Visible to everyone at FGC

Queries - Virtual Worship for White Friends Confronting Racism

Resources for newcomers:

What happens in Quaker worship?

White Friends Confronting Racism Worship Guide

What are queries?

3/27 & 28/2025

ICE Agents Storm My Porch

By Maria Melendez Kelson

The Indiscriminate Citizenry of Earth

are out to arrest my sense of being a misfit.

“Open up!” they bellow,

hands quiet before my door

that’s only wind and juniper needles, anyway.

You can’t do it, I squeak from inside.

You can’t make me feel at home here

in this time of siege for me and mine, mi raza.

Legalized suspicion of my legitimacy

is now a permanent resident in my gut.

“Fruit of the prickly pear!” they swear,

striding up to my table

to juice me a glass of pink nectar.

They’ve brought welcome baskets

stuffed with proof I’m earthling.

From under a gingham cover,

I tug a dark feather

iridescing green — cohering

to “magpie” thought,

to memory’s chatter,

to mind. Mine.

And here they have my mind translated

into a slate-surfaced pond, which

vibrates in the shape

of a cottonwood’s autumn molt,

which trees me to dirt, which soils me

heat & freeze —

But you’ll always be

one definitive document short! I complain.

Doubts can forever outstrip

your geo-logic.

For which they produce

a lock of my natal dust,

bronzed

to the fluttering fiber

of lacebark pine.

Where’d they get that stuff?

The baskets are bottomless,

and it’s useless for me to insist

on being distinct.

Undergoing re-portation,

I’m awakened to a Center,

where walls

between all beings

are dreamt to dissolve.

Source: Poetry (March 2014)

Queries: If you have been welcomed where you did not expect it, what was that like?

What other things come up for you about this poem?

3/13 & 14/2025

There is no executive order; there is no law that can require the American people to form a national community. This we must do as individuals and if we do it as individuals, there is no President of the United States who can veto that decision.

Barbara Jordan

Queries:

1. How does this quote touch your heart?

2. What does this quote call forth from you?

3. How does her statement relate to your Meeting?

2/13 & 14/2025

Mothership

Tracy K. Smith

1972 –

You cannot see the Mothership in space,

It and She being made of the same thing.

All our mothers hover there in the ceaseless

blue-black, watching it ripple and dim

to the prized pale blue in which we spin—

we who are Black, and you, too. Our mothers

know each other there, fully and finally.

They see what some here see and call anomaly:

the way the sight of me might set off

a shiver in another mother’s son: a deadly

silent digging in: a stolid refusal to budge:

the viral urge to stake out what on solid ground

is Authority, and sometimes also Territory.

Our mothers, knowing better, call it Folly.

Query: Where does this poem take you, in your body, in your heart?

01/30 & 31/2025

Bayard Rustin. Video: On the Success and Failures of The Civil Rights Movement

https://youtu.be/grSbGG8uM-0

Queries

Rustin talks about changing tactics to match the times we are in.

1. What conversations are you involved in (or might you initiate) about changing or updating tactics for racial equity work?

2. What inner dialog(s) might you need to disrupt in order to update your own thinking and behavior in your work for liberation?

01/16 & 17/2025

By Nikki Giovanni

If Black History Month is not

viable then wind does not

carry the seeds and drop them

on fertile ground

rain does not

dampen the land

and encourage the seeds

to root

sun does not

warm the earth

and kiss the seedlings

and tell them plain:

You’re As Good As Anybody Else

You’ve Got A Place Here, Too

Source: Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (HarperCollins Publishers, 2002)

MLK reminds us that the “white moderate” can read Giovanni’s poem, BLK History Month, and nod along, unconsciously allowing a place for the Black person, while avoiding the deeper tensions and truths of white dominance and Black oppression. This is merely a perpetuation of dominance.

How does it feel to give up dominance, and consider yourself one seed among the many, equal to, not better than?

01/9 & 10/2025

…I recoiled in fear for days…But not some of my peers at FAMU. They amassed the courage I

did not have, that all antiracists must have. “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the

strength to do what is right in the face of it,” as the anonymous philosopher tells us. Some of us

are restrained by fear of what could happen to us if we resist. In our naivete, we are less fearful

of what could happen to us-------or is already happening to us------if we don’t resist.

Ibram X. Kendi. How to be an antiracist. 2019. One World, an imprint of Random House, a

division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York. p 124.

Queries:

How do I cultivate the strength and courage to act against racism when it is occurring?

What is the network (group, team) with which I will be taking action against racism?

01/2 & 3/2025

A social movement that only moves people is merely a revolt. A movement that changes both people and institutions is a revolution. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Queries:

1. What would you like to change in your meeting to make it more welcoming, more equitable, more anti-racist? How might you begin to create that change?

2. What practices or relationships sustain or support you in your work to create institutional revolutionary change?

12/26 & 27/2024

ON HOW

by Franny Choi

we wrote new chants

& bailed folks out

& plate-scooped meals

& healed old wounds

& walked cold blocks

& drummed up, stumped

& "stole" back land

& claimed back facts

& sewed loud flags

& sowed right crops

& cut cops' cash

& heaved gold rot

& let go ghosts

& surged, rode crests

& spread wealth flat

& clawed down walls

& ex-learned harm

& nixed cruel laws

& crowdsourced grace

& ground teeth down

& laid cards flat

& dug toward hope

& sang off-key

& worked through shit

& took sweet time

& pre-lived worlds

& dreamed past doom

& walked, fell, walked,

fell, walked, fell, walked.

From The World Keeps and the World Goes On (Ecco Press, 2022, pp. 90-91)

Queries

How does this poem feel in your body?

Where do you see your work in this poem, either work you are doing now or work you can do in the future?

12/19 & 20/2024

From Howard Thurman

Commitment means that it is possible for a [person] to yield the nerve center of [their] consent to a purpose or cause, a movement, or an ideal, which may be more important to [them] than whether [they live or die.]”

Queries:

How do these words land in your body?

What words stand out for you?

How do these words resonate or not with your Quaker practice?

12/12 & 13/2024

Who is there when so many of the poor (and recently poor) now compete for crumbs across racial and ethnic lines, rather than standing together to vision, to pray, to recollect, to plan, to struggle? Someone.

…

Who will open the door for the children, to let them see him, feel him, as he was, to recall him as he is, perhaps to expose their hungry, directionless lives to the flaming vector of his passion for the poor? Someone.

Is he safely dead? Perhaps we should recall him and see. Now. Perhaps in the process we may learn again how to live—unsafely, in love with God and neighbor, with cleansing, purifying fire, with the America that is yet to be created—by us. Perhaps if we recall him at this level even presidents will understand what Rabbi Abraham Heschel meant when he spoke to a group of his co-religionists ten days before King's death and said,

Martin Luther King, Jr., is a voice, a vision, and a way. I call upon every Jew to harken to his voice, to share his vision, to follow in his way. The whole future of America will depend on the impact and influence of Dr. King.

Harding, Vincent. Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero , rev. ed. (pp. 21-22). Orbis Books. Kindle Edition.

Queries

What does America “still being born” conjure up for you?

For what vision are you willing to die?

How does unprogrammed Quakerism, predominantly white, middle to upper-middle class, English only speaking as we are, fit into this challenge?

12/5 & 6/2024

In keeping with our Quaker calling to be witness to and active in the world, this month we begin our exploration movement building with the basics of self-care, from the website: Finding steady ground:

Finding steady ground

Finding steady ground: strengthening our spirits to resist and thrive in these times. To be in shape for the long...

www.findingsteadyground.com

Finding steady ground • www.findingsteadyground.com

Strengthening our spirits to resist and thrive in these times.

Here are 7 behaviors we can use right away to strengthen ourselves, so we can keep taking more and more powerful and strategic actions.

Every day:

1. I will make a conscious decision about when and where I’ll get news — and what I’ll do afterwards.

2. I will make human-to-human connection with another person and make sure we stay in motion.

Once a week:

3. I will pray, meditate, or reflect on those I know who are being impacted by oppressive policies, and extend that love to all who may be suffering.

4. I will read, listen to, or share a story about how others have resisted injustice.

5. I will be aware of myself as one who creates.

6. I will take a conscious break from social media.

7. I will commit to sharing with others what’s helping me.

Queries

How might these keystone practices support your anti-racism and anti-oppression work, both personally and in your meeting or community?

What helps you nurture your spirit and ground yourself as you prepare for social action?

11/28 & 29/2024

“By apologizing for the forced assimilation of Native American children in boarding schools, President Biden is making a significant acknowledgment of deep wounds impacting every Indigenous family in America. Building upon earlier apologies to Indigenous peoples from Presidents Clinton and Obama in 1993 and 2009, this moment underscores the urgent need to move beyond words. True healing demands dismantling colonial structures, returning stolen lands, honoring Indigenous sovereignty, fulfilling treaty obligations, and transforming symbolic gestures into concrete actions that address ongoing injustices and achieve meaningful reparative justice. Without such tangible steps, the apology risks remaining a symbolic gesture without fostering real accountability and justice.”

October 25, 2024

Native American historian comments on U.S. apology for abusive boarding schools

President Biden will deliver remarks in Arizona today apologizing for the federal government’s role in forcing Indigenous children into boarding schools, where many were abused and nearly 1,000 died. <br /> <br /> Doug Kiel (citizen of Oneida Nation), an associate professor of history and a faculty fellow at the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern University, is available for media interviews on this historic event.

news.northwestern.edu

Native American historian comments on U.S. apology for abusive boarding schools • news.northwestern.edu

Doug Kiel (citizen of Oneida Nation), an associate professor of history and a faculty fellow at the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research at Northwestern University

Queries:

Where in your body do you feel Dr. Kiel’s words?

How might you respond (or have you been responding) to these or similar words?

11/21 & 22/2024

Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up.”

Queries

What stirs in your heart, mind and body with this reminder not to protect yourself from life, from others, from love?

How does your meeting culture support or inhibit members open-hearted embrace of life?

11/14 & 15/2024

In the days head there will be the need for many gifts of the Spirit.

Query: What gift(s) of the Spirit will you bring?

Late in the session we will share the attached quote from Rev Barber

"In this season, when some want to harden and stop the heart of our democracy, ware being called like our foremothers and fathers to be the moral defibrillators of our time. We must shock this nation with the power of love. We must shock this nation with the power of mercy. We must shock this nation and fight for justice for all. We can’t give up on the heart of our democracy. Not now, not ever.”

~Reverend William Barber, Yale Divinity School

11/7 & 8/2024

"Bless the poets, the workers for justice,

the dancers of ceremony, the singers of heartache,

the visionaries, all makers and carriers of fresh meaning

--We will all make it through,

despite politics and wars, despite failures

and misunderstandings. There is only love."

Joy Harjo, Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems

How is your heart today?

What does Joy Harjo have to say to you about how Spirit is calling you?

What self-care messages are you receiving in this poem ?

11/1/2024 Queries

As we were leaving the meeting, a white Quaker woman who was sitting on a crucial decision-making committee at the WCC told me, “You know, no one in this group is trying to marginalize you, and no one at the WCC is trying to marginalize you.”

I told her, “I would be happy to have this conversation with you if you like, but it merits more time than two minutes on the way to the bus. Since you are in a position of power, I understand why you would say that. But I will just point out that that is what the powerful always say to and about the marginalized.”

It would have been much more helpful to me if this woman had said, “You have a point of view I haven’t heard. I’m distressed about it. And, in my position of power, I want to make sure that I can hear your voice fully. Would you be willing to meet with me and talk?” This would have signaled to me that she was willing to listen about how I felt marginalized, rather than engage in a rather dismissive one-minute conversation, and that she was open to learning about the process of marginalization within WCC of which she might be unaware. ..I hope that my experience as an indigenous woman can be taken seriously.

-”The Land is Not Empty,” Sarah Augustine, 2021, Herald Press, pp 67-8.

Queries

What did I learn from this quote?

How will this quote impact my actions in the future?

What characteristics of white supremacy culture cause us to marginalize others?

10/25/2024 Queries

“They don’t love you like I love you”

They Don’t Love You Like I Love You

poets.org

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Queries

In the poem, Diaz writes of a mother cautioning her daughter not to need the love of white people in order to know her own goodness.

How does it feel in your body to hear this.

How do you decenter whiteness in your interactions with others?

10/18/2024 Queries

“To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you

And know there is more

That you can't see, can't hear

Can't know except in moments

Steadly growing, and in languages

That aren't always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.”

― Joy Harjo

Queries:

As you breathe in these words, how do they land in your body?

What words especially stand out to you?

Do the author's words move you in some way?

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10/11/2024 Queries

I’ve spent nearly all of my adult life articulating…the importance of land to the Nishnaabeg. Although three generations of my family were removed from our reservation community, and much of our culture and our language, I have been able to spend the past twenty years living in our fractured and injured homeland, and struggling to learn the language, culture, ceremony, and knowledge. There are many, many Nishnaabeg who know more than I do, whose land is more intact than mine, who can think inside our language with ease. There are so many Nishnaabeg who have not had the same opportunities.

Land is so important to me, and to indigenous peoples, that all of our uprisings and resistance hold land at the centre.

-Robin Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Rehearsals for Living, 2022, Haymarket Books,p.85.

Queries:

What is your relationship with the land?

What is the relationship of your monthly meeting, yearly meeting to the lands where you meet?

Does hearing the importance of land to native people change how you view land?

What happens to how we view land when it is given a monetary value?

10/4/2024 Queries

“Peace cannot exist without justice, justice cannot exist without fairness, fairness cannot exist without development, development cannot exist without democracy, democracy cannot exist without respect for the identity and worth of cultures and peoples.”

– Rigoberta Menchú Tum a K'che' Guatemalan, human rights activist, feminist, Nobel Peace Laureate (1992)

Queries:

As you hear this quote, how does it land in your body?

How can we honor and respect the identity and worth of cultures and peoples with different experiences from our own?

What is Spirit calling you into?

9/27/2024 Queries

From the Southeastern Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

Annual Michener Lecture January 14, 2007, page 8

Letting Go of Illusion, Engaging Truth: Healing!

by Niyonu D. Spann

1) If you are a Quaker, what makes you so? What would have to happen for you to no longer be a Quaker?

I invite you with this query and others I ask, to just allow what comes and track it just a bit. So, if you are a Quaker, what makes you so? And if you go to an overly analytical place, just kind of calm that part of your mind down, and just let the simple little answers come.

2) Do you believe that there are those who really own Quakerism?

Not your analytical mind, the rational one that goes, "well, I would say given that… "Not that one.

3) Why is it that Quakers who come from a working class or poor background so often feel out of place or less-than among amongst friends?

So, I cautioned you a little bit about that rational and analytical mind, and I also want to caution you just a little bit about the little guilt prick that can come in and stop you. Why is it that people coming from a working class or poor background so often feel out of place or less than amongst Friends except for the times we are in silence together.

9/20/2024 Queries

"I try to be as honest about what I see and speak rather than be silent, especially if it means I can save lives or serve humanity." -Sandra Cisneros

"I hope I will see in my lifetime, a growing realization that we are one world. And that no one is going to have quality of life unless we support everyone's quality of life." -Dr. Helen Rodríguez-Trías

Queries:

How do each of these quotes land in your body?

How do these quotes challenge you?

How do we as Quakers integrate sitting in expectant waiting worship and speaking Truth with love?

9/13/2024 Queries

We have to, as a progressive movement, organize climate justice and reproductive rights and racial justice. We've got to do this. We can't continue to organize in silos.

I'm going to make mistakes. I'm going to say things I may not understand have hurtful impact on people. I always call people to call me in, to educate me. And to love me enough and to see my contributions in a way that, when I become better, our country becomes better.

-2020, Linda Sarcour, “We are Not Here to Be Bystanders.”

Queries:

What do you feel in your body when you hear these quotes today?

What moves you in these words?

How can we encourage loving feedback?

9/6/2024 Queries

“On one hand, I assume that the religious traditions are, for the most part, reactionary, repressive, and repulsive without heavy doses of modern formulations of rule of law, gender and racial equality, tolerance and, especially, substantive democracy. On the other hand, such modern formulations can be based on or derived from the best of religious traditions. To be a contemporary religious intellectual--and person—is to be caught in this creative tension on the boundary between past and present, tradition and modernity—yet always mounted in the barricades on this battlefield on which life is lived and history is made. Prophetic thought and action is a preservative in that it tries to keep alive certain elements of a tradition bequeathed to us from the past and revolutionary in that it attempts to project a vision and inspire a praxis that fundamentally transforms the prevailing status quo in light of the best of the tradition and the flawed yet significant achievements of the present order. These fragments—which feebly reflect the Christian faith that shores me up against the ruins in our world—are linked together by my response to one basic question: How does a present-day Christian think about and act on enhancing the plight of the poor, the predicament of the powerless and the quality of life for all in a prophetic manner?”

- From Cornell West’s introductory remarks in Prophetic Fragments (1988) and reprinted as chapter 24: The Crisis in Contemporary American Religion in The Cornel West Reader (1999)

Queries:

How does a present-day Quaker address challenges in Quakerism and in the world in a prophetic manner?

What tensions do you experience in your spiritual or religious praxis?

How might one envision both preserving the best from the past and being revolutionary in a way that transforms the status quo into a better way of being?

8/29/2024 Queries

Fear of White Supremacy Characteristics Cont.

