Race to GA

In the opening ceremony of GA 2007, both UUA Moderator Gini Courter and President Bill Sinkford set the tone for this GA by signalling their intention that Unitarian Universalism deepen its self-reflection on issues of racial and cultural diversity and anti-racism.

As part of their joint opening address, Courter and Sinkford took a fascinating retrospective look at how resolutions of the General Assembly impact the life of the denomination. They raised up past resolutions on Women and Religion, on Serving People With Special Needs and on Diversity and Anti-Racism.

While celebrating positive change in all areas, both speakers showed a certain impatience with progress on issues of Diversity and Anti-Racism. For President Sinkford, "...progress has been agonizingly slow. There are too few people of color in our congregations."

After noting the fact that 54 percent of UU congregations have become Welcoming Congregations by participating in a special program to address how the congregation is relating to the LGBT community, Gini Courter wondered aloud why we have been so effective addressing one form of oppression and not the other.

Sinkford followed up the opening reflection with a call on Thursday for the denomination to revisit the issue of reparations for slavery. Seats squeaked as many of those occupying them squirmed in uncomfortable memory.

The Oregonian quotes Sinkford saying, "Many of our churches with beautiful steeples on the New England Coast were built with money from the slave trade."

Not surprisingly, this very public treatment of this long-submerged issue by the UUA leadership has created a considerable buzz among GA attendees. I've been in at least a dozen conversations with people looking back on some of the UUA's painful history in this area...and nobody talks to me.

Even the press covering GA has picked up this issue. Based on a series of interviews that extended well beyond the official UUA spokespeople, a writer for Oregon's largest circulation paper wrote a provocative analysis of diversity (or lack of same) within the UUA. While not particularly flattering of Unitarian Universalism, it does suggest that the UUA is trying to address the issue, which puts it in select company in this country. The article also references a weblog by a newly-ordained UU minister of color who shares his own reflections on these issue.

One hopes that the increasing prominence given to this discussion by the UUA will help UUSC in its own efforts to address issues of diversity from an anti-oppression perspective. As Joseph Santos-Lyons suggests in the article in The Oregonian, "A habit of liberals is to want to fix everything on the outside....But we don't turn inward and fix ourselves." Can we look inward and outward at the same time?