How AR/AO work in YRUU can be more effective and inclusive

An Essay by CSAC Christine Michell, Summer 2007


Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression (AR/AO) is the most visible and addressed social justice issue at the Continental level of YRUU, as well as the one to which the most time, energy, resources, and funding is allocated. This tremendous emphasis on AR/AO within the youth movement at this level has had some positive effects and some negative ones: it has led to some remarkable strides toward greater inclusivity and accountability in YRUU and the larger UU movement, but it has also alienated many youth, created divides within the youth community, and has failed to be adopted by many youth at the district, regional and local levels. In this essay I will endeavour to point out why I feel that AR/AO work is extremely important in YRUU and should be continued, and also what I feel some of the weaknesses are that have lead to the above difficulties, and how I feel they can begin to be addressed.
I recognize that my own identity and experience have brought me to my current views and conclusions, and I can only really speak from my own experience and so I will give a short explanation of where I am coming from. I am a white female heterosexual Canadian who grew up UU. I am currently 19 years old, attending University, and I hold the position of Continental Social Action Coordinator (C*SAC). For several years I was involved with my Regional YAC, the RRYSC, and with the Canadian national Youth Advisory Group. While I have been interested and engaged in social action work since I was very young (most notably as one of the creators of the Pride Rainbow Project which worked for Equal Marriage in Canada), I only attended my first AR/AO training at YSJT 2006. Since then I have experienced AR/AO trainings and workshops at the Basic Advisor Training of Trainers, at Youth Council 2007, and at YSJT 2007. I have joined the fledgling white allies association Allies for Racial Equity, and was recently accepted to train to become a Groundwork Trainer. I do not feel I have a long history with AR/AO within YRUU, but I have experienced a fairly varied collection of AR/AO trainings and workshops, which I feel vary dramatically in quality and applicability/inclusivity.
I feel that the fight to end racism and other forms of oppression in the world is extremely important, and it is essential if we are ever to live peacefully together on this tiny planet of ours. Almost every problem humanity has faced has its roots in racism or sexism or religious intolerance or xenophobia…in some fear or hate for people unlike oneself. Human beings have treated each other very, very badly, and not only the symptoms (war, genocide, violence, etc), but the root causes need to be addressed, if we are to have any chance of surviving as a species, and any hope of becoming a peaceful human family.
I am also very aware that racism and other forms of oppression are quite prevalent in UU communities, though it is often hidden under the surface. Our communities are products of the society we live in, and our Western culture that is built on patriarchal, white supremacist, euro-centric, heteronormative (the list goes on) structures. UU communities have made some significant strides when compared to mainstream North American society, as our abundance of female ministers, our overwhelming support of equal marriage, and even the existence of anti-racism committees, groups, trainings, and resolutions, can attest. However cultural misappropriation is rampant in our churches, as well as within the youth movement; and systemic and cultural racism and oppression manifests itself in many different ways in our communities, which are too numerous and pervasive to list.
Therefore I feel AR/AO work is clearly needed, both by society at large, and within our religious community as a whole, and the youth movement more specifically. No matter what else I say in the rest of the essay, I want it to be very clear that I believe AR/AO is very, very important, and this essay is meant as constructive criticism, NOT an attack on or a call to end AR/AO trainings and work.
The concerns I have the AR/AO as done in YRUU currently, are not universal. They are trends I have witnessed on more than one occasion, but I have also experienced workshops put on by very skilled, talented trainers, who overcome all of the concerns I will mention. However these trends are quite widespread (I know this from personal experience, as well as from speaking with other youth and adults who have similar personal experiences with AR/AO), and can have quite negative consequences, and so I feel is it necessary to bring the continental YRUU movement’s attention to them.
I have three major concerns with the way YRUU currently does AR/AO work: too often it is alienating to newcomers to AR/AO work, not inclusive of Canadians, and generally keeps blinders on with respect to the way AR/AO issues play out in other parts of the world, and in global conflicts.
My first concern is that the way we do AR/AO work is often threatening and alienating to youth who are experiencing it for the first time, and we need to find ways to support inexperienced youth so they will stay and continue to be involved. When I had my first experience with AR/AO, I knew it would be a new experience, and I tried to keep my mind open, and was doing my best to understand these totally new models. However when I got confused and had questions about the models and definitions, I was shut down and made to feel not only stupid, but that I was obviously not really committed to AR/AO because I didn’t simply accept the models in silence without questions. I have seen this happen several times, where youth who are more experienced in the models and theory - sometimes those leading workshops and identity groups, and sometimes other participants – treat youth who are seeing all of this for the first time with disgust when they have any confusion or make any mistakes. This tendency was recently described to me as internalized anti-racist superiority, and I think that is exactly what it is.
