 Good day everybody. It's my great honor to present to you on this topic of whiteness and patriarchy, weeding out barriers to oneness and cultivating obedience to the covenant. My name is Chuck Edgerton. I have a PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies and I'm a lecturer at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. I would describe myself as an artist, photographer, protagonist for oneness and justice, someone who's been on this path a long time, who has a long way to go yet, but I want to share my learning at this point. And I need to acknowledge with humble gratitude the brainstorming with Elizabeth Allen PhD on this intersection of oppressions. So this is one of my haikus. And I think it describes really the positionality that I find myself in to seek my true self is to acquire a taste for ambiguity. And I must say that ambiguity is a good place to be. And it's not often where a white person wants to be or where a man wants to be. Because really ambiguity is often the antithesis of whiteness and patriarchy. But I think, as one person said in a presentation, ambiguity is the beginning of learning. It's saying I don't know, and I'm here to learn. And so I hope we can walk together on this journey. And you can fill me in on the areas that I really have a deficit. There are many blind spots that I've got. And I'm counting on you, those that are listening to this to share what you think of what I've presented today. And I have deep concerns and deep passions about what I'm about to present. And some of it will be challenging. Some of it will be deeply uncomfortable for us to discuss. But I think it's time for these issues to be brought to the surface and discussed in conjunction with one another. So a little bit about me, I was born into a light skinned European American male body. I was whited and I was gendered. And by that I mean, I was not born white. I would describe myself and my skin color as light. And when I check the box on the census, I do check white. But I was whited in the sense that the ideology of whiteness was imposed upon me. And what it's told me is that whiteness is indelible. It's somehow it's it's part of my, my, my, my being and my identity. And yet it is an ideology. It is an ideology of poison. And I was not born with it, but I acquired it and trained and was trained and racialized in it. I was also gendered. I was not born with masculinity. I was not born with a toxic or hyper masculinity, but I acquired both of those. And both my, my being whited and gendered have been deeply damaging to my spiritual growth through my life. And I'm working my way out of those things. I'm working my way towards my genuine reality, as I say here below, as being created in the image of God, and to seek the balance and integrity of, of, of who I really am. And to see that together with the identity as being part of the oneness of humankind. One thing I need to mention up front here is that this video is available on the ABS conference, but there is no designated discussion period with this video. And they graciously allowed me to set up my own Zoom discussion period. And that will be a week from the conference. So it's Saturday, August 6th at 1pm Eastern time. The link to that, the Zoom link to that will be on the ABS web page that's associated with this talk. Also on that web page, there'll be links to readings. I have many, many resources that you might find interesting and helpful videos. So please take a look at that. I have a Google drive that is that it that is linked there. And you can find many other resources. Also, because this time is so short, I'd ask that you pause the video at different points so that you can read the passages because I won't have time to necessarily go over all the passages completely. So this is one of the foundational passages that we'll read. How great, therefore, how staggering the responsibility that must weigh upon the present day of the American believers at this early stage in their spiritual and administrative evolution. To weed out by every means in their power, those faults, habits and tendencies, which they have inherited from their nation, from their own nation. And to cultivate patiently and prayerfully those distinctive qualities and characteristics that are so indispensable to their effective participation in the great redemptive work of their faith. And of course, this is talking about the double crusade. First, we need to work on our inner life. Then we need to assist the world to be transformed. And so these things that the Guardian is asking us to weed out is exactly what we're going to be talking about in this presentation. We're going to be talking about whiteness and patriarchy. And then we need to be thinking about what is it we need to cultivate? What qualities is it that we need to cultivate to replace those things that we've inherited from our nation? These are four questions that we'll discuss in the discussion period in a week after the conference. And so I'll just leave these here for you. But I think really the third question is really critically important. How does the unconscious sense of superiority created by the false doctrines of white and male supremacy affect our community building process, consult consultations, the institute process and fulfillment of goals of the nine year plan? I would even add to that decisions made by local spiritual assemblies. How can those be tainted by whiteness and patriarchy? And then how does it taint our interpretation of the writings and how those should be translated into action? These problems are so deep and we are so unconscious of them that they are seeping in at all levels. So let me begin here that race is a myth. And as we know, there is only one human race. The idea of different races was constructed by white supremacy. And it's very important to realize that we have been raised. There is no such thing as different races of human beings. This is a basic tenet of critical race theory, which I believe is a wonderful expression of these issues