Back in the olden days, long before the Unitarians and Universalists merged, when our language tended to be more overtly theological, many of the Unitarian churches had mission statements which contained the phrase "salvation by character". Neither faith nor works, the argument of other Christian faiths seemed quite enough. To both early and later Unitarians, it was inconceivable that a good God could consign an individual of high character, no matter what his or her beliefs might be, to the everlasting fire. The Universalists of those days believed in salvation by grace, of course, so they were above that particular fray. Even those who were convinced that the Universalists, not believing in hell, must live evil and dissolute lives, could not argue that God's grace was not a sufficient answer to the question of salvation.
I was by nature and upbringing a Unitarian, though I never went to one of our churches until I was twenty-five. When I was in college, a Baptist college in those days, though it has since lost its credentials through being too liberal, we naturally spent a lot of time talking about religion. I was noted as the official campus atheist, though at the time I think deist would have been a more appropriate description, and at one of our dormitory bull sessions one of the girls said, "You know, Katy, you're so nice, it's too bad you're going to hell." I said, "You have put your finger on why I don't believe in your God. I simply cannot believe in a god who would condemn an essentially good person to hell simply because she isn't able to believe in him. I'm nicer than that!" That was my untutored opinion then, and it still is. It was gratifying to find a religion that agreed with me.
It still does. The first of the seven principles in the Unitarian Universalist Association bylaws may be the most controversial. It is the one that says we (the member congregations) affirm and promote the worth and dignity of every person. We usually take that to mean that we are expected to believe in such worth and dignity, a belief that some of us find hard to swallow when we think of certain evildoers. Hitler comes to mind. That, I am sure, never entered the heads of those who wrote it or who voted for it. It was really talking about salvation by character again. What it meant was that color, national origin, sex, sexual orientation or religious beliefs were irrelevant to the value we would place on anyone. What mattered was character - i.e. worth and dignity.
Tomorrow we will be celebrating the birthday of a great American hero, Martin Luther King, Jr. In his most famous speech - so famous it has almost entirely eclipsed much else that he said of beauty and power - one of the things he dreamed was that the day would come when we would be judged not by the color of our skin but the content of our character. That day has not yet come. Not only that, it seems to me that it is no longer an ideal that is held by most of those who are concerned about issues of racial justice. It is a dream wholly denied. Although we are still rightly indignant that it is still possible to be arrested for driving while black and that there are such obvious advantages to being white as greater ease in being granted a mortgage on a house. At other times, though, we are enjoined from making any judgment even on an issue of character, when color is part of the mix.
Let me say that I know that I am completely disqualified from saying any of the things I am going to say in the rest of this sermon, and I apologize ahead of time. I do not have to look in the mirror every morning and realize that today, just as every other day, I will be judged differently and harshly because of the color of my skin. Although I have been in situations where I was discriminated against because of my skin color, it was only an incident here and there, and though it was hurtful and made me angry I knew that is was not the whole make-up of my life, and that by walking a few blocks I would again be one of the privileged. Although it is almost guaranteed that I had ancestors who were slaves, (slavery having been universally practiced in human history) it is not recently enough that it can be traced, and it cannot affect me now. What made slavery as practiced in America more evil and keeps its effects alive was that, unlike others, it was based on color, and not necessarily your own color, but that of your grandmother. It was probably one of our greatest virtues that created this greatest evil. We founded our country on ideals of freedom and equality - and we owned black slaves. They were property to be bought and sold, to do the owners bidding without question with the threat of a whip, and husbands, wives and children could be separated for the owners' advantage. Naturally we could not treat fellow human being life that, so we had to decide that they were not really human - at least not in the same way that white people were. This laid the groundwork for the stereotyping and discrimination which still are with us and make issues of racial justice a continuing open sore in our society. How can we judge people with this history and this present on questions of character? Yet, if we do not, it seems to me that we are perpetuating a kind of discrimination that says that these people are not adults and cannot be held responsible for their actions. We still condemn or refuse to condemn, not on the basis of character, but of race.
All this was laid out for me very clearly some years ago. First Unitarian Universalist Church in New Orleans had a monthly breakfast to which they invited community leaders to come and talk about the various issues that confronted the city. One of their speakers, a black man, began a diatribe against homosexuals, using foul language, demeaning stereotypes, and all of the myths and lies that are told about sexual orientation. When someone did point out to him the prejudicial nature of his remarks, he became very angry that anyone would dare to question his opinions since they had not experienced the poverty and discrimination that had been his lot since birth. What he was saying was that a victim had a free pass to victimize others. I'm not saying that this is a widely held doctrine, but it is a dangerous one, and an inference that can be drawn from the influence of victim politics. It justifies the woman who encouraged her son, who could not have been more than ten, to vilify me for being white, and standing inattentively where he wished to walk.
