 Good morning Please join me in a moment of silent centering and now please remain seated for in gathering him Which is in the order of service and is also number 1023 in the teal hymnal Good morning and welcome to first Unitarian Society of Madison This is a community where curious seekers gather to explore Spiritual ethical and social issues in an accepting and nurturing environment Unitarian Universalism supports the freedom of conscience of each individual as Together we seek to be a force for good in the world My name is Lorna Aronson and on behalf of the congregation. I'd like to extend a special welcome to any visitors We're a welcoming congregation So wherever you are or where whoever you are or wherever you happen to be on your life journey We celebrate your presence among us New comers are encouraged to stay for our fellowship hour after the service and to visit the library Which is directly across from the center doors of this auditorium Bring your drinks and your questions Members of our staff and lay ministry will be on hand to welcome you You may also look for persons holding the teal stoneware mugs These are members knowledgeable about our faith community who would love to visit with you Experience guides are generally available to give a building tour after each service So if you'd like to learn more about this sustainably designed Addition to our national landmark meeting house, please meet meet near the large glass windows on your left We welcome children to stay for the duration of the service However, because it's difficult for some in attendance to hear in this lively acoustical environment our child Haven and commons are Excellent places to retire if a child needs to talk or move around The service can still be heard from these areas Also, this would be a good time to turn off all electronic devices that might cause a disturbance during the hour I'd like to acknowledge those individuals who help our services run smoothly Today on sound we have David Bryals Our lay minister is Dorit Bergen Greeter Janine Nussbaum, and I think I also saw Gail Bliss up there Usher's Bob and Paula all Carolyn Ben ferrato Nancy Daley and Dan Bradley this Nitschke is Providing how hospitality and coffee this morning and our tour guide is John Powell Please note the announcements on the red floors in your order of service Which describe upcoming events at the society and provide more information about today's activities and other activities that are coming up I Want to call your attention to one announcement in the order of service to let you know that a representative of the Madison Urban Ministry, which is receiving a portion of our collection today Linda Ketchum is Out in the commons and she will be available to answer any questions you have about Madison Urban Ministry Also on hand. I was gonna wear this, but I wasn't prepared for a fashion statement this morning You can have your very own standing on the side of love t-shirt They will also be available at the social justice table up front Again, welcome. We hope today's service will stimulate your mind touch your hearts and stir your spirit From the fragmented world of our everyday lives. We gather together today in search of greater wholeness By many cares and preoccupations by diverse and selfish aims We are separated from one another and divided within ourselves And yet we know that no branch is utterly severed from the tree of life that sustains us all And so we cherish our oneness with those around us and the countless generations that have come before us We would hold fast to all the good that we inherit even as we leave behind us the outworn and the false We would escape from bondage to the prejudices of our own day and from the delusions of our own fancy Let us labor in hope for the dawning of a new day without resentment without insensitivity and without injustice Let us nurture in our own lives The love that has shown in the lives of the greatest men and women the rays of whose lamps still illumin our way In this spirit we gathered in this spirit on this fine day. We enter the hour of worship. I Invite you to rise in body or in spirit for the lighting of our chalice And if you will join me in the words of affirmation printed in a program your program To worship God is nothing other than to serve the people It does not need rosaries prayer carpets or robes All people are members of the same body Created from one essence if fate brings suffering to one member The others cannot stay at rest and on this fine bright January morning Please turn to your neighbor in exchange with Emma warm greeting some children who would like to come forward for the message for all ages So this is a story by Jamie Lee Curtis and Laura Cornell called is there really a human race? Now we kind of think that we all belong to the human race Okay, we're all one great big family all human beings But this is a different kind of human race that we're going to talk about and there are going to be pictures up on the screen there If you can see that but Kelly's also going to show us the pictures from the book if that's a little easier for you Is there really a human race? Is it going on now all over the place? When did it start who said ready set go Did it start on my birthday? I really must know Do I warm up and stretch? Do I practice and train? Do I get my own coach? Do I get my own lane? Do I race in the snow? Or do I race in a twister? Am I racing my friends? Am I racing my sister? If the race is a relay is dad on my side and is his dad and his dad You know what I mean? Is the race like a loop or or like an obstacle course and am I a jockey or am I a horse? Is there pushing and shoving to get to the lead and if the race is unfair will I succeed? Do some of us win? Do some of us lose? Is winning or losing something I choose? And why am I racing? What am I winning? Does all of my running keep the world spinning? And if I get off track and take a wrong turn Do I make my way back from my mistakes? Do I learn? And is it a sprint a dash to the end? Am I aware of the time that I spend? And why do I do it this zillion yard dash? You know if we don't help each other We're all going to Crash, you know sometimes it's better not to go fast There are beautiful sights to