It is so hard to speak about racism without being misunderstood and without becoming so emotionally caught up in my own words that I sometimes hesitate to open my mouth. But I think that I have something to say that is important, whether you find yourself in agreement with me or not. And I do not have any expectation that anyone in particular will be in agreement with me. Anne and I have had long, powerful, and even heated conversations about what I am about to say. We do not agree. These words represent my own growing edge on race and racism. I have been growing a long time; I am growing still. I pray that I am growing in the direction of healing.

I also need to say at the outset that in much of what follows I use the word "we," not to indicate anyone particular either in this room or in Unitarian Universalism, but to indicate we Americans, we the people in our cultural sphere. I use it as a statistical grab-bag, if you will. Nothing in particular follows for anyone in particular. The work of understanding how, if at all, any of what I have to say applies to you is your work, and I do not presume to suggest anything about any particular person other than myself.

Let me begin with a few specifics. First, consider this anecdote gleaned from Rebecca Walker's powerful and wonderful book, Black, White, and Jewish. She is the daughter of Alice Walker and Mel Leventhal, a Jewish civil rights lawyer. They were married in the 1960s and were divorced in the 1970s. Rebecca would spend one full year with her father and then one full year with her mother, back and forth, from one coast to the other, through her childhood and adolescence, and so she absorbed the white world and the black world into her soul.

One evening, she was with her mother's brother and some cousins after a particularly good day. She was filled with love and joy and was laughing hysterically with them. Her uncle said to her, "Rebecca...some people would call what you have the 'sillies,' but we call what you've got the 'crackers.'"

That may not seem like a big deal to many people, but if you've spent any serious time in the South you'll know what that means. "Cracker" is "a term black people use for white people, and which signifies the insanity, the cruelty, the maniacal culture of racist white people." In effect, her uncle had told her that she laughs white, and that remark drove a wedge between her and her family. It as one of the first times she came to feel pushed away from people she loved, pushed away by the simple fact that she has a white father whom she also loves. In her words, "How do I reconcile my love for my uncles and cousins with the fact that I remind them of pain?"

Second, there are two organizations under the general umbrella of the UUA that are in some conflict. One is LUUNA, the Latina/o Unitarian Universalist Networking Association. The other is DRUUM. As I write this sermon, I cannot remember what that acronym stands for, but it is an organization of Unitarian Universalist people of color. The conflict is that DRUUM wants LUUNA to join it. LUUNA's reaction is that while some of its members are indeed people of color, many are not. Many of its members, while clearly Latina or Latino, are as European as I am. My colleague, the Rev. Lilia Cuervo of the San Jose church, for example, appears to be as white as anyone in this room. It is not until you hear her accent that you can tell that she is a Latina. She maintains that she is not a person of color. I agree.

And finally, consider that the United Nations gathered a group of biologists, geneticists, and other appropriate scientists together and asked them to find a scientific basis for race. After several years of study, they reported their findings. They could find no biological or genetic basis for any racial differentiation in human beings. None. I share as much genetic information with Anne as I do with Clarence Thomas, Joy Harjo, or the Dalai Lama.

I have thought a lot about these and many similar anecdotes and tried to make sense of them. The conclusion that I am inevitably drawn to is that "race" is sheer nonsense. It is only a code word for oppression. Historically, we have applied the word to all kinds of people who may be united culturally or religiously but who have no genetic connections whatever. For example, we have spoken of the Irish "race," the Italian "race," and with recent extraordinarily tragic results the Jewish "race." And we are still doing it. Think about the recent census forms. It asked about race. And it included within the racial categories not only various ways of being "of color" but also Hispanic. Race is not about biology or genetics. It's not about skin color. Race is about culture and cultural oppression and nothing else. And it always has been.

Race is not real. It is a creation of Europeans designed to justify oppression, colonialism, and enslavement. It is the product of ignorance, xenophobia, and arrogance run amuck. And it would be better for all of us to rid ourselves of the whole idea. I refused to fill in the census question on race.

On the other hand, racism is something that is all too real in our world. Unfortunately, dismissing race does not dismiss racism, as paradoxical as that may sound. Race is a bogus justification of racism. Racism is the assumption of the inherent superiority of one culture or linguistic group of people over another and the attempt of the one group to oppress the other. That is very real, and it has been part of humanity for eons. Racism is a form of hatred. It is a way of driving people apart and alienating us, one from another. Racism is, therefore, a sin, a sin that has been committed in America from its earliest European days. And it is a sin for which we have yet to atone.

