My Life as a White Person

This sermon was presented by Doug Trenfield on Sunday, February 28, 2016

I’ve been white my whole life. Many of you have been too. The awareness of my whiteness, though, has evolved slowly. As a white person, I have had the luxury of letting that awareness evolve slowly. Because I, like a large percent of white folk, I imagine, did not grow up or ever live in environments where my not truly understanding my place as a white person put me at risk, physically or in any other way. Not like the black woman I sat next to at a convention luncheon, a woman about my age from Galveston. She told me ­­ and told me like it was just a well­-processed funny story, one she often traipsed out at convention luncheons when sitting next to white folk ­­ that her mom taught her at an early age that when she goes into a room of people she doesn’t know, to find the white people and figure out who they are. Her life, her prospects for her future, her profession could depend on how well she did this, her mom told her. I was stunned. I’ve told this to friends who are people of color, and they have not found this remarkable. And I found that stunning as well.

Turns out, stories like this are common among those of you (not me) who identify as people of color. After the horrible murder of Trayvon Martin by a self­appointed neighborhood watchman in Florida, we’ve heard a lot about the talk, when a black father sits down with his son and tells him how to act around white people he doesn’t know, around police. Ta­Nehisi Coates writes about this in Between the World and Me. There’d be real fear in his parents, fear that someone would take away their children’s bodies, enough fear that his father would beat him if he misstepped, hurting the very body he feared losing.

And all my life, I’ve gone blithely into that room, not knowing that the eyes behind the darker faces took me in, measured me, judged me quickly because I might judge them quickly, and if I didn’t like what I judged, that I would bring harm. I’ve gone blithely into that room, aware only of prospects ­­ friendships, jobs, maybe romance ­­ and never was afraid. Well, not in the way people of color speak of it.

I’ve never thought of teacher’s judging my academic abilities based on my skin hue. Tim Wise in his memoir White Like Me writes of this. He was raised and schooled, thanks to happenstance and, for the seventies, fairly enlightened parents , in a multicultural neighborhood in Nashville. He had done little to distinguish himself academically, but apparently his whiteness was his ticket to advanced classes. The skin hue of his black friends, many of whom he admits were probably more capable than he, was there ticket to remain in regular ed or, sometimes, to go to special classes.

I’m sure this sort of thing happened around me in school. Even now, 41 years after I graduated from high school, the U.S. Department of Education reports harsh disparities between ethnicities in how discipline in schools is doled out, and multiple studies (for example, one by the Applied Research Center, suggesting racial bias when schools determine who will take Advanced Placement courses) show how race can influence educators’ judgments of students’ academic abilities. I’m sure it did when I was in school, but I didn’t witness it, because I was that well insulated. My parents were liberal college town folks, supporting vociferously the civil rights movement (though showing some disdain for the uglier side of that movement [I remember my mother, a supporter of Martin Luther King, saying that in a way he “asked for it”]). They didn’t set out to insulate me. But the system insulated me nonetheless.

I’ve been wanting to talk about this, race from a white viewpoint, for years, literally for years. I think it began when I discovered literature, and found myself drawn to the literature coming from people of color. They had something to write about. My people, white people, abdicated our ethnicity when we were accepted into the white club. We were no longer English­Irish­Scottish­Dutch­French­Italian­German, we declared. We were white, void of color and void of histories that reached further into the past than two generations. People with similar ethnic heritage to mine and with my skin hue (yeah, I mean white people) who cry out about reverse racism have never held sway with me. I’m more inclined to white folk like comedian Louis CK, who a few years ago was doing lots of bits on race from a white vantage. He said the following in one:

'Here’s how great it is to be white. I could get in a time machine and go to any time, and it would be f­ing awesome when I get there. The year 2? I don’t even know what was happening then. But when I get there, ‘Welcome, we have a table right here waiting for you, sir.’

Language and images get a little dicey here, so I’ll summarize. He said he would not go forward in time in his time machine because, “We’re gonna have to pay for this sh!+.” And it gets dicier. You get the idea.

But if you’re not familiar with how white privilege functions, and you’ve never been around people of color, when you hear of measures to bring people of color to our bounteous table ­­ affirmative action, for one ­­ something like reverse racism, as poorly coined as the term is, comes to mind. A student at West Virginia University, responding to charges of reverse racism at another southern college, wrote:

Reverse racism does not and cannot exist by definition. While racial minorities can certainly hold prejudices against white people, they cannot be "just as racist as white people" or "just as discriminatory as white people" because they do not hold the same economic, institutional and political power.

