DISCUSSING RACIAL JUSTICE

Mary Morris Williams – NE Florida Chapter

This summer, Rich Lessard, Maryknoll Affiliate Board Chair, asked regional coordinators to help find facilitators for a reading group focusing on racial issues. Kathee Bautista, Los Angeles Chapter, and I agreed to take on this task. Based on the number of people who came to the first session, we added two small group discussion facilitators—Debbie Kair, New Jersey Chapter, and Mary Moritz, Northeast Florida Chapter.

The group began on Wednesday, August 5, at 3:00 PM in Florida and 12:00 noon in California. We had agreed to use one of Rich’s suggestions, a discussion guide developed by the editors of Sojourners magazine, “Christians and Racial Justice.” The four-week program, complete with literature, is available at www.sojo.net at no cost.

About 30 people joined our first session, which focused on the theological and spiritual understanding of racism from a Protestant perspective. Many Protestants believe in a continuing spiritual battle between heavenly forces and powerful forces of evil. Principalities or powers are evil forces which we need to recognize and against which we need to fight. This fight is a spiritual one we enter through worship and persistent prayer, conversion, and confession. The first set of articles points out the sins of racism, the idolatry of whiteness, and the assumption of white privilege. Jim Wallis of Sojourners tells us that the political battle will be more successful when we “go deeply enough with the spiritual struggle.”

We read that in the early years of the racial justice movement, leaders started in the small black churches with prayer and worship; people were sent out from these churches to engage in demonstrations, sit-ins, or marches. Over time the movement became “more and more a civil rights movement with a largely legislative agenda.” (“Exorcising an American Demon” by Bill Wylie-Kellermann) We can see clearly now that the civil rights movement was not able to go far enough—it changed the laws but it did not change the hearts of the people.

In our second session, we looked at the disparities in justice today that still affect Blacks and other persons of color—gaps in education, health care, criminal justice, housing, and wealth. Whites have enjoyed a privileged position with reliable assets which could be converted to provide education for their children, a secure back-up resource for unexpected problems, and seed money for business ventures. Many Blacks acquired assets like tools, equipment, buildings and livestock but were not able to raise capital against those assets. In some cases, their assets were not protected legally through property registers, land records, or contracts and could not be utilized for improving the lives of the family members (“40 Acres and a Mortgage,” Franklin D. Raines).

As I write this article, we are in the middle of the planned sessions. Kathee and I are preparing to examine articles and discuss Black/white communication. One article for this week examines a modeling method to show better communication skills by using an inter-racial pair to demonstrate interaction. This method needs careful structure, clear agenda, and skillful facilitators to create the best environment for this type of learning (“Can We Talk?” by Andrea Ayvazian and Beverly Daniel Tatum). The fourth discussion will center on racial reconciliation in the Church.

Kathee Bautista, a Professor of Special Education at the Azusa Pacific University located northeast of Los Angeles, has been our Zoom “guru.” Her familiarity with Zoom and her expertise with PowerPoint have helped immensely in preparing each discussion. I am a retired social worker, therapist, and teacher.

Our discussions have given participants a view of racism across the country through contact with members of other Affiliate groups. These sessions have helped us recognize the injustices that Blacks suffer because of institutional racism and have increased our dedication to work for justice. We encourage participants, and all Affiliates, to continue to pray, listen, study and learn, and then ACT for justice in our world.

NOTE: This article was published in the September/October 2020 issue of Not So Far Afield.