Poverty & Racism
POVERTY (4)
6. Functional Poverty [Training in Relatedness; Capable of Peace] (by Mildred Binns Young; 1939)
Foreword (by Elizabeth Biddle Yarnall)—This pamphlet's 3 papers derived vitality & validity from the author's unusual experiences. She & her husband have done Polish relief work, rehab in KY mining regions, rural/ urban experiments in PA, & in the Delta Cooperative Farm with Southern sharecroppers. Each of 5 summers they have been associated with 1 AFSC camp. "Functional ..." was done for Women's Problems Group (PYM); "Training ... " for Friday PH lecture; "Capable ..." for the Social & Industrial Section of the AFSC.
TOWARD A FUNCTIONAL POVERTY: [Desiring & Preparing for Functional Poverty]—Some are content with their lives' outward pattern of beauty & comfort. Others feel limited and blocked, weighed down by their outwardly fortunate lives, their souls dwarfed in a hostile and infertile soil. This pamphlet is for people in whom the longing to be free is past denying. 1st, we must desire freedom completely. We realize unlimited liability. We feel the obligation and the privilege to live as if we had many lives to live and could afford to hold loosely our little footholds in this one. The next step is clearly knowing our job and finding the freedom to do it.
To take hold of a job we must 1st lay down what is in our hands; [most of our hands are filled to overflowing]. Poverty or some approximation of it, willingly assumed, would set us free for finding our responsibility and fulfilling it. [What it enables us to do that makes] it functional poverty. It is to be taken up as a way to freedom, as a practical method for finding time and strength to answer one's deepest need to be serviceable for a new world. This poverty is a stripping off of encumbrances, a practical condition of preparation for work and performing it. This poverty is to be functional to the life we feel called upon to lead in carrying unlimited liability.
[Lifestyle Practices]—We as a family cut through our traditional living standards & went to live in a group where living was very poor, to throw our weight in with theirs in order to find a new [kind] of wholesome, productive life as an example to others. Even the slightest ostentation is avoided in deference to a neighbor's less fortunate circumstances. There are some who can't & shouldn't break away to these conditions, when need exists almost at their doorstep; one is often most effective where one is native. How do we clear our lives so we can relate to our communities in concerted action for a new world? How shall we grow so urgently aware of the need for action that we find the way to clear our lives for it? [Greater & greater realization of effective action will follow each cycle of freeing our lives from the unnecessary]. Simplifying one's life isn't simple to do.
Meals can be simplified from making 10 dishes to making 3, saving time in cooking & dishwashing. For home decoration, I first-off have only 3 rooms to deal with. There is cleared shelf & floor space, having gotten rid of unneeded things. In 1 room we cook, eat, study, sew, visit, read, & wash dishes. There is more beauty in this room than any of our other houses. Housework takes less time than it used to. I have time for my garden, family care, community work in field, garden, & other community-building activities with the Farm's women.
[Clothes, Committees, Information, Old Friends]—[For simplifying clothes, one need only think of shopping that grew from a new dress to all manner of accessories]. On the way home we might get a guilty reminder of those with less, but by the time we get home] & harden our hearts, we can put it on & enjoy, literally, our-selves. The early Quaker woman met this problem by plain dress. This allowed the heart to be undistracted & full of a sense of mission. Perhaps now concerned Friends may feel that the way is to find what is becoming to her, and wear it while it lasts, in spite of changes in fashion, and ignoring complicated conventions about occasions.
Committees are running people ragged. A few people carry the burden of meeting work by attending innumerable committees, giving a little hitch to forwarding a work in each committee. Perhaps committees should be composed of those with whom the particular concern is paramount. And perhaps strong steady effort on one or two committees would accomplish a bigger sum of work than a hasty hitch on half a dozen.
In terms of staying informed, consider whether we need to read all of what we read. If what I take in truly makes me feel the good in me raised up, then it is my meat & drink. Otherwise it is frivolity, waste, or conformity. Will these simplifications divide us from our own without unifying us with the world? Simplifiers will set themselves simple goals at 1st. They need to grow so clear a spirit that their lives can challenge others without condemning & criticizing. It will be a clear demonstration of new freedom, range, happiness, & effectiveness.
[Servants, & Savings from Simplification]—Those who can afford & have servants might say that the servants need the work. Waiting upon well people for pay is a humiliation which it seems only some old-time Negroes [who may have come out of a time when there was a mutual real care on the part of sensitive owners & sensitive slaves, can rise above]. To be waited on by one whom the service humiliates & try to make return in cash hurts & dwarfs him who is waited upon. If there are young servants for whom we feel responsibility, we could provide for their education or training. Problems of persons, servant or friend, are as individual as the individuals themselves, & need to be approached with candor and considerateness.
If I reduce my wants and try to live, do I not increase unemployment? [Self-indulgence is not a legitimate means for providing employment]. If we should choose to continue to receive our accustomed income, and still choose to live in simplicity or poverty, then the money saved by the discipline must not be kept. It must flow out to someone else at the same rate as if we spent it on ourselves; it will shift employment to more basic industries. We can give our savings to constructive self-help enterprises and institutions devoted to building children fit to become men and women of a new world. Some of us will find new work under our very hands that comes to seem uniquely our own that is worth investing our time and money in.
[Children]—Nothing second best is good enough for our children or for any other children. We may need to ask: What is best and second best for our children? We may need to ask whether insulation in ghettos of privilege which we provide is indeed the true training for a new world. The trend in Friends' schools is one of increasing magnificence, a kind of jewel case in which their beauty is protected. We teach them about society's problems, while they learn to be dependent on surroundings that negate our principle of unlimited liability, and they are beneficiaries of a system which can thrive only on victims. Yet Friends' schools have something irreplaceable to offer. Can we not press for a truer setting in which children may learn the sensitive, poised, free way of life taught by Jesus? The Friends' schools will be what we ask them to be.
