I've been re-reading UUA President Rev. Susan Frederick-Gray's letter which was published on her Facebook page Saturday night. (Actually I've read it a few times, because I read a paragraph and stop then read the next paragraph and stop) I'm still trying to wrap my head around the whole situation. But it got me thinking about something that happened a couple of weeks ago.
At the end of the first day of the Commission on Institutional Change convening, we were asked to think about what kind of Unitarian Universalism we wanted. I still stand by my original answer (those who were there hopefully remember what I said), but I feel the need to expand it some. And, in order to do that, I need to quote Du Bois.
The first essay in Souls of Black Folk is titled "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" and begins with:
BETWEEN me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.
So...to expand on my answer at the convening...I want a Unitarian Universalism that doesn't see people of color as a problem. Because that is what the person who wrote the hate-filled letter sees us as.
What would it mean for Unitarian Universalism for people of color to be able to bring their full selves into this?
What would it mean for Unitarian Universalism to actually lean into a liberatory theology?
Unitarian Universalists have a choice to make. Choose wisely.