Objectivity

Belief that there is such a thing as being objective or ‘neutral’

Belief that emotions are inherently destructive, irrational and should not play a role in decision-making or group process

Refusal to acknowledge the ways in which ‘logical’ or ‘rational’ thinking reinforce existing power structures.

Shaming of people who think in ways that do not appear to be ’logical’ or linear

Queries:

How can I be open to the divergent ways that people think and approach problems

What might I learn by really listening to a divergent way of approaching a problem?

8/9/2024 Queries

Fear of White Supremacy Characteristics Cont.

The right to comfort shows up as:

the belief that those with power have a right to emotional and psychological comfort (another way of valuing 'logic' over emotion):

scapegoating those who cause discomfort, for example, targeting and isolating those who name racism rather than addressing the actual racism that is being named;

demanding, requiring, expecting apologies or other forms of "I didn't mean it" when faced with colluding with racism;

feeling entitled to name what is and isn't racism;

white people (or those with dominant identities) equating individual acts of unfairness with systemic racism (or other forms of oppression)

Antidotes or suggestions for how to show up in more connecting and healing ways:

understand that discomfort is at the root of all growth and learning;

welcome discomfort and learn to sit with discomfort before responding or acting;

deepen your political analysis of racism and oppression so you have a strong understanding of how your personal experience and feelings fit into a larger picture;

avoid taking everything personally;

welcome honest and hard feedback as the gift it is, knowing that people so easily could choose to stay silent and talk about you behind your back rather than gift you with thei truth about how your attitudes and /or behavior are causing a problem;

when you have a different point of view, seek to understand what you are being told and assume there is a good reason for what is being said; seek to find and understand that good reason (without labeling the other person);

remember that feedback and criticism may be skillful or unskillful, and either way it will not kill you;

remember that critical feedback can help you see your conditioning as you learn to separate your conditioning from who you really are; you need to know your conditioning if you are going to be free; while your conditioning is hazardous, you are not.

Queries:

Think of a time when your white comfort or dominant comfort was disturbed. How did it feel in your body?

What work do you need to do to listen when your white comfort is disturbed?

How can we work together in our meetings to learn together that a disturbance in one's level of comfort may be an opportunity for curiosity and learning?

7/19/2024 Queries

Fear of White Supremacy Characteristics Cont.

From the website: White Supremacy Culture

EITHER/OR & THE BINARY

This page explores our cultural assumption that we can and should reduce the complexity of life and the nuances of our relationships with each other and all living things into either/or, yes or no,...

www.whitesupremacyculture.info

EITHER/OR & THE BINARY • www.whitesupremacyculture.info

This week we are looking at the characteristic of either/or thinking.

Either/or and the binary shows up as:

• Presenting options or issues as either/or — good/bad, right/wrong, with us/against us.

• Closely linked to perfectionism because binary thinking makes it difficult to learn from mistakes or accommodate conflict.

• A strategy used to pit oppressions against each other rather than to recognize the ways in which racism and classism intersect, the ways in which both intersect with heterosexism and agism and other categories of oppression.

Antidotes

Antidotes or suggestions for how to show up in more connecting and healing ways include:

• Notice when you or others use ‘either/or’ language and make time to come up with more than two alternatives.

• When you or others are faced with an urgent decision, take a break and offer some breathing room to think creatively and allow intuitive wisdom to arise.

• Avoid trying to assign a single cause to a problem or a challenge; acknowledge the ways in which oppressions intersect and reinforce each other as well as the ways in which oppression can be operating at the interpersonal, institutional and cultural levels.

Queries

Are there certain circumstances that make it more likely that I will see things as ‘either/or’?

What does it feel like in my body when I am in either/or thinking?

How might I interrupt either/or thinking when I see it in my meeting? Or in myself?

What does it feel like in my body when I interrupt it?

7/11/2024 Queries

Fear of White Supremacy Characteristics Cont.

One right way

One right way shows up as:

the belief there is one right way to do things and once people are introduced to the right way, they will see the light and adopt it

when a person or group does not adapt or change to "fit" the one right way, then those defining or upholding the one right way assume something is wrong with the other, those not changing, not with us

similar to a missionary who sees only value in their beliefs about what is good rather than acknowledging value in the culture of the communities they are determined to "convert" to the right way of thinking and/or the right way of living

The movement seeks uniformity because uniformity and purity feel safe. This, too, is the language of trauma.

Kai Cheng Thom from I Hope We Choose Love (p. 100)

Queries:

In what ways do my actions exemplify 'one right way'?

What practices in my meeting mirror 'one right way'?

How might I notice these practices and act to open myself and situations to multiple perspectives?

7/5/2024 Queries

Fear of White Supremacy Characteristic

"White Supremacy, white supremacy culture and racism are fear-based. White supremacy uses fear to disconnect us in multiple ways:

-to disconnect us from each other across racial identities,

- to disconnect us from each other within racial identities,

- to disconnect us from ourselves,

- to disconnect us from the earth, wind, and sky, and all creatures that roam the earth,

- to disconnect us from source, god, creativity..., or whatever you call the wisdom we carry inside us.

White supremacy, white supremacy culture and racism use fear to divide and conquer, always in service of profit and power for the few at the expense of the many."

Tema Otum, May, 2021 “White Supremacy: Still Here” https://whitesupremacyculture.info

Queries:

When you notice fear-based white supremacy (within yourself or within cultural structures) what do you feel in your body?

What are practices that can enable you to notice and choose a path forward?

6/14/2024-6/28/2024 Queries

Queer Jewish Israelis, in showing solidarity with queer Palestinians, became some of the most vigorous and vocal among non-Palestinians in the struggle against homophobia, anti-Arab racism, and the Israeli state. Queer Jewish North Americans and Europeans now play a disproportionately large role in the global queer Palestinian solidarity movement, particularly as the left—and the peace movement—has diminished in Israel in recent years. Furthermore, diaspora Palestinians and non-Palestinians who are solidarity activists work to support the queer movement in Palestine through campaigns in local contexts, particularly in Europe and North America, which has led to the global reach of the movement.

In recent years, those within the global queer Palestinian solidarity movement and their allies have increasingly turned against one another, resulting in deep divisions and contestation that have inhibited the movement from reaching its full potential. Activists and members are being worn down by the enduring nature of different and intersecting systems of oppression. There have also been shifts favoring a subset of activists whom I describe as “radical purists.” Their competition over moral purity, debates on representation, limits on institutional capacities, rigid policies on international aid, criticism of those to whom they are closest, and other factors have led to the fragmentation of the movement. Nonetheless, queer Palestinian activism persists on the ground in Israel/Palestine. Solidarity with Palestine remains one of the most dynamic and salient domains of global queer politics today.

From: Quaker Palestinian-American Queer Quaker Professor of Anthropology at Swarthmore College and Emory University, Sa’ed Atshan

https://transreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/2023-11-15_6554e3529a8e1_QueerPalestineandtheEmpireofCritique-SaedAtshan-2020-StanfordUniversityPress-9781503609945-38e1148de264983f2d72d73cdc1590aa-AnnasArchive.pdf

Queries

Why do you think that solidarity with Palestine is one of the most dynamic and salient domains of global queer politics today?

Have you noticed how subsets of activists can create divisions, wear us down, or just create problems, and how can be best manage that?

Will Queer Palestinians and Jews be one of the necessary keys to peace in the Middle East?

5/3/2024-6/7/2024 Queries

During these weeks, WFCR returned to and reviewed the queries from The Outgoing Epistle of the 2020 Virtual Pre-Gathering of Friends of Color and their Families.

The Outgoing Epistle of the 2020 Virtual Pre-Gathering of Friends of Color and their Families

July 3, 2020 by Friends General Conference

The importance of this Gathering for Friends of Color worshipping in community together cannot be overstated. To our Friends in the wider Quaker world, we the Friends of Color, can’t breathe. During this weekend, we enjoyed the rare opportunity of not being othered In Quaker space. We experienced the joy of being seen as we are and the affirmation

of a supportive spirit among ourselves in the “Amen corner”. The term “Amen corner” comes from the Black church and is a communal space that validates, affirms and uplifts the spirit. In isolation, due to COVID19, we are being kept apart

and away from those we love, trust and need. The pre-gathering retreat brought back the source of community and family that has been missing.

“We are a harvest of survivors. But then, that’s what we’ve always been.” — Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

To Friends Everywhere:

We begin by remembering our ancestors who were strong enough to make a way for us. Friends of Color and their families met for Pre-Gathering Retreat on 26 Day through 28 Day Sixth Month 2020. This is the eighth year Friends of Color have met for our Pre-Gathering Retreat. First-timers felt welcomed and validated. This year, we met virtually with our largest attendance yet. There were 47 attendees, ranging in age from 11 months through 77 years from Canada, Mexico, Switzerland and the United States of America. The importance of this Gathering for Friends of Color worshipping in community together cannot be overstated. To our Friends in the wider Quaker world, we the Friends of Color, can’t breathe. During this weekend, we enjoyed the rare opportunity of not being othered In Quaker space. We experienced the joy of being seen as we are and the affirmation of a supportive spirit among ourselves in the “Amen corner”. The term “Amen corner” comes from the Black church and is a communal space that validates, affirms and uplifts the spirit. In isolation, due to COVID19, we are being kept apart and away from those we love, trust and need.

The pre-gathering retreat brought back the source of community and family that has been missing. We were able to exhale, relax, and breathe together. Many of us did not realize how exhausted we were until we were able to relax with one another. The gifts of the spirit were abundant. We shared in worship, gentle yoga and meditation, meaningful discussions, journaling and self-discovery. We also listened and shared in each other’s joys, triumphs, pains and sorrows. We experienced spiritual renewal that was awakened by moving through pain to hope for the future for ourselves and our children. Attention and space was given for

people to play games, dance, talk, grieve, play music, watch videos, and write.

We have much gratitude to the Program Coordinator for the Ministry on Racism; the pioneer who laid the groundwork to make the Pre-Gathering Retreat available to us within FGC gathering and who faithfully makes it happen each year. We are grateful for being able to acknowledge all that makes us human, for finding home and connection. Our inner Light is magnified and our capacity to breathe deeply is nurtured when that of God is acknowledged in each of us. It is our hope that other Friends of Color will know that such a space exists and know that they are desired, needed and will be warmly embraced.

The Pre-Gathering Friends of Color Retreat provides a reprieve. Friends of Color need respite from the systemic racism too often found in our American Quaker community that often goes unseen by many white Friends. Friends of Color need respite from the insidious lie of white supremacy manifested in daily oppressive traumatic stressor (microaggressions) which have the effect of blaming the oppressed for our own oppression. Friends of Color need respite and support which our home meetings have not provided. Friends of Color are fatigued from being asked to teach white folks.

We ask all Quakers to heed a Call to Action. Please sit with these queries:

What is the Spirit leading me to do about the historic and ongoing racial pandemic across my meeting, my community, my work environment and my country?

How can we honor the memory of people who have lost their lives to the struggle for a better world?

How can we construct ways for people to engage and remain engaged beyond good intentions in the struggle for true equality in health, education, wealth and against state sanctioned violence?

How can we encourage the support of Friends of Color in Quaker worship and meetings around the world?

How can Friends de-center themselves in order to listen to and hear Friends of Color?

How can I support respite for Friends of Color?

In this time of COVID19, People of Color discovered that a deadly pandemic is secondary to the long-time pandemic of racism in our lives. People of Color are more likely to die from COVID19 due to the effects of racism and oppression. Think about how this pandemic has turned your world upside down, economically, emotionally, psychologically. Now imagine there is no one working on a vaccine, and that if you get sick or die, no one notices or cares. For People of Color, the human-made pandemic of racism is deadlier than COVID19, and we need you to do work so that we can BREATHE.

In Peace, Love and….

2020 FGC Virtual Pre-Gathering Retreat for Friends of Color and their Families

Queries

What is the Spirit leading me to do about the historic and ongoing racial pandemic across my meeting, my community, my work environment and my country?

How can we honor the memory of people who have lost their lives to the struggle for a better world?

How can we construct ways for people to engage and remain engaged beyond good intentions in the struggle for true equality in health, education, wealth and against state sanctioned violence?

How can we encourage the support of Friends of Color in Quaker worship and meetings around the world?

How can Friends de-center themselves in order to listen to and hear Friends of Color

How can I support respite for Friends of Color?

The Outgoing Epistle of the 2020 Virtual Pre-Gathering of Friends of Color and their Families - Friends General Conference

The importance of this Gathering for Friends of Color worshipping in community together cannot be overstated.

www.fgcquaker.org

The Outgoing Epistle of the 2020 Virtual Pre-Gathering of Friends of Color and their Families - Friends General Conference • www.fgcquaker.org

4/18/2024 Queries

“. . . though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you." Was not Amos an extremist for justice: "Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream." Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: "I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus." Was not Martin Luther an extremist: "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God." And John Bunyan: "I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience." And Abraham Lincoln: "This nation cannot survive half slave and half free." And Thomas Jefferson: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ..." So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary's hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime---the crime of extremism. Two were extremists for immorality, and thus fell below their environment. The other, Jesus Christ, was an extremist for love, truth and goodness, and thereby rose above his environment. Perhaps the South, the nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.” — From Martin Luther King, Jr.’s A LETTER FROM BIRMINGHAM JAIL, April 16, 196

https://url.avanan.click/v2/___http://abacus.bates.edu/admin/offices/dos/mlk/letter.html___.YXAzOmZnY3F1YWtlcjphOm86YjBiNWE0M2MxZjdjYjg2YjcxOGNmNDA2OWY2YmUzODQ6NjpkMDBmOjA1OWJiZGQzZDA5NDg3NDk2NzllMzU2ZmVhYjA4NDhiMWU3N2NkYjc0MDljOTI0Zjg4OTFiYjc3NjQyOGI4ZGI6dDpU

Queries

Where have you or, if not you, others have been called extremist in the service of love?

Has this happened in your Quaker Meeting or other groups?

How did you manage/are you managing it?

4/11/2024 Queries

Harlem

BY LANGSTON HUGHES

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore—

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over—

like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Queries

In your racial equity work, how do you move from grief, overwhelm and empathy to action?

3/28/2024 Queries

“No matter your race, ethnicity, or mixture, racial justice begins with a sobering soak in your own reflection, and all that lies beneath. To awaken to the ways in which white supremacy is playing out in your day-to-day, the ways you contribute to its prevalence, and the hurt it is causing us all. Here’s the tea – racial justice starts with you, and it starts within. There can be no genuine outer shift unless we get right with ourselves first – and racial justice requires a major collective upheaval. It necessitates an overhaul of every system we have ever known the world over. This is why I need you to tap into your heart space, connect to your righteous rage, and use it as fuel for systemic and collective change.” — Rachel Ricketts, “Do Better: Spiritual Activism for Fighting and Healing from White Supremacy,” p. xii

Queries

(Adapted from Mariame Kaba: Fumbling Towards Repair)

How have you changed in your understanding or in your actions in the last six months?

In the last year?

How do you feel about the change(s)?

3/21/2024 Queries

“...many people feel that being cordial is good enough, and that cruelty is measured by active, individual bad behavior. The reality is that choosing not to include the vulnerable has the same effect - dismissal - and being passively dismissed amounts to marginalization. The marginalized have little voice. They must be actively included. A failure to include is de facto exclusion.” — Augustine, Sarah, 2021. The Land is Not Empty, Following Jesus in Dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery. Herald Press. Harrisonburg, VA. p.68.

Queries

In what ways do my own actions marginalize individuals with whom I interact? How must I change my own behavior?

How can I work to expose passive aggressive responses and prevent marginalization of individuals?

3/14/2024 Queries

Two Loves

There is a love I know,

warm as the glos of summer,

on lingering autumn hillsides,

a love all gentleness and clam,

tranquil as shadows in a deep valley,

gloriously new as matins,

tender as evensong.

There is another love I know

struggling to live its life day by day,

having no past to build upon;

no hope, no promise in the offing,

no day possessed before the sibyl hour

predicting night.

— By Helen Morgan Brooks (1904-1989) African American Quaker, I Choose Love. Published by Friends of Helen Morgan Brooks (and may still be available Pendle Hill Publications), 1990.

“sibyl” is a noun meaning:

1. a female prophet or witch.

2. (in ancient Greece and Rome) any of a number of women believed to be oracles or prophetesses, one of the most famous being the sibyl of Cumae, who guided Aeneas through the underworld.

Queries

With the joys and problems in our lives, do you recognize different forms of love, peaceful or struggling?

How do you imagine African Americans see these loves differently from majority ethnic/racial folk in America?

2/29/2024 Queries

“I want you to have the vision to see things differently. Be open to listening in new ways and understand things outside of the context of the White culture. Your goals should prioritize flexibility. Step outside of your White cultural boundaries. Test yourself constantly to see how flexible you truly are. When you feel your White fragility surfacing, notice it, let it pass through you, and take the risk of making a different choice. Instead of defending you intention, apologize, let go of your defensiveness, and focus on how your actions have impacted others regardless of how good you intentions are.” — From page 26 id Pendle Hill Pamphlet 476: Radical Transformation: Long Overdue for the Religious Society of Friends by Vanessa Julye

Query

What tests do you set up for yourself in challenging White culture?