A friend of mine, a former student who’s working on her PhD at Florida State, would agree. She wrote, responding to a post on my FB feed: Yes, racism is systemic, but it's not bilateral. In other words, it only goes in one direction, and it always favors Whiteness. People of Color cannot be racist; we can be prejudiced and biased, but we are not evoking racism. That is because racism is anchored in systemically conferred power­­power being the operative notion. In racism, only White people have power (just like in sexism, cis­men have power, and xenophobia/nationalism U.S. citizens have power­­you get the point). Power is unearned influence that benefits one group (i.e., White people) over another group (i.e., People of Color). A simple example of power is as follows: You can hate your boss, and your boss can hate you. Certainly, you can hurt your boss' feelings, but only your boss has the power to fire you­­not the other way around. Likewise, when People of Color pit against one another, it's not racism­­it's internalized oppression. Because when we pit against one another, we pull each other down, thereby anchoring White supremacy.

For a long time, I wouldn’t talk about race, but ethnicity. I think most of us know by now, from any scientific standpoint, there is no race. The American Association of Physical Anthropologists has eschewed the idea of race. They wrote, in a 1996 position paper, "Pure races, in the sense of genetically homogeneous populations, do not exist in the human species today, nor is there any evidence that they have ever existed in the past." But the word race has crept into another very useful word, racism, which I’d hate to have to drop out of our discussion. Besides, our prejudices toward peoples are not just about ethnicity, but also appearance, specifically, and tragically for a large percent of our population, those features associated with people of African heritage.

But why has this been my obsession? If I want to vaunt my goodness, I’d say it’s because I want to do my part to understand and right centuries of wrongs. And though I do, I don’t think that’s why I’m obsessed. Is it guilt? I think, yeah, though we ­­ you others of my skin hue and having similar heritage (oh yeah ­­ white people) ­­ should do what we can to right wrongs, for the most part, I’m sure, we’ve done nothing consciously to further these wrongs.

So I don’t know. I don’t have any memorable encounters that would lead me to this.

These are the encounters with people of color as I was growing up that I remember. In 4th grade (yes, it took that long for there to be a memorable racial encounter), my nice little suburban neighborhood had its first black family, the Greggs. Kevin Gregg was in my class. He was fun to play football with, which is all I wanted in a friend at that age. The next year, he and his family were gone. Mom told me later that many of our neighbors made life difficult for the Greggs, so the Greggs up and left. At that time, 1966, black families were concentrated in, unironically, two areas of town ­­ Whiteley and White City.

Sixth grade. My sister Gail, five years older, the hippie in our family, brought home a black friend who was a boy. My father ­­ as I’d said, a staunch advocate of civil rights ­­ had never had race relations be so personal. The young man left. I remember there was yelling and stomping. And I remember my father standing over a seated Gail, looking as though he wanted to hit my sister. He didn’t. He wasn’t like that. But that’s how mad he was.

High school, ninth grade. I started at Northside High School in Muncie, Indiana, in 1971. The school opened a year before, rumor has always had it, to give a neighborhood school to the mostly white end of town. Town wasn’t big enough that Northside could exclude all black students, though. I had black students in my classes, but they seemed to have no interest in talking to me. But to be fair, I and my friends had no interest in talking to them. Or about them. Odd, but there was no friction that I knew of. Black and white just lived in skew, though unequal, worlds. At lunch, the blacks ate at one end of the cafeteria. So far as I knew, there were no rules that mandated this. It just happened. After eating, they played on their own end of the gym.

Eleventh grade, at a different high school, Larry Wilkerson broke my nose. No, no drama. We were playing flag football in P.E. I mention it only to bring up Larry, who was a thin bridge between the small group of black kids and my group of white boys (mostly boys). He had good weed. And was open to some good­natured kidding around.

I could go on, but not for very long, and it wouldn’t get more interesting. My point is that I ­­ and I think I’m typical, a type ­­ do not have much to say about my experiences with race, 4 even though, as I was growing up, the U.S. struggled with it mightily (and among whites, mostly unwillingly), and even though the black kids in my town would probably put race close to the center of the stories of their youth.

So I’m almost done with my sermon. And I haven’t given you a lesson, a homily. I don’t think a lesson or homily would be appropriate. I think it’s presumptuous that I, a white guy raised in suburban Muncie, Indiana, would have a lesson to give about race. My purpose in speaking today is to start a conversation. Would someone else like to speak on race? It’s hard to talk about, I know. What’re intended as observations can be taken personally, yes. But I think it’s important that we ­­ by we, I do not mean exclusively we at UUFHC, but all U.S. humans ­­ that we do talk about it. No one needs to presume to give lessons, but I think it’s important that we talk. Since I did not grow up around people of color other than African­Americans, I did not talk today about white­Latino relations. How are those different? How are they similar? Since I’ve spent almost all my adult life as a minority ­­ still white, though, so still a member of the more powerful class ­­ here in the Valley, I could talk about it. But so could most of you, white or Latino. And I’d love to hear the Winter Texan perspective on race here in the Valley.