As long as our brothers and sisters lie starved and beaten, our mere acceptance of ease, abundance and safety builds a wall between us and them and builds a dam against the fair flowing of power and strength. Functional poverty means an adjustment of the mechanics of living by clearing off the rubble in our lives. It is a discipline that scours clean the glass of self through which we see at best but darkly.
TRAINING IN RELATEDNESS: [Seeking a New Relatedness]—Modern Friends who seek to stay in accord with old convictions, are searching for a new alignment of their lives in the new circumstances. There is hu-man unity, no real good gained at another's expenses, & pacifism's claim on all our behaviors in life. As Friends grew in financial/ social status, they undertook more work of benevolence. New means have to be found if brotherhood of man through peace practices is to be implemented. We get the sense within, [that our good testimonies & works are just coincidental] bubbles on an ordinary brew of self-interest, luxury, race/class insularity, violent competition for money & status, & fear of losing these. We need to relate in a new way to our environment.
Some of us aren't very closely connected with the communities where we live or work. The city is not our community, we only work there. The country is not our community, we only live there; [no community exists]. We try to remedy our isolated condition with committee work with people from all over. Have we substituted many "contacts" for even a small community? Is there a "beloved community" in our lives?
[Beginning Relatedness in Small Ways]—Although world-shaking events are precipitated by central authorities, they are prepared for by tiny experiences, growing attitudes far back in the smallest social units. Through long habit of working together in daily concerns the communities may be disciplined for self-suffering resistance. Perhaps those of us driven by a concern for the good society have not placed ourselves deep enough at the center of society to convert our concern into action; change takes place inside the growing center.
We chose the simplest sort of beginning at Delta Cooperative Farm. We went to a place where new community was being created from a definite outline. Rewards & success were a good life in a simple & friendly set-ting, not money-success. Many must remain in & deal with an artificial mix of urban/ suburban life where it is almost impossible to see any community outlines. I think we pacifists will have to cut through the conventional & sectional in our way of living, & move into relatedness to whatever life at hand represents a growing point for community. Organizing a neighborly buying organization, or opening one's home as a recreation center are simple ways to make real a neighborly relationship that will open up other means of developing community life.
[Living at the Center of Growth]—The permanently unemployed could be drawn together into gardening activity that would recall their self-respect by supplementing their living. Women living near together can per-haps learn to knit together. Large numbers of women can knit garments cheaply & with enjoyment while perhaps hatching other ideas for collaboration. Almost all these ideas call for someone who would stimulate growth, live at the center where growth is expected, and live as nearly as they can at the local economic level.
Probably the advent of the families seeking to become neighborhood friends shouldn't be marked by having money for a project. As the right project for community effort comes into view let there be a source, perhaps the money freed up from someone living a simpler life, from which modest help can be obtained. It is probably best for families having incomes beyond their new needs to not keep control of their own surplus. Surpluses could be pooled for a foundation from which small well-considered community projects could borrow or receive help.
[Labor Unions]—At its worst, labor unions are pressure groups without responsibility. At its best it is a worker's community, striving to find what is its true share in the responsibilities & rewards of industry; between these limits there are many degrees. We need to assist & enlarge what is right in them, rather than condemn what we deplore & withdraw. The labor union has taken a sudden upward swing in this decade. The most aggressive & unruly infant unions are those striving to get their feet in big industries. In the 1920's, living standards had risen as the industries reached new peaks of production. Then came the depression with its shut-downs & retrenchments, its dis-employment. The lately-rising rising worker was put back, pushed; but he was no longer defenseless. He now saw himself as a link in the prosperity chain, & could no longer be disinherited without protest. Government stepped in with social services & civil works; unions developed a protective organization.
What is the pacifist's place in relation to this struggle? We may feel that the union as a pressure group is itself violently repressive of initiative in industry, which brought this on by slowness in dividing with labor the fruits of new discovery, invention, & method. [In spite of] innovations in technique & machinery, the worker remains 1st partner with ownership. He represents the largest potential consumer of the goods & services he helps make. We need to put ourselves in such relations to unions that opportunities to help will logically come. Sometimes collection & spreading of the facts in a conflict are all that we can see to do. We may be able to bring opposing groups together in an atmosphere of true seeking. When conflict brings distress we can sometimes help relieve it. If we can participate in this movement's development, we can help deepen & pacify the means used.
[Dreams of Unions]—The end to be achieved is secure world-community, peace on earth. Some of the intermediate goals are education & alliances for: mutual help, security for the unfortunate, experiments in health maintenance, buying cooperatively. When a union gains strength & vision, it sets milestones on the road to realizing industrial- & world-community. A city union leader envisioned a country summer community for his un-ion. He saw families growing in a sense of partnership with each other & with their men. He saw the summer experience of community carrying over into city life & [everyday solidarity]; he was never able to carry it out; [we perhaps could have supported him in his vision]. Another union has plans for an educational station, where young workers could go from time to time for a concentrated discussion. When worker groups grow [in solidarity], we then may expect disciplined, well-coordinated, non-violence from them. It is only as a full partnership in industry emerges that we shall have peaceful evolution into a community of interest. Will we help or will we stand back and watch and often deplore?
[Conclusion]—All of the community building mentioned here, and the others not discussed, call for the stripping away of the interest that centers self and [preserving the interests] of our particular culture and standard of living. Unless authority is checked by an ever-renewed sense of stewardship, it grows into arrogance. It is necessary to become one that understands nothing about success except in terms of the upward attainment of that group. [The authority I envision is what] I call "leadership from alongside."
One may have allied one's self with a needy group in a defiant and resentful spirit. As one labors to meet needs common to rich and poor, to serve, for instance, cleanliness and nourishment, one may be [moved to compassion] for those maimed in ways different from the harm done to the poor. Some of them are overfed, pandered to and lapped in luxury that destroys them; others cling tightly to what they have and fear risking it. He realizes that the service is to them also. The demands of need are so many that we cannot know joy and freedom except through complete shedding of personal ambition and devotion of the whole of our resource to humanity. We can do this only by slow, persistent, painful steps. Joy begins again when the work [of self-denial is begun].
