The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Salem, Oregon

YOUR INNER BIGOT

The Reverend Richard R. Davis

 January 18, 2009

             The very earliest years of our lives lie beyond the reach of memory, shrouded in mystery.  Yet our first encounters with the world shape us for good or ill.   In this regard, I have reason to suspect that my maternal grandmother, “Namama” as we called her, was probably one of the hidden blessings of my early life. Namama lived with us, so she and I probably spent a good deal of time together in the first five years of my life in Atlanta, Ga.   I can only summon a faint image of her in my mind’s eye, although I do have this fundamental sense of her loving presence.  My own very kind and loving mother – who died several years ago – always expressed the deepest love and admiration for her mother, always noting that “I could never be as good a person as she was.” 

            My mother often told me the story of a time when she was a young girl and the black maid of the family, Annie, came home from the grocery store crying.  Namama found out that a grocer had been exceptionally rude to Annie.  Whites often assumed they could treat blacks with such impunity in the Deep South in those days. Upon hearing of this outrage Namama promptly went down to visit this grocer and informed him that Annie was a child of God and was to be treated like one.  Whether or not that grocer saw the spiritual light is not known, but he did see the light of economic self interest, and he treated Annie respectfully thereafter.  (Until she died about forty years ago Annie always sent me a birthday card with a dollar bill and the loveliest handwritten note that she, who lacked any formal education, could compose.)  

Surely some of Namama’s and my own mother’s goodness rubbed off on me.   I was never taught to hate or fear or loathe black people.  To be sure, neither was I taught to challenge the racist status quo of my segregated southern society, but I still feel I was blessed by two exceptional women – my grandmother and mother – who regarded all people as equal in the eyes of God. 

            Another advantage I had growing up in the fifties was living on an integrated army base in Germany in the mid-fifties (my dad worked for the Red Cross) where I interacted with black children.   One older black guy, Gus, was like the big brother I never had to me – consciousness of his race never entered into my mind.  

            In a word, I was blessed – blessed to have been raised by those who did not judge someone by the color of their skin and blessed to have been in an environment for some time that gave me an opportunity to see beyond the cruel confines of the segregated southern society in which I was mostly raised.

            You were most likely blessed, too, or else you wouldn’t be in this place for too long – Unitarian Universalists have a long history of challenging racism and bigotry, it’s woven into the fabric of our identity – someone comfortable in their bigotry will not feel comfortable here for long.  Somehow, like many people in our society, you and I managed to emerge relatively unscathed by racist dogma – perhaps because of your family of origin or where you were born or key experiences you had or because your inner conscience told you that hating and despising those who are different from you is just not right. 

            Aren’t you glad that we’re not like narrow minded bigots and racists in our society, especially the ones in the Southeastern United States?  Oops!   That was sort of bigoted thing to say, wasn’t it?   - a bigotry against those whom we deem less enlightened than we are.

            As a native southerner I must tell you that although I don’t have much of a southern accent or carry much of the oppressive psychological baggage of someone who hails from say, the poor white regions of Appalachia, I still have a sense of myself as a southerner, and I have often taken umbrage at people who disparage the south as a region full of morally inferior racist “rednecks.”  Do you think people perversely choose to be bigots and racists?   Of course not.   Some people are born into times and places where, from day one of their lives, they marinate in the bigoted mindset of their society.  It’s a tragedy and a curse that needs to be lifted, but how can that most effectively be done?    

Perhaps taking a healthy dose of humility is a good way to begin.   The truth is that almost nobody is entirely free of racism, bigotry, prejudice or intolerance in some form – the world is not neatly divided between the despicable bigots and enlightened, tolerant souls.   Psychologists who administer tests to detect implicit bias in people have discovered that most of us have an “inner bigot” who may not be too obvious but who pulls some levers that distort our perceptions and control how we act.   Whether this is overt or covert bigotry, the end result is harmful. 

Regarding the damage that bigotry inflicts, I speak as one with precious little authority – I’m white and I’m male and I can’t truly imagine what it’s like to be exteriorly packaged in such a way that you’re automatically dismissed or disdained by others.  But I do have some moral imagination, and when I get some fleeting glimpse of the vast psychic and social pain inflicted by prejudice I’m deeply saddened that any child of God must experience this. 

Yet isn’t it too simplistic to say that all prejudice is wrong?  – our minds work in such a way that we sometimes do need to pre-judge, based on some past experience, how things might go in the future.  If you did not have the power to remember the past and prejudge the future you’d burn your hand on hot stoves over and over again.   You couldn’t survive if you didn’t carry some prejudices. 