The first reading today, Langston Hughes’ “Theme for English B” ­­ it’s connection is pretty easy to see. I’ve loved that poem since I first read it as a young teacher. Hughes, I think, gets at the subtler tensions between white and black, even though at the time of its writing there were much less subtle tensions between the races. He says:

Sometimes perhaps you don’t want to be a part of me.
Nor do I often want to be a part of you.
But we are, that’s true!
As I learn from you,
I guess you learn from me—
although you’re older—and white—
and somewhat more free.

The second reading, the sermon at the end of the novel (and movie) A River Runs Through It, is about what we can do when we don’t know what to do. Maclean writes, “And so it is that those we live with and should know who elude us. But we can still love them ­ we can love completely without complete understanding.” We may not understand one another because of our various differences ­­ gender orientation, race, ethnicity, social class. We can work toward understanding, but until we get even close to understanding, we can still love. And when we love, we listen.

Moving Toward the 6th Principle in Light of Ferguson

This sermon was given on 30 November, 2014, by Rachel Udow. We had an excellent group discussion afterwards, just between the sermon and the final hymn.

 

 Reading 1:

“The sixth Principle seems extravagant in its hopefulness and improbable in its prospects. Can we continue to say we want ‘world community’? ‘Peace, liberty, and justice for all’? The world is full of genocide, abuse, terror, and war. What have we gotten ourselves into?

“As naïve or impossible as the sixth Principle may seem, I’m not willing to give up on it. In the face of our culture’s apathy and fear, I want to imagine and help create a powerful vision of peace by peaceful means, liberty by liberatory means, justice by just means. I want us to believe—and to live as if we believe—that a world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all is possible. There is no guarantee that we will succeed, but I can assure you that we will improve ourselves and improve the world by trying.”

—Rev. Sean Parker Dennison, Tree of Life Congregation, McHenry, IL

Reading 2:
(This excerpt is from the most recent issue of UU World and predates the grand jury’s decision on Ferguson)

“As we tentatively enter the aftermath of this summer’s events in Ferguson, we are all choosing to whom we will listen, deciding which accounts we will believe. Such times of not knowing can be transformative, when something new has happened, or something old has been seen in a new way, and the official story hasn’t yet been written.

Times of not knowing aren’t my favorite. I like to feel well-informed and smart, and it is unsettling to realize how deep my unknowing goes. Right now a lot of white people are saying, “Let’s just wait for the experts to tell us what really happened. I recognize the impulse: to find someone impartial and fair, who knows the truth, so that we can know what ‘really’ happened.

Pew Research statistics show that 76 percent of black people don’t expect official investigations into Michael Brown’s killing to be of any help, while most whites think they will help. How do we move forward, in a nation with statistics like that?”

-       The Rev. Meg Riley, Church of the Larger Fellowship


 Sermon: Moving Toward the 6th Principle by Rachel Udow

This is a different sermon than the one I was planning to give a week ago: “A Grant Writer’s Guide to the Sixth Principle.” Fortunately, I tend to work best under pressure – which is a nice way of saying that I tend to procrastinate – and so I hadn’t gotten very far with my original concept before the grand jury’s decision on Ferguson impelled me to change course.

Our first reading, from the Rev. Sean Parker, begins: “The sixth principle seems extravagant in its hopefulness and improbable in its prospects…What have we gotten ourselves into?” I’m feeling this as acutely as ever after this week’s verdict and ensuing events.

Regardless of where individuals throughout the United States stand on the verdict, I don’t think there’s a person in this country who would argue that the events surrounding Michael Brown’s death and the aftermath have been reflective of a “world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all.”

In the face of the myriad ways one could unpack the relationship between Ferguson and the 6^th principle, I’d like to focus on one: the rallying cry “Black Lives Matter.” Black Lives Matter…I’ve been turning this over and over in my mind. To say Black Lives Matter implies that there is a need to say it – implies that we have a situation of Black Lives Not Mattering.  

In last week’s sermon, Emily referenced postcolonial and feminist theorist Chandra Mohanty, who said that “privilege nurtures blindness to those without the same privileges.” In my 29 years, it has never occurred to me to, first of all, think of myself as a “life” attached to one facet of my identity, and, second of all, state out loud that I matter as one of these lives. Let me unpack those two points.

The first point was that I’ve never thought of myself as a life attached to a facet of my identity. I have many “identity markers,” as we all do: White, Female, Daughter, Dog Mother, Friend, Musician, Employee, and Small Business Owner are some examples. Still, I think of myself primarily as “Rachel” and the unique configuration of identity markers that is me; I don’t think of myself as a “White Life” or any other kind of “Life.” Privilege is at work here; none of my identity markers has ever caused me so much trouble as to become particularly defining. As far as I know, nobody reads the visual manifestations of my identity – my skin color, for example – and feels threatened to the point of needing to kill me in order to feel safe.