The concepts dealt with in AR/AO workshops and ID groups are quite complex and often go against society’s accepted analysis, which requires a certain amount of re-programming of one’s own assumptions and analysis. This is not something that happens effortlessly, or immediately. Youth need to be encouraged and supported in this difficult process, not attacked or treated with disgust and disdain.
Some of the concepts may even be too complex for youth (especially younger youth) to grasp as they are, and so may need to be simplified, and explained in several different ways, in order to help youth to understand.
While some youth will be able to move past these first negative experiences, and continue to be involved with AR/AO work, many youth will decide to avoid AR/AO workshops and trainings in future as a result of feeling so attacked. They may also tell their friends to avoid those workshops and conferences because people are so mean and they make you feel stupid and evil. Obviously if we are to make any real progress in fighting racism and other forms of oppression, we can’t have large numbers of new youth - especially young youth who could be the new generation of leaders in this work – deciding to stop educating themselves, and telling others to stay away because of their own bad experiences. This is clearly counterproductive.
Therefore workshop leaders and trainers, and identity group leaders in particular, need to discuss internalized anti-racist superiority amongst themselves, and strategize how to prevent it, before every conference. ID group leaders should be given skills and strategies to effectively support new youth, and to prevent other more experienced youth from jumping on those struggling new youth. Anti-racist superiority also needs to be discussed with participants to help encourage more experienced participants to be gentle with and supportive of less experienced youth.
In addition, having new youth and quite experienced youth in mixed ID groups might not be the best strategy: more experienced youth often feel anxious to move past the stuff that now seems so simple, in order to work on more complex and advanced issues and topics; and so get impatient with newer youth, giving these youth the impression that they are stupid or bad people because they haven’t “gotten it” yet, and often moving the conversation along before the newer youth have finished processing.
Perhaps if ID groups are intentionally made up so that the least experienced youth are with the ID group leader(s) who are the most skilled at supporting new youth through their processing, and the more experienced youth are put together with a leader suited to encouraging them to move on to more complex, deeper analysis, then some of this could be prevented. Of course there are also benefits to having groups with participants of differing experience levels, but it might not be the best model for all the time.
The second concern I bring up is the unwillingness among those leading workshops and trainings, to ensure that content and language are inclusive of and relevant to Canadian youth participants. With very little effort, the same workshop that Canadian youth would feel alienated and confused by, can become relevant and impactful for Canadian youth.It is important for us as a movement to remember that YRUU is a Continental organization, and so Canada needs to be included. Canadians have just as much of a right to hear information that directly applies to them as American youth do. I’m not trying to say that Canadians are disadvantaged to the same extent that other oppressed people are, because that is simply untrue. However Canadians do often get ignored or forgotten in this organization, and that should not be acceptable in a movement that seeks to include and welcome everyone.
As someone who grew up in Canada, I was taught in school about the horrors of slavery and the Holocaust, and how courageous Canadians helped slaves escaping through the underground railroad from the southern United States, and how Canadian troops fought bravely against the Nazis in World War II to end the Holocaust. I learned about how Canada is officially multicultural – a cultural mosaic to the US’s assimilationist melting pot. With this kind of education, many Canadians come to believe that racism doesn’t exist in Canada, or that if it does, it’s still much better here in Canada than in the States.
However, I was also taught - to a lesser extent than the above lessons, and I know many other students in Canada were not taught this in school – about the inhuman treatment of aboriginal children in the Residential School system, and the approximately 1500 labourers brought from China to finish the Canadian Pacific Railway who were given the lowest wages and the most dangerous jobs. I heard my East Indian and Chinese friends called horrible names in elementary school, have seen disproportionate numbers of First Nations individuals homeless and on the streets, and I learned that my boyfriend, whose parents emigrated to Canada from India before he was born, was beaten by skinheads as a teenager. So I am very much aware that racism exists in Canada, both historically and today.
I would say that most Canadian UU youth are aware to some extent of the racism in Canada, but they are also brainwashed by notions of Canada as multicultural, and by the society-wide Canadian knee-jerk reaction of “we’re not like Americans.” Therefore, I feel that it is precisely because of this illusion that racism doesn’t exist in Canada, or at least that it “isn’t as bad;” that anti-racism work is desperately needed in Canada, and for our Canadian youth.
That being said, transplanting Canadian youth into American-centered AR trainings, or giving American AR trainings in Canada, can often be difficult, even counter-productive for the youth concerned. Canadians are used to defining ourselves as not-American (just as we UU’s are used to defining ourselves as not-Christian), and so it takes a lot of mental work to read American statistics, or listen to examples that only deal with black-white relations, and find the kernel of meaning that goes beyond numbers and specific examples, and can be applied to any city, and country, any race relation, any oppression.
