March 2018 Inclusivity Team Order of Service Insert.

Download the PDF of this insert. (full text below)

What is Your Experience at Albany UU?

The below is excerpted from the Inclusivity Team’s “Assessment for Individuals: Creating a More Inclusive Congregation.” The Inclusivity Team bulletin board in Channing Hall features additional material for your consideration from this same document. Each of us is encouraged to use this tool to participate in the inclusivity work at Albany UU in the privacy of our hearts and minds. This is an opportunity to reflect on our assumptions and perceptions, our actions and habits, and our responses and reactions as they relate to racism, white supremacy culture, and white privilege in general, and to our inclusivity and anti-racism work here at Albany UU.

For Albany UUs Whose Racial Self-identification is Person of Color:

• • How has not being white resulted in receiving or being denied privileges and opportunities at Albany UU?
• • How is white supremacy reinforced at Albany UU?
• • In what ways have the “rules of the game” or the actions of white Albany UUs adversely affected People of Color at Albany UU?
• • When discussing issues of race and culture, am I willing to risk honesty – and actually say “white supremacy?”
• • What is my experience with the willingness of white Albany UUs to embrace facts presented by Persons of Color about racism/white supremacy without minimizing or trying to justify.
• • Based on my experience, how open are white Albany UUs to feeling uncomfortable, having their own beliefs, notions and experience challenged, without feeling defensive?
• •How often do Albany UUs who are white express appreciation for the willingness of Persons of Color to risk honesty?
• •How, if at all, have has the congregation confronted white supremacy at Albany UU?

For Albany UUs Whose Racial Self-identification is White:

• • Consider how American culture is based on the preferences and experiences of white people (Americans of European ancestry) as the norm, at the center.
• • How is white supremacy reinforced in American culture? For this assessment, white supremacy means a set of institutional assumptions and practices, the “rules of the game,” etc., often operating unconsciously, that tend to benefit white people and exclude People of Color.
• • How is white supremacy reinforced at Albany UU?
• • How have the congregation’s actions, regardless of intent, adversely affected People of Color? How have mine?
• • How, if at all, has the congregation confronted white supremacy at Albany UU?
• • When considering or discussing issues of race and culture, am I willing and comfortable to acknowledge and actually say “white supremacy”?
• • How comfortable is it for me to embrace facts about racism and white supremacy without minimizing or trying to justify these facts?
• • How willing am I to be open to feeling uncomfortable, having my own beliefs, notions, and experience challenged, instead of feeling defensive?
• • How comfortable is it for me when People of Color are honest about racism and white supremacy? Do I take the initiative to seek out more information when this honesty causes me to feel unsure or confused, or question my own assumptions?

For All Albany UUs:

• • What symbols, items, activities, and traditions surrounding us at Albany UU provide a feeling of comfort and community?
• • What symbols, items, activities, and traditions surrounding us at Albany UU cause a feeling of discomfort or lack of community?
• • What symbols, items, activities, and traditions surrounding us at Albany UU represent a white-normative or Eurocentric culture?
• • What symbols, items, activities, and traditions surrounding us at Albany UU represent non-white culture?

An Exercise to Challenge a Prevailing Speech Norm, for Albany UUs Whose Racial Self-identification is White:

Use this exercise as a way to observe habits of signifying race in speech. How often do we include a race descriptor when it has no bearing on the story? What is really being communicated? And how rarely do whites signify race when talking about other whites?

• • Spend a full day mindfully referring to everyone specifically by race (i.e. Judy, the white woman, I was talking to this white guy….).