2017.10.22 “Taking
a Knee” Rev. Laura Bogle
A couple of things I want
to tell you first today --
With this worship service
today we are taking part, with many other UU congregations across the country,
in Part 2 of a White Supremacy Teach-in – conversations that leaders of color
in our movement, especially black Unitarian Universalists, have asked us to
engage. You may remember, we
participated in Part 1 last spring.
Today when I use the term
white supremacy I am not usually referring to the outright racist ideology that
explicitly states white people are superior to others—the neo-nazi kind of
white supremacy. Instead, I am referring
to the historical reality in our country that our systems and structures – from
education to health care to business to media to our own UU congregations—are
built in such a way that gives advantages and privilege to white people over
people of color.
So, this sermon today is
really speaking to my fellow white folks—which is most but not all of us in
the room.
Also, a caveat: I never watch NFL games, except the
occasional SuperBowl. So please forgive
me if I mess up a name or a team or some terminology.
I’ve taken a bit of a
deep dive the last few days reading back about how it was that Colin Kaepernik
formerly of the San Francisco 49’ers, began to kneel last year during the
national anthem before games.
Let’s take a few moments
to remember the timeline of events…
August 2016 – Kaepernick first sat during the anthem during the
pre-season games; wasn’t even noticed
for a couple of games.
Sept. 1 – Kaepernick and Eric Reid kneel at pre-season game
The very next day
Kaepernick announces that he will donate $1million plus all the profits from
his merchandise to grassroots organizations fighting for racial justice and
equality.
Only three days later -- Sept. 4, 2016—first white pro athlete
to kneel during the anthem after Kaepernick -- Megan Rapinoe of the Seattle
Reign – National Women’s Soccer League--
She expressed solidarity
with Kaepernick, saying that, as a gay American, she knows "what it means
to look at the flag and not have it protect all of your liberties," and
that "it’s important to have white people stand in support of people of
color on this."
At her next game the
opposing team rescheduled the playing of the anthem so it would occur when
teams in the locker room.
Sept. 9 – Denver Broncos Brandon Marshall kneels during regular season game. The first to do so.
Subsequently and swiftly
he lost two sponsorship agreements.
Sept. 16 – in Seattle, entire Garfield HS football team and coaches kneel
Subsequently more NFL
players, more high school teams, WNBA teams, etc.
Some high school students kicked off teams
A high school in Louisiana sent a
letter to all student-athletes saying they would be punished if they don’t
stand for the anthem.
(Timeline from : https://www.sbnation.com/2016/9/11/12869726/colin-kaepernick-national-anthem-protest-seahawks-brandon-marshall-nfl
)
March 2017—Kaepernick becomes free agent – he still hasn’t been signed
by any NFL team.
Trump tweets: “NFL owners
don’t want to pick (Kaepernick) up because they don’t want to get nasty tweet
from Donald Trump.”
REMEMBER: it was July 5 and July 6, 2016 when Alton Sterling and Philando Castile
were shot and killed at the hands of police – and videos of their deaths were
seen across the country. The next month
is when Kaepernick began his protest.
If we look at the
protests without remembering the reason why, saying the names of those who have
died and will never come back, then we miss the point:
Trayvon Martin
Eric Garner
Michael Brown
Laquan McDonald
Tamir Rice
Eric Harris
Walter Scott
Freddie Gray
Sandra Bland
Alton Sterling
Philando Castile
And so many others… It is
a feature of white supremacy that I do not have to recall these names every
day, that I move around my neighborhood and my communities without constant
vigilance and remembrance of what has happened to them.
According to Mother Jones magazine using data from
the Census Bureau and the Washington Post
database of police shooting: ( http://www.motherjones.com/media/2017/03/police-shootings-black-lives-matter-history-timeline-1/
)
[In 2015]-black men between the ages of 18 and 44 were 3.2 times as
likely as white men the same age to be killed by a police officer. And while
black men make up only about 6 percent of the US population, [in 2016] they
accounted for one-third of the unarmed people killed by police.
Why did they have to rely
on a Washington Post database? Because
it wasn’t until October of 2016 that the Department of Justice decided to begin
keeping national track of police use of force.
Eric Reid, Colin
Kaepernick’s teammate, wrote in his recent Op-Ed in the NYTimes:
“In early 2016, I began
paying attention to reports about the incredible number of unarmed black people
being killed by the police. The posts on social media deeply disturbed me, but
one in particular brought me to tears: the killing of Alton Sterling in my
hometown Baton Rouge, La. This could have happened to any of my family members
who still live in the area. I felt furious, hurt and hopeless. I wanted to do
something, but didn’t know what or how to do it. All I knew for sure is that I
wanted it to be as respectful as possible. …
…my faith moved me to
take action. I looked to James 2:17, which states, ‘Faith by itself, if it does
not have works, is dead.’ I knew I needed to stand up for what is right.”
One question I searched
for – have any white NFL players been kneeling?
Not until almost a full year after Kaepernick’s initial action – August
2017-- does the first white NFL player, Seth Devalve of the Cleveland Browns
kneel during the national anthem. He
happens to be married to an African American woman, and motivated in part by
the fact that his children don’t look like him.
He also says he was motivated to take action after the violence in
Charlottesville that killed white anti-racist activist Heather Heyer.
Of course, in the last
couple of months, we’ve seen entire NFL teams link arms or stay in the locker
room during the anthem. All of a sudden the conversation is about unity. And players – while making what I consider
huge sums of money – are not the ones holding the power in the
conversation. I will no longer engage in
conversation about how much NFL players make unless we are also talking about
the wealth of NFL owners. According to
Forbes, the top 10 wealthiest NFL owners are worth over $60 BILLION. Players hold power to the extent to which
they are willing to play the game.