The second thing that has never occurred to me is that my life does not matter. Of course it matters. Why wouldn’t it? I’m pretty sure this is what Mohanty was talking about when she said that privilege nurtures blindness to those without the same privileges. The statement “Black Lives Matter” is impactful to me because of my unfailing confidence in my own life mattering. While I’m painfully aware that injustice and inequality are rampant, I’m still able to be startled by the need to assert that the very lives of a whole race of people do, in fact, matter.

Yesterday morning, Melissa Harris Perry – writer, professor, television host, and political commentator – asked a diverse group of experts on her show to weigh in on the question, “Do black lives matter?”

Salamishah Tillet, Associate Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania, responded: “What does it mean to be part of a country that was predicated on black lives not mattering? Or mattering only in the service of property or service of maintaining the power of white, slave-holding society? It’s a founding principle, the fact that black people have been denied humanity as a part of the democratic experience. It’s not just shocking, it’s true, but now we’re at another moment where that same principle is just resurfacing, and we have to deal with it as a nation.”

Another response came from Khalil Gibran Muhammad, Director of the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture: “There’s a fascinating statement circulating on Facebook right now that says, ‘How interesting that we've moved from Black Power to Black Lives Matter.’ The diminishment of a social movement that helped to transform and make possible a black president has become about, ‘How do we save people?’”

We’re trying to make sense of and activate our 6^th principle, a world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all, and our nation is trying to figure out how to save black lives because black children are dying.  This makes me feel the way that Shirley, in one of her recent sermons, described feeling about climate change – despondent, depressed, overwhelmed.  I was steeped in these emotions, feeling both self-indulgent and absolutely stuck, when I opened the most recent issue of UU World and came across the Rev. Meg Riley’s commentary on Ferguson, “Up to Our Necks.” She writes:

As a nation of diverse races striving to be one people, we are buried up to our necks in a history of violence and brutality against people of color. Where do we look for safety, for help, as we try to excavate ourselves from this sinkhole? For a long time I have been one of the mostly silent, but increasingly alarmed, white folks struggling to discern how to be part of the solution instead of part of the problem. But standing silently, trying to figure things out may be a life-threatening course of action when you and your neighbors are buried up to your neck. So I’m looking on the local level for practical actions I can take. And I refuse to be silent or still anymore.

Without stating it explicitly, Rev. Riley is essentially saying that, even though we’re all buried up to our necks in a history of violence and brutality against people of color, she’s not giving up on the 6^th principle. Giving up would be, quite literally, a life-threatening course of action. So she acknowledges her starting place, holds the end vision in her heart and mind, and resolves to act.

I’m right there with her – and now I’m looking for practical actions. Fortunately, so are many, many others, and more fortunately still, there are people with far more experience and sophistication than I have regarding antiracism whose thoughts I have shared and will continue to share with you this morning. The following is taken directly from an article by commentator Janee Wood titled “12 Things WhitePeople Can Do Now Because of Ferguson.” For the sake of time, I’ve chosen to focus on ten of Woods’ twelve points. Also, for the purpose of today’s sermon, I’d suggest thinking about the following ten points as “Ten Ways to Move Toward the 6^th Principle in Light of Ferguson.” 

One: Learn about the racialized history of Ferguson and how it reflects the racialized history of America.  Michael Brown’s murder is not a social anomaly or statistical outlier. It is the direct product of deadly tensions born from decades of housing discrimination, white flight, intergenerational poverty and racial profiling. The militarized police response to peaceful assembly by the people mirrors what happened in the 1960s during the Civil Rights Movement.

Two: Reject the “He Was a Good Kid” narrative and lift up the “Black Lives Matter” narrative. Michael Brown was a good kid, by accounts of those who knew him during his short life. But that’s not why his death is tragic. His death isn’t tragic because he was a sweet kid on his way to college next week.  His death is tragic because he was a human being and his life mattered. The Good Kid narrative might provoke some sympathy but what it really does is support the lie that as a rule black people, black men in particular, have a norm of violence or criminal behavior. The Good Kid narrative says that this kid didn’t deserve to die because his goodness was the exception to the rule. This is wrong. This kid didn’t deserve to die because he was a human being and black lives matter.

Three: Use words that speak the truth about the disempowerment, oppression, disinvestment and racism that are rampant in our communities.  Be mindful, political and socially aware with your language. Notice how the mainstream news outlets are using words like riot and looting to describe the uprising in Ferguson.  What’s happening is not a riot. The people are protesting and engaging in a justified rebellion. They have a righteous anger and are revolting against the police who have terrorized them for years.

Four: Understand the modern forms of race oppression and slavery and how they are intertwined with policing, the courts and the prison industrial complex.  We don’t enslave black people on the plantation cotton fields anymore. Now we lock them up in for profit prisons at disproportionate rates and for longer sentences for the same crimes than white people. And when they are released, they are second class citizens stripped of voting rights and denied access to housing, employment and education.  Mass incarceration is The New Jim Crow.