around race that are completely in alignment with the teachings of the faith. And of course, they came well after the teachings of the faith were established. The other thing is no one is white. We have been whited. As I said before, this is something that we've somehow been brought up to think that whiteness is indelible, that somehow it is integral to my being. And actually, it's an ideology that we have been trained to believe and it is a lie. As James Baldwin said, it's up to you. As long as you think you're white, there's no hope for you. As long as you think you're white, I'm going to be forced to think I'm black. Now, male supremacy is also a myth. We have been gendered. There is no such thing as male superiority. There have been so many false doctrines around the superiority of men. And we'll talk in a little bit about that, at least the perspective of the Baha'i faith on that. And gender, like my masculinity, my toxic and hypermasculinity is something that I learned. It is not something I'm born with. Same with femininity. These are all learned behaviors. We are not born with them. They are really nurture, not nature. The two prerequisites that we'll be talking about here are so important. Prequisites for world peace. And then as we've just spoken of, the two barriers that prevent them. So the first prerequisite for world peace is racial unity. The second is equality of the sexes. So Abdu'l-Baha writes, love and unity will be fostered between you, thereby bringing about the oneness of mankind. For the accomplishment of unity between black and white will be an assurance of the world's peace. There's so much promise and hope in the statement of Abdu'l-Baha. But what's in the way? Whiteness is a disease that fosters the fallacious doctrine of racial superiority. It is symptomized by racism and manifests in behaviors of racial prejudice, patronizing willful ignorance, invisibility, dominance, cocksure arrogance, causing violent harm to name a few. These are the barriers to that realization of racial unity. The other promise, the other prerequisite for world peace is the emancipation of women. The achievement of full equality between the sexes writes the House of Justice is one of the most important, though less acknowledged, prerequisites of peace. And then Abdu'l-Baha says, until women and men are equal in strength, the oneness of humanity cannot be established, and the happiness and felicity of mankind will not be a reality. And what's in the way of that? What's a barrier to that realization of that prerequisite for world peace? Patriarchy is the systemic structural disease of male supremacy symptomized by arrogant sexist, misogynist behaviors that patronize, control, and dominate, causing violent harm. They are also terribly invisible, just as whiteness is. So let's turn to looking at the three protagonists in this battle to overcome these barriers to the potential for world peace. Here the Guardian writes the LSA of Atlanta in 1947, and many of you are familiar with this passage. The friends must at all times bear in mind that they are in a way like soldiers under attack. The world is at present in an exceedingly dark condition spiritually. Hatred and prejudice of every kind are literally tearing it to pieces. Don't we see that today? We on the other hand are the custodians of the opposite forces, the forces of love, of unity of peace and integration. And we must continually be in our guard, whether as individuals or as an assembly or as a community, lest through us these destructive negative forces enter into our midst. In other words, we must beware, lest the darkness of society become reflected in our acts and attitudes, perhaps all unconsciously. Love for each other, the deep sense that we are a new organism, the dawnbreakers of a new world order must constantly animate our Baha'i lives, and we must pray to be protected from the contamination of society which is so diseased with prejudice. Now all of us have no stories of these destructive negative forces of prejudice and hate, tyranny and oppression that we have allowed to enter into our midst. And perhaps maybe that statement isn't true, perhaps there are some of you that have not heard the stories of how these destructive negative forces have entered into our midst. I would say that when these do, it is spiritual violence and is harm for people who are black indigenous people of color and women who often as a result of these entering into our midst leave the faith or become estranged by these forces. I know many stories that I've been told and examples of African American Baha'is who have become estranged because of the way they've felt within the Baha'i community. And I would attribute that difficulty in the community of not feeling welcome to whiteness, to the aspects that whiteness brings to our community and how whiteness in so many ways has been centered in our community. Whiteness and we'll talk more about what that means. But also it's also important to realize that women have also suffered greatly within the faith. And then in some of the groups that I've held on talking about masculinity, I've heard some stories I did not want to hear about women who have been assaulted, abused, harassed, even raped in situations within the Baha'i community. These are horrible things to face up to. But they are examples of the stories of these destructive negative forces. And we have to realize that they are there. They are already in and that we need to work on weeding them out. Racism is a profound deviation from the standard of true morality. This comes from a very recent letter from the Universal House of Justice. And then racism retards the unfoldment of the boundless potentialities of its victims, corrupts its perpetrators, and blights human progress. I think we don't often talk about how these negative forces, this whiteness and patriarchy, corrupts its perpetrators. That actually the Guardian refers to harboring prejudice as potentially causing a negation of our faith. These are deep spiritual deficits and problems