My Anti-Oppression/Anti-Racism Analysis (MFC Paper)

I identify, live as, and believe I am seen as an able bodied, American, mixed race adopted Person of Color (Chinese-Czech ethnic descent), male, heterosexual, middle class, young adult and highly educated person. I am partnered with an immigrant Filipina with two mixed-race young children. I have committed passionately to intergenerational, multiracial community building, and aspire to minister in this way. My Anti-Oppression, Anti-Racism and Multicultural analysis originates from my personal experience particularly as a Person of Color in the dominant White Eurocentric UUA, and from years of education, relationship building and study.

When I was a child, I lived in a nearly all-White environment. Race gathered energy in my life as I lived with powerful internalizations of inferiority. I knew by first grade that I was adopted and by fourth grade that my racial identity opened me up to teasing. I experienced self-loathing, stress and anger from racial encounters with White students and even friends which were also confusing. I was highly racialized, and as I began to seek out meaning, particularly in my UU church, I was met with denial and silence.

My early life also intersects with homophobia and sexism. There was a running dialogue among the young men on the sports teams I was a part of, denigrating gays and women. Sometimes I would join in their ridicule. This exposure and behavior led me to stereotype and degrade persons, promoting my superiority. Even as I intellectually began to understand and reject oppression, in part through realizing my own racial marginalization, it took relationships, study, and training to counter the accumulation and move from participatory apathy to moral action. The UU church was instrumental in my reflection and action.

By college I was deep into anti-oppression theory and practice, and maintained a connection to the Eugene UU Church as a Welcoming Congregation participant. This was a very significant training for me, one that demystified Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender matters, and taught me the value and power of collective church reflection and action. Yet the church provided no place for my resistance to White supremacy and immersion into People of Color, particularly Asian descent community. My inquiry about racial diversity received responses such as “we tried that,” “they’re not interested,”and “love sees no color”. I was a believer in the intersections of oppression, and the linkages of identity politics, and was living this as Co-Director of the newly formed University of Oregon Multicultural Center. But I perceived a level of collusion with racial supremacy in UU difficult to endure. I sought spiritual enlightenment and mentorship during this time in my life, and for me this included questions of racial identity.

While Co-Director I was targeted as a Person of Color. On April 1^st, I was among several dozen Students of Color to receive a letter from the Administration declaring my financial aid would be eliminated due to revised affirmative action policies. It was a prank, which happened in the same semester as swastikas being burnt on our doors and White students urinating off rooftops onto Women of Color. Our Center organized a press conference, the police were involved, and attempts to inform the community and investigate the incidents soon developed. The Administration apologized, and nominally engaged our efforts. Campus security seized several of my planning notebooks from the Center, speculating that I may have sent the letter. Nothing came of the inquiry, and I never got my notebooks back, even after submitting written requests.

In this snapshot experience, I felt the privilege of my positional power, and sanctuary in the collective of Students of Color. With my peers, I was able to express my deepest fears and anger in a pastoral setting, and organize, with allies, to surface these issues in a constructive manner. I was deeply concerned about my peers who may not have realized the hoax and could have potentially quit school. 

I realized the incredible disparity racism perpetuates, particularly economically, and how it is an ideology that is one of the most resilient in the face of justice movements. One of racism’s strengths is the physical segregation and the advocacy of racial superiority still widely present in the public and private spheres of White American and Canadian individual and institutional life. Anti-racism and anti-oppression have a special place in my heart and ministry due to these experiences.

My life today is grounded in a multiracial, multicultural community. Outside my immediate family, it is my close peers and mentors who represent the diversity I seek to create. I have made choices about where I live, what I buy, and who I associate with in order to promote AO/AR/MC principles. I have experience with caucusing, which I believe is critical in sustaining transformative change. I stay in relationship with the people, communities and ideas that labor for justice. I have chosen Unitarian Universalism as my faith community first because of theological affirmation. I remain passionate about our faith because I believe we have a saving message, a healing spiritual home, and that our free pulpit is inclusive of the affairs of People of Color.

My analysis is inherently dynamic, and I am suspicious of any analysis that is declared static. Context is fundamental in oppression. In principle I am committed to the various analyses of oppression developed by the communities of persons who experience, reflect and resist oppression. In the UUA this comes from the Women’s Federation, Interweave, DRUUMM and UUA Accessibilities Committee for example. I strive to know history, and know elders to share in their wisdom from experience. I am skeptical of individual analyses as central for social action, and believe in analysis frameworks that are inclusive of institutional change and power dynamics.

Rigoberta Menchu’s autobiography touched me deeply and moved me to begin my journey towards wholeness with her story of familial suffering and resistance. The historical writings of Ronald Takaki and Howard Zinn revealed holistic stories of communities and movements for justice. Malcolm X’s biography as told to Alex Haley opened up the profound internalization and psychological effects of oppression. Training through Crossroads Ministry, Asian American Resource Workshop and the UUA have helped develop my analysis into action. Mentors have sustained and deepened my action: Leon Spencer, who introduced me to racial identity development, Josh Pawelek, who modeled institutional accountability, Danielle DiBona, who shared a pastoral vision, James Fraser who framed the spirituality of hope, and Marjorie Bowens-Wheatley, who encouraged my intergenerational activism. 

 I believe justice-making work requires us to attend to issues of understanding suffering, developing solidarity, and acting collectively.  I believe that AR/AO/MC work starts from our experience and profound empathy of the suffering of the other. I believe religious community needs to be conscious and vigorous of AO/AR/MC, particularly around issues present in the local setting. Oppression has roots in evil, and manifests as evil, yet dwells well masked in our North American way of life. Evil separates us from wholeness, and seeks to privilege a fraction of the universe. Evil is sustained from the parts of humanity that live void of consciousness and tolerate bigotry. I believe we are a faith that responds to this evil and the suffering it creates in the world.

I live a ministry that engages those on the margins, and strives to live the beloved community. One final example is my work with Youth and Young Adults of Color in the UUA. I have been focusing on developing leadership for young People of Color in my volunteer and UUA capacity. This is a primary response to our historic racial segregation, our outreach goals, and the expressed wishes of People of Color in UUA. I advocate for People of Color leadership in the UUA, coming from and in relationship with People of Color communities, and that we support ministry for these groups. I resist the tokenization of marginalized persons into leadership. In this context, I have been organizing annual spiritual retreats for young people, multiracial families, and the intergenerational community. One of the primary elements of these programs is encouraging parallel programming for White anti-racist allies, and facilitating open dialogue in the whole church setting. These have been difficult, incredible, and frustrating, but I believe critical to our stretching into justice-centered and holistic cultural change.

I believe AR/AO/MC is manifested in authentic relationship. In our authenticity, we are accountable and caring. In our accountability, we are reconciled and restored. In our caring, we nurture our greatest gift, the power of love. I believe true community to be intergenerational, multiracial, multicultural community, and it is these spaces and places I seek to be and minister.

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