CAPABLE OF PEACE: An Analysis of the Position of Sharecropper and Pacifist
[The Pacifist's Dilemma/ Failing the Young]—Pacifists have at once a religious conviction against the use of violence, & an awareness that the world is tending more & more toward the use of violence. We are in a society that is making war unavoidable & is at the same time condemning millions to a poor, mean, dangerous, frightening & hopeless life. As pacifists we are dissatisfied with pacifist preparations, ["evangelising"], protests, propaganda, conferences, fund-raising; it is not enough. [Some see pacifism] as the one way by which society may reach adulthood and finally learn war no more. It is learned from earliest infancy throughout life.
Pacifism means that the whole self must be made effective for peace. Making non-violence a tool, our whole armory of offense and defense, is a task from which we can hold nothing back. To serve the ideal of peace with one's whole life may mean going farther than anybody has yet gone. Each of us must find our own way to serve with our whole life. It is a way of life that uses diverse gifts, every gift and talent, however humble. Francis of Assisi's community had those with executive talent, musical, carpentry, cooking, or speaking skills, and some who were merely simple and devoted. Today we are wasting or reprimanding by neglect many special abilities & much capacity for devotion. [It is a combination] of willingness, and availability of place and method.
I think we older people are failing young men & women in this. They come with a readiness for devotion that older people have forgotten. They are ready to give all. They ask only that they may be used for the future. We don't know what to say except to tell them to train themselves for this or that. And when they have attained techniques, skills, & professional training, we still can't tell them how to use themselves to make peace prevail.
[Cells, Seed or Germ Groups]—These groups meet regularly & practice techniques by which group solidarity [is built]. If undertaken without complete realignment of one's work, way of living, all of one's life, they add to the unhealthy division within a person who must go to work knowing one is negating or not implementing one's pacifism. A real, effective pacifist cell or seed group finds out how to be a working unit in some larger, growing, transforming community. There are many possible examples of such larger communities. The best example is the rural community in an area where poverty has gone almost to its limit. Such is the sharecropper belt, where the workers' misery & apathy & the owners' fear & frustration bring a long trail of violence & disintegration. This group & similar groups can help pacifists out of their dilemma by letting us help them our of theirs.
How could we begin to make pacifism effective in the sharecropper's situation? In a simple community with land tenure & loan availability, a co-operative to some extent, there is self-containment & a low standard of living. It can be a community where families have a good life that grows in an atmosphere of work, health, companionship, & being functional & of service to the whole life of the community. It will use & increase its soil re-sources, promote education & recreation that thoroughly uses people's interest, energy & unrest. Mutual help associations can take the place of expensive health services & inadequate security systems now in place. I believe that it would grow soundly, if it included a percentage of people committed to the work of opening this way for peace by growing people capable of peace. Peace is there as a creative force, currently blocked by interests of self and family, race and class nation, boundaries which riddle a humankind that can only thrive in united effort.
[Cell's or Seed's Task]—The cell's or seed's members would 1st have to grow peace inside themselves. We would grow into the task as it went along. 2nd, their group life must be made deeply peaceable. They must discover how to lay hold of powers and resources that keep away stale weariness, mental and physical. They must learn how to re-create and recuperate without vacations, "getting away for awhile," or going to the movies. As nearly as they can they must learn to live upon what they can so earn, and to deal with the resulting poverty. They must learn to draw strength from their inner and group life, letting it draw them into full community participation; it should not be a screen between them and an uncongenial environment. The community at large needs to feel welcome in, and hopefully drawn to their more intimate group life. They must work out truly democratic processes in their group business and in the larger community business.
This plan for lifelong pacifism means discipline through poverty, through work, through maximum responsibility for others with minimum authority. There needs to be awareness of all the currents of life at all the levels of life, from the world's currents, [to nation], to community, to cell or group, to our self. Thousands of such pacifists will be needed to make a noticeable impression, yet even a few can create a pattern. Pacifists must ask of themselves the degree of dedication which recognizes that one owes nothing to one's self except to live as if one had many lives and could spare one to bring peace, and to live as if he had only one life and dared not waste it on anything less than the future of humankind, God's image.
12. A Standard of Living (by Mildred Binns Young; 1941)
About the Author—Mildred Binns Young was born in Ohio and attended Friends schools and Western Reserve University. She lived for some years at Westtown School, where Wilmer Young was Dean of Boys. The Youngs then lived in the South, working under American Friends Service Committee for 19 years; 4 pamphlets came out of the experience. From 1955-1960 they were in residence at Pendle Hill.
[Introduction]—2 years ago I defended a chosen poverty as a keen tool for accomplishing work and a straight road to a clearer relationship with our world, and as freedom (PHP 6. Functional Poverty). Now I must go further and [discredit] our standard of living as contributing to the world's violence, and announcing the choice of poverty as a reasonable corollary to refusing to participate in that violence. Knowing the futility of getting and keeping, we still strive for it and are in need of re-orientation. I feel hesitant in saying this, because it is skirting the subject of economics of which I am ignorant, and calls into question a lifestyle I instinctively prize. The present moment painfully demonstrates that peace cannot be organized over a substructure of strife. We can be glad that we made the efforts at peace, even as we can be sure we did not strike deeply enough.
[Turning Back the Clock/ Lebenraum]—People say that "You can't turn back the clock." I suppose what is really meant is you can't turn back the calendar. But the careful man is forever setting his watch by a trustworthy source; a religious man must always be checking his life against the chronometer he relies on. We act as if man were irreversible, while he furiously catapults himself back into the depths of barbarity through his very devices of "progress." I propose not looking backward into an old world, but forward into a new world in which all the best that we have learned about the whole man will be met for everyone, and one's capacities called out in measures we can now only guess at. We have committed ourselves to progress without clarifying the aims.
