Isaac Smith:
There are a lot of Quakers for whom the quality of their worship is measured by the quality of the silence therein, to the point that “disruptions” — whether they come from children, latecomers, folks who are not neurotypical, or folks who don’t comport themselves in the manner of the white middle class — are regarded as annoyances. This is not just a mistake.
An AFSC interview with Oskar Castro:
Me as a Puerto Rican coming into Quakerism, I find a lot of white paradigms, silence in and of itself is not exclusively colonialism, but I think the way that Quakers sometimes lean into silence beyond the spiritual side of it, the conflict avoidance side of being a Quaker, these are the things that don’t necessarily resonate with me, culturally speaking
https://www.afsc.org/blogs/acting-in-faith/quakers-afsc-oskar-castro
Wow, this should be interesting! The podcast series intro is all we have so far but this NPR piece is dishing some of the details of what we’ll hear when this episode airs:
Despite the risks, Rustin felt it was his responsibility to be open about his sexuality. He traces that duty back to an experience he had as a black man in the 1940s Jim Crow South, when he took his place at the back of a segregated bus.
“As I was going by the second seat to go to the rear, a white child reached out for the ring necktie I was wearing and pulled it,” he recalled in the newly released audio. “Whereupon its mother said, ‘Don’t touch a n*****.’ ”
As Rustin tells it, here’s what ran through his mind in that moment after the white woman called him the slur: “If I go and sit quietly at the back of that bus now, that child, who was so innocent of race relations that it was going to play with me, will have seen so many blacks go in the back and sit down quietly that it’s going to end up saying, ‘They like it back there, I’ve never seen anybody protest against it.’ ”
Rustin was fired from his work with organizations like the Fellowship of Reconciliation and he often had to work semi-anonymously behind the scenes. The famous March on Washington that we remember for Martin Luther King Jr.‘s speech was Rustin’s idea.
One of his catch-phrases in speeches was that we should “speak truth to power.” When he worked with the American Friends Service Committee to write the famous 1955 pamphlet of that name, not only wasn’t he not listed as one of the authors, but the others concocted some ridiculous story about the phrase being some ancient Quaker saying. Shameful. I really want to listen to his story and can’t wait for the podcast!
https://www.npr.org/2019/01/06/682598649/in-newly-found-audio-a-forgotten-civil-rights-leader-says-coming-out-was-an-abso?fbclid=IwAR3eUSvE9RsHVjgQU3zCmDs6z49bIuK3ijTt1JBznV7BVzpekH7G2kwCm2c
Okay, it’s not quite so referential: Mike’s lifting up three books in September’s Friends Journal book columns that “help ‘white’ readers go deeper into self-awareness about the hidden dynamics of racism.” He also tells a little of his own story of color-blindness.
When my “white” friends said I couldn’t bring my “black” best friend to their lunch table, I shrugged and sat with him at a “black” table. On the minus side, when someone in the school parking lot shouted nigger lover, and my friend wanted to fight, I just told him I didn’t mind the insult. That was probably my first seriously hurtful act of “white color-blindness.” It took me decades to realize, to my shame, that it was he who was being insulted, not me.
https://universalistfriends.org/weblog/three-books-for-white-people
Johan Maurer starts with “it’s complicated” and goes on from there. A passage I find particularly interesting is his explanation of why looking at large-scale state-level atrocities like the stealing of native land or the kidnapping of millions of Africans is not just something to be done out of guilt:
Whether you believe in an intelligent Satan (along the lines of Peter Wagner’s ideas) or a more impersonal mechanism of demonic evil (Walter Wink), we shouldn’t pretend that such nodes just go away. Their evil persists. The basis for apology and repentance is not white guilt or shame or any form of self-flagellation. Instead, it is to conduct spiritual warfare against the demons of racism and oppression and false witness, to declare them off-limits in the land that we now share, so that we can conduct our future stewardship — and make our public investments— in freedom and mutual regard.
I’m drawn to the old notion of “The Tempter” as a force that leads us to do what’s personally rewarding rather than morally just. I think it explains a lot of internal struggles I’ve faced, even in simple witnesses. As Johan says, these massive injustices can’t just be undone but they need to be recognized for the immensity of their scale. I’ve also seen this weird way in which progressive whites can blithely disregard Native American perspectives on these issues. Listening more and waiting for complicated answers seems essential in my opinion.
Another good deep-dive for Friends interested in this is Betsy Cazden’s Friends Journal 2006 article, Quaker Money, Old Money, and White Privilege. It’s one I turn to every so often to remind myself of some of our monied Quaker norms. Johan gives a pass to William Penn but I think it’s important to remember that his colonial ambitions were deeply enmeshed in at least three different wars and conveniently served the political calculations of two empires, the perfect storm of an opportunity for a group of pacifist idealists.
https://blog.canyoubelieve.me/2018/11/quakers-and-native-americans-its.html
From Molly Sheehan, one of a small “gray wave” of Quakers who ran for Congress this year (she lost her primary bid):
When the marginalized cry out for compassion, they are not censoring anybody. They are fighting for their very right to exist. Nonviolent disobedience and rewriting the rules of civility is for these groups. It is our job, especially as white people, or those with more societal power and time to protest, to amplify the voices of the most marginalized.
https://millennialpolitics.co/redefine-rude-embrace-disruptive/
From the Peace and Disarmament Programme Manger for British Friends comes a plea for us not to be afraid of going back to Quaker roots and challenge the abuse of power.
Society’s values are so often in opposition to God’s purposes. Slavery used to be legal. Love between two people of the same sex was illegal in our lifetimes. Our economic system is based on greed and pays no heed to God’s creation. Nation states exist and act for their own enrichment rather than loyalties lying with the Kingdom of Heaven and working for the enrichment of all humanity. When being loyal to God’s purposes runs counter to what society expects it can get pretty rough. There may be persecution, though it varies a lot: from tutting, telling you off for being vegetarian, being given white feathers, right through to imprisonment, jails and the lions of the Colosseum.
We didn’t see much of the Hammonton Fourth of July parade this year because once again the kids were in the bike parade portion (all except Francis, who had a bad meltdown in the morning and stayed home with mom).
The bike parade was again sponsored by Toy Market, the independent toy store in town (supplier of much of our household’s Santa delivery). They had a table full of red, white, and blue bunting that we could apply to the bikes. We all had a lot of fun.
Notes for next year: a tandem extension on a adult bike looked like fun and then 7‑yo Gregory will be a good age for this (we should dig ours out from the back of the garage). Also: the parade has a dog contingent so maybe a much-calmer Francis will be able to be part of that next year (we’re due to pick up the service dog in 12 days!, eeek!!!)
