In Costume
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
October 31, 2021
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
What are you going as for Halloween?
It’s a question many a little kid will answer excitedly when asked. After all a lot of thought goes into that decision. At least it did when I was a kid. I can remember one year agonizing over whether to dress as Darth Vader or Chewbacca…(I went with Darth Vader and my sister dressed as Chewbacca).
There’s something liberating about putting on a costume, dressing up, being someone or something else for a few hours at a party or while roaming the streets in pursuit of candy.
On the other hand, showing up in costume at party where no one else is dressed up can be anything but liberating. Fans of the goofy comedy “Legally Blonde” may remember a scene in which Elle, who is invited to a costume party by a girl who doesn’t like her, shows up in a rather risque costume only to find out it’s not actually a costume party. Understandably she draws a lot of unwanted attention. Not to worry though, the perky, personable, blonde Elle suffers little more than fleeting embarrassment over the whole cruel prank.
The same cannot be said for Ahmaud Arbery.
In February 2020 Arbery was pursued by three men in vehicles, stopped, confronted, and fatally shot. Now, Arbery wasn’t at a party. He was out jogging in a Georgia suburb. And he wasn’t in costume, exactly, though he might has well have been. You see, Arbery was black. The three men charged with his murder, white.
Video footage of the incident shows one of the vehicles driven by the men who pursued Arbery sporting a Confederate flag decal and later, after Arbery was shot, one of the men can be heard using a racial slur as Arbrey lay dying on the ground. Together with the fact that the local DA’s office recommended no arrests initially, citing a Civil War era citizen’s arrest law as justification, it is tempting to see this as a crime committed by a few overtly racist individuals.
After all, what else could it be?
“Privilege Is Never Having to Think About It.”, writes Andrea Gibson.
Oh but that word…privilege.
You have to be at least a little “crocus-minded” (Jo Carr and Imogene Sorley), I’ve found, to toss that word into a conversation, especially with people you care about. For it is often taken more as a pronouncement of judgement than an observation.
Indeed, a few months ago I found myself in a conversation with someone very close to me, a family member. The conversation started innocently enough with shared memories, some stretching back several decades which eventually transitioned into some version of counting one’s blessings. From there it wound its way into the woods of that familiar tale endlessly spun everywhere from popular culture to political stump speeches, a tale called, “the American dream.” We all know it: Anyone willing to work hard enough can make it in America.
Enter the crocus.
“Well”, I said, “That’s more true if you happen to be a white, straight male …and it doesn’t hurt if you’re Christian too.”
The first thing I got was a look, like someone had thrown a rotten egg in between us. You know, crinkled nose accompanied by a disapproving frown. Then came the words, “Oh, God. You don’t believe in that….”
There was a long pause.
“…that stuff, do you?”
“Stuff?” I wondered. “I’m only saying that being a straight white male helps.”, I replied. Now their tone changed from one of disbelief and disapproval of what I said to defensiveness, “I worked hard for what I have. No one gave me anything for nothing!”
Now, I don’t know about you, but I always find it harder to remain calm when a conversation with someone close to me starts to get heated. Nonetheless, as calmly as could, I assured him that I wasn’t saying he didn’t work hard. I know he did. And it’s true, this person did work hard. He’s as close to a self-made person as I know personally. So to hear that being white has its privileges as an accusation that one hasn’t or doesn’t work hard or that life has been easy is to miss the point.
At its most basic level, when we speak of privilege, we’re talking about a set of unearned benefits given to people who fit into a specific social group. But unearned doesn’t mean members of a privileged group don’t work hard or haven’t experienced any hardships, it simply means they enjoy certain benefits or advantages that come simply by being a member of a specific group whereas anyone outside that group has limited, conditional, or no access to those benefits or advantages.
During my sabbatical almost two years ago now, I traveled to New York City and visited the 9/11 memorial. Not far from the memorial was a historic site that was attracting a lot of visitors. I decided to check it out.
To gain entry into the site people had to pass through a metal detector. Ahead of me in line were two young black men. One of them set off the metal detector and was immediately pulled aside and told to take off his coat, empty all his pockets and so forth. He did so and was cleared to enter the site.
Then I set off the metal detector.