It is not time, but direction we need to be concerned with. We are all at cross purposes within, one side of life bumping into the other side of life, like cars at an unregulated crossing. Kierkegaard calls it purity of heart, or to will one thing only. Our American standard of living, [echoed] elsewhere, is the deepest cause of violence today. Our forefathers forgot about freedom to worship and set out toward comfort as humankind's chief end.
I conceive that Hitler means by Lebenraum not only more space, but also scope for his people to live according to ideals, opportunities, & science set by America & Germany's other recent conquerors. [In their claimed superiority was the claim] that they should possess more because they could use them better, much as white men claim in a country 10% Negro. Germany has sacrificed the remainder of their generation to Lebenraum.
[John Woolman and Poverty]—I remember the enrichments and amplifications of the hard colonial life, many of which Ben Franklin was instrumental in bringing about. There also briefly lived a perhaps greater American, John Woolman. Where Franklin thought in terms of nurturing the colonies, Woolman thought of nurturing the straight, tender spirit of [each] man in whatever color skin, or quality dress or house. He saw slavery ending in civil clash and a long-lasting aftermath. He saw [the consequences of shipping luxuries and producing goods cheaply on men's, women's, and child's labor]. He looked into the forest and saw how expanding American culture crowded and ruined the Indian. He looked about him and saw how workmen, servants, and animals were used for ease and gain. He wrote: "May we look upon our Treasures, and furniture of our houses and the Garments in which we array ourselves and try whether the seeds of war have any nourishment in our possessions or not. Holding Treasures in the Self pleasing Spirit is a Strong plant, the fruit whereof ripens fast."
His is a life we all feel back to as a touchstone, and I don't know the Friend who does not honor him. I look at our houses, our schools, our tables, and I wonder if it can be good for us to honor John Woolman in [only] our thoughts and words. It might result in schizophrenia, a split personality. Florence Sanville puts a different interpretation on Ananias' death after keeping back a part of the money and lying about it to the Apostle Peter. Sin was not the cause of death, but a split personality. "He tried to subject himself to 2 opposing controls."
John Woolman saw where the expanding standard of material life was tending, how one's possession of goods ends in goods possessing one. He saw that large enterprises couldn't be formed without doing injury to workers. He is something of a authority to many of us. He seems to have known how to express his sense of God in his relationship to others. Poverty & physical work appeared as the very core of his testimony about outward life. His loving concern was verified by his own freedom from motives of self-seeking, his sensitive rejection of any comfort or pleasure that could not be had without burdening another. As long as we have made little of or set aside Woolman’s testimony of poverty, we have squandered the heritage we have in his life-record. If he had known how science and mechanics would develop, he would have felt even more the necessity of regulating his bodily life according to its simplest needs, & the need to nurture that of God which he saw in every man.
[Poverty vs. Simplicity]—Simplicity is a treacherous word; advertisements specialize in it too. Poverty is a clean, clear, word; I mean [voluntary] poverty. It can still be voluntary even if it lands one in a spot there is no backing out of, or if one has never had anything else. I will try to distinguish between this poverty & poverty with few blessings & no excuses. Jesus commanded poverty of disciples much like what John Woolman lived.
Gandhi said: "Civilization ... consists not in the multiplication but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants." He also said that possessing without needing a thing, is stealing a thing. Both Jesus and Gandhi gave these instructions to those who are in leadership training. The nonviolent pacifist is offering one's self as pathfinder and exemplar in a totally unaccepted way of life. One must substantiate in one's own life one's claim that only real values are indispensable. While one clings to values that can demonstrably be defended [only] by superior armament, one is caught in a contradiction.
[Economy of Abundance]—For some decades now the American standard of living has been the pattern of standards everywhere. Even agriculture [ignored critical scientific facts] in using the one crop system, ruining the land & sinking farm people to a more helpless bondage than that of the wage-workers of industry. We talked of "economy of abundance" and "distribution." Seldom have we stopped to examine whether or not the standard itself is such a good one that it is worth distributing. I am one who has never wearied of our modern scene, its new cars and appliances, fashion, social life, and city life. I once thought that all would be well if we could only spread these delights of modern life to all our people; I no longer believe that. Have we yet to get a hold of a "standard of living" that is appropriate and workable to spread to everyone?
Do recent mental health discoveries offset the strains of the modern life we promote enough to raise the level of national health? One writer writes of "maximum satisfactions" & that "It is a crime against humanity when anybody performs any essential work with less than maximum efficiency, and the use of the best ma-chines for that particular job." He has accepted "progress" too uncritically. There are other satisfactions in work besides that of finishing as quickly as possible, other resources to be conserved besides time & physical energy.
[International Application and Defense of the American Standard ...]—Internationally, ambitious statesmen based their policies on making their countries approach the American record of popular consumption. So Japan must reach out into China; Britain must hold India and Egypt; Poland must hold to her seaport at all costs. Germany must take refuge in a regimented efficiency economy, lose all civil rights, and conquer her neighbors. Russia resorts to a proletarian dictatorship to [match American production].
America never relaxed her effort to extend herself & keep the lead. Tariffs, US marines, Mexican oil, US gunboats on the Yangtze are reminders of American interests' scope. We find everywhere reference to defense of Democracy, saving the American way of life, safeguarding our liberties. What is it really that Americans are all so avid to defend? [& there are forgotten American folk who don't participate in the American dream].
Advertisements are a good index to the real temper of our people. While children and whole people are hungry in Europe and the Far East, we boast of inexpensive "meat upon the table." And in a world where peace is now the tenderest and most wistfully far-off dream, is the temper of Americans indeed such that it is good psychology to say "In a world of strife, there's peace in Beer?"