Five: Examine the interplay between poverty and racial equity. The twin pillar of racism is economic injustice but do not use class issues to trump race issues and avoid the racism conversation. While racism and class oppression are tangled together in this country, the fact remains that the number one predictor of prosperity and access to opportunity is race.

Six: Diversify your media. Be intentional about looking for and paying close attention to diverse voices of color on the tv, on the internet and on the radio to help shape your awareness, understanding and thinking about political, economic and social issues. Check out Colorlines, The Root or This Week in Blackness to get started.

Seven: Adhere to the philosophy of nonviolence as you resist racism and oppression. Dr. Martin Luther King advocated for nonviolent conflict reconciliation as the primary strategy of the Civil Rights Movement and the charge of His Final Marching Orders.   East Point Peace Academy offers online resources and in person training on nonviolence that is accessible to all people regardless of ability to pay.

Eight: If you are a person of faith, look to your scriptures or holy texts for guidance. Seek out faith based organizations like Sojourners and follow faith leaders that incorporate social justice into their ministry. Ask your clergy person to address antiracism in their sermons and teachings. If you are not a person of faith, learn how the world’s religions view social justice issues so that when you have opportunity to invite people of faith to also become allies, you can talk with them meaningfully about why being a white ally is supported by their spiritual beliefs.

Nine: Be proactive in your own community. We are not limited to being reactionary and only rising up to stand on the side of justice when black people are being subjected to violence very visibly and publicly. Moments of crisis do not need to be the catalyst because taking action against systemic racism is always appropriate because systemic racism permeates nearly every institution and community in this country. Some ideas for action: organize  a community conversation about the state of police-community relations* in your neighborhood, support leaders of color by donating your time or money to their campaigns or causes, ask the local library to host a showing and discussion group about the documentary RACE: The Power of an Illusion, attend workshops to learn how to transform conflict into opportunity for dialogue. Gather together diverse allies that represent the diversity of backgrounds in your community. Antiracism is not a liberals only cause. Antiracism is a movement for all people, whether they be conservative, progressive, rich, poor, urban or rural.

Ten: Don’t give up. We’re 400 years into this racist system and it’s going to take a long, long, long time to dismantle these atrocities. The antiracism movement is a struggle for generations, not simply the hot button issue of the moment. Transformation of a broken system doesn’t happen quickly or easily. You may not see or feel the positive impact of your white allyship in the next month, the next year, the next decade or even your lifetime. But don’t ever stop. Being a white ally matters because your thoughts, deeds and actions will be part of what turns the tide someday. Change starts with the individual.

In closing, I’ll return to our first reading, a reflection on the 6^th principle by the Rev. Sean Parker Dennison. He wrote: “As naïve or impossible as the sixth Principle may seem, I’m not willing to give up on it. In the face of our culture’s apathy and fear, I want to imagine and help create a powerful vision of peace by peaceful means, liberty by liberatory means, justice by just means. I want us to believe—and to live as if we believe—that a world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all is possible. There is no guarantee that we will succeed, but I can assure you that we will improve ourselves and improve the world by trying.”

If we truly believe in the ideal of a world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all, let us leave here today and show, by our words and by our actions, that Black Lives Matter – and let us work for a world in which this sentiment is so innate that it no longer makes sense as a rallying cry.

Immigration Take 2: An Update on the Influx

This sermon was given on Sunday, 21 September, by Emily P. 

Children's book: Peace Begins with You by Katherine Scholes

Reading 1: 

from Enrique's Journey: The Story of A Boy's Dangerous Odyssey to Reunite with his Mother by Sonia Nazario, 2006.

pg. 49-51

      "When Enrique's mother left, he was a child. Six months ago, the first time he set out to find her, he was still a callow kid. Now he is a veteran of a perilous pilgrimage by children, many of whom come looking for their mothers and travel any way they can. The thousands who ride freight trains must hop between seven and thirty trains to get through Mexico. The luckiest make it in a month. Others, who stop to work along the way, take a year or longer.

      Some go up to five days without eating. Their prize possessions are scraps of paper, wrapped in plastic, often tucked into a shoe. On the scraps of paper are telephone numbers: their only way to contact their mothers. Some do not have even that.

      None of the youngsters has proper papers. Many are caught by the Mexican police or by la migra, the Mexican immigration authorities, who take them south to Guatemala. Most try again.

      Like many others, Enrique has made several attempts. 

      The first: He set out from Honduras with a friend, José del Carmen Bustamante. They remember traveling thirty-one days and about a thousand miles through Guatemala into the state of Veracruz in central Mexico, where la migra captured them on top of a train and sent them back to Guatemala on what migrants call El Bus de Lágrimas, the Bus of Tears. These buses make as many as eight runs a day, deporting more than 100,000 unhappy passengers every year. 