However, I was not pulled aside or told to empty my pockets. I was simply waved through. I thought about this for the rest of the day. How many times a day are those young black men treated with suspicion or subjected to different rules because they’re black? How many passes am I given because I’m white? It seems it would hard, if not impossible, for the two black men not to have to think about how they might be seen, treated, or what they might encounter where ever they may go. I, on the other hand, don’t think about any of that, as a rule. I generally go where I want and don’t expect any trouble.
“Privilege Is Never Having to Think About It.” (Andrea Gibson)
There are exceptions of course, but privilege concerns the rule not the exception. And this is why the killing of a black man jogging in a predominantly white suburb is not simply a case of a few bigoted individuals.
It is symptomatic of a society structured around an ideology constructed, bought into, and maintained over time. An ideology that has shaped our understanding of reality, of what and crucially, who, we value, and has given us norms that are both intentionally and incidentally discriminatory. An ideology of whiteness, so called because it arose in the Western world during the modern era, that is from the late Middle Ages onward and has continued to dominate Western thinking.
It’s central tenants will likely be familiar: They include beliefs and behaviors that reinforce reason as superior to any other form of cognition. That science offers the best and ultimate solutions to humanity’s problems and crises. That we live in a flawed or fallen world but that things will improve as time goes on. That human existence depends on our control or mastery of nature. And that universal solutions exist or can be found to fit just about any circumstance.
Closely linked to the ideas informing whiteness as an ideology is the pursuit of transcendence via the mind from the limitations of the body as our highest aspiration. It isn’t a far leap from there to the division of the world into those who primarily inhabit the mind and those who primarily inhabit the body and to pronounce the former enlightened and the latter a savage the enlightened have a moral duty and right to tame or save.
And so it is peoples utilizing diverse means of knowing and learning, people who see the world as something that just is rather than something broken, who seek harmony with, rather than domination of, nature, and who pursue local versus universal solutions to problems, people grounded more or as much in the body as in the mind who have been deemed primitive, less advanced, more suited to physical than mental tasks. And who are these people, historically speaking? Non-whites.
It is important to remember none of this means that being white is bad.
That is not the message here.
What is bad and what talk of dismantling things like white supremacy and ideology is directed toward is the way it limits not just our range of experience as human beings, but, as Audre Lourde notes, our ability to recognize, accept, and celebrate human differences. Indeed to dismantle does not mean to throw it out, but to welcome back in what has been excluded. Equal treatment and opportunity.
Indeed, if “privilege is never having to think about it.”, the aim of any effort addressing privilege is not to take it away but to extend it to all. For in the larger scheme of things the privilege we’re describing is what everyone should experience.
But this can’t happen until privileged people, and when we’re speaking of race, that means white people, start thinking about it. And that’s what I hope is happening here this morning.
Being here today and keeping your ear, mind and heart open as I’ve been speaking is a real start. Even if you think or feel things like systemic racism or white privilege aren’t real or are exaggerated, at least give some thought to what you’ve heard today. Ask yourself, if you were pulled over by police do you worry you might be mistreated or killed? Could you go out jogging without fear of neighbors calling the police or people chasing you down and confronting you? Would your first or last name increase the chance a potential employer calls you for an interview or tosses your resume? Can you shop in a store without being watched or followed by a store employee?
In addition to thinking about privilege, you might do some reading. Some of you have, I know. The BUUC book club read So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo last year. Other titles and resources can be found at the UUA Bookstore, InSpirit online.
Of course, you won’t necessarily like or agree with everything you read.
All the more reason to also listen. Listen to people who experience oppression, the very opposite of privilege. Listen, don’t dismiss what they say because you don’t see it. You might not see it because you don’t have to not because it doesn’t exists. Listen, don’t counter with a story of someone who is the exception. There are always exceptions. Remember privilege concerns the rule not the exception. And listen, even when you think you get it but still struggle to relate. Authentic listening is a form of love.
And as you think, read, and listen you just may find yourself increasingly aware that in this world, “wrongs don’t work themselves out. Injustices and inequities and hurts don’t just dissolve.” (Jo Carr and Imogene Sorley) in seas of silence. Indeed, you may just find yourself becoming crocus-minded, “knifing through hard-frozen ground and snow, sticking your neck out” (Jo Carr and Imogene Sorley) mustering the courage to talk with other privileged people about their privilege, working in solidarity with oppressed people, and refusing to wear your compassion as a costume.
May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be
Brookfield Unitarian Universalist Church
October 31, 2021
Rev. Craig M. Nowak
What are you going as for Halloween?