The question is where do you draw a line on what is acceptable and unacceptable prejudice?  Jesse Jackson, the African American activist, preacher and past presidential candidate once made this very brave confession:  "There is nothing more painful to me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start thinking about robbery—then look around and see somebody white and feel relieved.”  There’s a cruel irony at work here – our racist society created conditions that has led a disproportionate number of African American males to be ensnared in the criminal justice system –  statistically speaking, young black males are more likely to be in trouble with the law and fearing that you might be robbed by a gang of them on a dark street is not entirely ungrounded in reality.  

After September 11, 2001 I think that most us would have been pretty nervous to board an airplane with a small group of bearded Arab men with copies of the Koran. 

Yet imagine how many American men of Arab ancestry and how many young black males have suffered as a consequence of such attitudes?   And like Jesse Jackson, we feel shame and sorrow to recognize that we carry such feelings. 

Yet pretending as though such feelings don’t exist, denying them, repressing them, only allows such attitudes to function in subtle and insidious ways.  As the Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield notes: “denial undermines our freedom (and causes us to suffer)” whereas “recognition moves us from delusion and ignorance toward freedom.” 

In this regard, one of the first experiences I had with this congregation about 18 years ago was very liberating.  Several months before I came here I was asked to co-lead a class on welcoming gays, lesbians and bisexuals here that would be starting up right after I came here.  I was glad to do this, but also a bit nervous.  You see, I grew up in a homophobic society, so predictably enough, I had some homophobic ghosts floating around in the recesses of my mind.  Even though I honestly did believe in battling this hurtful prejudice, I recognized some of it in myself.  

 One of the first things that Susan Dye, the co-leader of the group (who has since moved away), invited us to do was to acknowledge our own homophobia.   She said, “Whether we’re gay, lesbian or straight, we’ve all got these thoughts and feelings . We all grew up in a homophobic society, so that’s inevitable.”   I had thought that every one else in the class had completely exorcised the demons of such bigotry, and I was going to somehow slip up and say or do something that revealed I wasn’t completely enlightened on this subject and embarrass myself. 

Susan, bless her heart, made it clear that just because you have homophobic thoughts and feelings doesn’t mean that you are a homophobe.   Neither does having racist ideas or cultural biases or other such prejudices indicate some basic moral failing on your part.   To be sure, it is a collective moral failing when people embrace and promote racist bigotry or homophobic thoughts – that is unacceptable.  Perhaps it’s my southern heritage kicking in here, but I also feel a sense of compassion for misguided souls whose hearts and minds have been enslaved by bigotry.  The Universalist in me leads me to hope that freedom from such a destructive mentality is possible for even the most diehard racist.   Then, too, we risk being hypocrites if we fail to acknowledge that bigotry has insinuated itself into all our hearts and minds.   When we have that level of honesty, rather than denying this reality, then we can deal with it. 

            Here’s the truth of the matter – you are not your inner bigot.  No one is.  If you observe any bigoted thought or feeling that comes to you and ask “is this REALLY who I am?” the ultimate answer will be “no, it isn’t.”  Such thoughts and feelings are socially conditioned – no one is born a bigot.  If you see these thoughts and feelings for what they are, recognize how they grow out of fear and ignorance, then you tame them.  Their power dissipates. 

            And the power of racism, homophobia and bigotry in general is, I do believe, headed toward an eventual extinction.  These fearful notions cannot survive in the light of day.  Some may say that such optimism is unwarranted, but consider what social psychologists term “the extended contact effect.” 

            The extended contact effect was discovered by virtue of some experiments in which individuals from different races and ethnicities spent just a few hours together, answering certain questions and going through a simple trust building exercise.  Psychologists were amazed to discover that significant trust was built between individuals from different races and ethnicities in just a shot period of time.  Furthermore, they discovered that the effect of this modest exercise greatly reduced the levels of bigotry and intolerance of the subjects afterwards.  Finally, they discovered that a single “cross group” friendship was contagious and helped reduce tension between larger groups to which these single individuals were connected.  In other words, tolerance is contagious. 

            In truth, we are all connected and the flow of history makes this more and more apparent.   No longer are different tribes and races so greatly separated by geography and custom.   As we do encounter one another more and more in our humanity, a level of trust is slowly building.   This goes a long way toward explaining the election of our first African American president – something not dreamed of even in recent history.  

We have not yet arrived at the Promised Land – bigotry is certainly not gasping for its last breaths, and its pernicious effects will continue to cause incalculable harm for years to come, but on this Sunday when we remember the one who helped us envision this promised land, Martin Luther King, Jr., let us take heart in knowing that we are on our way.    The question that remains for each one of us is “who can I bless?”  “How can I help lift the curse of bigotry that has been laid upon so many?  For even as we may have been blessed, so are we called to bless.