I’m not saying it can’t be done, that Canadian youth can’t do that mental translation and get a lot out of even extremely American-centered workshops – obviously it can be done. I know of many examples of Canadian youth who have been and are currently very involved in AR/AO, who have attended workshops and trainings that weren’t necessarily inclusive of their experiences, and learned a lot, and put it to use in their lives. However, for every one Canadian who is able to translate and make the necessary connections, many others put up the old “I’m not American” wall and stop listening; or even worse, come away with the message that racism-is-alive-and-well-in-the-US-and-isn’t-it-nice-to-live-in-Canada - because they were listening, and when they didn’t hear any statistics or examples from Canada, or that included Canada, they had no evidence that racism does exist in Canada. This is what I mean when I say that AR work that is not inclusive can in fact be counter-productive. I find this extremely saddening, and frightening. I worry about Canadian youth who are exposed to AR training from the States, because I don’t want this to happen to any more youth, as it takes us two steps backwards!
Making our AR/AO trainings more relevant to and inclusive of Canadian youth and their experience will not only benefit Canadians and the fight against racism and oppression, as more people get educated and stay involved; but hearing Canadian statistics and examples and more broadly applicable concepts will also help Americans and Canadians to understand how universal patterns of oppression really are, and to understand their shared history as North Americans. Although it is obviously most important to make the following changes for trainings where Canadians will be participating, it is probably easier for trainers to make such inclusion a habit, rather than having to specially prepare when Canadians will be present, and falling back into habits from when no Canadians are present.
The difference between a workshop that does speak to Canadians, and one that does not is often fairly small in terms of what the leader does, but it makes a huge difference. Comments like “in our nation” should be reserved for statements that only affect the one country, and should be replaced with “in western society” or “in North America” or even “in our nations.” It’s amazing how much of a difference this can make. I’ve sat through workshops where topics that should have been broadly applicable were portrayed as only applying to the US, even though there was a very high percentage of Canadians in the room, and it continued to happen after myself and others spoke with the trainers about this issue. This was a very frustrating experience, and even with a relatively high amount of experience with AR/AO that I had by that time, I had to fight with myself to keep myself from putting up that wall again.
In most parts of Canada the racial minorities are of a variety of races, and people of African decent are fairly uncommon. Therefore using examples of racism that either do not name the race or ethnic background of the people of colour involved, or making sure that the examples used include a variety of races, instead of just people of African descent can also help Canadians to relate to the situations.
Not every example or statistic needs to be inclusive of Canada, but some certainly do. Or, if the trainer/workshop leader focuses on broad over-arching systems that exist everywhere (government, media, education systems, etc), instead of specifics, the training instantly becomes inclusive of all those participating.
I’d like to note that I am aware that Groundwork is currently moving toward providing trainings that include Canadian examples and history and well as American ones, and I know that a Groundwork training that was run recently in BC region was extremely successful in making the material relevant to the all-Canadian participants. This is a great step forward, and I hope workshop leaders who are not part of Groundwork will follow Groundwork’s lead and work toward giving workshops that are inclusive and broadly applicable.
My recent experience with trainings and models/strategies used by The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (a non-UU organization that has been doing AR/AO work for a long time in many contexts) were extremely positive, and hopefully AR/AO leaders within YRUU can learn from them as well.
A third concern I have with YRUU AR/AO trainings is that they rarely look outside the boarders of the US (and sometimes Canada), to analyze how both systemic and cultural oppression play a role in our increasingly globalized interactions. For instance how the AIDS epidemic is impacted by racism and other oppressions, how the increased Islamophobia and the threat of terrorism has been used to justify racial profiling and war, how vulnerable women are to the effects of poverty, violence, and war, how important fair trade is to giving people a chance at a life of dignity. Global issues are tied very closely in with the issues we deal with in AR/AO, if we are willing to look beyond our own borders. We only have one planet, and our interactions and behaviours here in North America, affect those in other parts of the world. We need to talk about those connections so that we can be good global citizens, and fight these systems of oppression wherever they arise.
I recognize that we can usually have more impact close to home, and it is obviously important that we address the issues within our own communities – but we can do both. We can find a balance where most of our energy is focused on addressing our own issues, but we also examine how these issues play out in other parts of the world, and how we can change or impact them.
I feel that YRUU’s focus on Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression is important and vital. I hope that by raising my specific concerns about the way we do AR/AO, we can continue to do this important work, but in a way that is more inclusive, responsible, and effective. I hope this perspective will help to inform any changes being made as a result of the Consultation on Ministry To and With Youth.