vision. This work isn't easy, but if we keep our minds and souls and hearts stayed of freedom then we will have the wisdom, power, and love to travel together on this journey.

Never sell yourself short—whatever our race, whatever our history, we have a contribution to make to the struggle.

After Malcolm X returned from his trip to Mecca, and began preaching a new message, one of universal dignity and justice, he tells this story:

I was in my car driving along when at a red light another car pulled alongside. A white woman was driving and on the passenger side, next to me, was a white man. "Malcolm X!" he called out—and when I looked, he stuck his hand out of his car, across at me, grinning. "Do you mind shaking hands with a white man?" Imagine that! Just as the traffic light turned green, I told him, "I don't mind shaking hands with human beings. Are you one?"

Are you one? If we will say yes to that—yes, I am a human being, and, yes, you, my neighbor, are also a human being—then we will have taken the first step toward achieving the dream that one day this nation will live out the true meaning of its creed—all are created equal.

Stay on freedom! We must hold fast to our faith that freedom is a house large enough to hold every human being. This is the faith that matters. As Martin Luther King Jr. said at the March on Washington 39 years ago:

With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

May it be so; may it be so because we have worked for it.

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Choral Prelude: Deep River

Opening Words

Welcome and come in. Come into this house of hope, this house of beauty, this house of faith. You are welcome here. Come in, but do not come alone. Bring with you into this house your greatest hopes; your vision for a life of meaning and a world of peace. Bring into this house, also, your greatest fears, the despair of a vision denied, a world of violence. Bring it all here, and join with us in the ultimate quest: to create together the strength to turn from our fears to our hopes and to build the world we wish to live in.

Our strength to make such a turn rests on faith. Faith not in particular formulations of supernatural propositions, but in the dignity of the human being. For all our faults and fears, we are creatures capable of beauty, and truth, and love. For all the ill of the world, we have faith that although the moral arc of the universe may be long, it bends towards justice. We have faith that our vision of full equality, freedom for all, genuine human community is not idle fantasy but is in fact the deep and persistent calling of our being back to our true selves.

And so we begin; we begin our days, we begin our work together. We know the journey may be long, but we also know the destination is righteous. It is with such a hope and such a faith that we light our chalice this morning, a symbol of the enduring flame of courage and justice.

Chalice Lighting Lars Carlson

Greetings and Announcements Linnea Asp

Chorus: "City Called Heaven"

Reading: "Let America be America Again" by Langston Hughes

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)


O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark? 
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?

I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek--
And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.

I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!

I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean--
Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.

Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home--
For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."

The free?

Who said the free?  Not me?
Surely not me?  The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay--
Except the dream that's almost dead today.

O, let America be America again--
The land that never has been yet--
And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME--
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.

Sure, call me any ugly name you choose--
The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

The redemption of our lives and communities begins when we join together in free associations. This congregation is such a place, and its freedom depends on the support of its members and friends. In such a spirit, the offering will be collected while the chorus sings the Appalachian folk song "Every Night When the Sun Goes In." During the offering, the children may depart for their classrooms.

Offering: "Every Night When the Sun Goes In"

The children may depart for their classrooms during the offering.

Reading: From "It's the Little Things" by Lena Williams Kendyl Gibbons

Lena Williams, a reporter for the New York Times, wrote her book, "It's the Little Things" as a description of the everyday actions and attitudes that agonize, annoy, and separate the races. These words are taken from her first chapter:

[The Reading]

If we are going to stop taking away part of people's identity, if we are going to stop treating blacks as an invisible people, we are going to have to embrace difference in a much deeper way. When people used to an Euro-American culture, as most of us are, are plunged into another culture, it can be uncomfortable. Imagine for a moment the reverse, imagine if your culture was not dominant and you had to swim through difference most of the time. Part of accepting difference means that what we have abandoned, others have transformed. Many of our ancestors, like ourselves, had the opportunity to reject theologies they found fruitless. Most blacks did not have such an opportunity; instead, they transformed the "Master's religion" to cohere with their own experience. "Ride On, King Jesus" is one of the most important songs out of that tradition. In code, it refers to the coming of justice and the triumph of righteousness, that no man—no slave owner—can hinder. Let us hear it in that spirit that hope which is the ground of all faith, regardless of differences in theology.

Chorus: "Ride On, King Jesus"

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And may we now sing together Hymn #153. The chorus will sing the first verse and then we will all join in.

Hymn #153: "Oh, I woke up this morning"

Closing Words

We extinguish this chalice, but not

the warmth of community

the light of truth

or the fire of commitment

These we carry in our hearts until we meet again.

Go from this house of hope, this home of beauty,

knowing that our call is great

to bring freedom into the world.

And knowing that our power is just as great

we can speak up

we can reach out

we can act for justice.

Our postlude this morning is an affirmation of this power in each of us

and a reminder of the violence, the pain, the tragedy that lives in the world if we do not act.

The choice belongs to us all.

Choral Postlude: "One Breath"