Vessel has already posted a great response to John Katz’ recent UU World article defending UU culture, so I’ll just focus on one sentence:
If non-whites can meld so easily into our snob-culture that it becomes invisible even to them, then someone please tell me what we’re doing wrong.
Really, you don’t see any barriers to entry, race or otherwise, into a culture of members who are predominantly white, well above the US median income, and where graduate degrees are often the norm? Next you’ll tell me that Token Black proves that South Park, Colorado is a diverse, multi-cultural, multi-class town.
As long as Stuff White People Like reads like a detailed sociological study of UU culture—at least the younger end of it, where there is a younger end—we’ll continue to have a problem living out the diversity we’d like to embody.
Bravo! Amen!
It’s a culture. Like others, that’s legitimate.
The question is… is that what “we” want? To be an ethnic church?
Or can we (do we really want to?) open the doors to other subcultures that would like to share our theological openness?
Mark Morrison-Reed’s asked that question (PSWD’s District Assembly keynote–2010). He said, in essence, that it’s not racism that’s at the root of our racial lack of diversity, but culture/ethnicity… and that given the markers of our ethnos, the number of non-whites in our pews and pulpits makes all the sense in the world. (Increasing higher level education almost perfectly tracks the agonizingly slow progress in our outreach to Americans who are Black and Latino/a…).
Funny–he more or less let us off from our generational self-flagellation for racism, and said that there was far harder work to be done if we really wanted to be more diverse; we’d have to accept actual diversity, not simply people whose lives, interests and outlooks look like ours.
There is a third prong I see to these observations that neither he nor others have made–which would be entirely in keeping with Unitarian culture from way, way back. That would be to actively create the kinds of educational opportunities that people lack in this country (due to class and race…), making them available and accessible in ways that higher education isn’t now (ruinously costly…). In short, grow more people who are likely, because of their advanced educations, to be more like us.
The easiest path is to do nothing, look the other way, and pretend that it’s about race–and about our racism and failures there. No major cost in dollars, nor in having to crack open the culture walls…
Having only one foot (no Birkenstock on it) in that stereotyped culture, I’d personally opt for the hard work of becoming multicultural… as well as figuring out how to make more education available to more people….
Accepting actual diversity isn’t just harder work than anti-racist self-flagellation, it’s also more fun.
Well, what do you mean by accepting actual diversity? What do you do with people who are culturally very different from you? How do you sit and eat dinner with them if your world views are really different? Give me some examples.
Hmm, good question.
I think I mean embracing the diversity you actually encounter, with people you actually meet, as opposed to big talk about welcoming people you’ll never have occasion to meet. Does that make sense?