2/23/2024 Queries

“Jazz, and all the many musical forms it has influenced, models a collective combination of love and struggle for justice, because each instrument is saying to the other: You have value, we all have value, and none of us is greater than the other. This translates into: We recognize your humanity. You may not sound like me, yet we are working together on the same themes. In jazz politics, we define ourselves not by superiority to some denigrated other, but by how we use the gifts we were given to contribute to the community we share. In jazz, it is self -evident that all are created equal. In jazz, you can hear the sound of what Dr. King called the beloved community.” — Dancing in the Darkness, Otis Moss III. p,119. 2023. Simon and Schuster, New York

Queries

How do I support an environment that recognizes the humanity of each person present while recognizing the value of the unique gifts each brings?

How do I make sure the each voice has a chance to share its gift?

2/16/2024 Queries

“As much as we lawyers would like to feel that under our present system of government there is no wrong without a remedy, as men and women we must admit that the judicial, legislative, and administrative bodies of our country are composed of mere men and women. We must admit that no greater justice can come from a court than that which the majority of its judges metes out. We know that no fairer decision can come from a jury than that to which its most partial juror agrees. It is therefore submitted that the law per se can do little to help our backward areas. The law must be assisted by religion, for there must be in the hearts of the beings administering the law a fundamental quality which only a religion can place there.” — Mahala Ashley Dickerson from 1950 as quoted in Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights.

Queries

Given today’s mix of religion and government today, does Dickerson’s correction for the law still apply?

How do you apply religion to the law?

If you were a person of color, do you think your answers would be different?

2/8/2024 Queries

Cornell West: “Justice is what love looks like in public...“

Queries

In my own life, how does love compel me in my work for Justice?

In the places where love and justice are separate, what separates them? How can I bridge that separation?

Th[e]] poem [below] is by Helen Morgan Brooks (1904-1989), a Quaker and a poet from the Philadelphia region. Brooks was born in Reading, Pennsylvania and worked as a dietician and educator throughout her adult life. At the age of 52 she became a member of Arch Street meeting in Philadelphia, and served on several boards and committees of local Friends organizations, including Pendle Hill and Friends Journal.

Double chain

Portray her as you will.

If you see a black Queen's grace,

a slattern or a wench

beneath the pale yellow of her face,

try to conjure from your mind

the will and soul to learn

this strange alchemy of her race.

If you of one continuous strain

of tranquil thought and blood

Back through 100 years or more,

would call once to that strange

god-made protoplasm,

that lithe body that walks with measured tread;

those eyes that see, the ears that hear,

the tongue that speaks your language

or some other God-like nations;

who reads and learns, who lives and loves;

Who sickens as you do and dies;

she never will be free,

but bound fast with iron bands,

or, stranger still,

with chains of heritage

to the songs of her soul,

the soul of an ancestral slave

that makes her in the dead of night

morn in softly to herself;

I am bound I am bound can't be free

Soul save yourself and then save me

I am bound and can't be free

How often have you called back down to her,

when deep, the soul still cries aloud:

I am climbing Jacob’s ladder Ladder Ladder

I am climbing Jacob’s Ladder,

Soldier of the cross?

You read, that in some tyrant’s state,

blood Brothers have been lynched.

She would not be so far concerned

if tried, they went to death—

but the injustice of it all!—

or was it Injustice too

when her grandmama first reasoned thus:

Were you there were you there

when they crucified my Lord?

But trouble trouble

swinging down a narrow lane

cannot pass her by

or, just enough to hear her cry:

Nobody knows de trouble I see,

Nobody knows but Jesus.

O then for freedom in your soul, to no,

to recognize the courage and the hope

it takes to sing aloud at last:

Hush Hush Somebody callin’ yo name

Come up my chile on my right hand

and look and see de Promised Land

Hush Hush O yes somebody callin’ yo name!

— Helen Morgan Brooks, reprinted in Black Fire, African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights. Editors: Harold D. weaver, Jr, Paul Kriese, and Stephen W. Angell. 2021. FGC Press.

Queries

How does reading or listening to poetry of BIPOC folk differ from experiencing prose?

What are some of the ways we see the “Double Chain” today, in accomplished women of color or in the poor or unemployed?

What else is evoked in you?

2/1/2024 Queries

At this, the onset of Black History month, our queries come from a request to Quakers from Dr. Harold D. Weaver, a request he presents in the Pendle Hill pamphlet “Race, Systemic, Violence, and Retrospective Justice.“ They address, in part, his hope that we, as individuals and as meetings, become more active and committed in seeking justice.

Queries

Do we need a Justice testimony in the Religious Society of Friends? Why and how might a Justice testimony help Friends in our spiritual and temporal practices?

What does “justice” mean to Friends? How does our meeting respond to the need for justice?

If we disregard Justice, what impact does it have on our spiritual lives and on our connection with the Divine?

What is the relationship between love and justice? Between living in the spirit and seeking Justice? If compassion is love in action, what is justice in action?

Some of you may know Dr. Weaver from his work with the BlackQuaker Project. He is also speaking at Pendle Hill on Monday, 2/5: "Truth and Justice: The BlackQuaker Project Challenges Quakerism in the 21st Century.”

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Truth and Justice: The BlackQuaker Project Challenges Quakerism in the 21st Century - Pendle Hill - A Quaker study, retreat, and conference center near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

pendlehill.org

1/25/2024 Queries

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.

— Martin Luther King Jr.

It’s such a simple vision, and yet, we still do not yet have the public will to make these basic human goods a reality.

As people of faith, we share the vision and its radical implications, at least philosophically. The wider culture, however, is steeped in resistance, and we, as Quakers, live in both the world of our convictions and the world that would crush those same convictions.

It remains a bitter reality that our internalized racism and our internalized superiority as white people gives us reasons to pause, reasons to dehumanize those ‘unlike us’ who might benefit from these equalities most directly.

Queries

What stories do you tell yourself about why this vision is not possible or realistic?

What do you notice in your body, as you hold both the vision and the resistance in your awareness?

What is one thing you can do to break down your personal resistance or institutional resistance?

1/18/2024 Queries

The war in Vietnam is but a symptom of a far deeper malady within the American spirit, and if we ignore this sobering reality...and if we ignore this sobering reality, we will find ourselves organizing "clergy and laymen concerned" committees for the next generation. They will be concerned about Guatemala -- Guatemala and Peru. They will be concerned about Thailand and Cambodia. They will be concerned about Mozambique and South Africa. We will be marching for these and a dozen other names and attending rallies without end, unless there is a significant and profound change in American life and policy.

And so, such thoughts take us beyond Vietnam, but not beyond our calling as sons of the living God.

[….]

[T]he words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin...we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

Martin Luther King, Jr., “Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence,” 4 April 1967, Riverside Church, New York City; Speech written in collaboration with Vincent Harding

American Rhetoric: Martin Luther King, Jr: A Time to Break Silence (Declaration Against the Vietnam War)

americanrhetoric.com

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Queries

What do you do to move beyond “concerned” committees when confronting racism and other forms of oppression?

How do you make your life person-oriented rather than thing-oriented?

1/11/2024 Queries

By and Large, American politics is dominated by politicians who build their career on immoral compromise and allow themselves an open forum of political, economic and social exploitation. There are exceptions, of course. We salute those. But what political leader can stand up and say, ’My party is a party of principle?

....We are tired. We are tired of being beaten by policemen. We are tired of seeing our people locked up in jail over and over again and then you holler “be patient.” How long can we be patient? We want our freedom and we want it now.

…. Appeal to all of you to get in this great revolution that is sweeping this nation. Get in and stay in the streets of every city, every village, until the revolution of 1776 is complete.

From John Lewis’ speech at the March on Washington, 1963 His Truth is Marching On: John Lewis and the Power of Hope. 2020. Jon Meacham, Random House, pp140-142.

Queries

What am I doing to make my representatives accountable?

How can I be part of the change necessary to transform this nation so we value and provide for all who are here?

1/4/2024 Queries

In his Letter From Birmingham Jail, nearly 51 years ago, Martin Luther King, Jr. addressed the accusations of his being an extremist.

"...I have not said to my people, 'Get rid of your discontent'. But I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled through the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. Now this approach is being dismissed as extremist. I must admit that I was initially disappointed in being so categorized. But as I continued to think about the matter, I gradually gained a bit of satisfaction from being considered an extremist. Was not Jesus an extremist in love? -- "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you." So the question is not whether we will be extremist, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate, or will we be extremists for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice, or will we be extremists for the cause of justice? I had hoped that the white moderate would see this. Maybe I was too optimistic. Maybe I expected too much. I guess I should have realized that few members of a race that has oppressed another race can understand or appreciate the deep groans and passionate yearnings of those that have been oppressed, and still fewer have the vision to see that injustice must be rooted out by strong, persistent, and determined action. I am thankful, however, that some of our white brothers have grasped the meaning of this social revolution and committed themselves to it. They are still all too small in quantity, but they are big in quality. They, unlike many of their moderate brothers, have recognized the urgency of the moment and sensed the need for powerful "action" antidotes to combat the disease of segregation."

Queries

In this year, what are you called to be?

How can we, individually and collectively, be examples of extremists for love?

12/15/2023 Queries

Our topic this month is PEACE

Definition of Racial Wounding

First and foremost, racial wounding is what a Person of Color says it is. We offer this definition knowing there are many other possible definitions.

We understand racial wounding to be protecting power, white supremacy culture, institutions, or the status quo above the well-being of a Person of Color in any of the following ways:

Harm to a Person of Color, whether intentional or not

An act, sentiment, or behavior diminishing someone’s humanity to a race-based stereotype

Othering, exclusion, silencing, erasure, or denial of a Person of Color’s lived experience

Dictating the appropriateness of a Person of Color’s emotional response (tone policing)

Appropriating, tokenizing, or exotifying the cultures of People of Color

Disrespect of the boundaries of a Person of Color; nonconsensual feeling of entitlement to People of Color’s time, attention, emotional labor, bodies, and spaces

White people being present where it’s not appropriate, and feeling justified (for example in a POC-only space)

Guidelines for the Committee to Address Racial Wounding

Priorities for this Committee:

Holistic healing for racial wounding that occurs within FGC’s events, committee meetings, or communications.

Deepening our relationships as Friends and making our community stronger.

Offering tools for accountability and amends making to Friends who have caused harm with actions and attitudes that stem from white supremacy when appropriate

Holding FGC accountable for its organizational responsibility to the community for harm that occurs at its events, in meetings and communications.

Taken from: https://www.fgcquaker.org/fgcresources/fgc-policies-and-guidelines/guidelines-for-addressing-racial-wounding/

Queries

Do you have people in your life that will point out to you when you have racially wounded someone?

When you have racially wounded someone, what kinds of feelings do you have?

What has worked and has not worked well for you when this happens?

12/8/2023 Queries

Belief in the superiority of the "white race" was both inspired and reinforced by the contact of European colonist-conquerors with native populations in the Americas, Asia, and Africa, and buttressed as pseudo-science by a perversion of evolutionary theory known as "social Darwinism." "Social Darwinism" postulated that human beings were not one species, but divided into several different "races" that were biologically driven to struggle against one another for living space to ensure their survival. Only those "races" with superior qualities could win this eternal struggle which was carried out by force and warfare. Social Darwinism has always been the product of bogus science: to this day, despite a century and a half of efforts by racists to find it, there is no biological science to support social Darwinist theory.

These new "antisemites," as they called themselves, drew upon older stereotypes to maintain that the Jews behaved the way they did—and would not change—because of innate racial qualities inherited from the dawn of time.

- Taken from the Holocaust Museum website: https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism-in-history-racial-antisemitism-18751945

The expectation that the oppressed should keep to nonviolent resistance has been around at least since William Lloyd Garrison, the famous white abolitionist, clarified that he would never advocate for slaves to revolt. Western solidarity with nonviolent struggle has a long history and is based on a series of premises: that it will be easier for solidarity activists to win more followers to the cause if the oppressed refrain from using violence; that nonviolent ‘soul force’ has more power than actual material force (per Gandhi); that with a ‘free press’ the images and stories of nonviolent resistance cannot but move Western publics to stop supporting colonial abuses (per Orwell). In the Palestinian case it is the Western solidarity activists who have failed. Perhaps Western democracies aren’t as democratic as we think they are, perhaps the Western press isn’t as free as we think, or perhaps the Western public is more supportive of settler colonialism (anti-Palestinian racism) than we would have wished. In any case, having failed to fulfill our end of the bargain through our failure Western solidarity activists have left Palestinians alone to liberate themselves (with some regional help, for example from the equally demonized Iran and Hizbollah).

As Frantz Fanon taught, it is always the case that the burden of liberation is on the natives themselves.

https://podur.org/2021/05/23/anti-palestinian-racism-a-resource/ Author: Justin Podur

Queries

How have you encountered antisemitism and racist components of it and what has it looked like? Has it shown up in your school? On social media? In other communities you are a part of?

How have you encountered anti-Palestinian racism and what has it looked like? Has it shown up in your school? On social media? In other communities you are a part of?

How does our language confuse or clarify anti-Zionism and racialized antisemitism, and the same for anti-Palestinianism and Islamophobia and anti-Arab frames?

12/1/2023 Queries

Quote: "To understand the storying of any place, I must also understand the storying of myself. Must follow traces beneath familiar surfaces to where ancestral structures lie." Lauret Savoy, Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape

Quote: "As a nation, will you choose the path we have always traveled, a journey of silence that has benefited only a select group and oppressed other, or will you choose the road less traveled, a journey of racial reality that may be full of discomfort and pain, but offers benefits to all groups in our society?" Derald Wing Sue, Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence

Quote: "Our task is to honor our ancestors, even those who caved beneath the weight of systematic destruction and became conquerors themselves. Our task is to remember that we are those beautiful Earth People." Lyla June Johnston (Dine/European), Reclaiming our Indigenous European Roots

Sighted in Louise Dunlap's Inherited Silence: Listening to the Land, Healing the Colonizer Mind

Queries:

What was/is the inherited silence in your family?

How are you called to be in relationship to the inherited silences?

What are you called to in relationship to these inherited silences?

11/17/2023 Queries

Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of Settler Privilege

https://www.beaconbroadside.com/broadside/2018/11/unpacking-the-invisible-knapsack-of-settler-privilege.html

By Dina Gilio-Whitaker (Colville Confederated Tribes)

Quote: “[In the US] The single, irreducible element of the racism American Indians have been subject to is the acquisition of our lands, and this is what makes racism against American Indians different than all other forms of racism and discrimination. This is the core of a system we call settler colonialism…..

All of today’s settlers and immigrants are in one way or another beneficiaries of genocide and land theft, even if they are simultaneously themselves victims of other forms of discrimination (with the possible exception of migratory Indigenous peoples of “Meso-America”). I realize this may be difficult for people of color to hear. But this is what it means to center settler colonialism as a framework for understanding the foundation of the US beyond an analysis of race, since the origins of the US are rooted in foreign invasion, not racism.”

For generations, the popular significance of Thanksgiving has centered on gratitude and hospitality.

Queries:

How might you think or act this season to give voice to the lives and stories that have been rewritten by racism and the settler colonialism lens of gratitude and hospitality?

What might allow for gratitude and grief in the practice of Thanksgiving?

11/3/2023 Queries

Queries:

What does it mean that settler society established the State of Minnesota at the expense of Indigenous Peoples?

What does it mean that Minnesota’s citizens advocated, supported and perpetrated genocidal policies so they could obtain Dakota homeland?

What does it mean that Dakota extermination and forced removal (as well as Ho-Chunk removal) were the price of Minnesota’s statehood?

Source: Waziyatawin, Ph.D. What Does Justice Look Like? The Struggle for Liberation in Dakota Homeland. Living Justice Press, 2008, St Paul, Minnesota, pp.3.4.

What can you do in your state to bring awareness of the role of colonialism in the policies being made today that continue to cause harm to resident Indigenous People’s?

How can you meeting make people aware of the impact of colonial thinking in the way laws are made?

10/27/2023 Queries

White supremacy culture teaches us to be experts and to be dominating rather than interpersonal.

Queries:

What is the culture of your meeting around the labeling of “eccentric” expressions and possible mental health concerns?

How do race, gender, ethnicity or class influence what is considered to be “eccentric” behavior?

Does your meeting have a ‘companion’ model for being in relationship or an ‘expert’ model?

10/26/2023 Queries

The Hicksite-Orthodox Schism and the Friends Asylum

From: Mental Health and Quaker Theology | Quakers & Mental Health (haverford.edu)

Quote:

The Quakers who were involved in starting and managing the Friends' Asylum nearly all became Orthodox Quakers in the split. Their roles as leaders of the Friends' Asylum indicated that they held a privileged position in the Quaker community, which made them more likely to become Orthodox Quakers. Their place on the top of the Quaker hierarchy gave them a particular viewpoint on insanity. Historian Patricia D’Antonio argued that the Orthodox Quakers were “less tolerant of behavioral eccentricities than… their Hicksite brethren” (50). Some of these eccentricities were probably related to mental illness. The Orthodox control of the Asylum gave the Orthodox Friends a place where they could take care of eccentricities without having to disown people.