This is not to say that European culture is, itself, evil or that there is something inherently wrong in the way we European Americans are in the world. It is to say that we have done many evil things in the process of spreading European culture throughout the world. It is this evil that I seek to recover from, and the first step for me is the eradication of the idea of race. It requires that every time I hear a reference to race I translate it into something else: culture, language, ethnicity, whatever seems appropriate. That's annoying at best, but we UUs have been translating in a religious context for years. We should be pretty good at it by now.

It also requires that I give up any notion of myself as "white." I'm not white. My skin is a kind of brownish pink color. I'm a European American, more specifically, an Anglo-Celt. My primary language is English. My family has been in North America for a little more than 350 years. I grew up in an upper middle class neighborhood in the Mid-Atlantic state of Delaware, which was a border state during the Civil War. My family comes from the South, and my ancestors were slave holders. When I was very young and she was very old, I met the last of these slaves still living. All of these things are part of my cultural heritage and are part of who I am. None have anything whatever do with the color of my skin, my "race."

I also have to begin to recognize the reality that the racism of America has in fact been perpetrated primarily on those whom we call "people of color," i.e. those whose skin color is dark: reddish through various shades of brown to nearly black, and these people, victims of the sin of American racism, have tended to use the color of their skin as an organizing principle. Hence, for example, DRUUM. It is incumbent on me to respect this. In reaction to oppression based so often on skin color, people organize to take pride in skin color. This seems entirely appropriate, but it must not blind me to the fact that skin color does not exhaust racism.

Those steps to recovery aren't all that difficult. A far more difficult one has to do with the levels of privilege that I have as a result of being European American. As I see it there are three kinds of privilege. There are those privileges that are appropriate and acceptable, i. e. the privileges that adults enjoy that children don't, like driving. There are those privileges that some enjoy but none should have, i.e. the ability of the powerful and influential to get away with certain crimes. Clearly these privileges should be eradicated. And then there are those privileges that only some enjoy but which should be the province of all, i.e. the ability to move freely through any neighborhood in America and not be subject to arrest. These must be extended to all.

"White privilege" falls into the later category. The question that I face is what to do with the reality that I enjoy this "white privilege." It is mine whether or not I want it. I can't give it away, sell it, deny it, or fail to exercise it. It is a matter of American culture, a legacy of the fact that America has perpetrated the sin of racism, and no one person acting alone can erase that legacy. So what do I do about it? These privileges should be extended to all, but how can we do that? What is my responsibility here? It is one thing to talk in grand terms about exercising those privilege in such a way that they are extended farther and farther. It is another thing entirely to understand specifically what that means for my behavior. This is one of my growing edges.

Another growing edge that is related to this has to do with responsibility. I may not be responsible for the sins of racism as practiced by my ancestors, but since I am the beneficiary of the those sins, am I not responsible to the continuing victims of the sin? Am I not responsible to act for atonement, for cultures and people becoming at one with each other? And how do I do that? What am I called upon to do, in specific terms. I do not know. I do not even know what atonement might mean, and this causes me considerable anguish.

Rebecca Walker ends her book with these two paragraphs:

My grandmother sat shiva as if my father had died when my parents married, and then twenty years later introduced me with her chest poked put to whoever would listen. She was stubborn, generous, and desperately lonely. What is left of that life lived? My memories, perhaps, the imprint she left on the being that is me that goes on after all this, the effects passed on nameless to my children and their children, biological or not.

It all comes to this. I stand with those who stand with me. I am tired of claiming for claiming's sake, hiding behind masks of culture, creed, religion. My blood is made from water and so it is bloodwater that I am made of, and so it is a constant empathic link with others which claims me, not only carefully drawn lines of relation. I exist somewhere between black and white, family and friend. I am flesh and blood, yes, but I am also ether.

It all comes to this, to overcoming the ravages of the sin of racism, to embracing the paradox that it has nothing to do with the color of skin and it has everything to do with color of skin. It all comes to this. It all comes down to overcoming.

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What is your reaction to this sermon? Please send comments to Reverend Ken Collier