be seen when you're last Shouldn't it be that you just try your best and that's more important than beating the rest Shouldn't it be looking back at the end that you judge your own race by the help that you lend? So take what's inside of you and make big bold choices and for those who cannot speak for themselves use your bold voices and make friends Love well Bring art to this place and make the whole world better for the whole human race so that's our story kind of like a poem isn't it and you know in our Society in our culture probably in our schools. We're all trying to win We're all trying to beat each other to be better than each other And the story is really saying that in the human race Sometimes we are really going to be the winners when we really try to help each other to do just as well as we're doing ourselves So there's our story for today, and we're gonna we're gonna sing you out to your classes with our next team Thank you all for listening from Sue Monk kids new novel the invention of wings and This is a fictionalized account of the growing up years of a woman named Sarah Grimke Sarah Grimke along with her sister were early 19th century abolitionists and women's rights activists They grew up in Charleston, South Carolina and like many children of wealthy slaveholders in South Carolina Sarah had been given her own slave as an attendant and her slaves name was handful I remember very clearly coming to a full halt on the second floor landing of our house and Gazing curiously at the door to my room It alone was shut while the other doors stood open. I Walked toward it Uncertainly with a vague sense of portent and I paused with my hand over the knob for a second and cocked my ear Hearing nothing I turned the knob And it was locked. I Gave the knob a second determined cry and then a third and then a fourth and then that's when I heard a tentative voice inside That you mama Handful The thought of her inside my room with the door locked was so incongruent. I could not immediately answer back She called out coming Her voice sounded exasperated Reluctant breathy There was the sound of water splashing a key thrust into the lock click click And there she stood in the doorway dripping wet naked, but for a white linen towel clutched around her waist. I Couldn't help gazing at her wet black skin the small compact power of her torso She'd unloosed her braids and her hair was a wild corona about her head shimmering with beaded water She stepped backward her mouth parted and Behind her the wondrous copper tub sat in the middle of the room filled with water vapor lifted off the surface turning the air roomy and The audacity of what she had done took my breath away If mother discovered this the consequences would be swift and they would be dire I move quickly inside and closed the door my instinct even now to protect her She made no attempt to cover herself I glimpsed defiance in her eyes and in the way she rested her chin as if to say yes It's me bathing in your precious tub The silence was terrible And if she thought my reserve was due to anger she was right I wanted to shake her her boldness seemed more than just a frolic in the tub It seemed like an act of rebellion of usurpation What had possessed her she'd violated not only the privacy of my room and the intimacy of my tub She'd breached my trust. I didn't recognize how my own mother's voice was ranting inside of me Handful started to speak and I was terrified of what she would say fearful that she would be hateful and justifying And yet oddly I feared an expression of shame and apology just as much. I stopped her Please I said don't say anything the least you can do for me is don't say a word. I Know you're angry Sarah, but I didn't see any harm with me being in the same tub as you Not miss Sarah, but just Sarah. I would never again hear her put miss before my name And she had the look of someone who had declared herself and seeing it my Indignation collapsed and her mutinous bath turned into something else entirely She had immersed herself in forbidden privileges. Yes But mostly in the belief that she was worthy of those privileges So what she had done was not a revolt It was a baptism I Saw then what I had not seen before That I was very very good at despising slavery in the abstract in the removed and the anonymous masses But in the concrete immediate flesh of this girl beside me. I'd lost my ability to be repulsed by it I'd grown comfortable with the particulars of evil There is a frightful mutinous that dwells at the center of all unspeakable things and I had found my way into it the second of our readings comes from Tim wise's book white like me Tim wise grew up in Nashville, Tennessee He then attended Tulane University in New Orleans from which he graduated Wise is a nationally known anti-racism trainer who has made presentations at over 750 high schools and colleges and he's a recognized expert on the subject of white privilege on the morning of April 19th 1995 my Co-workers and I were standing around watching the news on a small television set when reports from Oklahoma City began to pour in The Murrah federal building had just had its front blown off by a 5,000 pound bomb that has been planted in a truck outside the entrance Speculation immediately focused on one or another Muslim terrorist And within hours mosques around Oklahoma City would be raided in hopes of finding evidence to implicate those who they had assumed were responsible as It would turn out within the next two days. The terrorists were apprehended Timothy McVeigh Terry Nichols White men who had no compunction about killing people including children in the building's daycare center Ultimately 168 would die hundreds more would be injured Thanks to the fulfillment of McVeigh's bloodlust fueled by right-wing anti-government hysteria Now fast forward to August 1996 Timothy McVeigh is awaiting trial and I'm about to move back to Nashville and to make that move I need to rent a truck The closest moving truck company to my home happens to be the Ryder truck franchise The same company used by Timothy McVeigh for his bomb When I am ready to load my boxes and furniture I head down to the Ryder location and I asked for a truck turns out the same size and model as The one Tim