Racial Justice

February 2023

Racial Justice Queries

Will the decisions we make, and the process by which we make them carry forward our work for racial justice?

Do we welcome and pursue the understanding of divergent perspectives?

Do we engage with others with the intention of their feeling heard, considered, respected, and responded to as we work towards finding a positive outcome for all?

Are we prepared to lay down any actions that stand in the way?

July 2020

Statement on Justice and Equality

Charlottesville Friends Meeting

We at Charlottesville Friends Meeting reaffirm the principle upon which the Religious Society of Friends was founded, that God lives in every person. Thus, we believe that all deserve equal respect and protection. We share the outrage and horror at the inhumane murder of George Floyd, and countless other people of color, at the hands of a racist system that disproportionately targets them for police brutality, imprisonment, and death.  We deplore violence and the culture of confrontation on the part of police and recognize that this violence is a symptom of embedded prejudice and white supremacy in our society, which manifests itself in all aspects of daily life.

Charlottesville Quakers come from varied backgrounds, but many of us identify as white. We acknowledge that white privilege too often makes us blind to the hurt that we cause people, even members of our own faith community whom we care about deeply.  We know we have a long way to go in our work to understand the damage done by racism, and we recognize the need to both listen deeply and take decisive action in this crucial work toward change, in ourselves as well as in the societal structures in our nation.

We unite with the Declaration by Baltimore Yearly Meeting as an Anti-Racist Faith Community.   We hope that this can be a step forward as we strive to become an actively anti-racist faith community.

DECLARATION BY BALTIMORE YEARLY MEETING AS AN ANTI-RACIST FAITH COMMUNITY

In struggling with how to ensure that our Yearly Meeting is an anti-racist faith community, we have come to some convictions.

We Aspire To Recognize And Affirm Diversity As A Means To Truth
We Friends are of many skin colors, ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, gender identities, sexual orientations, abilities, stages of life, and socially constructed racial identities. We are all seeking the Spirit’s presence in our lives, and in our life together. We recognize that some of us have experienced oppression and marginalization in ways that others have not. We aspire to live as members of the blessed community, which is one of liberation, equity, and great diversity across all differences.1

We Approach Racism as a Virus to Be Healed
Simply “addressing” racism is too weak. Believing that we can simply end racism is too optimistic. Our response to racism must be to challenge it, to confront it, to correct it, and to heal this societal infection.2

We Are Committed to Becoming More Inclusive and Welcoming to All
We are committed to discerning how our Meetings at all levels can be more inclusive and welcoming to all, can encourage participation and leadership among all Friends, and can build an anti-racist, multicultural community.3

We Strive To Do More To Build And Maintain Trust
We will focus upon being more authentic (sharing the real me), logical (being rigorous in my thinking), and empathic (my being in it for others).4

We Seek to Ensure That We Do Not Benefit Some at the Expense of Others
We are encouraged by a practice that was adopted by the Board of Trustees at Pendle Hill Conference and Retreat Center several years ago to vet each decision using the following queries:

  1. How might this decision affect people from other cultures or those within the same culture who have different experiences, perceptions, belief systems, and perspectives from our own? 
  2. To what degree have privilege, class, stereotypes, assumptions, and our ability to include other perspectives affected this decision? Will this decision promote inclusiveness, allow equal access, and welcome those we perceive as different from ourselves? 
  3. How might this decision advance Pendle Hill’s goals of promoting diversity, fostering justice, and creating the Beloved Community for all people?

A Major Step Toward Becoming More Anti-Racist is To Test Decisions We Make  
Using queries to examine how our decisions may promote inclusiveness, allow equal access, and welcome those we perceive as different from ourselves could, we believe, guide us in our deliberations. It will also make us more accountable for our actions and less likely to be satisfied with a statement that sounds laudatory but proves empty or even harmful.  In that regard, we seek to always be able to answer the following queries:

  1. How could this decision affect those who have been harmed by racist behavior?
  2. To what degree have privilege, class, stereotypes, assumptions, and our ability to include other perspectives affected this decision? Will this decision promote equity, diversity, and inclusiveness? Will it enable us to be more friendly and whole?
  3. How will we provide opportunities for those most likely to be directly affected by our decision to influence that decision?
  4. How does this decision support the declaration of our Yearly Meeting that we are an anti-racist faith community?

In Love and Peace, We Can Live as Friends 
We will reach out to and welcome others we do not yet know, but who are God’s children, as we are. This must be done with warmth, compassion, love, and truth so it is rightly ordered (has integrity) and reciprocated in love and peace. 

Further, we will include friends-to-be in our activities and welcome their questions and differences in understanding and action so as to develop friendships and become a whole community, richer due both to our more diverse composition, perspectives, and strengths and to the truth and love we have grown and used in the process.

1 Baltimore Yearly Meeting Statement of Vision (2016, adopted as revised)
2 Baltimore Yearly Meeting Epistle (2017 Annual Session)
3 Baltimore Yearly Meeting Epistle (2018 Annual Session)
4 Pettus, C. (2018). A Descriptive Analysis of the Views of People of Color Regarding Building a Bigger and Better Worship Community (A report submitted to the Growing Diverse Leadership Committee of the Baltimore Yearly Meeting)

From Hopewell Friends Meeting:

A Minute Against White Privilege: Action Steps to Build a Beloved Community

The work is ours. The time is now.