From: Quakers and Mental Healthcare - Friends Journal

Quote: Helen B. Mullin, a lesbian and member of Brooklyn Meeting, has worked as a social worker for 29 years in public and private settings:

When I was introduced to Quakerism in 2000, I began to change my view from “service” to “seeing.” The “seeing” was about seeing that of God in everyone with whom I worked. I guess I also began to see myself as a sojourner with my clients as well. I would redirect their inferences that I was the “expert” to my being a fellow traveler who might be able to help with their journeys.

Queries:

How has your monthly, quarterly, or yearly meeting supported members or attenders or seekers with mental health concerns?

How has your monthly, quarterly, or yearly meeting mishandled mental health concerns of members, attenders, or seekers?

How do you manage your own and/or your own family members mental health concerns with your meeting (or do you keep is hidden therein)?

10/20/2023 Queries

From VeryWellFamily.com, during ADHD Awareness Month:

Quote: While the stigma around mental illness is still prevalent across cultures, it holds especially strong in many minority communities, some of which may also distrust the medical system for past mistreatment. Parmar explains, “Parents are often opposed or ashamed of getting their child labeled with ADHD, and may decline treatment due to fear of negative outcomes or side effects.”

“ADHD symptoms are often dismissed as ‘laziness or defiant behavior’ in affected children in such households. Children are often berated and blamed in such homes for being unable to keep up with day-to-day tasks. Caregivers might not even think of these issues as problems that may need professional help; it’s often brushed under the rug as something that every family has to deal with on their own," says Parmar.

Queries:

How do our own cultural stigmas around ADHD, and other mental health diagnoses, potentially prevent inclusiveness in our Meetings for Worship, where silence + stillness is expected?

How do pervasive cultural stereotypes, often based on prejudice and bias, feed into the way we see the behavior of those around us? Are we also more likely to see neurodivergent people of color as lazy or defiant, rather than recognizing it may be a mental health issue?

As we’ve discussed in the past, Whiteness values things like being on time and productivity at all moments. Confronting racism is about collective liberation and undoing those standards around Whiteness - none of us are free until all of us are, and that includes neurodivergent folks. What are some ways you can start making every day accommodations for people of all races with ADHD who struggle with executive functioning, which directly impacts their ability to fall in line with the expected “social norms” of Whiteness?

9/22/2023 Queries

Elizabeth Acevedo, Afro-Latina:

https://youtu.be/tPx8cSGW4k8

Queries

Whiteness teaches us to think in terms of either/or.

What do you notice in your personal reaction to this poet’s claiming and navigating her mixed heritage?

In your meeting, does your anti-racism work include acknowledging mixed heritages?

What helps you to be able to allow racial and cultural identities to be complex?

7/20/2023 Queries

“…we need not insist that discussions of race, sexuality, and gender adversely affect the appearance of harmony or cause it to disappear. The notion that acknowledging lived experience is misaligned with spirituality is something we've made up in our minds, and not the natural reality of things. We must study the self in order to discover harmony in our own lives. We must listen to the earth right under our feet no matter what. We must constantly be attuned to the unfolding of life as it presents the multitude of variations in which harmony manifests in nature as oneness... If we carry awareness of the body as our inheritance of nature, as tender as a maple leaf or a small hummingbird, then the experience of complete tenderness can rise and swell within our ever-evolving relative reality.”

― Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, The Way of Tenderness: Awakening through Race, Sexuality, and Gender

“A society that is fearful of self-examination and exploration can't believably say that it trusts in God. Nor can it believably say that it values every living being. We must trust the totality of our nature, in terms of both its multiplicity and its oneness.”

― Zenju Earthlyn Manuel, The Way of Tenderness: Awakening through Race, Sexuality, and Gender

Queries

How have you found oneness in multiplicity?

How has embracing or resisting your tenderness effected your ability to grow around whiteness and racism?

6/22/2023 Queeries

https://youtu.be/c0Mv8CYvQAA

Zenaida Peterson is; nonbinary, a poet, Quaker, alumni of the Quaker Voluntary Service(QVS) program and now serves QVS as the Director of Equity & Empowerment and as the Boston Coordinator.

Queries

If safe, pause, how does this poem make your body feel?

When has gender, sexuality or whiteness been a place of silence/politeness for you?

What had to be sacrificed of you and others to confine these identities in silence/politeness? What can be liberated when we don't?

How has connection to your body changed your relationship to your whiteness, gender or/and sexuality?

6/16/2023 Queeries

"We spend vast amounts of our time and emotional energy in learning how not to be natural and in eluding the trap of our own nature and it therefore becomes very difficult to know exactly what is meant when we speak of the unnatural. It is not possible to have it both ways, to use nature at one time as the final arbiter of human conduct and at another to oppose her as angrily as we do."- James Baldwin

“My fullest concentration of energy is available to me only when I integrate all the parts of who I am, openly, allowing power from particular sources of my living to flow back and forth freely through all my different selves, without the restrictions of externally imposed definition. Only then can I bring myself and my energies as a whole to the service of those struggles which I embrace as part of my living.” —Audre Lorde

“When we define ourselves, when I define myself, the place in which I am like you and the place in which I am not like you, I'm not excluding you from the joining—I'm broadening the joining.” —Audre Lorde

Queries:

What is your relationship to the word ‘natural’? How have systems of oppression intentionally shaped this definition? How has your definition of ‘natural’ shaped you?

How do we create spaces that see naming our own similarities and differences as ‘broadening joining’ vs excluding joining? Why can this be so hard?

How do you hold the importance, and intersection, of both the queer rights and racial justice movement?

6/8/2023 Queries

Author, performer, activist, fashion icon and speaker Alok Vaid-Menon is nonbinary Indian American.

https://youtu.be/j-k1riPzf9c?t=35

Queries:

How have you recognized cultural racism (thinking people of color’s cultures are conservative and transphobic while white cultures are more accepting and inclusive) within yourself?

Alok says colonization ruled by the demonization of sacred femininity and gender nonconformity. How have you experienced these demonization's in your own experience of gender?

How can you decolonize your ways of thinking about gender and sexuality?

6/1/2023 Queries

"Without an emotional, heartfelt grappling with the source of our own oppression, without naming the enemy within ourselves and outside of us, no authentic, non-hierarchical connection among oppressed groups can take place.

"When the going gets rough, will we abandon our so-called comrades in a flurry of racist/heterosexist/what-have-you panic? To whose camp, then, should the lesbian of color retreat? Her very presence violates the ranking and abstraction of oppression. Do we merely live hand to mouth? Do we merely struggle with the "ism" that's sitting on top of our own heads?

"The answer is: yes, I think first we do; and we must do so thoroughly and deeply. But to fail to move out from there will only isolate us in our own oppression - will only insulate, rather than radicalize us."

Cherrie Moraga, from the essay "La Güera" in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (1983)

Queries:

Have you taken time to thoroughly and deeply understand oppression that may be sitting on your own head, be it homophobia, transphobia, classism, sexism, etc.?

How has this informed your struggle against oppressions you do not experience?

What can we do to move behind a hierarchy of oppression and into solidarity across oppressed groups?

5/26/2023 Queries

From https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/a-noble-experiment-how-solitary-came-to-america/

“In the late 18th century, the Quakers, a pacifist religious group in Pennsylvania, were looking for a way to rehabilitate criminals instead of resorting to the violence of the whip or the gallows.

In 1787, they began to impose sentences of solitary confinement in an experiment at the Walnut Street Jail in Philadelphia.

“There was a belief that you could put a prisoner in his solitary cell, freed from the evil influences of modern society,” said Stuart Grassian, a clinical psychiatrist who has studied the long-term impact of isolation in prison. “[A]nd they would become like a monk in a monastic cell, free to come close to God and to their own inner being, and they would naturally heal from the evils of the outside society. … It was a noble experiment that was an absolute catastrophe.””

Queries:

Did you know about “our” involvement with the start of solitary confinement?

While well-intentioned, this “experiment” has had such longstanding harmful repercussions. How do we hold both and of the necessity of trying new things on path to a liberated world with the possibilities they can unintentionally go horribly wrong?

5/19/2023 Queries

Peonies are my favorite flower. Since moving to Ohio a few years ago, I’ve come to look forward to this time of year—a brief window of a few weeks, actually—when I can find the lush heads of peony flowers bowing in gardens and yards all over the city. It’s a gloriously short-lived season. The flowers always seem to be exhausted by their own opulence, ready to leave us right as they arrive.

I worship their extravagant brevity.

Sometimes, I wish I didn’t so easily see death, bright as sunshine, burning at their centers, reaching out to us to be touched, to be known, but I do. I see the end of the world unfurling in the petals of every peony flower I pass.

It would be enough for all of us to make it home tonight. A miracle even.

- Saeed Jones, "Peony Season in America" https://saeedjones.substack.com/p/peony-season-in-america

Query:

How can we as white people support People of Color who experience anticipatory grief in a world full of racist violence?

5/11/2023 Queries

“Martin Luther King was public enemy number one. Seen as an even greater threat by our government…than Malcolm X was….

And for all Martin’s actions of peace and love, he was targeted with violence, harassed, arrested, black-mailed, followed by the FBI, and eventually murdered….

Martin was the black man who asked for too much, too loudly….

Because no matter what we ask for, if it threatens the system of White Supremacy, it will always be seen as too much.”

Ijeoma Oluo. So you want to talk about race. 2018. Seal Press. New York. p. 203.

Queries:

Describe your emotional and spiritual experience with being bullied or harassed?

What is the emotional impact of seeing images of people who have been killed or beaten?

How can we make love the first motion in our interaction with others?

4/27/2023 Queries

Minstrel Man

Because my mouth

Is wide with laughter

And my throat

Is deep with song,

You do not think

I have held my pain

So long.

Because my mouth

I wide with laughter

You do not hear

My inner cry

Because my feet

Any gay with dancing

You do not know

I die.

-Langston Hughes

Queries:

How does this feel in your body?

What actions can you take so People of Color do not experience pain?

4/21/2023 Queries

The prompt is this poem by Norma Johnson, a Colorado-based storyteller and poet.

Recited by Norma Johnson

How Does it Feel?

-Norma Johnson

How-Does-It-Feel-1

Audio Recording

Queries:

"How does it feel to wake up to your bondage when you thought you were free?”

How does it feel to consider your investment in whiteness?

How does it feel to listen?

4/14/2023 Queries

Songs for The People

Let me make the songs for the people,

Songs for the old and young;

Songs to stir like a battle-cry

Wherever they are sung.

Not for the clashing of sabres,

For carnage nor for strife;

But songs to thrill the hearts of men

With more abundant life.

Let me make the songs for the weary,

Amid life’s fever and fret,

Till hearts shall relax their tension,

And careworn brows forget.

Let me sing for little children,

Before their footsteps stray,

Sweet anthems of love and duty,

To float o’er life’s highway.

I would sing for the poor and aged,

When shadows dim their sight;

Of the bright and restful mansions,

Where there shall be no night.

Our world, so worn and weary,

Needs music, pure and strong,

To hush the jangle and discords

Of sorrow, pain, and wrong.

Music to soothe all its sorrow,

Till war and crime shall cease;

And the hearts of men grown tender

Girdle the world with peace.

-Frances Ellen Watkins Harper

4/06/2023 Queries

It is tragic to think that only money can buy a political seat. Until such time as truth prevails and there is actually reformation of our system of government, actual campaign reform, our country will continue to be for sale. Now at least there is the vote, even though every attempt has been made and the Supreme Court has gone along with almost destroying districts which give black minorities an opportunity to block the continued sale. By its action, which could be called the deciding death vote to Affirmative Action, it could have destroyed the concept. The ballot box remains free but is there a chance at true democracy in our country if only money can purchase the seats of government? Although slavery has been legally abolished we must ask ourselves to what extent is our population still being enslaved by a system which is determined to keep a certain number of its people, the actual majority which if properly linked together would be the true majority, at the bottom,

-Ashley Dickerson. Delayed Justice for Sale (Anchorage:Al-Acres, Inc., 1998, pp.247-248) Privately published memoir.

Queries:

What am I doing to break down barriers that prevent People of Color from having their votes be able to prevent systemic racism from continuing to rule the government?

Am I disrupting systemic injustices in my nation's governmental system?

Am I called to do governmental justice work or other justice work and why?

How can I begin the movement to transform Quaker practices rooted in systemic racism?

3/31/2023 Queries

Coherence in Consequence

Claudia Rankine

Imagine them in black, the morning heat losing within this day that floats. And always there is the being, and the not-seeing on their way to—

The days they approach and their sharpest aches will wrap experience until knowledge is translucent, the frost on which they find themselves slipping. Never mind the loose mindless grip of their forms reflected in the eye-watering hues of the surface, these two will survive in their capacity to meet, to hold the other beneath the plummeting, in the depths below each step full of avoidance. What they create will be held up, will resume: the appetite is bigger than joy. indestructible. for never was it independent from who they are. who will be.

Were we ever to arrive at knowing the other as the same pulsing compassion would break the most orthodox heart.

-Coherence in Consequence, Claudia Rankine, Excerpt from Plot

Queries-

How do you move with “what is” when it comes to racism within your communities by embracing some faith in “what will be”?

What is your connection to your own “form”? How does this connection move you towards anti-racism or inhibit it?

How can the relationship to your’s and other’s “form” move us towards the hopeful/faithful “what will be”?

3/24/2023 Queries

auction street

(for angela mcdonald)

consider the drum.

consider auction street

and the beat

throbbing up through our shoes,

through the trolley

so that it rides as if propelled

by hundreds, by thousands

of fathers and mothers

led in a coffle

to the block.

consider the block,

topside smooth as skin

almost translucent like a drum

that has been beaten

for the last time

and waits now to be honored

for the music it has had to bear.

then consider brother moses,

who heard from the mountaintop:

take off your shoes,

the ground you walk is holy.

--Lucille Clifton

Queries:

Are there places you pass through in your everyday life that are made holy by a history of suffering? How do you honor them?

3/17/2023 Queries

Sarah Mapps Douglass, from “Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship” Donna McDaniel & Vanessa Julye (pp. 75-77)

In “Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship,” Donna McDaniel & Vanessa Julye tell the story of Sarah Mapps Douglass, one of the African American founders of the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Philadelphia in the 19th century. Though most female antislavery organizations were in small towns and only had members of European descent, the Philadelphia society was racially integrated.

With respect to her sisters of European descent, Mapps is quoted saying: “ I wish it was in my power to give you an idea of the enthusiastic affection with which we regard all those dear friends who are advocates of immediate emancipation.”

Mapps extends this affection in spite of her experience in Quaker meetings in the Philadelphia area, which she attended her entire life. McDanial and Julye write:

“….she never joined the Religious Society of Friends, no doubt because of its racial proscriptions. Being told to sit on the bench “for the black people” at meeting was one of the “often repeated and galling remonstrances” she endured: “galling indeed because I believe they despise us for our color,” Douglass wrote in a letter to her friend William Based. She added, “Often times I wept, at other times I felt indignant and queried in my own mind, are these people Christians?”

Queries

Quakers often proudly claim our history of antislavery. How does Mapps appreciation and indignation toward white Quakers feel in your body.

In your anti-racism work, how do you center the voices of BIPOC Friends? How does your answer to that question feel in your body?

In your meeting’s (Yearly Meeting’s) anti-racism work, how do you center the voices of BIPOC Friends? How does your answer to that question feel in your body?

3/10/2023 Queries

“When we face pain in relationships our first response is often to sever bonds rather than to maintain commitment.”

― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“true resistance begins with people confronting pain…and wanting to do something to change it.”

-bell hooks, Yearning: Race, Gender, and Cultural Politics

“Relationships are treated like Dixie cups. They are the same. They are disposable. If it does not work, drop it, throw it away, get another.

Committed bonds (including marriage) cannot last when this is the prevailing logic. Most of us are unclear about what to do to protect and strengthen caring bonds when our self-centered needs are not being met.”

― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“The growing number of gated communities in our nation is but one example of the obsession with safety. With guards at the gate, individuals still have bars and elaborate internal security systems…

Culturally we bear witness to this madness every day.

White supremacy has taught him that all people of color are threats irrespective of their behavior. Capitalism has taught him that, at all costs, his property can and must be protected. Patriarchy has taught him that his masculinity has to be proved by the willingness to conquer fear through aggression; that it would be unmanly to ask questions before taking action. This is what the worship of death looks like.”

― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions

Queries-

What commitment comes in CHOOSING to love The Society of Friends?

Where are you with your love of The Society of Friends?

Who do we want to be together as a The Society of Friends?

3/02/2023 Queries

‘The time for healing is now! Let us work to change our patterns of relating with one another…Work for systematic change. The structural foundation of racism is collective and precedes all of us. We may not be responsible for its existence, and as individuals we did not create it; however, as individuals we participate in larger social systems. We are the moving parts that allow these systems to run. When we change our beliefs and behaviors, these systems come to a halt. We must become aware of how inequality is orchestrated in our society; we are responsible for what we think and what we do to perpetuate this inequality.’

-Vanessa Julye p.395 Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship Quakers, African Americans, and the Myth of Racial Justice. Donna McDaniel and Vanessa Julye. Quaker Press, 2009.

Queries

In what ways must I change my behaviors to create an environment of racial equity and respect for every person?

In what ways can I work to remove patterns of systemic racism from my meeting and groups in which I am a participant?

2/25/2023 Queries

“Radicals . . . charged that the timidity of many gradualist Friends stemmed from their entanglement in the enslavement economy.