Because modern life's machine is made out of vast numbers of needs, hopes, beliefs, & fears, we can personify it & say it has no sense of direction. To one who relies on spiritual & interior forces rather than on violence, belongs the task of locating a new center, making realignment, facing a new direction, setting one's watch by eternal sun without reference [to the local, cultural time]. With one's watch well-set, one's life will fall into a new schedule; one mustn't expect to feel no dislocations; the benefits will more than compensate for the strains.
II: [Pacifist as Plant]—If our standard of living is a root cause of war, acquiescence in it makes us partners in violence & war. As pacifists & leaders in the use of an untried strength, we must re-orient in the specific direction of the dayspring of peace. We can never relax efforts to influence the movements of our time. Wars must cease; degrading, depleting poverty must be cured. We are to society as plants are to soil. There are replenishing & exhausting plants; the more replenishers grow the better the soil becomes; exhausting plants cause the reverse. The replenishing plant lespedeza cures the damage done by [the exhausting] cotton. Replenishers aren't parasitic, often make excellent forage, & have pretty & fragrant bloom. A great socialist once said: "While there is a lower class I am in it;/ while there is criminal class I am of it;/ while there is a soul in prison, I'm not free."
[Peace People in Isolation]—I shall take 3 samples of how a conventional standard of living isolates peace people: relations in business; relations in social work; "joining & sponsoring" activities. Quaker business people have always found their way difficult, & perhaps it will now be more difficult. Steering a pacifist, non-violent course among workers, partners, & customers was never easy. Government demands to unify in defense add to difficulties. The nonviolent pacifist may find one's self limited to small enterprises, having close participation with all concerned. One must regularly do productive handwork to connect with one's neighbor in physical labor.
That which created a profession of administering of aid to the poor is a symptom of the sickness into which headlong "progress" has thrown us. The heart's charity has always been too late, too little to undo society's wrongs. There were lines of beggars outside of Warsaw churches & charity largely got squandered; this wouldn't do in America. The people on relief are fulfilling their indispensable place in society, the only one we know how to offer them. Recognition of this has been a bread of bitter [resentment] to recipients of public relief.
Thousands of the best and brightest earn themselves a comfortable living by relieving the poor. Training in social work schools to my mind is mainly for protecting prospective social workers against the vocational diseases of the trade. Barricades of psychological devices are built around the social worker for one's safety. Charity givers and taxpayers are barricaded behind the social workers.
Von Huegel says of Ettore Vernazza: "It was one of [his] deepest convictions .. that only by actually living among the poor, poor yourself doing [their] work ... only by such fraternal-paternal sympathetic identification can such service really rise above the dreariness of officialism ... [and be] life directly touching life." The per-sistent unprofessionalism of Friends' relief work has often been a prime reason for effectiveness. This is lay-service which corresponds to the lay-ministry which is inseparable from our worship. [It sometimes leads to long-term] committed participation in the life of groups which modern systems have abused and beaten.
19. Participation in Rural Life (by Mildred Binns Young; 1942)
About the Author—Mildred Binns Young was born in Ohio and attended Friends schools and Western Reserve University. She lived for some years at Westtown School, where Wilmer Young was Dean of Boys. The Youngs then lived in the South, working under American Friends Service Committee for 19 years; 4 pamphlets came out of the experience. From 1955-1960 they were in residence at Pendle Hill.
[Participation vs. Isolation]—Participation is a word which expresses well the Quaker view of social responsibility. To participate fully in the love of God, we must participate to the limit of our capacity in the passion of humankind. [Spiritual] beginners and seekers get lost from, or lost amid their fellowmen unless actual physical sharing is allowed them. It may be that the pacifist's discipline of uselessness during war is the sacrifice the world is now going to put upon the pacifist.
[There is isolation to be found in the educational process, as] we are to spend our youth learning to do something others can't do. Grading is based on individual performance, rather than how one uses one's best in cooperation with one's group. The degree to which one can outstrip one's fellows is the measure of one's promise and success. But humankind advances behind [expanding frontiers] pushed out by inventors and seers, and along broad fronts where the ranks are knit together in a closely correlated movement of the mass.
Personal success [has become so important that] parental ambition can hardly [stand] our young being merged rather than outstanding, [& it pushes the idea of outstanding to the point of becoming] a form of isolation. So upside down is our society that young people [excelling in working with people will be "promoted" out of where their talents lie into] administrative positions, where one is no longer responsible for anything but the delegation of responsibility. How is an administrator's delegation of responsibility a form of isolation? Even in nursing, with a very close participation in suffering, & at the pinnacle of success, the nurse no longer holds basins, bathes feverish bodies, or binds up wounds. [Their time is "better spent"] regulating institutions where patients are [cared for]. [With his doctor's degree, my friend is] "fitted to teach the teachers of social workers."
[Unrest Among Young Pacifists]—They were taught and still believe, to the despair of many of their teachers, that a modern war is not caused by the sin of one nation or the rise of perverted rulers. There is no peace until conditions of peace are laid deep in the structure of society; the oppression or neglect of a single human being contains the seed of war. One reason war is so hard to get rid of is that it draws people together in great shared efforts. This closeness and community of interest is a universal and timeless need of human beings. [In the everyday], a man is given no more satisfying goal than food, a roof, and paid-up life insurance for his widow. Youth rebels against such a program that is not worthy of the capacities given to one made in the image of God.
So great is the need for community of effort that it overcomes even the general fear of death. Men have always been seduced to war by the offer of an opportunity to die for something. We peace propagandists have cried out that soldiers are not sent out to die but to kill. In "total" war [on the farm and factory fronts, we are not given an opportunity to live for a common ideal but only to produce and produce so that the fighting few may continue to kill for the common ideal. Rather than "Keep them killing," the battlefield slogans say "Keep them flying," a smoke screen of words so that our hearts do not betray us.