McVeigh used to bring down the Murrah office building. I walk in I put my license and my credit card on the counter and within 15 minutes. I'm headed to my house to load up. I Am white. I am male. I Have short hair at the time. I was clean shaven My name is Tim All of which is to say that I fit the profile of the nation's deadliest terrorist in five different ways And yet no one at Ryder thought to ask me for an additional security deposit Nobody looked at me funny. Nobody ran a background check or said anything other than Mr.. Wise will you be needing a map? That was it They could tell the difference or thought they could between that Timothy and this Timothy and That is what it means to be white The murderous actions of one white person do not cause every other white person to be viewed in the same light Just as the incompetence and criminality of a white person in a corporation or on Wall Street Does not result in other whites being viewed with suspicion as probable incompetence or crux Whites can take it for granted that will likely be viewed as individuals Representing nothing greater than our solitary cells Would that persons of color could say the same even before September 11th 2001? let alone after Driving back from Minneapolis the day after having visited our son Kyle for Christmas Trina and I stopped for a bite at the Culver's restaurant outside of Tomah and As Trina took Sasha our 14 year old papillon out for a brief walk I ordered the food and then I hunted in my pocket for the correct change But the total for our meal when it appeared on the cash register screen Wasn't what I anticipated. I did a double take Shouldn't it be more than that? I asked the counter clerk No, she said the price reflects your 5% senior discount You are a senior aren't you? I said that depends. What is Culver's policy on senior discounts? You just have to be over 60. She said I Guess I'm a senior I conceded and I repocketed the extra coins Seniority has its privileges as this episode attests at least in certain establishments and at specified times But the opposite as we know is also true youth are often Advantage over their elders in the job market age works against 50 something men and women who have been downsized More often than not employers prefer younger folk even when their skill set is no better than that of their more seasoned competitors Privilege operates at many levels and under many guises You've heard the expression. He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple There are privileges acquired at birth by virtue of one's parents social and economic standing In some traditional cultures primogenitor still affects a child's fortunes If you are lucky enough to be born first and particularly if you were the first born male You enjoyed a long leg up on your siblings People born into wealth and status have automatic advantages that other people lack Despite a mediocre academic record. They may gain access to an Ivy League education via a legacy admission Think of George W. Bush More often than not wealthy individuals have benefited from a generous Inheritance from their parents think Donald Trump think the Koch brothers On the other hand what Michael Harrington observed 50 years ago remains true today He said most people who are poor are poor because they made the mistake of being born to the wrong parents Privilege also comes in to play with respect to the opportunities available to men and women in our society Although many professions once closed to women The ministry medicine law military and commercial aviation Engineering although many of these fields have opened up men generally still have an advantage over equally talented women Take the field of engineering here women today represent about 17 percent of the total workforce Which is a higher percentage than it was 30 years ago But a recent longitudinal study of 5,300 women engineers found that 40% of those who had earned their degrees either never entered the profession at all or Abandoned it after just a few years and fully a third of those who quit cited Incivility and lack of support from their male supervisors and co-workers with another 50% mentioning poor working conditions low salary and lack of advancement opportunities as Alan G. Johnson points out most men can assume that their gender Won't be used to determine whether they will fit in in the workplace or whether teammates will feel comfortable working with them and of course Unearned privilege still adheres to those of us who are heterosexual To the detriment of folks who are gay lesbian by or trans and it gives those who are able-bodied significant advantages over individuals who have disabilities and yet in our own country all forms and expressions of privilege pale before a Pervasive one that continues to have a profound effect on men and women rich and poor Gay and straight alike and this of course is skin privilege Whose advantages are linked to nothing more or less than the lightness of one's complexion and that being the case I intend to devote the remainder of today's discourse to this controversial and frequently misunderstood phenomenon of white privilege So what do we mean by privilege Peggy McIntosh offers this simple and succinct definition Privilege exists when one group has something of value That is denied to others simply because of the groups they belong to Rather than because of anything they have done or failed to do And McIntosh goes on My privilege status does not determine my outcomes But it is definitely an asset that makes it more likely that whatever talent abilities and aspirations I have will result in Something good and beneficial for me now to be sure when it is suggested that they enjoy Certain advantages on account of their skin color any number of white people will strenuously disagree they will say you know what I don't feel privileged My life is difficult anxious demanding They say how can I be privileged and not feel good about my own situation? How can I be privileged if I'm not meeting my own expectations and since there seems to be this disconnect between The overarching premise of white privilege and the individual white person's lived experience on the other hand Then the former white privilege is judged to be invalid But