Criticizing the Society of Friends ‘as it was,’ the editor of the radical Anti-Slavery Bugle in Salem, Ohio, home to many Hicksites, declared that ‘Friends had become addicted to wealth and worldly displays . . . [and] gloried in the abolitionist work only to quiet their own uneasy consciences.’

European American New England abolitionist Parker Pillsbury, who was not Quaker but worked with many Friends in the abolitionist cause, accused Friends of losing ‘fire’ because they were not living according to their beliefs; indeed, he asserted, the very Quakers who cautioned against mixing with non-Friends in reform activities themselves mingled with the world to a mighty extent in all wealth-getting schemes.’”

--From Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship by Donna McDaniel and Vanessa Julye, Quaker Press of Friends General Conference, Philadelphia, PA. 2009. page 87.

Queries

Where do you find yourself and your meeting(s) on the various spectra of gradualist to radical regarding anti-racism work?

How does Friends’ relative wealth help and hinder anti-racism work?

With regard to anti-racism work, are there places where you fit into the wealth-getting schemes of our world’s current iteration of capitalism that might make your conscience uneasy?

2/16/2023 Queries

“. . . .I suggest that there are four major sources in King’s thought. The first—and most important—source was the prophetic black church tradition that initially and fundamentally shaped King’s worldview. The second consisted of a prophetic liberal Christianity King encountered in his higher education and scholarly training. The third source was a prophetic Gandhian method of nonviolent social change that King first encountered in a sermon by Mordecai Johnson (president of Howard University) and that he later used in his intense intellectual struggle with powerful critiques of the Christian love ethic by Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche. The last source was that of prophetic American civil religion, which fuses secular and sacred history and combines Christian themes of deliverance and salvation with political ideals and democracy, freedom and equality. . . .”

-From the book, The Cornel West Reader, chapter 33: Prophetic Christian as Organic Intellectual: Martin Luther King, Jr., page 426. Basic Civitas Books: New York, New York. 1999.

Queries-

How do you identify your own influences that have developed your practice antiracist practice?

How are your influences the same and how are they different from West’s assessment of King’s influences?

What might the praxis of prophetic anti-racist ministry mean for American Friends?

2/09/2023 Queries

“The heart of justice is truth telling, seeing ourselves and the world the way it is rather than the way we want it to be. More than ever before we, as a society, need to renew a commitment to truth telling.”

“Choosing to be honest is the first step in the process of love. There is no practitioner of love who deceives. Once the choice has been made to be honest, then the next step on love's path is communication.”

― bell hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“The time has come to tell the truth. Again. There is no love without justice. Men and women who cannot be just deny themselves and everyone they choose to be intimate with the freedom to know mutual love. If we remain unable to imagine a world where love can be recognized as a unifying principle that can lead us to seek and use power wisely, then we will remain wedded to a culture of domination that requires us to choose power over love.”

― bell hooks, Communion: The Female Search for Love

Queries-

What do you see the connection between love and truth to be in your life?

How do you practice truth telling in your anti-racism work?

How do you see love as connecting to Black History Month?

2/03/2023 Queries

Think of something you learned in history that you later realized through your anti-racism work was inaccurate or incomplete.

Suggestion to either take a piece of paper and write the history the way it should be written or think how you would rather record that history to be more accurate.

1/27/2023 Queries

“When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him.”- Bayard Rustin

‘So the question is whether we are practicing loving ourselves? Because loving ourselves means loving our community…So the second help, the second insight, is that between self or no-self there is no real separation. Anything you do for yourself you do for the society at the same time. And anything you do for society you do for yourself also.’- Thich Nhat Hanh, Building a Community of Love: bell hooks and Thich Nhat Hanh

‘The only answer to fear is more understanding. And there is no understanding if there is no effort to look more deeply to see what is there in our heart and in the heart of the other person.’- Thich Nhat Hanh, Building a Community of Love: bell hooks and Thich Nhat Hanh

‘ I think this is the love that we seek in the new millennium, which is the love experienced in community, beyond self.’ - bell hooks, Building a Community of Love: bell hooks and Thich Nhat Hanh

Queries

How are you being transformed by community?

How is your community being transformed by you?

1/20/2023 Queries

[The organization] dRworks offered one framework to understand racism based on how it shows up on three levels: personal/interpersonal (how we are with ourselves and each other), institutional (policies, procedures, practices), and cultural (beliefs, values, norms). Liberation shows up on all three as well. This principle suggests that working for racial justice means we need to work on each of the three levels.

Queries:

What work, (or liberation!) is showing up for you at the personal / interpersonal level?

What strategies do you (or might you) use to check in that you are paying attention to all three levels?

12/29/2022 Queries

…W. E. B. Du Bois wrote that the color line is the defining characteristic of American society… Critical Whiteness Studies (CWS) is a growing field of scholarship whose aim is to reveal the invisible structures that produce and reproduce white supremacy and privilege. CWS presumes a certain conception of racism that is connected to white supremacy. In advancing the importance of vigilance among white people, CWS examines the meaning of white privilege and white privilege pedagogy, as well as how white privilege is connected to complicity in racism. Unless white people learn to acknowledge, rather than deny, how whites are complicit in racism, and until white people develop an awareness that critically questions the frames of truth and conceptions of the “good” through which they understand their social world, Du Bois’s insight will continue to ring true.

-Critical Whiteness Studies, Barbara Applebaum

Critical Whiteness Studies

"Critical Whiteness Studies" published on by Oxford University Press.

doi.org

Critical Whiteness Studies • doi.org

Queries:

How does whiteness impact your interaction with people?

What has helped you become aware of the impact of whiteness on your meeting?

What can you do to help people become aware of how whiteness harms your meeting?

12/22/2022 Queries

Christiane: Professor Beaubouef’s series has been mind-blowing for me. Before this lecture series, I never would have thought to focus specifically on “whiteness” in a discussion on race.

Andy: Yeah, I think our listeners would be curious to know why she focused on whiteness. Here she is explaining the lecture series:

Tamara Beauboeuf (guest): I created it in a specific context, I think it’s not a unique conversation, but it is trying to shift the way we think about our racial tensions. Instead of looking outward, and “what do they want, what’s happening to them.” But to recognize that there’s a center that keeps creating this violence and harm. And trying to name, to see the center. And often we don’t see things that we haven’t named.

It just struck me that as a person of color, maybe I’m more sensitized to this than other people might be. That when we talk about race, we put a lot of burden on the people who are affected by racism. And it’s not that their experiences are not important. But the problem is not their experience, the problem is the thing that creates their experience.

And I felt that there was a huge unexamined center that in the scholarship is called “whiteness.” And whiteness is something that is a form of dominance. It’s the center that creates the margins, it’s the center that creates the harm, it’s the center that covers its tracks, it’s business as usual. And so whiteness is a term for naming a series of assumptions about the world and refusals to change it.

-From: https://www.prindleinstitute.org/podcast/the-burden-of-whiteness/

Queries:

How do you experience “whiteness” in your lived experience?

How did your family of origin develop their idea of whiteness?

How do you experience a burden in being white, if you do?

12/15/2022 Queries

This quote comes from an essay called “Half-Breed” by Alicia Elliott, a writer of mixed Indigenous (Mohawk) and white (Hungarian) descent and discusses her experience of being asked about her race as a child:

“I realized then I had a choice. I’d fallen down a rabbit hole into a racial Wonderland where logic was negotiable. Only I wasn’t Alice; I was the Cheshire Cat, the Trickster. If I wanted I could say I was part Mexican or Italian or Mongolian, and the person would squint, but nod. As though they accepted that America’s melting pot would sooner or later boil all races down to a pale person like me.”

Queries:

How would/do you feel if someone asks about your racial identity?

What impact does your whiteness have on those feelings?

Have you ever felt the desire to hide or “boil down” your race or ethnicity?

12/09/2022 Queries

Being anti-racist

"To create an equal society, we must commit to making unbiased choices and being anti-racist in all aspects of our lives." - National Museum of African American History

Queries:

What has called you to the identity of being anti-racist?

In what ways does your life demonstrate your commitment to being anti-racist?

When is it difficult to demonstrate a commitment to anti-racism and when have you succeeded?

12/01/2022 Queries

What does home mean to you?

What does home mean for Indigenous People who have been forced to live on reservations?

11/25/2022 Queries

[A]n acknowledgment is not the same as a relationship. Land does not require that you confirm it exists or that it has been stolen, rather that you reciprocate the care that it has given you. - Joseph Pierce, Cherokee Nation

Queries:

How do you express gratitude for the place where you live and the people who cared for it before it was stolen?

How do you make the act of giving thanks part of relationships of reciprocal care?

11/17/2022 Queries

What have you learned from First Nations People about relationship to resources and the land?

How would our community's relationship with the land and resources change if we learned from First Nations People?

How can we evolve Thanksgiving into a time for reparations and repairing our relations with First Nations People?

11/10/2022 Queries

First Peoples Worldwide:

2007 was a watershed year for Indigenous rights. On September 13th, the United Nations adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and it has since been ratified by 143 countries. While the Declaration is not legally binding, it sets a global standard for the treatment of Indigenous Peoples. This was a vital step in securing Indigenous rights worldwide.

Victories [such as these] have been followed by an increased global awareness of Indigenous issues and further successes in securing the rights of Indigenous Peoples. Although Indigenous initiatives are often the most underfunded and under-recognized, they have succeeded so far on an unprecedented level. Indigenous communities, advocates and supporters are forming the world’s first global civil rights movement.

The single unifying issue facing Indigenous Peoples everywhere is how to protect their territories and stop the “asset stripping” that robs them of their livelihoods and the foundation of their cultures. Without land and control of their assets, Indigenous Peoples are destined to remain the world’s poorest communities – with the worst health, highest mortality rate and shortest life span.

http://www.firstpeoples.org/the-indigenous-movement.htm

Queries

Exploring ‘home’

When you think of ‘home,” do you include the Indigenous history of your home, land, town or community?

What do you know about the Indigenous Peoples who inhabited the land you live on now?

How does it feel, emotionally and in your body, to acknowledge the complex and often violent history of land rights in your country and in your community?

11/03/2022 Queries

What relationship do you have to the Native American community in your area?

In what ways can you help land acknowledgements be made more than a statement that is repeated over and over?

How can you help your meeting engage in reparations to be in right relationship with Native people, considering the history of Quaker and Native people on the land?

What do you feel holds you back from taking steps toward right relationship with the Native American community in your area?

10/27/2022 Queries

“Known in the middle 1600s in Britain as radicals whose public defiance of conventional religions and the clergy led to persecution and often imprisonment, by the 1700s Quakers…had turned inward and become a “settled” people whose lives would witness to their beliefs. As “quietists,” Friends’ prevailing view was that God’s will would be revealed in the silence of meeting for worship, and they began to see other Friends as radicals for their increasingly public advocacy for causes like emancipation.”

“Quakers who worked to end enslavement in the United States at large were a statistically small portion of their own society. Yearly meetings by and large left the campaign to end enslavement to individual Friends; only New England and North Carolina Yearly Meetings continued to seek an end to the practice as corporate bodies. By the end of the 1700s many Quakers believed that they had done what God required of them by ceasing to buy and sell people and by freeing those they held in bondage; merely belonging to a religious body that had taken a stand against enslavement was, they believed, sufficient atonement for that sin.”

Donna McDaniel and Vanessa Julye, Fit for Freedom Not for Friendship

In what ways do Quakers not live what they say they believe?

In what ways do modern Quakers mirror the beliefs and actions of our ancestors?

Quakers take time to discern and make decisions, is this tradition a gift or a fault? Under what circumstances?

How do you struggle with the pull between quietist and activist beliefs?

How do you respond to a non-Quaker saying “Oh, Quakers you were such wonderful people working on abolition of slavery?

10/14/2022 Queries

How does white supremacy keep us from hearing spirit?

10/06/2022 Queries

Power Hoarding

Those with power assume they have the best interests….at heart and assume those wanting change are ill-informed (stupid), emotional, inexperienced; blaming the messenger rather than focusing on the message.

Little, if any, value around sharing power.

Antidotes:

Discuss and define what good leadership looks like and include how a good leader develops the power and skills of others.

Feel joy in helping others grow, thrive, succeed, and even exceed (you).

Queries:

How do I help others become aware of and grow their gifts while stepping back?

In what ways can we help our meetings learn to listen to all with open hearts and allow sharing of power?

How would our meetings change if we were willing to release some of the ‘Quaker’ patterns of meetings for business?

9/29/22 Queries

Fear of Open Conflict

‘when someone raises an issue that causes discomfort, the response is to blame the person for raising the issue rather than to look at the issue which is actually causing the problem;

emphasis or insistence on being polite; setting the rules for how ideas or information or differences of opinion need to be shared in order to be heard (in other words, requiring that people "calm down" if they are angry when anger often contains deep wisdom about where the underlying hurt and harm lies);

equating the raising of difficult issues with being impolite, rude, or out of line; punishing people either overtly or subtly for speaking out about their truth and/or experience;’

Queries:

What are unspoken beliefs you have around conflict (e.g. it means something is wrong, it must be fixed right away, someone has to be ‘bad’…) and how does that emerge in how you engage with conflict?

Do you see white supremacy emerging in your response to the above query, where? Are the ways you relate to conflict similar or different to how your meeting deals with conflict?

What physical sensations occur in you when conflict arises?

How do you feel spirit leads us to deal with conflict?

9/23/2022 Queries

Right to Comfort

The belief that those with power have a right to emotional and psychological comfort and people who cause discomfort (i.e. by naming racism) are blamed and isolated. Those with dominant identities feel entitled to name what is and isn’t racism and expect apologies when accused of colluding with systemic racism.

Antidote: Accept feelings of discomfort which are at the root of all growth and learning. Deepen your political analysis of racism and oppression to gain understanding of how your personal experience and feelings fit into a larger picture.  And, ultimately don’t take everything personally.

Queries:

In what ways does Quaker practice use the “Right to Comfort” to maintain our religious tradition?

What tools does Quakerism offer to those who want to lean into discomfort? What needs to be released?

How does the need to feel comfortable keep us from hearing the voice of Spirit?

9/16/2022 Queries

Characteristic of white supremacy: Sense of Urgency

Dismantling white supremacy is an urgent matter, and yet, a continued sense of urgency reinforces the idea that we are ruled by time, deadlines, and needing to do things in a "timely" way. Often this urgency is based on arbitrary schedules that have little to do with the actual realities of how long things take, particularly when those "things" are relationships with others.

A chronic sense of urgency is also linked to perfectionism; perfectionism creates urgency as we try to make sure something is done perfectly according to our standards.

In these ways, urgency prevents us from hearing or connecting with others and from taking the time to be thoughtful in our decision-making.

Queries:

What are my beliefs about urgency? Do I equate urgency with some other value, like the value of ‘getting things done?’ If so, am I able to pause, and question my belief?

When I feel a sense of urgency in making a decision, what happens in my body and mind? How does that impact my decision-making?

What practices help me slow down?

9/9/2022 Queries

Denial

Denying what another person is saying about the ways in which white supremacy and/or racism are showing up in an interaction or space. Insisting that white supremacy and racism require intent. Attempting to separate intent from impact in order to claim that if racism is not intended, then it is not happening.

Queries

In what ways do you experience denial in your own life?

How does denial show up when there is any discussion about racism or white supremacy among a group you know?

How can we help each other become aware when we are acting out of denial?

9/1/2022 Queries

Defensiveness

In White Supremacy Culture, the structure is set up and much energy is spent trying to prevent abuse and protect power as it exists rather than to discover and facilitate the best of each person or to clarify who has power and how they are expected to use it.… A lot of energy is spent trying to make sure people’s feelings aren’t getting hurt or working around defensive people.

Queries:

When I get my feelings hurt, how do I discern whether I am responding to something harmful or am being defensive?

How can I better notice and change my own defensiveness?

Where/how does defensiveness appear in my Meeting?

What truths are going unspoken in my meeting because of defensiveness?

8/25/2022 Queries

‘I’m the Only One’

Belief that if something is going to get done correctly it must be done by me.

Is there a pattern to when I prefer to do something myself and not allow room for others to help or lead?

What has allowed me to step back and follow the leadership or help of another? (Especially the leadership of someone outside my group i.e. a person from the BIPOC community or those younger than myself?)

What do I need to remember there is more than one way to an outcome (e.g. to; soften, expand, surrender, breath, connect...)?

8/18/2022 Queries

Individualism

As a white person: I see myself and/or demand to be seen as an individual and not as part of the white group; I fail to acknowledge any of the ways my dominant identities... shape cultural norms and behavior; I believe I am responsible for and qualified to solve problems on my own and desire recognition and credit; I am more comfortable with competition than cooperation; If something is going to get done right, I have to do it therefore, I don’t delegate; I believe teamwork takes up too much time.

Antidotes

Seek to understand all the ways my dominant identities and benefits influence how I interact with others. Acknowledge my internalized racist conditioning and figure out what I am going to do about that conditioning. Engage in team work, let others take the lead and give credit to others for their contributions.

Queries:

How does individualism show up in my relationships with others, in my actions, in my use of resources?

How does individualism harm me and the people with whom I interact?

What will I learn through engaging as a follower in teamwork that can transform me?