      The second: Enrique journeyed by himself. Five days and 150 miles into Mexico, he committed the mistake of falling asleep on top of a train with his shoes off. Police stopped the train near the town of Tonalá to hunt for migrants, and Enrique had to jump off. Barefoot, he could not run far. He hid overnight in some grass, then was captured and put on the bus back to Guatemala. 

     The third: After two days, police surprised him while he was asleep in an empty house near Chahuites, 190 miles into Mexico. They robbed him, he says, and then turned him over to la migra, who put him, once more, on the bus to Guatemala. 

      The fourth: After a day and twelve miles, police caught him sleeping on top of a mausoleum in a graveyard near the depot in Tapachula, Mexico, known as the place where a migrant woman had been raped and, two years before that, another had been raped and stoned to death. La migra took Enrique back to Guatemala.

      The fifth: La migra captured him as he walked along the tracks in Querétaro, north of Mexico City. Enrique was 838 miles and almost a week into his journey. He had benn stung in the face by a swarm of bees. For the fifth time, immigration agents shipped him back to Guatemala.

       The sixth: He nearly succeeded. It took him more than five days. He crossed 1,564 miles. He reached the Rio Grande and actually saw the Untied States. He was eating alone near some railroad tracks when migra agents grabbed him. They sent him to a detention center called El Corralón, the Corral, in Mexico City. The next day they bused him for fourteen hours, all the way back to Guatemala.

       The bus unloaded him back across the Río Suchiate in the rugged frontier town of El Carmen. The river marks the Guatemalan border, just as the Rio Grande defines the Mexican border to the north. A sign in block letters on top of a hill says BIENVENIDOS A GUATEMALA.

       It was as if he had never left."

Reading 2:

Guerrillas of Peace on the Air: Pacifica Radio commentaries, reports and other works which examine and promote the ideology of peace by Blase Bonpane 

page 18-19

SICSAL Meeting In Guatemala

February 20, 1996

    "I recently attended a meeting in Guatemala which was truly upbeat. I am struck by the sense of empowerment of people living in such poor and oppressive places. But part of the re-entry crisis is to once again confront the myth of powerlessness which is so common in our own country.

     Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú was there, a Guatemalan human rights attorney who had been in exile as long as I can remember--and some of the world's most progressive bishops. The group is called SICSAL (Secretariado Internacional Cristiano de Solidaridad con los Pueblos de América Latina, Oscar A. Romero), or the International Christian Secretariate in Solidarity with the People of Latin America, Oscar A. Romero. Do not let the word Christian frighten you. This is not the so-called "Christian coalition" of the United States. This group is self-identified as macro-ecumenical, which means they are open to all perspectives on religion and non-religion. The focal point of SICSAL is solidarity with the people and especially the poor. 

    Bishop Samuel Ruiz Garcia of San Cristóbal de las Casas serves as president of this hemispheric organization. We were in Guatemala to identify moral and ethical problems in the hemisphere and to look for solutions.

    The first moral imperative is the campaign to cancel Latin America's indebtedness to the international banks. We wish to accomplish this by the year 2000. Such debts cannot be paid and should not be continued. For every dollar invested in Latin America during the twentieth century, three dollars of raw materials have been extracted. 

    Second was to study more deeply the fanatical ideology which is being imposed on poor countries by an international clique of corporate capital. Alternatives to this centralized and anti-solidarity model were identified. Many of the stated alternatives are in the form of cooperatives with local decision making. Models established by the indigenous communities are excellent examples of cooperativism and communitarianism.

   Opposition to the principles of neo-liberal corporate capital were clear:

   No, to structural adjustment policies of the international monetary fund and the world bank.

   No, to the devaluation of local currencies as a condition for loans.

   No, to the privatization of schools, hospitals and social programs.

   No, to the use of poor countries as exporters of food while their own people go hungry. 

   Yes, to the removal of United States military bases from Panama, Cuba, Japan and many other countries.

Resounding support was given for displaced and migrant people with ringing opposition to California's Proposition 187 and the militarization of the United States border. Our support for the implementation of peace accords in Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico was unanimous as was our support for indigenous autonomy. 

     Everyone was in their right mind. Therefore, everyone supported the elimination of the United States' ancient act of war against the Cuban people; the embargo and the blockade conducted by nine foolish United States presidents against an island of delightful people. 

     As usual the ideas coming from the poor express the solidarity of one family. Solidarity means we care about each other. The globalization policies imposed on us by international corporate capital are anti-solidarity, anti-people and anti-humane. We oppose them on moral and ethical grounds.

     This is truly liberation theology. Such macro-ecumenical theology is not dead. It is the future of the spiritual quest of people throughout the world. What was proclaimed at the Guatemala meeting applies equally to the United States, whose great people have seen their country made into a Banana Republic by the newts in power."