[Pacifists and "a Return to the Soil"]—The pacifist sees war as a total evil, and one can only take part in what one does not know how to avoid. Those pacifists who are drafted are not free to choose their own line of effort. They are not permitted to prove their devotion or show their mettle or risk their lives. The pacifist may be tried by tedium, by nothingness in a time of urgency, by the ordeal of the side track. We pacifists have let slip a 20-year reprieve during which we might have built our vision into the foundations of society.
Instead, we have gone on educating our young for the isolation of personal success rather than the deep community of participation in the building of a world which cannot break out into war, a world based on peaceable relations at the heart of life. The maze of modern social organization offers almost no exit [from seeking personal success]. Among pacifist young people there is a wave of longing to try a "return to the soil." [There is even] a strong non-pacifist movement toward the land to press from it the basic munition of food. We seek to exploit the Earth for the purposes of total war. We are blocked by her exhaustion from our earlier attacks on her.
[In examining the path of "returning" to the land, some have] stipulated a partnership of God, human, beast, plant, & soil. Ignore any one of these & you may have production, but it will be temporary & destructive. Farming can be called a way of life; it is more than a business, profession, or skill; it includes peaceableness & com-munity. I will try to set forth some of its opportunities & satisfactions, & some of its requirements & disciplines.
[The Wholeness of the Farmer's Life]—The farmer is in cooperation with Nature, [especially animals], in supplying a common requirement of men & animals: food. Among people of the soil, the way is open for simple associations for mutual aid not often available for city dwellers. A city dweller is practically several different [barely inter-connected] people: producer; consumer; socializer; religious; family-person. Among all these compartments, the integration of one's personality becomes a major psychological problem; integration with a group becomes a major physical problem. [The question of how one will find] completeness can receive no answer.
The farmer's life can be a solid whole. [One's labor and one's physical needs, one's need of help and opportunities to help others are closely inter-connected]. Meditation need not be left behind when the farmer goes to work. Feet in the soil and head toward the sky, one is still in position for worship. One eats reverently the fruit of one's own cooperation with the forces of productiveness. One does not need [a separate time for] recreation; one is recreated moment by moment in one's work. The description of village festivals, marriages, and processions awakens an unappeased hunger within city-dwellers. Having none of their own, they fall back upon those which grew out of a healthier, more unified culture.
[Farming meets Mass-Production]—When I say that the farmer's life is a solid whole, and part of a vast cooperation, I am not speaking of farm life as we have it in most parts of the country now. With no abiding philosophy of the land to guide us, we went helter-skelter into a program of sheer enterprise that has obscured the intrinsic quality of farm life; that quality is almost everywhere lost. A long tale of slavery, neglect of soil, absentee ownership, insecurity of tenure, single-cropping, disregarding the [soil/ plant/ human/ animal inter-relationship]. And always, there is the perpetual draining off to the cities of [human resources] and natural wealth, which in some form or other must be returned to the land to avoid sterilizing the land. The national standard of converting wealth into cars, clothes and luxuries [is a threat to that return].
We have made of farm life a drudgery & disgrace, from which young people have for generations mainly studied to escape; civilization declines as farm life is [depleted &] debased. Young & vigorous people [need encouragement and] improved farm life to make of life on the land an example of true husbandry, true co-operation between God & humans, & a true pattern for peace. I have listened to accounts of farm life from first-generation city-dwellers from the great fertile areas of the Middle West. Their parents would achieve a measure of comfort in one place only to gather up their earnings and move on, [over and over again]. For some of these the farm is a nightmare memory and the worst thing they can think of for their children is a return to the land.
I have myself seen a good deal of farm life in areas where for generations there have been no scope for ambition. The desire to own farms has been almost quenched by the hand-to-mouth existence of tenant-farming or share-cropping. Land deteriorates, homes decay, home life grows impoverished. Some of the vigorous families escape to the mills & mines. The least competent drift into little towns & become day- or migrant-laborers. In industrial towns [the once-farmers are introduced to] lipstick, store clothes & installment-bought cars, but the impoverishment of life itself goes along with them & increases. There is also the slightly less depressing picture of the mechanized, commercial farm. They have little of the unique qualities of farm life. They are often just hard-pressed business undertakings with employer, employees, machines, animals, & soil existing only as cogs in a machine which produces commodities for sale; land & neighborhood are often ignored & impoverished.
[Picture of an Ideal Farm]—There are farm life experiences that do not fit any of the descriptions I have given. Some of us feel that with the end of the present war the moment may be ripe for a new philosophy of life on the land. We would like to be ready with some little pattern communities in which the full partnership of God, human, soil plant, and animal have been set as a conscious goal. We picture a group of family-sized farms, held in some form of secure tenure based on right use. Cooperation among them might begin with forest and pastures held and used in common, [as well as resources pooled for buying and selling. We should leave the forms of group activity to grow out of group needs and according to them. Nothing satisfactory can be arranged on preconceived lines here. Something is wanted that does not advance one group at the expense of another.
Within each family-sized farmstead and from early childhood, each family member shares in the work. As they grow older, they will have work suited to their interests and capacities. They will learn the discipline and joy of work, even the distasteful and very difficult, that was well-done. Even a very small person may work quite alone and still know themselves as part of a harmonious whole. A workshop will be part of the establishment, and articles of daily use will be made in it as family members have time and inclination.
On the housewife's side, it is necessary to [set priorities] suited to each family's need and each farm's situation and growing area. Weaving and spinning should come last or not at all, except when members of the family find a creative zest in weaving itself. Hand looms can't produce all the plain, durable, necessary clothes without eating into all other activities and becoming overwhelming. [Since looms] are big, noisy, and untidy, they should be something shared by the community at large. The loom is an example of needing careful examination of the validity of our preconceptions. [Practical hand-looming comes after]: gardening; canning; ground flour; baked bread; quilt-making; mending and making clothes; knitting; supply of spun material for loom.