8/12/2022 Queries

Worship of the Written Word can appear as:

an inability or refusal to acknowledge information that is shared through stories, embodied knowing, intuition and the wide range of ways that we individually and collectively learn and know

continued frustration that people and communities don't respond to written communication; blaming people and communities for their failure to respond

Some antidotes can be:

identify when circumstances require documentation on others' terms and bring transparency to how you respond (legal documents, funder applications, government forms, etc.)

practice listening; because our culture doesn't value oral traditions or storytelling wisdom, we are out of listening practice or remembering how to hold a spoken word with weight (without having to write it down)

Queries:

What is the impact of the worship of the written word on my racial justice work and the work of Quaker meetings I am part of?

When have I missed or misunderstood something in focusing on the written word?

How can we grow to better understand and value other forms of knowing?

8/5/2022 Queries

How does White Supremacy Culture work to limit your access to Spirit?

7/28/2022 Queries

Either or and the Binary

This characteristic explores our cultural assumption that we can and should reduce the complexity of life and the nuances of our relationships with each other and all living things into either/or, yes or no, right or wrong in ways that reinforce toxic power. There is little or no sense of the possibilities of both/and as we try to simplify complex things, for example believing that poverty is simply the result of lack of education. This characteristic is closely linked to perfectionism because binary thinking makes it difficult to learn from mistakes or accommodate conflict. The binary is used to pit oppressions against each other rather than to recognize the ways in which racism and classism intersect, the ways in which both intersect with heterosexism and agism and other categories of oppression.

Queries:

· How can we hold the complexity of our communal lives, and to refuse to submit to binary thinking?”

· How is either/or thinking present in our Monthly Meetings?

· How would our Meetings, Quaker culture, and, our perceptions change if we were able to understand truth as both/and?

7/21/2022 Queries

Qualified-

Qualified is internalized primarily by middle and owning class white people, formally educated, who are taught by the culture that they (people like me who live in these identities) are qualified and duty bound to fix, save, and set straight the world…a Christian ideology that teaches a Christian duty to convert the "heathen," the "savage," the "impure," makes this characteristic particularly violent both psychically and physically in its determination to ignore and/or erase the culture, wisdom, genius, joy of people and communities being "saved" while seizing their land, labor, architecture, music, food, and other material goods to commodify for profit.

The deviousness of this characteristic is how strongly white middle and owning class educated people can internalize and assume their own inherent qualifications to "improve" whatever is in front of them that is "broken" without acknowledging or seeing their role in breaking it.

Queries:

In what ways do I experience using qualified as a way to approach problems without acknowledging my role in creating them?

What do you feel when you think of handing over power/leadership to someone who feels 'unqualified' to you? (Based on that- what could help you and others deal with that feeling when it arises?)

How/can you discern between internalized white supremacist notions of 'qualified' vs spirit led knowing of who is right for a task?

7/15/2022 Queries

Sense of Urgency

Our learned cultural habit of applying a sense of urgency to our every-day lives perpetuates power imbalance, disconnects us from our need to breathe and pause and reflect. The irony is that this imposed sense of urgency serves to erase the actual urgency of tackling racial and social injustice. We become disconnected from each other, ourselves, and all living things.

We are called on to hold the volatile and tender contradiction of an underlying urgency about our immediate need for justice which is with us always with the day to day sense of urgency that too often defines our Quaker and community cultures, living with a constant sense that everything is urgent is a recipe for the abuse of power and burnout.

Queries:

Where do I notice urgency arising for me in my justice work and how do I channel it with thoughtfulness and intention?

Does my Meeting take the time to listen to a variety of opinions of people from the non-dominant culture as we engage in social action?

Do I routinely pause to reflect on the consequences of my decisions and/or actions?

In what ways does my Meeting resolve tension between perfectionism and urgency?

6/30/2022 Queries

This week's theme from Tema Okun's Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture is Objectivity.

Objectivity can mean, among other things, "refusal to acknowledge the ways in which 'logical' thinking and/or decision-making is often a cover for personal emotions and/or agendas often based in fear of losing power, face, or comfort".

You can move away from prioritizing objectivity when you "assume that everybody has a good reason for what they are feeling and your job is to understand that reason and how it connects to their position, particularly if you are the one with more formal or informal power".

Queries:

When do you encounter appeals to "be objective" or "be logical" in your anti-racism work?

When you take away the "cover" of objectivity, what feelings arise for you? How do these feelings relate to whiteness?

How is objectivity valued in making decisions in your meeting?

6/23/2022 Queries

Paternalism

Decision-making is clear to those with power and unclear to those without power. Those in power think they can make decisions for the interests of those without power. Those in power often do not think it is important or necessary to understand…. the experience of those for whom they are making decisions.

Queries

How does the white supremacy characteristic of “paternalism” show up in me?

How does it show up in the anti-racism work of organizations of which I am a part?

Where is it evident in my Monthly Meeting?

How do I experience the response in others when I use paternalism?

How do I feel when someone makes a decision about me without consulting me?

6/16/2022 Queries

Tema Okun describes "One Right Way" as:

when a person or group does not adapt or change to "fit" the one right way, then those defining or upholding the one right way assume something is wrong with the other, those not changing, not with us

She also offers this antidote:

accept there are many ways to get to the same goal; once a group has made a decision about what to do, honor that decision and see what you and the community or organization learn from making that decision, even and especially if it is not the way you would have chosen

Queries:

Where does the characteristic of "one right way" show up in your anti-racism work?

How do you feel when someone questions a practice that you value?

What do you do to support your meeting in taking paths you would not have chosen toward a common goal?

6/10/2022 Queries

Perfectionism

There is little appreciation expressed for the work that Friends are doing, in fact it is more common to point out how the work is inadequate or to talk about a Friend behind their back. Making a mistake or doing wrong is confused with being a mistake. There is little or no learning from mistakes. Often this is felt internally - the perfectionist fails to appreciate their own good work, focusing on inadequacies and mistakes rather than learning from them. This leaves us with a harsh and constant inner critic.

Queries

What is my personal experience with Perfectionism?

How does this characteristic show up in the life of my Monthly and Yearly Meeting?

What harm does it cause—especially with respect to racial justice?

What practical actions might heal ourselves and/or our Meetings

5/27/2022 Queries

Margery Post Abbott reflects that one of the names of the early Quakers was Friends of the Truth. The ‘truth’ being the Light of Christ or the Truth of God - a truth that was not an abstraction but a present Light and guidance - the nearness of which could cause the faithful to ‘quake.’

Barry Crossno and J. Brent Bill write about a different kind of quaking, more like a shuddering, that is common in contemporary Quaker worship and is caused by vocal ministry that is a ‘political diatribe or lecture.’

Resmaa Menakem writes today about the historical trauma in white bodies that has numbed white people and separated them from the truth of their existence. He also writes of the need for white people to face the truth that would make them quake.

Queries:

Have you tried to turn off or numb out that quaking ( especially thinking about in quaker spaces)? If so how and why did you numb?

What resources do I use when I am facing an uncomfortable truth about my whiteness?

How does your meeting respond to messages that speak of difficult truths

5/20/2022 Queries

“Replacement” theory is a set of racist and antisemitic lies and socio-political arguments that has cropped up around the world in the past decade.

In the US it is expressed as the false idea that a cabal of Jews and Democrats is “replacing” the shrinking white American majority race with Black, Hispanic and other people of color by encouraging immigration and interracial marriage – with the goal of threatening the ruling elite and eventually engineering the extinction of the white race.

It’s being investigated as a key motivating factor in Saturday’s supermarket shooting that killed 10 people and wounded three others in Buffalo, New York, 11 of them Black.

- from www.theguardian.com, "US House passes domestic terrorism bill in response to Buffalo shooting”, May, 19,2022.

Queries:

How do you respond upon hearing about racist attacks on the Black community such as the rampage in Buffalo last week?

How can we engage with others about the growing “homegrown terrorism” that targets people who are not of the white race?

What more is expected of us as “woke” white people in light of the rise of the “replacement theory”?

5/13/2022 Queries

“. . . critiquing the way something is spoken is a useful way to avoid discussing the content of their point. Those who can “play the part” of civility, educated, white, and wealthy patricians, are taken more seriously and therefore be heard more clearly, drowning out the cries of the disadvantaged. It is one of the many cultural phenomena that reinforce the hegemony of white supremacy through culture, resisting the truth that language is fluid, and insisting that the “Queen’s English,” or how wealthy white people speak, is the best and in fact the proper way to conduct discourse. Furthermore, those who are oppressed must necessarily resort to civil disobedience and other forms of general incivility to make an impact. If you’re stuck in a trap, you’ll cry and grunt struggling to break free. Pearl clutching about civility and tone-policing are tools of the privileged because one should not and cannot be civil when confronting those who willingly harm disadvantaged groups or the planet. . ..

-Mary Imgrund, Don’t Be Fooled, the Civility Debate is a Tool to Silence Marginalized Voices https://ecowarriorprincess.net/2019/06/civility-debate-silence-marginalized-voices/

Queries:

In an anti-racism context, how has your behavior been civil to a fault? What do you feel makes you drawn to 'civility'?

In your body what does civility feel like? What does the thought of rebelling against it feel like?

How do you notice civility showing up in your meeting?

What do you think helps you move beyond civility?

A resource on language and race:

https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510312/codeswitch

5/06/2022 Queries

In honor of AAPI Heritage Month, this week's quote comes from Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong:

The indignity of being Asian in this country has been underreported. We have been cowed by the lie that we have it good. We keep our heads down and work hard, believing that our diligence will reward us with our dignity, but our diligence will only make us disappear. By not speaking up, we perpetuate the myth that our shame is caused by our repressive culture and the country we fled, whereas America has given us nothing but opportunity. The lie that Asians have it good is so insidious that even now as I write, I'm shadowed by the doubt that I didn't have it bad compared to others. But racial trauma is not a competitive sport. (One World paperback edition, p. 78)

Queries:

What work have you done to become aware of and dismantle the stereotypes that continue to be powerful and harmful to the Asian and Pacific Islander communities?

How do you challenge the myth of the model minority and honor trauma experienced by people of Asian descent?

What rises for you when you hear the sentence "racial trauma is not a competitive sport"?

4/29/2022 Queries

“The world is full of painful stories. Sometimes it seems as though there aren't any other kind and yet I found myself thinking how beautiful that glint of water was through the trees.”

“I realize I don’t know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more. Then we can teach one another. We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic.”

“There is no end to what a living world will demand of you.”

-Quotes from Parable of the Sower by Octavia E. Butler

Queries:

How do we hold both the painful stories and the beauty through the trees?

In what ways do we accept our ignorance and our need to learn and teach others about the history and implications of racial injustice?

How do we live with the dynamic expectation that much is expected of us in a living world?

4/22/2022 Queries

On April 4, 2022, Twenty-six-year old Patrick Lyoya, whose family emigrated from the Democratic Republic of Congo seven years ago was shot in the back of the head by a Grand Rapids, Michigan police officer. Mr. Lyoya was unarmed. His memorial service is happening concurrent to this afternoon's worship. Today in our worship let us hold Partick Lyoya, his loved ones, his city and our country in our hearts as his memorial service proceeds.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15a_Ju1GV5FEW-KBJFIcqwgZYTmIJBFql/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=115402717747030372439&rtpof=true&sd=true

Shared on Google Drive

docs.google.com

If you are led to write a letter of protest this link will take you to Red Cedar’s letter writing kit. https://docs.google.com/document/d/15a_Ju1GV5FEW-KBJFIcqwgZYTmIJBFql/edit

4/15/2022 Queries

Let us begin to identify and separate the aspects of Quakerism that are not related to the core of our beliefs, the nonessential Eurocentric practices that have become attached to the way we practice our faith. Once they are removed we, people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds working together, can rebuild Quakerism and the world into an equal and peaceful home.

Racial awareness is not static. It is a process. We all are someplace in this process, and everyone benefits when we grow. So get involved.

Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship – Donna McDaniel and Vanessa Julye p. 397

Queries

What changes have you seen in your Quaker communities as a result of growing awareness of structural racism?

What practices would you work to change in order to transform your meeting into an anti-racist Quaker meeting?

What benefits will you (or we) experience as Quakerism releases the nonessential Eurocentric practices?

4/8/2022 Queries

I have been in movement spaces for a long time, and we have a way of doing things that is so steeped in critique that I have often wondered if we would strangle movement before it could blossom. Sometimes I think we put up the critiques to excuse ourselves from getting involved, and sometimes I think we do it to protect our hearts from getting broken if it doesn't work out. Critique, alone, can keep us from having to pick up the responsibility of figuring out solutions. Sometimes I think we need to liberate ourselves from critique, both internal and external, to truly give change a chance.

-Within Emergent Strategy by adrienne maree brown:

Queries:

In your anti-racism work, when has the desire to choose the perfect action prevented you from taking action at all?

Do you find yourself being less critical of ideas that come from people who are more like you?

How do you prepare to take on work that may break your heart?

4/1/2022 Queries

“All that you touch

You Change.

All that you Change

Changes you.

The only lasting truth

Is Change.

God, Is Change.”

- Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

Queries

Where have your efforts to address racism produced change?

In what ways has your commitment to become anti-racist changed you?

Where do you find Spirit in this work?

3/25/2022 Queries

Mapps extends this affection in spite of her experience in Quaker meetings in the Philadelphia area, which she attended her entire life. McDaniel and Julye write:

Source: “Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship” Donna McDaniel & Vanessa Julye (pp. 75-77)

Queries

• Quakers often proudly claim our history of antislavery. How does Mapps appreciation and indignation toward white Quakers feel in your body?

• In your anti-racism work, how do center the voices of BIPOC Friends? How does your answer to that question feel in your body?

• In your meeting’s (Yearly Meeting’s) anti-racism work, how do you center the voices of BIPOC Friends? How does your answer to that question feel in your body?

3/18/2022 Queries

According to Vanessa Julye’s FGC website article, African American anthropologist Dr. Vera Mae Green’s Three ethnographic research questions sought

1. the “general Black reaction” to Quakerism,

2. the possible motivations for an African American to “attach themselves to the Society,”

3. and the factors that might keep them away from such an “attachment.”

https://136hfg2lvsjp18ha1b2f9z26-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Vera-Green.pdf

From Vera Green’s, Blacks and Quakerism 1973, quoted in Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights:

“I am not in favor of trying to involve large numbers of Culture of Poverty type Blacks in Quakerism as perhaps some might advocate. I think the battle is too great, and requires intense multifactorial, almost social work approaches which Friends are not by and large trained to do. Sometimes more antagonism is built up by well meaning naive people “going forth to do good.”

“It seems that if contacts are to be made they should be lateral (across to those Blacks more likely to respond, and then those influences could filter down into inner city groups, Culture of Poverty, and poverty groups). The experience in culture change theory is that individuals accepting a change often receive it if there is sufficient value for them (status, material, and personal). And it is often quickly accepted if introduced by their own members with sufficient status, or they are able to see immediate tangible benefits to themselves from the change.”

Queries:

1. How do we, how might we, more authentically hear the pain and the seeking for community among BIPOC folk in our communities?

2. European American Friends relations with Friends of color historically have had and continue to exhibit negative behaviors. Which negative behaviors have you seen? What is emerging as we look for more of our behaviors that are experienced as negative?

3. How does Green’s language on the "Culture of Poverty" and assertion in 1973 that Friends are not ready to engage poor Black folk sit with you? What would need to happen for Friends to be ready for deeper class inclusion?

3/11/2022 Queries

Mahala Ashley Dickerson said, “The white supremacy that surrounds the Religious Society of Friends causes enduring harm.”

from “The 1619 Project” by Nikole Hannah-Jones (p. 11)

…despite being violently denied the freedom and justice promised to all, Black Americans believed fervently in the American creed. Through centuries of Black resistance and protest, we have helped the country live up to its founding ideals. And not only for ourselves - Black rights struggles paved the way for every other rights struggle, including women’s and gay rights, immigrant and disability rights.

Without the idealistic, strenuous, and patriotic efforts of Black Americans, our democracy today would look very different; in fact, our country might not be a democracy at all.

Queries:

1.) Do we take time to recognize the whole history of our country? of our faith community?

2.) How do you make the connection between the culture of the country and the culture in the Religious Society of Friends?

3.) What would it be like to live in a decolonized community that honors the gifts and sacrifices of everyone?

3/3/2022 Queries

This child is called Black-

Once her folks were called Africans,

Then Negro, then Colored,

Now they are called Black.

She is not the black-a black of one’s true

Love’s hair,

Nor the black of the famous painting

In the museum, simple titled, “Black,”

Or the black hole, black of far off stars dying.

Her Black can be the color of honey,

Or sunsets lowering,

The color of Autumn leaves, mingled

With brown branches bending;

There’s the color of new earth turned,

Joyfully feeling great oaks,

Russet violets, or wheat fields waving;

Black can be the color of sand-

Seashore sand, washed by the movement of

Rhythmic waves crisscrossing.

All these colors strangely evident

As you look at the child;

All the tans, the browns,

All the colors of mankind,

All neutral, all blended

Into the color, of her people

In this one child called, Black

Black Child by Helen Morgan Brooks in I Choose Love (Pendle Hill Publications, 1990) p. 3.

Queries

What new insights do you gain from this poem?

In what ways does it change the image in your mind when someone is called Black?