here's the thing any one of us can feel stressed by the demands of parenthood We can be displeased with our job. We can feel financially pinched We can have physical and medical issues and any or all of those factors can affect our sense of well-being But which of us could say that a white skin? Lowers our life satisfaction How many of us who are white could identify with child advocate Mary and Wright Edelman who observed that Physically mentally and emotionally there is no respite from your badge of color no respite White privilege has little if anything to do with any particular Individuals level of satisfaction or achievement Because what we are faced with here is a social construct that is super imposed on our personal lives And about which we have very little to say it just goes with the territory to be born white Is to be born bearing this invisible knapsack of unmerited advantage now as heirs of certain enlightenment values particularly ones that stress conscious rational thought and Individualism as heirs to those values we may have great difficulty Recognizing and accepting the place that white privilege occupies in our lives Because we do not intend Consciously to take advantage of people of color because we do not indulge ourselves in Prejudicial behavior because we as good liberals believe in fairness and equity in interracial harmony We cannot possibly be a source of oppression. Can we? But the fact is most of the privileges that white Americans enjoy and that we profit from are not the result of deliberate conscious and personal choice as John Powell points out in his book racing to justice Virtually all sectors of society now renounce racism The good American refuses to engage in conscious racially motivated behavior Refuses to see race Refuses to call it out. He is race blind But white Americans need not seek white privilege. They simply exist within it For its beneficiaries more often than not White privilege operates below the level of consciousness something we never really have to think about and then to there is the second issue of Individualism and the way that Individualism affects our estimation of others as members of the dominant culture We have been taught to believe that people No matter their color or their gender that we all succeed or fail by virtue of our own efforts Faced with certain barriers the enterprising American overcomes them and to suppose that someone might enjoy a Significant head start based solely on their skin color that is to call into question the quintessential American myth of the self-made man or woman as it were So that having been said let's let's now take a closer look at just how this whole white privilege business plays out Some of you may have read Charles blows January 4th column in the New York Times In which he described a scary episode that unfolded the day after Christmas in Chattanooga, Tennessee It seems that an individual cloth in body armor was cruising through this neighborhood in a dark colored sedan Firing a pistol out the window at other vehicles seemingly at random Police were alerted a high-speed chase ensued which ended as the report put it with the shooter taken into custody without incident or injury Now as it turns out the shooter in this case was a fight 45 year old white woman Charles Blow invites us to compare this particular episode with well publicized recent encounters involving young black men and law enforcement officers It's hard to read stories like this He says and not believe that there is a double standard in the use of force by police He says it's a good thing a good thing that officers took this woman in without incident without injury But can one imagine the result being universally the case if the shooter looked different Would this episode have ended the way that it did if the shooter had been male if he had been black if he had been both People of color particularly African-American men have been caught up in a twister of macro aggressions and micro aggressions No amount of ignoring can alleviate it and no amount of achieving can ameliorate it The American mind blow continues has been poisoned from this country's birth against minority populations American law enforcement has been on the defensive in recent months their actions toward African-Americans harshly criticized and and just as strenuously defended But the inequities in our criminal justice system They are profound America's prisons are crowded with young black men the vast majority of whom were arrested for simple drug possession Black youth are nearly 50 times as likely as white youth to be incarcerated for first-time drug offenses even though whites comprise roughly 70 percent of all illegal drug users Anti-racism trainer Tim wise whose words you heard earlier describes his years as an undergraduate at Tulane University The loud house parties that were thrown by his fellow white students the alcohol flowed freely The air reaped of marijuana and if the police appeared it was only to caution these white students about making too much noise No one was ever arrested for serving alcohol to underage drinkers or for casual use of marijuana and wise Observes that the same permissiveness Prevails even today at grateful dead performances whose fans are overwhelmingly white But the disparate treatment of whites and people of color by the justice system This represents only one piece of the privilege problem So let me highlight just very quickly a few others Today the average African-American student attends a school that is at least 50 percent black and That school is almost invariably understaffed and underfunded relative to schools that are predominantly white In the United States black job applicants without a criminal record Have the same chance of being hired as white applicants with a criminal record Blacks with college degrees have greater difficulty finding jobs in their field than white college graduates Whites are more likely than blacks to have loan applications approved and During the recent housing bubble were far less likely to be offered subprime mortgages Indeed in private memos Wells Fargo Banks loan officers referred to these products as ghetto loans The average net worth of white families is 13 times that of black families Do