We abhor the death of so many people of color. We abhor the constant diminishment of the humanity of people of color.  As members of the Religious Society of Friends “(Quakers)” we stand with all sufferers of injustice and peaceful protesters here and around the world. We believe we are in a revolutionary moment where change is possible and justice may be realized.  We must recognize that our history and our culture have betrayed us, and we must take steps to build a Beloved Community.

Our faith demands that we support police and legal system reform for equal protection under the law and accountability for those who betray public trust.  We must recognize our role in the continuance of injustice and inequality and act upon it.  The judgment of history and the fate of our society are upon us.

For this change to happen, white privilege must be exposed and eliminated, and it is only our (white people’s) difficult inner work that will make this happen. We call for all white people to learn about the pernicious force of racism through a deliberate focus on self-education. This self-study can be accomplished by reading books (especially those written by Black, Indigenous, People of Color authors), watching films, listening to podcasts (for example, Seeing White from Scene On Radio), participating in civil community discussions, and undertaking a candid appraisal of U.S. history.

Through this work, we believe that white cultural values, norms, and expectations generated by white privilege will be named and dismantled. In this dismantling the police and legal systems will be transformed, and trust and collaboration will be given the climate to flourish. This will seed the ground for the growth of Beloved Community.

Join us now in taking these actions. Take this responsibility to heal with each other. Stand for ending oppression in all forms, and stand with us in co-creating a Beloved Community for all.

Sincerely,

Julia Storberg-Walker

Dick Bell

Hopewell/Centre Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (“Quakers”)

July 12, 2020

__________________________________________________________________________________________

5/31/2020

Statement on the murders of murders of
Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd and Breonna Taylor

What do we tell our children?
What do we tell ourselves?
What do we tell GOD?
 
We, the members of the Charlottesville Clergy Collective, came together to figure out how to react to and support each other through the deaths of the brothers and sisters of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, SC, at the hands of a white supremacist.
 
We forged our deepest bonds over the horror of August 11 and 12 of 2017 in Charlottesville, Virginia.
 
Today we grieve anew, at the deaths of Ahmaud Arbery in Brunswick, George Floyd in Minneapolis, and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, by the hands of current and former police officers.
 
We are Christian and Jewish and Muslim and Baháʼí and Sufi and Buddhist and Unitarian Universalists; male and female; Black, White, Red, and Yellow spiritual leaders at a time of disinformation, pandemic, and destructive partisan politics. The question that echoes through the corridors of time is now ours to answer: “What is truth?”
 
How do we tell our children about our species’ penchant for othering and murdering GOD’S children who are not like us?
 
What meaning do we tell ourselves when murder keeps happening in plain sight with cameras recording, and we do nothing about it?  
 
What do we say to GOD, Whom we say we trust, when asked to give an account of ourselves?
 
We need to say the truth, as all Holy Books teach, that we are ALL GOD’S children. We know there is no excuse to treat others as less than ourselves.
 
We need to acknowledge that our own need to be “exceptional” has led to a pernicious greed and lack of empathy for those who are less well off — socially, economically, and politically. Further, this same greed and lack of empathy have created and continue to perpetuate systems — woven through our interpretation of Scripture, and our social and judicial principles — that visit evil upon those not favored by the systems.
 
We need to admit that the inequalities made glaringly clear by the COVID-19 pandemic are not new, just uncovered.  
 
We need to acknowledge that these instances of police and “neighborhood watch” brutality aren’t happening more, we are just able to capture them more, because of phone cameras.
 
We need to believe those who tell us about their mistreatment at the hands of our systems that protect some and kill others.
 
We need to ally ourselves with those whose stories are not our own, but whose scars are evident.
 
We need to work for justice with those whose sufferings are so long-standing that all seems normal to those who don’t know the stories, who don’t see the scars, who don’t bear the sorrow.
 
We need to tell our children that Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, and Breonna Taylor were murdered because some people thought they were disposable. Their deaths, and so many others, are a result of systemic and cultural racism deeply embedded in America.
 
We need to be honest and tell ourselves whether we are all right with “officers of the law” having a free pass to murder with impunity.
 
And, we need to explain to GOD how we can love and trust GOD, and yet still let this evil keep happening.
 
It is not enough that the police officer who held his knee on George Floyd’s neck for eight minutes, and three other officers who did nothing, are fired. They all must be arrested and prosecuted.  
 
It is not enough that Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend had charges dropped after wounding a drug SWAT team officer whom he perceived to be breaking and entering into what was, in fact, the wrong apartment. As a result of a no-knock warrant into the wrong home, Breonna Taylor was shot eight times and was killed in her own bed.
 
Wrong must be righted. 
 
If not, what do we tell our children?
What do we tell ourselves?
What do we tell GOD?
 