and harm that we need to be concerned about as we deal with these issues. So what's on my heart? When any of the Baha'i protagonists, individuals, communities, or institutions practice or center whiteness in patriarchy, even unconsciously, it can manifest direct structural and cultural violence, harm against black indigenous, all people of color and women, spiritually corrupting its perpetrators and retarding the progress of the cause. This is my thesis statement. This is what I really want to bring across in this video, is how important it is for us to weed out these problems, to become aware of them because they are so invisible. The light of men is justice quench it not with the contrary winds of oppression and tyranny. The purpose of justice is the appearance of unity among men. Whiteness and patriarchy are oppression and tyranny. So looking at whiteness, whiteness is not white people. Whiteness is an ideology, a poison to anyone who believes and internalizes it, including Iranians and people of color. It is a fallacious doctrine supporting the oppression and tyranny of white supremacy. It can poison anyone and can be manifested through anyone. It is not only white people that suffer from whiteness. The false racial ideology of whiteness is the overarching disease. The ideology of whiteness is the source of racism. Whiteness is the disease and racism is its symptom. Whiteness was constructed, designed, created, and legalized made a form of property as violent anti-blackness. That's what it was created for. Martin Luther King very wonderfully analyzes this problem in America with this passage from 1967. Ever since the birth of our nation, white America has had a schizophrenic personality on the question of race. She has been torn between selves, a self in which she proudly professed the great principles of democracy and a self in which she sadly practiced the antithesis of democracy. This tragic duality has produced a strange indecisiveness and ambivalence towards the Negro, causing America to take a step backwards simultaneously with every step forward on the question of racial justice, to be at once attracted to the Negro and repelled by him, to love, and to hate him. There has never been a solid unified and determined thrust to make justice a reality for Afro-Americans. What is the source of this perennial indecision and vacillation? It lies in the congenital deformity of racism that has crippled the nation from its inception. Wow, what a brilliant analysis. As we know, the first purpose of the prophets coming to us is to liberate the children of men from the darkness of ignorance. To become unwhited, one must become aware of their tragic duality and their congenital deformity as one who is infected with a disease of whiteness, symptomized by racism, and as one who is also deeply and essentially a noble soul created in the image of God. Your true spiritual reality is free from the devastating ideology and violence of whiteness. This is why we must strip it off and weed it out. Thandakar is a wonderful analysis of King's statement. The problem King said was white racism, the total estrangement of the body, not only from the mind but from the spirit. He called such splintering of the self a congenital deformity of racism. His prescription, this is really the important part, was redemption. The white America's humble acknowledgement of guilt and an honest knowledge of the self. So these are all in accordance with Bahá'í principle, as Bahá'u'lláh says in this simple profound statement, true losses for him whose days have been spent in utter ignorance of his self. So do you know yourself? Do you know and see your whiteness and your patriarchy? Do you see how those things may be carried by you? This is part of knowing ourselves. Prejudice is an emotional commitment to ignorance, wonderful statement from the Center for the Healing of Racism and Cherry Steinwender, also with Nat Rutstein. I've always found this to be a wonderful definition, but they also talk about prejudice plus power equaling racism and they speak about this element of power. The other thing to remember too is there's a lot of emotion around whiteness and patriarchy. The emotions are very powerful and we need to acknowledge them and work through them. That emotional commitment is not about just becoming smarter to overcome our ignorance, it is about dealing with those emotions as well. And here in the role of power, the House says clearly the concept of power is a means of domination with the accompanying notions of contest, contention, division and superiority must be left behind. Power is not a fine identity which is to be seized and jealously guarded. It constitutes a limitless capacity to transform that resides in the human race as a body. Now these are some aspects of white supremacy culture, of whiteness. And take a look at these very closely and I think, I hope, I pray that that you have seen and know about some of these different qualities of white supremacy. I've seen this illustrated as each one of these a different bottle of poison with this label on it. It's important to see what of this list do you see manifested in the Bahá'í community at any level at individual institution or community level. Do you see any of these things being manifested? If you do, and I hope that you do because I see them, we need to talk about this and we need to begin being very open about weeding these out. Now some of these have positive aspects to them, but in the context of white supremacy where we have prejudice plus power at work, these are negative, destructive and I would say violent. And as we know the hidden word, oh children of man, know ye not why we created you all from the same dust that no one should exalt himself over the other. So what is the future of whiteness? The authors here re-imagine a different set of norms and values, a critical humanizing pedagogy of love, one that can only be realized when whites learn to love whiteness to death. That is, whites need to find not just the political will but also the