2/25/2022 Queries

Below Twitty describes seeing a ceremonial Ghanaian drum in a room devoted to Southeastern Native American artifacts in the British Museum:

"At one time it was believed that the drum was American Cedar and the skin of a whitetail deer, an artifact completely African in design but North American in material construct. It is now known that the drum is made of wood native to the Ghanaian rain forest, and the skin is American white-tailed deer. The Akan drum is one of the most well-known 'American' artifacts in the British Museum. The body is African and its cover is American. The drum was 'found,' half-buried in a sacred, secret place until it was stolen.

"I ache to touch it. That drum is an attempt at survival, persistence, memory. That drum brought to Europe almost three hundred years ago was read as a Native American artifact. Now we know it's African American. When we take leave of it, sitting among objects it has no real relationship to, I lament that a delegation of African Americans of Ghanaian descent haven't come here to bless it, or with them Akan priests. I kiss my fingers and press them to the glass. If nothing else, I know this--the drum is me."

-The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South by Michael W. Twitty.

Queries:

How do you grapple with information that complicates your understanding of history?

How do you grieve for what you can't know about the past?

What is it your responsibility to do when you learn that Black history has been obscured or intentionally destroyed?

2/18/2022 Queries

The treatment accorded the Negro during the Second World War marks, for me, a turning point in the Negro's relation to America. To put it briefly, and somewhat too simply, a certain hope died, a certain respect for white Americans faded. One began to pity them, or to hate them. You must put yourself in the skin of a man who is wearing the uniform of his country, is a candidate for death in its defense, and who is called a "nigger" by his comrades-in-arms and

his officers; who is almost always given the hardest, ugliest, most menial work to do; who. knows that the white G.I. has informed the Europeans that he is sub- human (so much for the American male's sexual security); who does not dance at the U.S.O. the night white soldiers dance there, and does not drink in the same bars’ white soldiers drink in; and who watches German prisoners of war being treated by Americans with more human dignity than he has ever received at their hands. And who, at the same time, as a human being, is far freer in a strange land than he has ever been at home. Home!

-James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time

Queries:

What did you know about the treatment of Black soldiers returning from World War II? What can you do about it?

In what ways did you and your families benefit when soldiers returned from the war?

How does the systemic racism of the white culture seep into your Quaker Meeting and its culture?

In what ways does white culture live in your faith and everyday life?

2/11/2022 Queries

From the 1892 autobiography of Frederick Douglass

“The story of the master never wanted for narrators. The masters, to tell their story, had at call all the talent and genius that wealth and influence could command. They have had their full day in court. Literature, theology, philosophy, law and learning have come willingly to their service, and if condemned, they have not been condemned unheard.”

Our part, Douglas said, “has been to tell the story of the slave.”

Queries:

How do I as a white person listen deeply and uplift the story without attempting to “correct” the narrative?

When I re-member the horrors of the history of White Supremacy, what is brought up in me? How does my body respond and how do I direct it?

How do I tell the story of the effects of continued privilege and dominance of people who look like me at the expense of BIPOC?

2/4/2022 Queries

Conversion

African Guardian of Souls,

Drunk with rum,

Feasting on a strange cassava[ii],

Yielding to new words and a weak palabra[iii]

Of a white-faced sardonic god—

Grins, cries

Amen,

Shouts hosanna.

-Jean Toomer, Cane

[i] https://poets.org/poet/jean-toomer

[ii] A root eaten in much of Africa, often pounded with yam or plantain into fufu

[iii] A word. Also: talk, especially of an unnecessary, profuse, or idle nature; occasionally figurative.

Queries:

How does Toomer’s voice stand out among historical Quaker African American voices?

How do Toomer’s words feel in your body as you sink into his poem of nearly 100 years ago? Which line or phrase evokes the strongest reactions?

In what ways do I notice my meeting still practices colonizing behaviors?

1/28/2022 Queries

Paraphrased from Anneliese A. Singh, “The Racial Healing Handbook.”

In the US, we are all born into a racist society. As we look at that racism systemically, we can identify ways in which we, as individuals, are rewarded when we don’t challenge racism and punished when we do challenge racism. A reward for white people may be a continued feeling of belonging within a community and a punishment may be a loss of relationship, or job, or other opportunity. We all receive rewards for playing along with our racial scripts and punishments for stepping outside of them. White people may be so accustomed to their privilege, however, that these reinforcing rewards and punishments may be challenging to see.

Queries:

Do I notice ways in which I am rewarded by keeping silent when I observe racist behavior?

Do I notice ways in which I am punished when taking action when I observe racist behavior?

How do I decide when to challenge racism and when not to?

1/21/2022 Queries

"[The] prison industrial complex is much more than the sum of all the jails and prisons in this country. It is a set of symbiotic relationships among correctional communities, transnational corporations, media conglomerates, guards' unions, and legislative and court agendas. If it is true that the contemporary meaning of punishment is fashioned through these relationships, then the most effective abolitionist strategies will contest these relationships and propose alternatives that pull them apart. What, then, would it mean to imagine a society in which race and class are not primary determinants of punishment? Or one in which punishment itself is no longer the central concern in the making of justice?"

-Angela Davis, Are Prisons Obsolete

Queries:

When I think of "justice being done", do I feel comforted by the idea of wrongdoing being punished?

How do I interrupt white supremacist patterns of punishment and support those most harmed by them?

What is the central concern in the making of justice?

1/14/2021 Queries

After the death of 4 little girls in a church bombing Martin Luther King’s message changed to a “…deepening and expanding concern about the harsh realities of economic injustice in American and across the globe; his powerful determination to identify his life and his leadership with the cause of the poor of all colors; his audacious movement out of more familiar settings of his native South into the uncertain cauldrons of the Northern cities; his increasingly strident denunciations of white American racism; his courageous willingness to carry on a religiously and politically motivated lover’s quarrel with the leaders of his nation and with all of their followers who were destroying the peoples of Southeast Asia and the hopes of poor people in America; his call for the revolutionary transformation of our nation’s institutions toward compassion; his attempt to gather the poor people of this country and organize them into a visionary nonviolent revolutionary force to challenge the status of economic justice….these and other manifestations of the post-1963 life of our hero have generally been missing from our celebrations of his work….we who remember King’s unceasing warnings about the triple American evils of racism, militarism, and materialism, are engaged and assisted much more fully by the King of the post-1963 years than by an earlier, more convenient hero.”

Martin Luther King, the Inconvenient Hero – Vincent Harding

Martin Luther King’s queries were: Who is my neighbor? What does love mean?

What can I do to move forward King’s real message about the triple threat of racism, militarism and materialism and challenge people to embrace and respond to it?

1/7/2022

No Queries, extended group worship, start of the new year

12/22/2021 Queries

Another response to racism has been the establishment of unlearning racism workshops, which are often led by white women. These workshops are important, yet they tend to focus primarily on cathartic individual psychological personal prejudice without stressing the need for corresponding change in political commitment and action. A woman who attends an unlearning racism workshop and learns to acknowledge that she is racist is no less a threat than one who does not. Acknowledgment of racism is significant when it leads to transformation. -bell hooks

Queries:

What are the white supremacist values and beliefs that support Quaker practice?

In what ways do I walk through my life embodying white supremacy values and beliefs?

12/17/2021 Queries

“One ever fells his twoness, -an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” With these words, W.E.B. Du Bois, in his masterpiece The Souls of Black Folk, identifies the central dilemma facing Black people in the United States – that, to a great degree, Blackness” and “Americanness” have been cast in opposition to one another, a predicament created by the details of history and the desires of others. What has it meant (what does it mean) for Blacks to claim Americanism while substantial numbers of their fellow Americans reject the idea that Blacks can be true Americans? And that they have used their great numbers to make that rejection the basis of law and social policy? (Annette Gordon-Reed in On Juneteenth)

12/10/2021 Queries

For the coming weeks, we will explore how shame comes up in anti-racism work among white people.

From Curt Thompson on "Shame and the Soul of Racism"

"Shame is racism’s seed and flower, each feeding off of and reinforcing each other. It is this dynamic relationship between them that is causing as much trouble as anything we are encountering, albeit often outside of our awareness. How we respond to this relationship is crucial in our call to be image bearers of God….. Knowing how shame works enables us to be aware of it and to take steps to do the double work of dismantling it internally and systemically. But it is paramount that I as a white person do not delude myself into thinking that all I have to do is work on my inner life; rather, I must in particular attune to the institutional issues at hand.”

Queries:

Reflecting on shame as the seed and flower of racism:

When I feel racial shame, what helps me acknowledge both my personal feelings of vulnerability and the larger systemic issues that perpetuate racial harm?

How do I become more aware of my feelings of racial shame as they relate to systemic racism?

In what ways can we go beyond our inner work toward the ‘institutional issues at hand’ in our faith community?

12/03/2021 Queries

Tarana: We often carry our trauma in similar ways, but the roads that led us to the trauma are all so different. We must pay attention to that road. That road is our humanity. That road is the piece that we're talking about. A lot of times we're happy and relieved to find similarities: "Oh, you too? You too? Me too." No pun intended. These experiences create community, and it's wonderful, but it is still critical to understand the very different paths that led you to the trauma.

Brené: That makes so much sense. We have to know the road if we're going to walk back down it and dismantle the systems that lead us to trauma.

from You Are Your Best Thing : Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience, edited by Tarana Burke, and Brené Brown, Random House Publishing Group, 2021.

Queries

When have I been strengthened by connecting with others around shared experiences of shame?

What impact do these connections have on my ability to recover from shame and move forward in my work for racial justice?

How do I honor the different paths we have to walk down as we become more vulnerable and resilient together, particularly in multiracial spaces?

11/26/21 Queries

From a blog posting by Tina Alvarado, LMFT on the Seattle Anxiety Specialist PLLC website:

The function of shame is to tell us when we have done something that violates our own values or our community's values.

We, as White people, need to work on building up our shame resilience as a way to continue to engage in dismantling White Supremacy. To increase our tolerance of these uncomfortable feelings so that we can remain steadfast in our anti-racism work. The lives of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) depend on it.

Queries:

What shame am I holding as my whiteness automatically benefits me in our White Supremacy culture?

What is there for me to learn about as I consider the shame I hold?

How and where can I break the silence to remove the power my shame gives to furthering White Supremacy?

11/19/21 Queries

“We run from grief because loss scares us,

yet our hearts reach toward grief

because the broken parts want to mend.”

The Lesson: Healing requires us to live courageously and allow ourselves to fully experience the feelings of loss and grief.

Brene says that to have courage is to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart. When grief is part of your story, it needs to be held to be healed. We cannot heal what has not been processed, and it takes time to move through the pain of loss and grief. We don’t do ourselves any favors when we rush or simply try to skip over the process of grieving. Even when it is scary, we must follow our hearts and honor our grief. Allow our hearts to heal the way they truly want to. Grief teaches us the power of our love, and our resilience. When we practice courage we lean into showing the world our whole self, wounds and all.

-- https://blog.funeralone.com/grief-and-healing/brene-brown-grief/

Queries:

How does shame get in the way of you "honoring your grief?"

How do you turn towards grieving your personal and communal historical narratives about race?

What does “honoring grief” in relation to racism mean to you today?

11/12/21 Queries

For the coming weeks, we will explore how shame comes up in anti-racism work among white people.

Shame resilience moves us towards empathy (courage, connection and compassion) and away from shame (fear, blame, disconnection), according to Dr. Brene Brown.

When we have shame resilience we are able to identify the stories we tell ourselves that trigger us into feeling shame instead of connection. We can recognize our body’s response to feeling shame, so we are then able to re-story the event, and soothe our minds and bodies so we can return to connection.

Queries:

How has shame manifested in me that ultimately worked to the benefit of white supremacy?

What is my automatic reaction to shame? How is that tied to identities and privileges I may hold?

11/04/21 Queries

Epistle from the Friends of Color Pre-Gathering 2020

www.fgcquaker.org/news/outgoing-epistle-2020-virtual-pre-gathering-friends-color-and-their-families

Uplifted query from epistle-

6) How can I support respite for Friends of Color?

10/15/2021 Queries

Epistle from the Friends of Color FGC Pre-Gathering 2020

https://www.fgcquaker.org/news/outgoing-epistle-2020-virtual-pre-gathering-friends-color-and-their-families

Uplifted query from epistle-

How can we construct ways for people to engage and remain engaged beyond good intentions in the struggle for true equality in health, education, wealth and against state sanctioned violence?

10/8/2021 Queries

Epistle from the Friends of Color FGC Pre-Gathering 2020

https://www.fgcquaker.org/news/outgoing-epistle-2020-virtual-pre-gathering-friends-color-and-their-families

Uplifted query from epistle-

How can we honor the memory of people who have lost their lives to the struggle for a better world?

10/1/2021 Queries

Epistle from the Friends of Color FGC Pre-Gathering 2020

https://www.fgcquaker.org/news/outgoing-epistle-2020-virtual-pre-gathering-friends-color-and-their-families

Uplifted query from epistle-

What is the Spirit leading me to do about the historic and ongoing racial pandemic across my meeting, my community, my work environment and my country?

9/24/2021 Queries

“We are born to move towards harmony and learn to ignore the “harms” or causes of harm. Even if we can’t name or otherwise identify a harm, our body knows and remembers. By noticing and naming both the oppression and faithfulness, we can shift our stuckness and woundedness (on race and the effects of racism) within the Religious Society of Friends and the greater society.”

-Lisa Graustein of NEYM, Noticing & Naming Patterns of Oppression and Faithfulness

Queries:

1) What is the sign in your body that something is “off”, wrong, an untruth?

2) What is a sign in your body that something is truthful, right on, Spirit-led?

3) Name a (spiritual) practice that helps you hear truth and have the courage to notice and name patterns of oppression - regarding race and racism.

9/17/2021 Queries

No queries, extended 20 minute worship

9/10/2021 Queries

Song by British rapper Dave called "Black": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDUPSNdmFew

Focus on timestamp 02:51-03:14, the lyrics are:

Black is so confusing, 'cause the culture? They're in love with it

They take our features when they want and have their fun with it

Never seem to help with all the things we know would come with it

Loud in our laughter, silent in our suffering

Black is bein' strong inside and facing defeat

Poverty made me a beast, I battled the law in the streets

We all struggled, but your struggle ain't a struggle like me

Well how could it be when your people gave us the odds that we beat?

Queries

How do I feel when I engage with work by Black artists that does not reflect my culture?

Do I recognize when work made by Black artists is intended for a white audience?

When I see/read/listen to the work of Black artists, do I expect them to educate me about racism and racialized experience?

9/3/2021 Queries

"What I’m talking about is more than recompense for past injustices—more than a handout, a payoff, hush money, or a reluctant bribe. What I’m talking about is a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal. Reparations would mean the end of scarfing hot dogs on the Fourth of July while denying the facts of our heritage. Reparations would mean the end of yelling “patriotism” while waving a Confederate flag. Reparations would mean a revolution of the American consciousness, a reconciling of our self-image as the great democratizer with the facts of our history."

~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

What are some changes I imagine as part of a "revolution of the American consciousness"?

What work am I doing to reconcile my own self-image as an inhabitant of this country?

In what ways does my management of personal resources consider reparations?

8/27/2021 Queries

In America, nearly all of us, regardless of our background or skin color, carry trauma in our bodies around the myth of race...It can be a response to anything (the body) experiences as too much, too soon, or too fast. Trauma can also be the body's response to anything unfamiliar or anything it doesn't understand, even if it isn't cognitively dangerous. The body doesn't reason; it's hardwired to protect itself and react to sensation and movement.

Resmaa Menakem - My Grandmother's Hands

What is my body's response to racism discussions?

What is my body's response to being in a group of mostly BIPOC individuals?

Do I avoid areas where mostly BIPOC individuals live?

8/20/2021- Cancelled

8/13/2021 Queries

Ruth King, Mindful of Race, Introduction

Something alarming happens when we think or hear the word racism. Something deep within us is awakened into fear. All of us, regardless of our race and our experience of race, get triggered, and more than the moment is at play…. This activation happens to all of us….Some of us do not acknowledge that we are racial beings within the human race, nor do we recognize how or understand why our instinct as members of racial groups is to fear, hurt, or harm other races, including our own. And we don’t know how to face into and own what we have co-created as humans. But each of us can and must ask ourselves two questions: Why are matters of race still of concern across the nation and throughout the world? And what does this have to do with me?

Queries:

Do I notice any signs of stress in me when the topic of race comes up?

What happens in my body when the topic of race comes up in my meeting?

How do I navigate any stress I feel when talking about race; what helps me stay present and grounded?

7/6/2021 Queries

What do I do each week regarding anti-racism work in my life that will inform my habitual ways of relating? Do I understand that some knowledge based on frequently engaged relationships will take years for some aspects of knowledge to develop?

If your local BLM representative or a representative of another anti-racism group offends you, how does this affect one’s support for such groups?

When your monthly meeting or another group you engage appears to think they are anti-racist but there has been little work done by members on themselves, what responses to your group or meeting have not been helpful and what helps start useful actions or conversations?

7/29/2021 Queries

(Query creator has) been thinking a lot about those Indian princess doll souvenirs of her childhood and found the following:

“‘It Has Stuck With Me 35 Years’: 11 Childhood Memories of Blackface and Other Racist Incidents. Readers reveal racist behavior they committed or witnessed as children and reflect on how it affects them today.