Sermon: Immigration Take 2: An Update on the Influx, by Emily P

This sermon is a two-parter. I was asked to give an update on what's been happening with the "influx" and the UACs and why it hasn't been as prominent in the media lately. Then, I'm going to offer some suggestions about how to talk with people who aren't really informed about immigration, from immigrants stealing jobs to parents being irresponsible in bringing or letting their children make the dangerous journey to the United States. "Immigration" is a complex topic, and I am focusing more on the Unaccompanied Alien Children from Central America (specifically Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, which is where most of the kids are coming from) and Mexico. 

The number of UACs entering the US has decreased recently. Shelters are no longer operating at capacity, like they were earlier in the summer. I think the UAC situation isn’t in the news as much because the numbers aren’t as astonishing. I still see some articles about how schools are handling new immigrant children or about militias in the RGV who are interfering with border patrol operations.
 
There is anecdotal evidence that very few Honduran children are in the shelters in the valley. Perhaps some political pundits will say that it’s due to the border being more secured or a tougher stance on immigration. I worry that people will think the issue has been solved. Well, the media attention on overcrowded BP stations might have gone away, but the situations in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras have not improved. 

On August 1st, the White House issued a press release on the government-wide response to influx of Central American Migrants at Southwest Border. In the diplomatic efforts section, they outline all of the programs designed to keep kids from emigrating in the first place. Unfortunately, I doubt that these programs address root causes. The names of the programs are groan worthy—my favorite is “Operation Rescue Angels” in Guatemala. Sounds like a biker gang, right? The “Angels” received training and funds from CBP. Honduras is also broadcasting information about the dangers of migration on 120 radio stations. In July, the government of El Salvador initiated a 1.2 million media campaign, and the second phase of it is supposed to “highlight government efforts to reduce migration push factors.” Well, the 6 months of the campaign hasn’t ended, but the “push factors” haven’t been sufficiently reduced, probably because it takes more time to solve such problems. Honduran spokesman for UNICEF, Hector Espinal said that “The governments in Central America need to wake up now to this crisis. They need to work harder to reduce the violence here. If they don’t, then more children will be going north, however many police and soldiers are in their path.”

I think Espinal makes a good point; I’ve heard that the kids who have come recently tend to have worse stories, in general, than those who came during the influx. Makes sense—they are desperate enough to leave that it doesn’t matter how many millions are spent on media campaigns.

And by the way, these kids in the US still don’t have court appointed counsel, which means they are not guaranteed an attorney to represent them in immigration and removal proceedings. The lucky ones work with a pro bono, non-profit, or have a private lawyer. While not all kids would qualify for legal relief, it is estimated that at least 40% would.

Part 2:
I watched an Aljazeera America TV series on immigration called Borderland. I highly recommend it. I think it is a good exercise or at least starting point for dismantling myths about immigration. The premise is that 6 Americans who feel very strongly about immigration and the border participate in a month long journey that starts in a Tucson morgue. They are paired up and then “follow the footsteps” of the three migrants who died in the desert. One is a 13 year old Guatemalan boy, a young woman from Chiapas, Mexico, and a woman who had lived in Des Moines but was deported after living there for 9 years. Her mother had escaped the U.S.-funded civil war in El Salvador. The show participants visit the migrants’ families and friends, ride la Bestia (the dangerous cargo train that many migrants use to travel through Mexico), and spend a couple of days in the Sonoran desert. While the show touched a little on the US’ military and economic involvement in these countries, it didn’t go far enough. I thought it was particularly telling that a couple of the participants expressed that the US had nothing to do with this problem of immigration, and who are we to blame that these immigrants are pursuing the American Dream? I wish it had mentioned farmers poisoning themselves because their farms couldn’t compete with the US corn dumped in the Mexican market…NAFTA and Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine is a topic for another day, that is, if I haven’t depressed you guys too much already. 

But were people able to shift their staunch beliefs? The more conservative Americans grew more compassionate and realized that perhaps they had oversimplified the “immigration problem.” The 3 liberal participants acknowledged the importance of listening to those with opposing views and that even those who would deport their neighbors have a warm heart.
 
One of the participants is a farmer from Washington who is typically conservative but realizes that the US economy is dependent on low-wage labor and that his farm workers certainly aren’t taking jobs from native-born Americans. According to the American Farm Bureau, the US economy would lose $9 billion a year in agricultural production without guest workers. The UFW (United Farmworkers) has a campaign, several years running, called “take our jobs” in which they invite US citizens and legal residents to become farmworkers. For those who say those jobs could go to US citizens, have them sign up on takeourjobs.org. 