[Leisure in a Life of Simplicity]—Where does leisure come into a rural or other style of life? Without strict simplicity standards, the answer is not at all. Unhappiness & overwork aren't caused by the little we have but by the much we want. [Looked at this way], a poor southern share cropper is [a better] candidate for a fresh start [than] the ambitious, ever-accumulating, more prosperous farmer. If a culture is to develop in farm groups, there must be leisure. [Throughout history], leisure for a culture of sorts was furnished by slaves or "lower class" citizens. [How widely available must cultural opportunities be before a culture is healthy & whole?] On the ideal farm, it can be found in the reduction of wants to actual needs, in collaborating rather than competing with neighbors, & [establishing a culture based] on values & standards relevant to their own way of life. If a farmer is to know the satisfaction of work well in hand and to enjoy fruitful leisure, one must accept the discipline of the seasons, the weather, daylight and dark, rain and sunshine.
The first thing to say about so-called labor-saving devices is that we need to become fully critical of them. Some multiply rather than save labor by increasing the conception of need. Refrigeration on a farm does not simplify the feeding of a family; it elaborates the food. Few of us realize how very simple diet can be and still furnish every single need. Widely-varied food is not a need and after a while it is not even a pleasure. It is a labor-producing one which creates the need for devices, kitchen tools, complicated utensils, [specialized implements] to beat, cook, chill, serve, and eat food. The question of heavy, powered farm machinery is more complicated. If there is force in asking whether the mule is working for the man or the man for the mule, there is more force in asking when a tractor has replaced the mule.
[Education in Farm Communities]—What shall education be in an ideal farming community? There is no need for much "progressive" education, which seeks to relate children to life. These children of farms will be already related to life. A rural life education must offer means for exit from that life for those who don't find it to be the "good life." Whatever basic training opens the way to true specialization which grows from innate gifts, that training every child should have no matter where one is born. Education is spiritlessly falling in step with an augmenting, not evolving society. The smallest schoolboy has already deduced that work serving primary common needs is menial & unworthy of aspiration. Secondary work which serves the top-heavy complexities of our society is honorable. Training of the head has been given a place of honor more than hand & heart's training.
Husbandry of the earth's resources has been degraded, not by the men of the soil so much as by the educators. Modern schools which replaced one-room rural schools certainly facilitated the escape of young people from the farms, but the education in these schools left farm life increasingly without a philosophy. 4-H clubs [have worked hard] in this default of the schools, but they are handicapped by emphasizing commercial success and the trappings of modernity in farming. No philosophy of farm life seems to emerge from their program.
It may be that education will have to move back into farm communities & be individualized for local needs. All that is taught will be taught so as to establish in the child's mind one's true relation to one's farm home, the larger community at hand & to the world out of sight. Education should be planned to help them find the way to the unique place which waits for the participation of every man & woman. It may be that rural communities such as we want can't grow until schools suited to them have been evolved. It will be a slow process of development as growth occurs & further growth as development proceeds. In the long look ahead, perhaps school & church in any farm neighborhood or other close-knit community should be the pivots around which common life revolves.
[Tenant Farmer and Sharecropper Community]—I find my hope is in the impoverished farm populations who are on poor farms because that is where they were born. They are unspoiled by the favoritism of a machine age and are suited for starting from the bare soil where the start will have to be made. They will not likely produce a philosophy or program of renewed rural life on their own. It is my conviction that some people with a vision of husbandry as a profoundly satisfactory example of the "good life" should become active farmers, so as to be kept out of mischief. If one is not kept busy one will try to create the [whole] crop, [rather than planting and watering the seeds of ideas one has come with, and waiting while they grow].
A healthy farm community can be built only upon healthy soil. It is made & kept healthy only by intimate work with it based on understanding, a reverence for its possibilities, needs, its role as the base of life for all generations. Realizing the obstacles confronting farmers requires becoming one. [The people with a husbandry vision who are ready to participate] can provide a liaison between agricultural scientists and the struggling farmer. [How can farmers and the prophets of farm life be supported while they earn at least part of their living from the soil, reclaim it, and slowly sketch in new designs for farm living]? They will need land tenure and operating capital between seedtime and harvest. Wealth has been taken from the soil, converted into money and machines, and the soil exhausted. No more logical use can be made of wealth than to return it to the soil through subsidies for right farming practices. The farmer of today is only to blame for further harm one does to already-damaged soil, and not even that if one's choices are starving one's soil or one's children.
[Religion of the Soil, Young People & Poverty]—The religion of the soil is having a revival today among educated and privileged people, who are tired of the dead weight of the accumulated stuff used as the measure of civilization. Liberal-minded older people believe in the better distribution of more and more stuff. Many young people look to drop this load and go back to simpler and more direct ways of living. Some of them haven't faced what it means to become dirt farmers. They should first serve strenuous apprenticeships in heart-breaking, existing conditions of narrowness, ignorance, erosion, prejudice, & meanness. And they will have to [contend with] the seduction of town-made values, which stands square across the path of a developing culture of farm life.
Young people on a mission as farmers will have to accept poverty, [as they understand it]. To their new neighbors it isn't poverty. To them poverty would mean hunger & nakedness, which many of them have known. For college-bred Americans being without plumbing, evenly-heated houses, cars or decent cars, vacations, washing machines, vacuums, fashionable clothes, insurance, savings, this is poverty. Harder than getting used to poverty's physical conditions is getting used to social isolation. Those around you don't even speak your language though they use the same words. And you aren't there to reform or to teach, but to participate. You must learn to let moments of dear delight in the meeting of minds compensate for hours of sterile separateness.
How have I made the most of myself; how have I done justice to my own possibilities; how have I fully used the capacities given me? Only as you can find or develop new values which you know outweigh the old values can you find peace and contentment. You must often go on working under a sense of uselessness. The conventions as to success are so ingrained sometimes, that you will feel you have been irresponsible toward your beloved partner or your children. The life that sets out to participate fully with abandoned or neglected groups in the shaping of freshly conceived patterns of success is a life for which the first requirement is to shift our values, truly and deeply, to new levels. [We shall require long "novitiates" or apprenticeships] before we commit ourselves to whole-hearted participation with others and with God in building the very earth on which a new culture may rise. The way is open for those with conviction, endurance, and patience, underlying like rock their vision.