Signed, 

Rev. Dr. Alvin Edwards, President, Charlottesville Clergy Collective
Pastor, Mt. Zion First African Baptist
105 Lankford Ave, Charlottesville, VA 22903

  • Rabia Povich, Inayati Sufi Community of Charlottesville
  • Rev. Phil Woodson, First United Methodist Church
  • Pastor Brenda Brown-Grooms, New Beginnings Christian Community 
  • Manouchehr Mohajeri, Treasurer, Baha’i Community of Albemarle County, VA
  • Sharon Beckman-Brindley, Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville
  • Susan Kaufman, Insight Meditation Community of Charlottesville
  • Rev. Dr. Elizabeth Emrey, New Beginnings Christian Community 
  • Rev. Sandra J. Wisco, Retired Pastor in ELCA
  • Pastor Cass Bailey, Trinity Episcopal Church
  • Rabbi Tom Gutherz, Congregation Beth Israel
  • Adam Slate, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church-Unitarian Universalist, Charlottesville Clergy Collective Treasurer
  • Rev. Dr. Jill Duffield, The Presbyterian Outlook
  • Rev. Liz Hulme Adam, Tabor Presbyterian Church
  • David K Garth, Westminster Presbyterian Church
  • Cynthia Power, Charlottesville Friends Meeting
  • Rev. James Hassmer, retired United Methodist clergy
  • Rev. Carol Carruthers Sims, Episcopal Priest, Retired
  • Rabbi Daniel Alexander, Rabbi Emeritus, Congregation Beth Israel, Charlottesville, VA
  • Jay Swett, First Presbyterian Church
  • Rev. Dr. Eugene T. Locke, Parish Associate, Westminster Presbyterian Church
  • Rev. Emily Rowell Brown, St. James Louisa Episcopal Church
  • Rev. Dorothy Piatt, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Charlottesville
  • Rev. Maren Hange, Charlottesville Mennonite Church
  • Rev. Neal Halvorson-Taylor, Grace Church|Red Hill
  • Rev. Patricia Gulino Lansky, Unity 
  • Rev. Dr. Jim Bundy, Retired United Church of Christ 
  • Rev. Don Lansky, Unity
  • Rev. Patricia Gulino Lansky, Unity
  • Apostle Sarah A. Kelley, Faith Hope and Love Int’l Healing and Deliverance Center, Charlottesville Clergy Collective Vice President
  • Cynthia Deupree, Christian Scientist
  • Rev. Karen Foley, member, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Unitarian Universalist Church
  • Rev. Marilu Thomas
  • Rev. Dr. Gay Lee Einstein, Minister-at-large
  • Elizabeth Shillue, Charlottesville Friends Meeting
  • Rev. Nicholas Deere, Charlottesville, VA
  • Rev. Dr. Michael Cheuk, Charlottesville Clergy Collective Secretary

The Charlottesville Friends Meeting is active in the Charlottesville Clergy Collective, a group of clergy and interested lay persons who gather regularly to discuss and address the challenge of race relations in Charlottesville and Albemarle. The Collective mission is to establish,develop, and promote racial unity within the faith leadership of Charlottesville/Albemarle. Go to their website for an overview or see a calendar of their current activities on our News > Community News page. Our meeting contact for the Clergy Collective is Elizabeth Shillue who led part of the service “Navigating Troubled Waters” on August 12, 2019.

The Baltimore Yearly Meeting Working Group on Race’s  Ideas for Lowering Barriers to Involvement of People of Color (POC) in Our Meetings Friends should feel free to begin with whichever ideas seem most doable and sensible to them.

ecruit a small group within the Meeting that is willing to focus on efforts to moving the Meeting to becoming more multicultural

Let people know we exist in ways other than “word of mouth” such as print, broadcast and online media

Make sure information about the Meeting shows up in communities of color and in media read by those communities

Conduct First Day programs that assume the presence of children of color and work to meet the needs of all children

Conduct workshops on how racism affects both whites and POC

Conduct workshops on understanding microagressions

Encourage white Friends to get to know individual POC

Encourage Friends not to let their fears of interracial missteps–no matter how well founded those fears are–keep them from engaging with people of other ethnicities

Increase emphasis on pastoral care

Become actively involved in local community social justice work that is led by people of color.

Learn how POC houses of worship support their membership and consider using similar approaches in the Meeting

Learn from denominations that have been making an effort to be more multicultural (e.g. UU and UCC)

Learn from local congregations that have been successfully multicultural (less than 80% of any one race) for many years

Conduct regular antiracism audits of Meeting

Work with the BYM camping program

Provide meals rather than snacks at Meeting events

Reduce costs of attending Meeting events either through Meeting subsidies or scholarships or through reliance on free-will offerings

Be alert to specific barriers individual POC may encounter in becoming involved and work to overcome them

Seek feedback from POC and take it seriously

Make sure any POC involved in Meeting activities are heard when they speak

Help individual POC who show up several times to become more involved in Meeting work

Insure that photos and graphic art used in Meeting activities include POC

Post information in the Meeting House in both Spanish and English

Develop joint youth program with a multicultural or mostly POC congregation

Look for resources in the “Black Studies” department of the local university