in large part to imbalances in home equity an outcome directly attributable to Exclusionary practices by banks real estate agents and ultimately the federal housing administration Tim Tyson a former professor of history at the University of Wisconsin writes that the enduring chasm of race is still with us And in some ways that chasm is wider than ever blacks fall behind whites in almost every Observable measure of well-being including health mortality wages and crime victimization Now these are tangible quantifiable differences, but there are also plenty of intangibles Telling anecdotes from black patrons who are shadowed in department stores who are ignored in Restaurants who are asked to display additional identification in order to use a credit card or to cash a check or Consider this little story as related by the journalist Ellis coast an African-american attorney a Partner in a large urban law firm went to his office early one Saturday morning to catch up on some work and Standing near the elevator. He was confronted by a recently hired young white attorney from the same firm Can I help you the white man asked pointedly? Partner shook his head and tried to enter the elevator the white man stepped in his way Blocking his path repeated his question this time as a direct challenge. Can I help you? Only then did the partner reveal his identity At which point the young attorney allowed his elder and his superior to pass Ellis coast says The young white man had no reason to assume the right to control the older man standing before him Except the reason provided by the cultural assumption of white racial dominance that can override any class Advantage that a person of color might have so this then gives you some idea of how White privilege tilts the playing field Leaving people of color with this uphill climb in their quest for equity Now are some African-americans successful in our world absolutely the Obamas present us with the most notable example But as the black journalist Ta-Nehisi Coates complained last June in Atlantic magazine Barack and Michelle Obama have won to be sure but they have won by being twice as good and By enduring twice as much now with regard to this whole business of white privilege the historical record Explains a great deal when we consider the combined legacies of slavery and then Jim Crow of Public policy that deprived blacks of free land under the homestead Act of Exclusion of blacks from most labor unions of restrictive real estate covenants of Local sundown ordinances that drove African-Americans off their property and out of their livelihoods and into the inner cities The decimation wrought by deindustrialization and urban renewal in those same cities a GI bill that as Ira Katzanoff describes it represented an affirmative action program for white men The exemption of most African-Americans from key provisions of the New Deal When all of the foregoing is taken fully into account It's hard not to reach the conclusion that white Americans and Americans of color have lived and continue to live in a society largely separate and still dramatically unequal And this is not about anything that any of us as individuals have done and Therefore, this is not a matter of guilt But it is a call for honesty And white privilege is something that we as persons of integrity need to acknowledge and ultimately that we need to take Responsibility for and what what does responsibility call for? Continuing education for one thing. There is much more to this story than I've been able to share with you in less than a half hour today And you can become secondly an ally which means Engaging with listening to people of color and given giving credence to what they say about their experiences and And finally we can be more consistent and in intentional about living our own values We cannot simply slough off the privileges that the dominant culture has bestowed upon us But we can do our part to ensure That others are not denied the unearned entitlements that most of us have enjoyed as our birthright Over the decades we have seen any number of positive developments in American race relations. Absolutely But in certain key respects the more things change the more they seem to stay the same But as James Baldwin declared many decades ago If we do not falter We may be able handful that we are To end this racial nightmare to achieve our country and To change the history of the world may it be so our offering today Will be shared with Madison Urban Ministry who do wonderful work on behalf of released prisoners and other members of our minority community Please be generous We gather each week as a community of memory and a community of hope and To this time and this place we bring our whole and our broken selves We carry with us the joys and sorrows of the recent past and seek here a place where they might be received and celebrated and shared And now we would take a moment to acknowledge Joyce Kerry's husband Phil Who is in Meritor Hospital, and he's suffering from influenza and bacterial Pneumonia we know that Phil has been in kind of fragile health in recent years and and our thoughts are with him today And then we would also acknowledge the passing Last Thursday of Donna Hart-Shorn at a Grace Hospice Donna Hart-Shorn was a member of FUS for many years and served with distinction for many years as our archivist There will be a memorial service for Donna on April 18th when her far-flung family can be in Madison at 7 o'clock in the evening And for any joys and sorrows that remain unarticulated We hold those with equal concern in our hearts Let us join together in just a moment of silence in the spirit of empathy and hope And so may our coming together for this brief time today may it serve to lighten our burdens and expand our joys I invite you now to turn to our closing hymn in the gray hymnal number 323 break not the circle we close with these words from W. E. B. Du Bois Now is the accepted time not tomorrow not some more convenient season It is today that our best work may be done not in some future day or future year It is today that we fit ourselves for the greater usefulness of tomorrow today is the seed time now are the hours of work and tomorrow comes the harvest and the playtime blessed be