In the meantime, the more delightful and interesting readings I have had at other blogs, UU and otherwise, are these:…

Also, I don’t recall who it was that made up the organizational name using the letters of DRUUMM, but as a member of DRUUMM (and its current steering committee), I thought it was pretty rude. I am not the type to walk around looking for offenses, but that one definitely took me by surprise.

Not to get all overedumicated about it, but even though I’m not a big fan of the whole modernist progress metanarrative, I can’t believe these two orgs would have us go back to “separate but equal.” Yowza!

As for your question about DRUUMM posed to Kermie, the answer is in fact no, white people are not allowed to join DRUUMM. But this isn’t unfair, because non-whites aren’t allowed to join the new UU White Allies group. So there is balance. Balance = fairness. I learned this from watching cable news. Now that we have two race-based UU groups that discriminate membership based on skin, I am convinced that we are headed in the right direction toward becoming an anti-racist, multicultural religious denomination. It’s about time someone came to their senses and realized that the best way to promote racial understanding and reconciliation is to divide into two racialized camps and schedule extensive ideologically-charged programming around our respective in-groups, rather than seeking healthy interaction.

By the way, I just finished reading that Thandeka article. Really good stuff, thanks for pointing it out. I don’t quite agree with all of her conclusions (I think there are other stories and experiences that are left out), but I really feel like I learned something new and important about white people in America. And that is definately NOT something I can say everyday. Heck, I don’t even remember the last time I was able to say that. I’m going to pay closer attention to her stuff in the future, and I’m gonna start recommending her more often to others. I was also interested to learn that Archbishop Desmond Tutu gave her the name Thandeka, that kind of redeems it in my mind. I’d sort of thought it was an ego thing, like all the other celebrities who just go by one name (Madonna, Prince, etc). But if Archbishop Tutu, who is one cool guy, gave me a name, I’d damn well use it too.

This whole education clause thing (including both the things you pointed to here and Philocrites’ recent thing) has had me thinking all week. Man, this seems really relevant to things going on in my own life right now. Each generation of my family has been more educated than the last (including my wife and I), and we’re downwardly mobile (careening down a precipitous cliff, as a matter of fact). I don’t even know where to begin sorting out the issues of class, education, and poverty/wealth that are so complicated and yet immediate at this point.

One would think that if one wanted to be “accountable” to the Diverse Revolutionary Union of Underage Maoist Missionaries, that one would just join the damned thing, wouldn’t one?

Why would one need to join a separate, pseudo-subsidiary white organization? Does DRUUMM not welcome (voiced lowered to whisper here…) white people? Exactly how undiverse is DRUUMM trying to be?

[FYI: If anyone else uses the (previously secret) meaning of DRUUMM, they owe me a quarter. And a slice of pie. Clairvoyance has its price.]

Oh, but he does exist! He does he does! His name is Mr. Gruff, the atheist goat who love coffee instead of God. He even has his own t-shirts! And you can make him out of origami!

Yes, Jeffrey, there is a grumpy UU humanist. I found him myself on the internets!

That was brilliant !

joe bageant

I won’t furnish that hypothetical list, however. For one, just the idea of such a list makes me literally queasy, it’s almost like blacklisting or some similar nasty attack method. God, I hope we never see lists of “tainted UUs” over ANY issue circulating in UU circles, what an awful, awful prospect. I can think of no possible good that can come from calling out specific people who are way far gone with their commitment to damaging anti-racism, especially since as I said many are relatively young. Even in their extremism ARAOists are UUs and their worth and dignity needs to be respected, even when they have trouble reciprocating. What we need to do is dismantle the false ideas within extremist AR/AO, not attack specific individuals, most of whom are at least well intentioned.

The other, less strongly felt, reason I won’t furnish such a list is that I’ve seen the AR/AO community within UUism get incredibly nasty, and I’m not inclined to subject myself to that anymore. There’s a back history to this month’s discussions that goes back ten years and more, including interactions on now-defunct listserves and websites, and incidents at UU events from a broad spectrum, from GAs to YRUU gatherings. I’ve really learned that some UUs have serious limits about what they consider legitimate for frank and open-minded discussion, and while it’s been a sobering lesson it’s not one I’m looking to repeat yet again on the off chance that people will fail to be reactionary. The ARAOists who are inclined to attack have been by far the most aggressive, hurtful people I’ve seen in UUism, way worse than the most heated theist-atheist, language of reverance, welcoming congregation, political liberal-political conservative, or other debates for which I’ve been an observor or a participant. BIG DISCLAIMER: I’m not just talking generally, I have many specific interactions and individuals in mind; and there have been others who did not give in to reactionary impulses–if ARAOists have provided many of the worst examples of counter-productive extremism in UUism, this is in no way an indictment of all ARAOists or all potential efforts against racism and oppression (far, far from it). However, the failure of these more moderate ARAOists to police their own extremist colleagues has made many people unwilling to confront anyone from that subculture at this point.