What about the need for the border wall? I imagine there are mixed feelings here. Everyone is aware of the stash houses and how the RGV’s economy is intimately tied to drug money. But others might remember the days when there wasn’t a wall and you could spend the day in Matamoros without worrying if you’d be in the wrong place at the wrong time. There are plenty of people in the US that think the border needs to be better secured. One of the participants in the show was astonished to see gaps in the border wall. He thought it was inexcusable for smugglers and migrants to be able to cross through the mountainous areas in Arizona. The other weekend I sat on the shores of Falcon Lake and looked at the people playing in the water while BP trucks perched on the hills. Looking over the water, I wanted to ask a border-wall supporter (for lack of a better term) if they thought it was feasible to build a fence through a lake. I remember a professor telling me during my Border Studies off campus program that the wall doesn’t stop the drugs—within days of the wall going up, the cartels had manufactured slim packages that could slip through the bars and people invented helicopters with lawnmower engines to fly over the wall to drop off a package. Yes, CBP seizes drugs and I am fully aware of the harm that is connected to the drug trade. Trust me, I got mad at plenty of friends in college who said “oh, no, don’t worry, this pot is from a friend in Colorado. I’m not supporting the cartels. See, this pot is a different color than the stuff that comes from Mexico.” But going back to my point, I’m not convinced that the border wall puts a significant dent in the drug trade. Out of curiosity, you could ask your pro-border militarization friends “hey, on TV I see drug busts all the time and we have, how many thousand agents in this sector, AND a fence. And driving along the border, I see so many enforcement vehicles that I lose count. What do you think is the solution?”
 
So maybe your friend agrees that the border wall doesn’t stop drugs, but what about stopping people? You can explain that the wall locations along the border are strategic. They were designed to funnel crossings away from populous areas into deserts and dangerous terrain. It is deterrence by death. It’s also had the unintended consequence of increasing immigrants’ length of stay in the US, because it isn’t as feasible to cross multiple times.
 
But think about it, imagine you are a Central American woman escaping from a gang member who told you he would make you his woman. If you stay, you will be killed, whether you refuse or not. It isn’t like in the US where you can just move across the country. This woman has been raped on the train (La Bestia)…I’ve read 80-90% (depending on the source) of women are sexually assaulted on their journey north. Is a border wall or the threat of dying in the desert really going to make her decide to turn around? 

One of the heart rendering scenes from the Borderland series is when a group of rural Guatemalan school children are asked if they know someone in the US. Nearly every child raises their hand. They are asked if they want to go to the US someday. Again, almost all raise their hands, giggling. Then they are asked if they know how dangerous it is. Their faces change. What can happen? A little boy says, “you can get lost,” another says “bad people hurt you.” A girl says sometimes, in the desert, you get really thirsty. You could die.” 

One of my friend’s relatives just doesn’t understand why these kids are coming to the US. A participant on the Borderland show thought the parents were incredibly irresponsible to let a child leave with a coyote. This friend of mine had a great response. She merely said, “imagine for a moment what would make you send your child away, say to Canada. How bad would things have to be?” 

Sometimes I get the impression that some people are just supposed to accept their lot in life, the suffering, the life they were born into. You could say to someone who takes their luck for granted, “you were fortunate to be born here, but what if you were born elsewhere? Are you just supposed to accept (for example) that gangs are trying to recruit you at age 12 and that they suffer no qualms in raping your sister or killing your family if you refuse?” Some of the UACs that come to the US grew up in poverty, were never threatened and just want to see their parents. Others have parents who can’t afford to feed them. A UAC said, “one day we had tortillas. The other day we had beans. We never had them together. My mom never could get enough food. A lot of times we’d eat instead of her.” Others certainly will die if they stay in their home country or are returned.

When we are talking with people who don’t share our viewpoints, it is important to keep reflecting the questions back to them. Keep engaging. 

I want to leave you with this quotation from a 16 year old migrant Osman. He was caught in Mexico and sent back to Honduras. He asked a reporter “Why are they trying to stop us? I am just trying to survive. There is nothing for me here. My mom is in Miami and I haven’t seen her for four years.”


Sources/recommended reading:
http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/al-jazeera-america-presents-borderland.html
 http://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/honduran-special-forces-work-keep-kids-fleeing-country-n164791
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/08/01/obama-administration-s-government-wide-response-influx-central-american-
http://www.immigrationpolicy.org/high-school/top-10-myths-about-immigration
http://www.justiceforimmigrants.org/myths.shtml
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012228123122975116.html (El Salvador’s Civil War)
http://notexasborderwall.blogspot.com/
http://fusion.net/justice/story/desperate-raped-migrant-women-face-sexual-assault-mexico-1037738
http://afgj.org/border-militarization-study-guide/border-repression-and-human-rights
http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/mexico704/history/timeline.html#
http://www.uua.org/documents/washingtonoffice/immigration/studyguides/handout4.1.pdf
http://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/childrights/content/articles/summer2014-0714-urgent-need-unaccompanied-children-access-counsel-immigration-proceedings.html