emotional strength, vulnerability necessary to eliminate the white race as a sociopolitical form of human organization and to free themselves and others from the shackles of the institution of race. Imagine that concept of shackles. And if treason to whiteness really is loyalty to humanity then the greatest act of love that whites can show humanity is to end whiteness itself, to love so much as to send whiteness to its grave. This is no utopia since whiteness is a modern human creation. That is, there was a time before whiteness. As such, there can be a time after whiteness for those, for we can choose to demolish whatever we have built. This leads us to the wonderful statement by Audrey Lord for the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. So we have to ask the question, consider whose tools and what tools we use to build a new world order. We can't use the tools that the master used to build tyranny and oppression. To learn requires unlearning. To build requires dismantling. We all understand that decay and growth go hand in hand. So now let's talk a little bit about male supremacy. The gendered ideology of male supremacy is the disease. Sexism and misogyny are its symptoms. Patriarchy is the structural expression of male supremacy. Patriarchy is more than men. It is an ideology of false doctrine of male supremacy. A system of oppression and tyranny enabled by anyone who believes acts on or internalizes its corruption. Patriarchy is invisible in all encompassing. It is an institutionalized political social form of male dominance. It's an ideology. Presents itself as natural and therefore immutable. Patriarchy has no gender. We are all complicit in holding the system. This is what I was talking about in terms of whiteness. We are all complicit if we believe the ideology. We can all be helping to enable it and to uphold that system of whiteness or patriarchy. This is a beautiful exchange between Abdul Baha and some suffragettes in London. They asked them about why women should have the right to vote. They said, of course, we need the right to vote because we cannot soar on only one wing. Abdul Baha responded, but what would you do if one wing is stronger than the other? They said, then we must strengthen the weaker wing. He smiled and said, this profound statement, what will you say if I prove to you that woman is the stronger wing? The answer came and really caused quite a bit of excitement and then Abdul Baha says, the woman is indeed of greater importance to the race. She has the greater burden and the greater work. Patriarchy is the antithesis of these statements and we need to weed out the patriarchy within our minds and our hearts and within our communities, individuals and institutions because woman is the stronger wing. I'll leave this for you to pause and read in greater detail, but male supremacy, patriarchy is a dominator culture. This comes from Bell Hooks, this idea of dominator culture. Here she can compare dominator systems with partnership systems and take a look at these in light of the Baha community and the way that we work and consult together. The other part of this is that patriarchy corrupts and damages men and it is so important that as Bell Hooks says here, we cannot demand for men the right to be whole, to be givers and sustainers of life. They are imprisoned by a system that undermines their mental health. I actually believe that whiteness and patriarchy are all damaging to our mental health. These are four archetypal hyper-masculine scripts and I will not go through them now, but I'll just mention the four to be a sturdy oak to give them hell. No sissy stuff, be a big wheel. These are all aspects of patriarchy and we need to understand them and recognize them. Male supremacy dominance is a socially constructed disease that is learned by and assimilated into all men. It permeates the conditioning of cis women in all performances and expressions of sexuality and sexual embodiment along the LGBTQIA spectrum. It is driven by a fear of femininity and homophobia. Where do we go from here? What can we do? Racism and I add sexism must be supplanted by the establishment of just relationships among individuals, communities and institutions of society that will uplift all and will not designate anyone as other. The change required is not merely social and economic, but above all moral and spiritual. So we need to know yourself. You need to know yourself and the lies you accept without question. Cultivate genuine friendships and relationships. Learn the stories, lived experience and history of black indigenous people of color and women. You must read your reality again back to my statement. I submit that when any of the three protagonists practice and center whiteness in patriarchy even unconsciously they can manifest violence and harm against BIPOC and spiritually corrupt themselves as perpetrators, rictaring the cause of God. If this is our reality, what will we do? How will we change? I'll leave this for you to read from Paulo Freire, where he talks about really, it is not the oppressor's power to overcome and to be liberated. It really is in the power of the oppressed. And so we must ask to be led by black indigenous, all people of color and women. And they have to be centered and lead the way to liberation. Read this hidden word. In the final seconds of this video, I would like to introduce the idea of photosofia and this is homework that I'm going to give you for the meeting that we're going to have a week after the conference. And this is to do and create a self-portrait and then to write on one side weeding and the other side cultivating to really dig deep into your own personal issues and to identify the things that you can about your own faults and to work on the qualities that you need to develop. So this is called photosofia light and wisdom. These are the directions which you can pause here to read. This is when we will meet. This is the zoom link. And I thank you all very much for listening and I hope this has had some impact. Thank you so much.