There is a strawman angry UU Humanist who gets beat up all the time. He’s a crotchy old man who hates religion–especially Christianity–and demands that no one talk about God or the Bible or Jesus in his presence. He doesn’t really exist, though many UUs seem to think he does. The ARAOists who are under (somewhat necessarily oblique) discussion here are not strawmen–they do exist, and I and others with strong social justice commitments but reservations about the dynamic and ideology of anti-racism/anti-oppression have been dealing with them in various venues for many years. But the nature of the situation precludes naming them as such. Better to simply describe the beast, and by their fruits shall ye know them.

There may be one exception to this unwillingness to name names. Within the UU AR/AO subculture there are a very small number of people who have manipulated AR/AO feelings to enable themselves to get away with various objectionable behaviors, such as extensive sexual harrassment. These individuals perhaps should be dealt with directly, even though it is difficult because some knee-jerk elements of AR/AO will defend them regardless of the evidence. But then again, the issue here isn’t their AR/AOism itself, but their usage of it as a cover for disturbing personal actions.

I’ve looked over the links you provided, to the Allies site as well Scott Wells’ site, and I can’t say I fully understand what they mean by “anti-racist,” nor what it is they hope to accomplish. I find the suggestion in their mission statement that they want to be “accountable to” DRUUMM (Diverse and Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries) a bit cryptic. As a white person and a person on an ongoing spiritual journey that I am content to label “Unitarian-Universalist”, I think the only one I have to be accountable to in respect to racism is my own conscience; but I feel that way about all of my ethical and spiritual beliefs - hence UU.

But it seems there is a larger issue here, in that DRUUMM desired an identifiable group of white people to turn to should they get into a political scuffle (based on their own statements in their contribution to the Allies’ organizational documents). I suppose this is something like a political candidate having various interest groups organized by for their campaign, such as “Hispanics for…,” “Farmers for…,” “Women for…,” etc., so that if they get hit on a specific topic they can count on their “allies” to stand up and say “Well I’m a Hispanic/Farmer/Woman, and I think Candidate Smith is a swell guy.” If that analogy holds, then I’m curious what the agenda will be that needs some backup. If it’s to offer more anti-racist educational programming at UU Churches or some such, that seems reasonable. Some of us may appreciate having that option, and they shouldn’t need any special backup for that. If it’s to make anti-racism a central plank or tenet of the UUA, then I’d be concerned, depending on what they mean by “anti-racist.”

It concerns me because I’m not sure really what they mean by anti-racist, other than the clarification from one commenter on Scott Wells’ site that anti-racist DOES NOT mean “not being racist.” I gather, therefore, that it requires something more active than changing my own outlook and actions; it requires, as you note Chutney, a sort of evangelism, meaning convincing other people to think as you do. I know that there is a purported definition of racism that defines the term as “race power.” Personally, I find that definition offensive and counter-productive, because it means I can never be anything other than racist, unless I am in some way powerless, or until white no longer equates to power. Now, I’ve never been followed around in a department store or pulled over by a cop for driving too nice of a car in too nice of a neighborhood, but I would think we would be less concerned with people THINKING racist than with people ACTING racist. I actually agree with the statement by the commenter you quoted that the idea of a “color-blind society” is kind of naïve, one that assumes we have all had the same experiences in life, which is obviously foolish. My goal is not to treat everyone as if they were white; it is to treat everyone with equal respect, not matter what their background may be. But I don’t think that requires me to embrace the idea that I am inherently a bad person because of the color of my skin or for the way that society treats me because of it – and I certainly would not want to be part of any religious organization that put that forth as a key concept.

There is a difference in me acknowledging and understanding the ways in which I benefit from being white and using that knowledge to treat other people better on the one hand…and on the other hand participating in some sort of self-hatred and public apologetics. I disappoint myself sometimes, and sometimes I disappoint others. When I do, I can try to do better the next time in both cases, and certainly apologize in the latter. But I am simply incapable, as a single, solitary human being (however privileged) of apologizing for the way we homo sapiens sapiens evolved, for the basic human drive to define in-groups and out-groups and to try to screw everyone who’s not like you. As an American, I’m ashamed of the way our government repeatedly lied to the native people of this continent, but I cannot apologize for beating them up and taking their stuff, because that’s humanity world-wide and history-long. I think it sucks, just as I think it sucks that humanity continues to sustain itself by causing suffering to animals just because that’s how we may have evolved and survived in the past. But here’s the thing: I would like UU’s to be vegetarians, but I would never ask them to take up vegetarianism as a central tenet of the UUA.

Not acting in a racist manner seems to me to be one of many moral imperatives I have in life, which all go back to doing unto others as you’d have them do unto you. I’m not sure the Golden Rule needs its own separate caucus within a humanistic and liberal religion.