The blackface performances that 68-year-old Bernie Oakley remembers from the 1960s weren’t held during booze-fueled college fraternity parties. They were held at fund-raisers for local schools. And his father, who considered himself an anti-racist Sunday school teacher, was the M.C. Mr. Oakley was one of about 75 readers who wrote to tell us about their memories of witnessing or participating in blackface or other racist behavior when they were young.

Many recalled seeing or participating in racist activities at school, where it was sanctioned by adult role models, when they were children. Their memories, spanning seven decades from 1940 to 2010, chronicle the evolution and persistence of racist episodes within schools and among groups of children. Several described struggling to reconcile their enjoyment of those things with their anti-racist beliefs and to unlearn what they were taught.”

-The New York Times, by Lela Moore, February 23, 2019.

Queries:

What racist activities or images or stories do you recall seeing or participating in when you were young?

In what ways did these experiences teach you how to be racist?

How might these activities/images inform your anti-racism work today?

7/23/2021 Queries

Because of how rarely privilege is examined, even our social justice movements tend to focus on the most privileged and most represented people within those groups. Anti-racism groups will often tend to prioritize the needs of straight men of color, feminist groups will tend to prioritize the needs of white women, LGBYTQ groups will tend to prioritize the needs of white gay cisgender men….These solutions, not surprisingly, often leave the underprivileged populations in our movements behind.

Ijeoma Oluo –So you want to talk about race

Queries:

In what ways can I ensure the focus of my antiracism work raises the voices of those least heard (or with the least privilege)?

How can I help others become more aware of how their privilege impacts others with less privilege?

7/16/21 Queries

"The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be an anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. And it’s the only way forward.” Ijeoma Oluo (from her book “So you want to talk about race”)

“Do not accept anything as love which lacks truth.” Edith Stein

Queries:

In what ways do you live into your commitment of challenging racism wherever you find it?

How do you respond when you identify racism within and how do you care for yourself?

What practices help ground you in truth and love?

6/25/21 Queries

“ What we must do is commit ourselves to some future that can include each other and to work toward that future with the particular strengths of our individual identities. And in order for us to do this, we must allow each other our differences at the same time as we recognize our sameness.”

– Audre Lorde

In what ways can I commit myself toward being authentically vulnerable in my anti-racism work?

How will I be stretched when I make this commitment?

6/18/21 Queries - Juneteenth

“Struggle is a never-ending process. Freedom is never really won, you earn it and win it in every generation.” - Coretta Scott King

“We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers.” - Bayard Rustin

On this Juneteenth holiday, newly recognized by the Federal government, where is your anti-racism work focused?

In what ways can we use this Juneteenth holiday in our commitment to becoming an anti-racist faith community?

What new anti-racism actions can you commit to exploring in the coming months?

What are we doing to continue the struggle with younger generations?

6/11/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture wrap-up

6/4/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Right to Comfort

Right to Comfort

The belief that those with power have a right to emotional and psychological comfort. Those who cause discomfort are blamed. Equating individual acts of unfairness against white people with systemic racism which daily targets people of color.

Antidote: Accept that discomfort is at the root of all growth and learning so, welcome it as much as you can. Deepen your political analysis of racism and oppression so you have a strong understanding of how your personal experience and feelings fit into a larger picture. And, ultimately don’t take everything personally.

Queries

In what ways does Quaker practice use the white supremacy culture characteristic of Right to Comfort to maintain our religious tradition?

What tools does Quakerism offer to those who want to lean into discomfort?

What current practices, norms and standards do Quakers need to release to become an anti-racist faith community?

5/28/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Objectivity

Objectivity is the belief that it is possible to identify one universal Truth. Objectivity claims that emotions are inherently destructive or irrational, and should not play a role in decision-making or group process.

A variety of experiences influence our world-view and the way each of us understands things. We are pushed to sit with discomfort when people are expressing themselves in ways which are not familiar to us. The challenge is to assume that everybody has a valid point and your job is to understand what that point is.

Queries

What internal shifts must I make in order to hear God’s presence in a message that is highly emotional?

Where have I experienced an expansion of God’s Truth that was not linear?

How can I more deeply question the idea of one universal Truth? How can I make room for many different truths next to one another?

5/21/2021 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Progress is Bigger/More

Progress is Bigger, More

White supremacy measures success by expansion, duplication, numbers and financial profit. Accountability is to funders, board members, stock holders rather than to people served or to employees.

There is a focus on numbers served rather than quality of service or values of how people are served. Cost/benefit analysis focuses on financial and rarely considers morale of staff, credibility of an organization or use of resources.

Queries:

In what ways do Friends accept or resist this culture characteristic in our anti-racism work?

What measurement should the Religious Society of Friends use as we strive to make progress to becoming an anti-racist faith community?

5/14/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, I’m the Only One

Belief that if something is going to done correctly in must be done by me. Not have much ability to delegate work to others.

Queries:

When have I stepped back and followed the leadership of someone else? Do I follow even if I don’t believe it is in the right direction?

Do I know in my heart there is more than one way to a desired outcome?

Why do I prefer to do something myself? Why is it difficult to allow room for others to lead?

5/7/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Individualism

I believe I’m responsible for solving problems alone. I desire recognition and credit. I more comfortable with competition than cooperation. I alone am accountable for success. I am isolated. If something is going to get done right, I have to do it therefore, I don’t delegate. I don’t like working on a team unless I’m the leader. Teamwork takes up too much time.

Query:

How does the white supremacy culture characteristic of individualism show up in me and in my life? (in my relationships, my actions, my relationship to resources, etc.)

How does the framework of individualism harm me and the people around me?

When do I feel most connected to others? How can I grow those connections and let them expand and transform me?

4/30/21 Queries

For those of us who Worshiped together last week, in what ways has your anti-racist heart and soul stayed open?

How can we stay present in the face of pain and anger when Black and brown people are routinely killed by law enforcement?

Where/how does your anti-racism work show up within your circle of influence?

What is your heart telling you about your commitment to ending white supremacy?

4/23/21 Queries

How can I release my intellectual understanding of racism and move to a heart (soul) sense of racism and its impact on people?

4/16/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Conflict part 3

How has my avoidance of conflict harmed my anti-racism work?

What was I taught about conflict as a child? Are there things I need to unlearn?

Where might I practice a healthy relationship with conflict? Who might I learn from?

When I avoid conflict who do I harm?

4/2/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Conflict week 2

What is my own relationship with conflict?

In what ways does my relationship with conflict collude with White Supremacy? Where do I see this at work in Quaker spaces?

What happens to my soul when I engage (or disengage) with conflict?

How does gender influence the way I engage in conflict?

3/26/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Fear of Open Conflict week 1

Fear of open conflict: People in power are afraid of conflict and try to ignore it... When someone raises an issue that causes discomfort, the response is to blame the person for raising the issue rather than look at the issue... Raising difficult issues is equated with being impolite.

Queries:

How has fear of conflict been present in the meetings and organizations in which I participate?

How can I work to interrupt the fear of open conflict in myself and in groups in which I participate?

3/19/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Power Hoarding

Power Hoarding: Power is seen as limited. Those with power feel threatened when changes are suggested. They assume they have the best interests of the group at heart and assume those wanting change are ill-informed, emotional, inexperienced.

Query:

How has Quaker practice and tradition be used to keep power grounded in white supremacy?

How does my meeting develop the skills of all Friends to challenge leadership in healthy and productive ways?

Do I join those who challenge the power holders in my meeting?

3/12/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Either/or thinking

Either/or thinking – good/bad, right/wrong, with us/against us…linked to perfectionism making it difficult to learn from mistakes or accommodate conflict. Either/or thinking simplifies complex issues and does not consider both/and.

then use this as the query:

“Our culture teaches us either/or choices, right/wrong analysis, us/them understanding. How would our culture, society and, our perceptions change if we were able to understand truth as both/and, hold the complexity of our communal lives, and to refuse to submit to binary thinking?”

Linnea Halsten 2 years ago

@amy.rowland@me.com @lupinelady@gmail.com @sjpcrockett@gmail.com @megarid@yahoo.com This should allow you all to edit this document. Please let me know if i

Queries - Virtual Worship for White Friends Confronting Racism
3/27 & 28/2025
ICE Agents Storm My Porch
3/13 & 14/2025
2/13 & 14/2025
Mothership
01/30 & 31/2025
01/16 & 17/2025
01/9 & 10/2025
01/2 & 3/2025
12/26 & 27/2024
12/19 & 20/2024
Commitment means that it is possible for a [person] to yield the nerve center of [their] consent to a purpose or cause, a movement, or an ideal, which may be more important to [them] than whether [they live or die.]”
12/12 & 13/2024
12/5 & 6/2024
11/28 & 29/2024
11/21 & 22/2024
11/14 & 15/2024
11/7 & 8/2024
11/1/2024 Queries
Queries
10/25/2024 Queries
Queries
10/18/2024 Queries
Queries:
10/11/2024 Queries
10/4/2024 Queries
Queries:
9/27/2024 Queries
From the Southeastern Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends
Annual Michener Lecture January 14, 2007, page 8
9/20/2024 Queries
Queries:
9/13/2024 Queries
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9/6/2024 Queries
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8/29/2024 Queries
Fear of White Supremacy Characteristics Cont.
Queries:
8/9/2024 Queries
Fear of White Supremacy Characteristics Cont.
7/19/2024 Queries
Fear of White Supremacy Characteristics Cont.
Antidotes
Queries
7/11/2024 Queries
Fear of White Supremacy Characteristics Cont.
Queries:
7/5/2024 Queries
Fear of White Supremacy Characteristic
6/14/2024-6/28/2024 Queries
Queries
5/3/2024-6/7/2024 Queries
The Outgoing Epistle of the 2020 Virtual Pre-Gathering of Friends of Color and their Families
Queries
4/18/2024 Queries
Queries
4/11/2024 Queries
Harlem
Queries
3/28/2024 Queries
Queries
3/21/2024 Queries
Queries
3/14/2024 Queries
Two Loves
Queries
2/29/2024 Queries
Query
2/23/2024 Queries
Queries
2/16/2024 Queries
Queries
2/8/2024 Queries
Queries
Double chain
Queries
2/1/2024 Queries
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1/25/2024 Queries
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1/18/2024 Queries
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1/11/2024 Queries
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1/4/2024 Queries
Queries
12/15/2023 Queries
Our topic this month is PEACE
Definition of Racial Wounding
Guidelines for the Committee to Address Racial Wounding
Queries
12/8/2023 Queries
Queries
12/1/2023 Queries
11/17/2023 Queries
11/3/2023 Queries
10/27/2023 Queries
10/26/2023 Queries
The Hicksite-Orthodox Schism and the Friends Asylum
10/20/2023 Queries
Queries:
9/22/2023 Queries
Elizabeth Acevedo, Afro-Latina:
https://youtu.be/tPx8cSGW4k8
Queries
7/20/2023 Queries
Queries
6/22/2023 Queeries
Queries
6/16/2023 Queeries
Queries:
6/8/2023 Queries
6/1/2023 Queries
Queries:
5/26/2023 Queries
Queries:
5/19/2023 Queries
Query:
5/11/2023 Queries
Queries:
4/27/2023 Queries
Minstrel Man
Queries:
4/21/2023 Queries
How Does it Feel?
4/14/2023 Queries
Songs for The People
4/06/2023 Queries
Queries:
3/31/2023 Queries
Queries-
3/24/2023 Queries
Queries:
3/17/2023 Queries
3/10/2023 Queries
3/02/2023 Queries
Queries
2/25/2023 Queries
Queries
2/16/2023 Queries
2/09/2023 Queries
2/03/2023 Queries
1/27/2023 Queries
Queries
1/20/2023 Queries
Queries:
12/29/2022 Queries
12/22/2022 Queries
Queries:
12/15/2022 Queries
12/09/2022 Queries
Being anti-racist
Queries:
12/01/2022 Queries
11/25/2022 Queries
Queries:
11/17/2022 Queries
11/10/2022 Queries
Queries
11/03/2022 Queries
10/27/2022 Queries
10/14/2022 Queries
10/06/2022 Queries
Power Hoarding
9/29/22 Queries
9/23/2022 Queries
Queries:
9/16/2022 Queries
Characteristic of white supremacy: Sense of Urgency
Queries:
9/9/2022 Queries
Denial
9/1/2022 Queries
8/25/2022 Queries
8/18/2022 Queries
Queries:
8/12/2022 Queries
8/5/2022 Queries
7/28/2022 Queries
7/21/2022 Queries
Qualified-
7/15/2022 Queries
Queries:
6/30/2022 Queries
6/23/2022 Queries
Paternalism
Queries
6/16/2022 Queries
6/10/2022 Queries
Perfectionism
Queries
5/27/2022 Queries
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5/20/2022 Queries
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5/13/2022 Queries
5/06/2022 Queries
4/29/2022 Queries
4/22/2022 Queries
4/15/2022 Queries
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4/8/2022 Queries
4/1/2022 Queries
3/25/2022 Queries
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3/18/2022 Queries
3/11/2022 Queries
3/3/2022 Queries
Queries
2/25/2022 Queries
2/18/2022 Queries
2/11/2022 Queries
2/4/2022 Queries
Conversion
1/28/2022 Queries
1/21/2022 Queries
1/14/2021 Queries
1/7/2022
12/22/2021 Queries
12/17/2021 Queries
12/10/2021 Queries
For the coming weeks, we will explore how shame comes up in anti-racism work among white people.
12/03/2021 Queries
from You Are Your Best Thing : Vulnerability, Shame Resilience, and the Black Experience, edited by Tarana Burke, and Brené Brown, Random House Publishing Group, 2021.
11/26/21 Queries
11/19/21 Queries
11/12/21 Queries
For the coming weeks, we will explore how shame comes up in anti-racism work among white people.
When we have shame resilience we are able to identify the stories we tell ourselves that trigger us into feeling shame instead of connection. We can recognize our body’s response to feeling shame, so we are then able to re-story the event, and soothe our minds and bodies so we can return to connection.
11/04/21 Queries
10/15/2021 Queries
10/8/2021 Queries
10/1/2021 Queries
9/24/2021 Queries
9/17/2021 Queries
9/10/2021 Queries
9/3/2021 Queries
8/27/2021 Queries
8/20/2021- Cancelled
8/13/2021 Queries
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7/29/2021 Queries
7/23/2021 Queries
7/16/21 Queries
6/25/21 Queries
6/18/21 Queries - Juneteenth
6/11/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture wrap-up
6/4/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Right to Comfort
5/28/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Objectivity
5/21/2021 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Progress is Bigger/More
5/14/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, I’m the Only One
5/7/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Individualism
4/30/21 Queries
4/23/21 Queries
4/16/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Conflict part 3
4/2/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Conflict week 2
3/26/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Fear of Open Conflict week 1
3/19/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Power Hoarding
3/12/21 Queries - White Supremacy Culture, Either/or thinking

​​3/27 & 28/2025

​​ICE Agents Storm My Porch

​​3/13 & 14/2025

​​2/13 & 14/2025

​​Mothership

​​01/30 & 31/2025

​​01/16 & 17/2025

​​01/9 & 10/2025

​​01/2 & 3/2025

​​12/26 & 27/2024

​​12/19 & 20/2024

​​12/12 & 13/2024

​​12/5 & 6/2024

​​11/28 & 29/2024

​​11/21 & 22/2024

​​11/14 & 15/2024

​​11/7 & 8/2024

​​11/1/2024 Queries

​​10/25/2024 Queries

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​​8/29/2024 Queries

​​8/9/2024 Queries

​​7/19/2024 Queries

​​7/11/2024 Queries

​​One right way

​​7/5/2024 Queries

​​6/14/2024-6/28/2024 Queries

​​5/3/2024-6/7/2024 Queries

​​4/18/2024 Queries

​​4/11/2024 Queries

​​3/28/2024 Queries

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​​12/15/2023 Queries

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​​11/17/2023 Queries

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​​10/27/2023 Queries

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​​2/09/2023 Queries

​​2/03/2023 Queries

​​1/27/2023 Queries

​​1/20/2023 Queries

3/27 & 28/2025

ICE Agents Storm My Porch

3/13 & 14/2025

2/13 & 14/2025

Mothership

01/30 & 31/2025

01/16 & 17/2025

01/9 & 10/2025

01/2 & 3/2025

12/26 & 27/2024

12/19 & 20/2024

12/12 & 13/2024

12/5 & 6/2024

11/28 & 29/2024

11/21 & 22/2024

11/14 & 15/2024

11/7 & 8/2024

11/1/2024 Queries

10/25/2024 Queries

10/18/2024 Queries

10/11/2024 Queries

10/4/2024 Queries

9/27/2024 Queries

9/20/2024 Queries

9/13/2024 Queries

9/6/2024 Queries

8/29/2024 Queries

8/9/2024 Queries

7/19/2024 Queries

7/11/2024 Queries

One right way

7/5/2024 Queries

6/14/2024-6/28/2024 Queries

5/3/2024-6/7/2024 Queries

4/18/2024 Queries

4/11/2024 Queries

3/28/2024 Queries

3/21/2024 Queries

3/14/2024 Queries

2/29/2024 Queries

2/23/2024 Queries

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2/1/2024 Queries

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12/15/2023 Queries

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1/20/2023 Queries