It’s a question many a little kid will answer excitedly when asked. After all a lot of thought goes into that decision. At least it did when I was a kid. I can remember one year agonizing over whether to dress as Darth Vader or Chewbacca…(I went with Darth Vader and my sister dressed as Chewbacca).
There’s something liberating about putting on a costume, dressing up, being someone or something else for a few hours at a party or while roaming the streets in pursuit of candy.
On the other hand, showing up in costume at party where no one else is dressed up can be anything but liberating. Fans of the goofy comedy “Legally Blonde” may remember a scene in which Elle, who is invited to a costume party by a girl who doesn’t like her, shows up in a rather risque costume only to find out it’s not actually a costume party. Understandably she draws a lot of unwanted attention. Not to worry though, the perky, personable, blonde Elle suffers little more than fleeting embarrassment over the whole cruel prank.
The same cannot be said for Ahmaud Arbery.
In February 2020 Arbery was pursued by three men in vehicles, stopped, confronted, and fatally shot. Now, Arbery wasn’t at a party. He was out jogging in a Georgia suburb. And he wasn’t in costume, exactly, though he might has well have been. You see, Arbery was black. The three men charged with his murder, white.
Video footage of the incident shows one of the vehicles driven by the men who pursued Arbery sporting a Confederate flag decal and later, after Arbery was shot, one of the men can be heard using a racial slur as Arbrey lay dying on the ground. Together with the fact that the local DA’s office recommended no arrests initially, citing a Civil War era citizen’s arrest law as justification, it is tempting to see this as a crime committed by a few overtly racist individuals.
After all, what else could it be?
“Privilege Is Never Having to Think About It.”, writes Andrea Gibson.
Oh but that word…privilege.
You have to be at least a little “crocus-minded” (Jo Carr and Imogene Sorley), I’ve found, to toss that word into a conversation, especially with people you care about. For it is often taken more as a pronouncement of judgement than an observation.
Indeed, a few months ago I found myself in a conversation with someone very close to me, a family member. The conversation started innocently enough with shared memories, some stretching back several decades which eventually transitioned into some version of counting one’s blessings. From there it wound its way into the woods of that familiar tale endlessly spun everywhere from popular culture to political stump speeches, a tale called, “the American dream.” We all know it: Anyone willing to work hard enough can make it in America.
Enter the crocus.
“Well”, I said, “That’s more true if you happen to be a white, straight male …and it doesn’t hurt if you’re Christian too.”
The first thing I got was a look, like someone had thrown a rotten egg in between us. You know, crinkled nose accompanied by a disapproving frown. Then came the words, “Oh, God. You don’t believe in that….”
There was a long pause.
“…that stuff, do you?”
“Stuff?” I wondered. “I’m only saying that being a straight white male helps.”, I replied. Now their tone changed from one of disbelief and disapproval of what I said to defensiveness, “I worked hard for what I have. No one gave me anything for nothing!”
Now, I don’t know about you, but I always find it harder to remain calm when a conversation with someone close to me starts to get heated. Nonetheless, as calmly as could, I assured him that I wasn’t saying he didn’t work hard. I know he did. And it’s true, this person did work hard. He’s as close to a self-made person as I know personally. So to hear that being white has its privileges as an accusation that one hasn’t or doesn’t work hard or that life has been easy is to miss the point.
At its most basic level, when we speak of privilege, we’re talking about a set of unearned benefits given to people who fit into a specific social group. But unearned doesn’t mean members of a privileged group don’t work hard or haven’t experienced any hardships, it simply means they enjoy certain benefits or advantages that come simply by being a member of a specific group whereas anyone outside that group has limited, conditional, or no access to those benefits or advantages.
During my sabbatical almost two years ago now, I traveled to New York City and visited the 9/11 memorial. Not far from the memorial was a historic site that was attracting a lot of visitors. I decided to check it out.
To gain entry into the site people had to pass through a metal detector. Ahead of me in line were two young black men. One of them set off the metal detector and was immediately pulled aside and told to take off his coat, empty all his pockets and so forth. He did so and was cleared to enter the site.
Then I set off the metal detector.