So, yes, Colin Kaepernick
is privileged in some ways, yet still vulnerable as a black man in America. And yet he found one place where he could
risk his privilege and power for greater freedom. He may never get to play football in the NFL
again.
How can we white folks
learn from that example?
Two ways white folks can
pay attention to and use our own vulnerabilities to join in the struggle for
racial justice.
1—Cultivate our own
strength in the face of our own vulnerable feelings.
Pay attention to when and
where we feel fragile or vulnerable when people are talking about racism,
or perhaps noting
something you have done or not done and you are feeling complicit,
or perhaps when you see
protestors on the TV screen or in your community, and you think “I’m with
them! But I’m not sure about the words
they are using or the tactics they are using.”
You know that moment when
you feel like you want to critique or to run away? I invite you to breathe and stay in the room.
Take a moment and think
about the physical vulnerability of black men and women in many, many
communities in this nation.
Cultivate the vulnerable
strength of a learner.
Know that you are strong
enough to be in a learner posture—like Nate Boyer, the Green Beret and former
Seattle Seahawks player that Kaepernick consulted. He said to Kaepernick, “Even though my
initial reaction to your protest was one of anger, I’m trying to listen to what you’re saying and why you’re doing it. …So I’m just going
to keep listening, with an open mind. I
look forward to the day you’re inspired to once again stand during our national
anthem.”
I like to think that when
Kaepernick and Boyer met they created something called “brave space.” A space for the honest exchange of
experiences, even across disagreement. A
space where we don’t necessarily have to stay locked in our own ideas of the
way things are.
Rather than seeking safe
space – where what you think and how you think is simply re-affirmed,
seek out brave space.
We don’t know what we
don’t know.
For white folks, taking a
knee could mean a posture of humility, a posture of listening, a posture of
“deliberately restraining the impulse to answer, or presuming to know the
answer” as Aana Marie Vigen writes.
In our Opening Words
today, Karen Maezen Miller’s poem:
“Abandon your authority and entitlements/Release your self-image/Status,
power, whatever you think gives you clout/It doesn’t, not really…/See where you
are. Observe what is needed./Do good. Quietly.”
2) The
second way white people can work to dismantle white supremacy: Choosing
vulnerability when we don’t have to– to risk the places where we have privilege
and power and choose to be vulnerable
in order to be in solidarity with those who have no choice about their
vulnerability and often aren’t able to exercise their voice.
Examples:
--Heather Heyer chose
vulnerability when she as a white woman showed up physically to protest the
white supremacists in Charlottesville.
--Country music star Megan
Linsey chose vulnerability when she as a white woman chose to kneel *while she
sang the national anthem* before the Titans game in Nashville last month. She says, “The easiest thing to do would be to walk out, smile real
pretty and sing an anthem and get off the field. I think that’s what
everybody expected me to do. But, in that moment, I don’t think that was what
was right for me. I knew that I wanted to make a stand.”
And she has since received numerous death threats.
--Just this weekend, Laura
Ellis, white music professor at University of Florida, chose vulnerability when
she climbed up the bell tower on campus and chose to ring the carrillion bells
in the tune of the African American national anthem “Lift Every Voice and Sing”
– all while white supremacist Richard Spencer held his rally on campus.
--UU Congregations around
the country right now are voting to become sanctuary congregations—to place
their physical places of worship in the service of protecting immigrants –
overwhelmingly people of color—who are facing deportation. This is choosing a kind of vulnerability in
order to be in solidarity whose very freedom is under attack.
--Last October the UUA Board
pledged $300,000 immediately to support the Black Lives of UU organizing
collective and also made a $5 million long-term commitment to the organization
which seeks to provide support, information & resources for Black Unitarian
Universalists, and to expand the role & visibility of Black UUs within our
faith.
One of the ways we as
white people can risk our power is to give away our wealth and resources,
without having to control it. In the
coming weeks and months, we all will have an opportunity to give towards a fund
to fulfill the $5million pledge to BLUU.
One UU donor has already pledged a $1million match.
{By the way—this was the
guiding approach that our very own Community Outreach Project team used when we
decided to give $1,000 of our budget to support a conference next month
at Maryville College for youth of color.
Moving resources to those most affected by oppression for them to use as
they see fit.}
Our late UUA moderator
Jim Key, who was at that Board meeting said, “To me, doing nothing—or doing something more timid—was a
greater risk to our movement and the values we say we have and the way we live
in the world. It would put our overall mission at risk not to deal with
society’s most pressing issues now.” https://www.uuworld.org/articles/board-commits-5-million-bluu
For white folks it is a
delicate balance – figuring out when to simply listen and “do good,
quietly.” And when to do something bold
that is risky, that might draw attention to ourselves.
I believe we collectively
figure it out, as we stayed rooted in a spiritual practice of Love for self and
Love for others, listening to and being in relationship with those who have
less racial privilege than we do.
Do you remember that at
the 1968 Olympics, track stars John Carlos and Tommie Smith famously raised
their fists in the black power salute during their medal ceremony. Who was the third person on the podium that
night? Peter Norman, a white
Australian. Norman has gotten less
recognition but he too made his stand that night – he wore a button for the
Olympic Project for Human Rights.
In 2006 when Carlos and
Smith were pallbearers at Norman’s funeral, Carlos was reflecting on how Normal
stood with them. He said he “expected to
see fear in Peter Norman’s eyes before the medal ceremony, when there was no
turning back from what they were about to do.
But he didn’t see fear.
‘I saw love,’ he said.”
May we remember always
that Love is stronger than our fear.
May that love guide us to
build new ways of being until all people are free.
May it be so. Amen.
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