In the past few days, I've been thinking about racism alot, specifically, the systemic or institutional forms that we hear much about these days. What spawned this thinking was a reflection on my seminary's policy to have a quota system for liturgical party diversity during student designed worship services. So, when designing a service, you have to try and make sure men, women, white, black, asian, hispanic, gay, straight, young and old are all represented. Given the make up of the student body at Seabury, this meant the same three people were always being asked to serve on liturgical parties because of thier color. Now, I believe this stems from the fact that our school suffers a bit from white liberal guilt and so we sometimes seek to overcompensate for the mistakes of the past. Others may disagree. I have been working to change the quota system mentioned above in my capacity as MC Coordinator by advocating that if a liturgical party is all black women one day, that's fine with me. If it's all white men another day, that's fine with me. We have a small enough community here that it will even out in the end. Another way I've been striving to change this quota system is by example of my own MCing. Next week will be the feast day for Latimer, Ridley, and Cranmer, and in order to fill out my liturgical party, I've allowed people to sign up for the positions just as they would for any other service. Lo and behold we have a pretty good amount of diversity going there so far. Now, it's not perfect, nor would it meet the quota system, but it will be good because the people chose it themselves. Something about empowering leaders, right Lemler?

The other reasons I've been thinking about racism recently is a couple of comments I have heard, one on the radio and one in a phone call. I was listening to one of the Christian radio stations here in the Chicago area when their news program came on (usually this causes me to groan becuase they sight people like F. Graham and Falwell as authorities). They were giving a report on gang violence in the city and made the remark that "it was spreading to so many areas that even white suburban kids were getting caught up in it," [emphasis added]. Intentional or not, that remark is evidence of the deep seeded and insidiuos forms of racism still present in our society. Behind it is the assumption that gang violence is a minority problem only and that now that it is getting bad enough to effect white kids, perhaps we should do something about it.

The phone call was to a friend whom I know did not intend to make the remark they made. We were talking about a new group this person had joined and they mentioned to me that they were the only white person in the group, "but that they all were such good people." Unintentional as I'm sure this was, behind it is the assumption that in a room full of black people (as was the case) it needs to be specifically stated that they were good people because the inclination is to believe that they were not. This reminded me of a comment I made over the summer where I got caught doing the same thing. I was telling a story about a friend of mine from college, who is a black man. If I remember correctly, he stands about 12 feet tall and weighs about 600 pounds. After this reference to his size, I said, "but he's just a big teddy bear, really." Behind that remark of mine is the assumption that a black man of such significant stature surely can be be up to no good. Because my comment was related to his size rather than his melanin level, I should have said something like, "even though he's a big guy, he's just a big teddy bear," which may have helped to clarify my point. So, that's what I've been thinking about recently.

Also, hello to Randi!!!! Wow, so good to see you on the comments! What a pleasant surprise!

-R