dictated
by George Fox in Launceston prison, 1656, Quaker faith and Practice
19:32
Racism
within the Society of Friends is perhaps more damaging because it is
unconscious and springs from stereotypical assumptions: “And no
harm is meant by it. Harm may be done but it is never meant.”
Epistle
of Black, white, Asian and mixed-heritage Friends 1991 QF&P 10:13
“And
no harm is meant by it” not meant because it is not seen, it is
invisible, it is invisible power.
What
does it mean to be white? We should know because most British
Quakers are white, but do we normally think about that question? What is whiteness? It is the invisible power that white people
accept, and unconsciously use, in any situation where there are people
of different colour.
Over
the weekend a group of delightful, open minded, mostly white Friends,
typical of most meetings, was constantly brought face to face with
inequality. Inequality between races, inequality of opportunity for
people who have questioned their gender, people of working class
backgrounds. It was often uncomfortable, even painful, it was
challenging.
As
the second extract, above, says “no harm is meant by it” and
therefore it is not appropriate to feel guilt about what has happened
in the past, but it is appropriate to mourn the way we we have
unconsciously acted. Now, today, we need to wake to what has been
happening, to be aware. We need to repent, reform, rue what we have
done, what we have allowed others to do on our behalf, the, often
unconscious, inequality that we have allowed in our dealings with
others. Answering that of God in everyone is showing respect to
other children of God. Privilege is not something that is born to
some and not others, everyone should be treated as privileged.
Our
testimony to the world is that there is that of God in everyone, so
we will not fight with outward weapons, we will not lie, we will not
take more than our share of resource, and we will try to walk
cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.
Edwina
Peart, diversity and inclusion project co-coordinator at Friends House,
and Mark Russ of Woodbrooke, led the weekend, ably supported by Elders
and the Woodbrooke volunteers and staff. Edwina introduced the
concept of intersectionality; where social strata do not exist
separately from each other but are interwoven together. Thus the
term “black” comes to mean black men and recognises that the
forms of oppression experienced by white middle-class women were
different from those experienced by black, poor, or disabled women.
Edwina
is currently trying to establish a base line of where Quakers are
now, with regard to diversity and inclusion through a simple survey,
information about this can be found here:
http://www.quaker.org.uk/blog/diversity-where-are-we-now
Prof
Robert Beckwith introduced some idea of the history of racism. In
the Middle Ages there were attempts to bring an academic approach to
studying different human types by examining skulls, the study finding
that the ideal was that of a young Caucasians woman, giving the word Caucasian a special historical relevance. A later study decided
that Anglo Saxons were the nearest to ideal with the Sots, Welsh and
then Irish filling lower positions. A concept which fueled hundreds
of bar room jokes. Professor Beckwith, who is a BAFTA winning media
presenter as well as respected academic, told us about a situation in
which he arrived to take up his chair at a University but was
initially put to work peeling potatoes in the kitchens. Read more
about Professor Beckwith here:
https://www.canterbury.ac.uk/arts-and-humanities/school-of-humanities/religion-philosophy-and-ethics/research/jamaican-bible-remix.aspx.
Sabah
Choudrey http://sabahchoudrey.com/about-2/
led the second session on the Saturday. This is what Sabah says about
themself. “I am a magician. I’ve mastered the art of
concealment, and everything you see is an illusion. What you see is
not what you get. Some see a handsome gayboy, others see a pretty
faced lez. What I am, is carefully constructed, to emphasise parts of
me I feel that fit me, and hide other parts that I feel do not
belong.” They are very clever in this regard. They have a full mustache and bushy eyebrows. They are small and slight, so the part
of the illusion that I picked up was the first of the two above.
They appear to work on this as a major part of life. The point that
Sabah made very clearly is that our lives are not a debate. The
pronouns, man/woman, boy/girl, these are not our concern, only they
get to define, only they have the power to decide. For both Beckwith
and Choudrey our role is to be a gateway, never gatekeepers. We
experienced comfort and discomfort, some would keep a gate at the
point where someone who identifies as female gets access to women
only spaces, here we were not in unity.
Rev Lynne Cullens website:
https://lynnecullens.com/
Throughout
the weekend we constantly returned to the realisation that the way in
which class, gender, race, physical or mental impairment create
gateways are all just symptoms of the same malaise, the difficulty
that people have in treating others with the respect, dignity, love
that Jesus demanded of us, the need to answer that of God in
everybody. If sin is falling short then we have all sinned, can we
take such a realisation into the silence and hold it in the light?
Can we forgive ourselves and change our attitudes, give up our
undeserved invisible power, and gain the true power of community?
PH