However, I was not pulled aside or told to empty my pockets. I was simply waved through. I thought about this for the rest of the day. How many times a day are those young black men treated with suspicion or subjected to different rules because they’re black? How many passes am I given because I’m white? It seems it would hard, if not impossible, for the two black men not to have to think about how they might be seen, treated, or what they might encounter where ever they may go. I, on the other hand, don’t think about any of that, as a rule. I generally go where I want and don’t expect any trouble.
“Privilege Is Never Having to Think About It.” (Andrea Gibson)
There are exceptions of course, but privilege concerns the rule not the exception. And this is why the killing of a black man jogging in a predominantly white suburb is not simply a case of a few bigoted individuals.
It is symptomatic of a society structured around an ideology constructed, bought into, and maintained over time. An ideology that has shaped our understanding of reality, of what and crucially, who, we value, and has given us norms that are both intentionally and incidentally discriminatory. An ideology of whiteness, so called because it arose in the Western world during the modern era, that is from the late Middle Ages onward and has continued to dominate Western thinking.
It’s central tenants will likely be familiar: They include beliefs and behaviors that reinforce reason as superior to any other form of cognition. That science offers the best and ultimate solutions to humanity’s problems and crises. That we live in a flawed or fallen world but that things will improve as time goes on. That human existence depends on our control or mastery of nature. And that universal solutions exist or can be found to fit just about any circumstance.
Closely linked to the ideas informing whiteness as an ideology is the pursuit of transcendence via the mind from the limitations of the body as our highest aspiration. It isn’t a far leap from there to the division of the world into those who primarily inhabit the mind and those who primarily inhabit the body and to pronounce the former enlightened and the latter a savage the enlightened have a moral duty and right to tame or save.
And so it is peoples utilizing diverse means of knowing and learning, people who see the world as something that just is rather than something broken, who seek harmony with, rather than domination of, nature, and who pursue local versus universal solutions to problems, people grounded more or as much in the body as in the mind who have been deemed primitive, less advanced, more suited to physical than mental tasks. And who are these people, historically speaking? Non-whites.
It is important to remember none of this means that being white is bad.
That is not the message here.
What is bad and what talk of dismantling things like white supremacy and ideology is directed toward is the way it limits not just our range of experience as human beings, but, as Audre Lourde notes, our ability to recognize, accept, and celebrate human differences. Indeed to dismantle does not mean to throw it out, but to welcome back in what has been excluded. Equal treatment and opportunity.
Indeed, if “privilege is never having to think about it.”, the aim of any effort addressing privilege is not to take it away but to extend it to all. For in the larger scheme of things the privilege we’re describing is what everyone should experience.
But this can’t happen until privileged people, and when we’re speaking of race, that means white people, start thinking about it. And that’s what I hope is happening here this morning.
Being here today and keeping your ear, mind and heart open as I’ve been speaking is a real start. Even if you think or feel things like systemic racism or white privilege aren’t real or are exaggerated, at least give some thought to what you’ve heard today. Ask yourself, if you were pulled over by police do you worry you might be mistreated or killed? Could you go out jogging without fear of neighbors calling the police or people chasing you down and confronting you? Would your first or last name increase the chance a potential employer calls you for an interview or tosses your resume? Can you shop in a store without being watched or followed by a store employee?
In addition to thinking about privilege, you might do some reading. Some of you have, I know. The BUUC book club read So You Want to Talk about Race by Ijeoma Oluo last year. Other titles and resources can be found at the UUA Bookstore, InSpirit online.
Of course, you won’t necessarily like or agree with everything you read.
All the more reason to also listen. Listen to people who experience oppression, the very opposite of privilege. Listen, don’t dismiss what they say because you don’t see it. You might not see it because you don’t have to not because it doesn’t exists. Listen, don’t counter with a story of someone who is the exception. There are always exceptions. Remember privilege concerns the rule not the exception. And listen, even when you think you get it but still struggle to relate. Authentic listening is a form of love.
And as you think, read, and listen you just may find yourself increasingly aware that in this world, “wrongs don’t work themselves out. Injustices and inequities and hurts don’t just dissolve.” (Jo Carr and Imogene Sorley) in seas of silence. Indeed, you may just find yourself becoming crocus-minded, “knifing through hard-frozen ground and snow, sticking your neck out” (Jo Carr and Imogene Sorley) mustering the courage to talk with other privileged people about their privilege, working in solidarity with oppressed people, and refusing to wear your compassion as a costume.
May it be so.
Amen and Blessed Be