There was a terrible incident last year in Jena, Louisiana. There was a tree in the shade of which white students gathered. Exclusively white students. Some black students went to the principal's office to enquire if this were the policy of the administration. They were told that it was not, and if they wanted to gather there they should do so. They did, and the next day there were several nooses hanging from the tree. The black kids reacted with violence and so did the authorities, trying the kids as adults for attempted murder for a schoolyard fight. Protesters gathered from all over the nation in support of the young black men. The authorities clearly overreacted. The nooses were horrible and have been copied since when people want anonymously to express their racist sentiments. Nevertheless, it occurred to me to wonder whether anyone had suggested to those young men that a violent attack, however nastily provoked, is not acceptable behavior. I imagine they all are convinced that they admire Martin Luther King. Do any of them know or understand his commitment to nonviolence? There's a responsive reading by Clinton Lee Scott in our hymnal which I almost used today. Since I didn't I'll read it to you anyway:
Always it is easier to pay homage to prophets than to heed the direction of their vision.
It is easier blindly to venerate the saints than to learn the human quality of their sainthood.
It is easier to glorify the heroes of the race than
To give weight to their examples.
To worship the wise is much easier than to profit by their wisdom.
Great leaders are honored, not by adulation, but by sharing their insights and values.
Grandchildren of those who stoned the prophet sometimes gather up the stones to build the prophet's monument.
Always it is easier to pay homage to prophets than to heed the direction of their vision.
There is a writer I have always admired, Shelby Steele, a fellow at Stanford University with Ph.D.s in a couple of different fields, one of which is sociology, who is very little known, though he has made it into Wikipedia. One of his first books was titled The Content of Our Character and was an examination of what he thought would be the negative consequences of affirmative action for black people. He thought all the consequences would be negative, and that the worst ones would be on the characters of the individuals whom it affected. He talked about the lack of respect that could be expected not only from others but from oneself if it was believed that someone got a job or a school placement because of their color rather than their ability, but his greatest fear was that it would create a new victim culture in which people would fee entitled to rewards for weakness rather than for their strengths. I could not agree with him entirely. There are kinds of affirmative action of which I strongly approve. When my son graduated from college he was offered a job that was contingent on their not being able to find a qualified black or woman, or preferably black woman, applicant. I am happy to say, for the job I did raising him, that he thought that that was perfectly reasonable contingency, even though it was his job that was in question. If applicants are equally well-qualified, it seems to me obvious that the one chosen should be a member of a historically underrepresented group. The problem comes when standards are actually reduced I order to include such people. Then Shelby Steele is right. It cannot be good either for the respect of others or one's self-respect to be perceived as getting a job under those conditions. It is particularly painful in colleges where the percentage of black students who drop out because of an inability to do the work is unacceptably high. I am not saying that affirmative action should be dropped as the Supreme Court decided, but that it should be redirected from admissions to remedial assistance at an earlier stage of education.
However, that is not the point. I wonder if Steele was right that the politics of victimization have had the terrible consequences that he foresaw. Some of it, I think, is real, as in the hypersensitivity that makes the word lynch a racial slur, even though whites as well as blacks were lynched even in the old South, and has the hymnbook commission change the word lashed to drove in one of our hymns for the same reason. We see it, I am afraid, in the breakdown of the black family, where a smaller percentage of women seem to be finding men worthy of marrying, and too many men pride themselves on the numbers of children they can father with different mothers. We see it in the kids who are accused of "acting white" if they want to study and get a good education. We see it in the abusive anger of too much of the rap music. We see it in the black on black crime and the numbers of black men beyond what is caused by the kind of discriminatory law enforcement we saw in Jena who are in prison. It is almost, for some of them, it seems, a rite of passage.
I cannot talk or do anything about it and neither can anyone else who is disqualified by being white. Luckily some others have joined Steele in his cause. I do not count Thomas Sewell, who appears to me to be infused with his own internalized racism, but Bill Cosby has spoken out as has nationally syndicated columnist William Raspberry and St. Petersburg's (and our Unitarian) Bill Maxwell. Perhaps the pendulum has swung and will begin at last to swing the other way.
Please believe that I do not consider any of this that I have been speaking of universal or even widespread behavior. However, it does exist and is too often justified and accepted because of the victim status that we have endowed our brothers and sisters with. Like Martin Luther King Jr., I have a dream that one day we will be judged not by the color of our skin but the content of our character. Perhaps that day is finally coming closer.