90. Insured by Hope (by Mildred Binns Young); 1956
About the Author—Mildred Binns Young was born in Ohio and attended Friends schools and Western Reserve University. She lived for some years at Westtown School, where Wilmer Young was Dean of Boys. The Youngs then lived in the South, working under American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) for 19 years; 4 pamphlets came out of the experience. From 1955-1960 they were in residence at Pendle Hill.
[Quotes from William James’ Varieties of Religious Experiences]: “I have often thought that in the old monkish poverty-worship, in spite of pedantry ... there might be something like that moral equivalent of war which we are seeking. . . English-speaking peoples have grown literally afraid to be poor . . . We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant . . . It is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.”
First as to my title: It struck me that the eternal succession of the seasons does in some real sense insure the person who works with soil & growing things . . . we can all be insured the same way. The knowledge [that] “we are all one body in Christ” makes us whole. I myself have come by slow, faltering, and partial steps to understand the relation of voluntary poverty to religious life, worship and commitment, wholeness and security.
It is now 20 years since we left Westtown School . . . and went south to work with sharecroppers. It may seem hard to see any logic in the claim that [recognition of the oneness of all human life] prescribes poverty. We started from no specific, religious convictions. We worked for a summer in Kentucky coal-mining villages . . . & the next summer we worked with unemployed men in North Philadelphia . . . who sought to help themselves.
The first American work camp was held in 1934. As the years have gone by, the work camp in its various forms has developed into an unparalleled instrument for educating young people in social problems. We came to believe that poverty and physical labor are a necessary discipline [for the leaders of revolutions].
After we had been [at the Delta Cooperative Farm in Mississippi for] 3 years, the American Friends Service Committee sponsored us in a small project with white and Negro tenant farmers in western South Carolina. We bought some large tracts of land and gradually sold it again in family-sized farms to tenants who had never had any secure tenure of the land they worked. We felt more careful for the self-respect of our neighbors than even for their diet. We wanted to cooperate and collaborate with our neighbors in making conditions better . . . and to not impose even improvements on them. The things we wanted most for them . . . were not what they wanted.
While they [enjoyed prosperity] . . . we continued to live in a rather bare way. [We felt that] we must try to show them how to be content with their new state without wanting to raise ever further. For us, Poverty . . . means the strict limitation of goods that are for personal use . . . the opposite of the reckless abuse, misuse [and disrespect] of property. Even children can benefit from living in graceful, orderly, [and simple] surroundings.
For a long time I have preferred the word “poverty” to “simplicity” because I felt it was less ambiguous. “Simplicity” is an advertiser’s as much as an idealist’s word. But let us not confuse “poverty” with “destitution”; it is not possible to idealize “destitution.” For most human beings, destitution is ruinous to the spirit as well as the body. “Poverty” is better and more truly defined without adjectives. Poverty may be voluntary with one who . . . believes that it could never be right for him to have plenty while there are destitute people. Poverty can be taken up; true simplicity comes by the grace of God . . . only babes and great souls can be truly simple. We may equate simplicity in this sense with the term “poor in spirit.”
Poverty of material possessions ... isn't the same as “poverty in spirit,” this simplicity, purity of heart. Multitudes spend their lives in poverty, or with moderate possessions, without ever receiving the gift of simplicity. Paul Tillich has lately suggested that our high rate of mental illness is partly due to people’s need to escape from the pressure of responsibility for themselves, the pressure to succeed in the race for status & security.
There is another escape [from competition] . . . the escape into commitment to the whole of humanity. We should know . . . that “the level above which a man’s goods become superfluous . . . goes up and down according to the needs of the poor.” As the standard of living goes up, the fear of insecurity remains. People . . . wear out their lives in the struggle to feel secure. The full sharing of goods, as in the early Christian community . . . is now hardly seen except among such poor people [still unaffected] by modern enlightened social theory. The attempt to make secure whatever standard one has attained . . . inevitably cuts one off from one’s fellows.
Surely there can be no question that much of the dangerous strain between our country and other countries comes from our rich standard, which we are not willing to share, except piecemeal. . . out of our surplus. If Americans could . . . do with less . . . in order that the poorer nations might have necessities, we might become the leader of a peaceful world. What we can do personally is small but it is definite, and to do it can release us out of frustration . . . and into hope.
In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoievski says: True security is to be found in social solidarity than in isolated individual effort . . . A man must set an example, and so draw men’s soul out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea not die.” There is much help in going as far as we can with our particular gifts in our particular circumstances.
John Woolman had a dream: “I was mixed in with [the mass of humanity] & [told] henceforth that I might not consider myself ... a separate being. I heard a soft melodious voice: ‘John Woolman is dead.’ I perceived ... that the language ... meant no more than the death of my own will.” He had come to that point by being 1st of all obedient to calls for very small sacrifices & duties, & then to ... greater ones. We can stand ever in sight of Jesus' [example] [who] took upon himself hope's whole burden; & laid on us … hope for humanity's burden.
About the Author—Dr. Harold D. Weaver is Associate at Harvard's Hutchin Center for African & African-American Research & Davis Center for Russian & Eurasian Studies. Hal has been a lifelong cultural ambassador, breaking barriers & building bridges. Hal is part of the Black Quaker Project; he co-edited with Paul Kriese & Stephen Angell, Black Fire: African-American Quakers on Spirituality & Human Rights (2011). Hall has served in governance roles in 6 Quaker Organizations, including their UN Office, and Pendle Hill.
Introduction—I am grateful for the chance to share my thoughts about achieving better society, drawing on Truth, Peace, Equality, Community, & Justice Testimonies. Ira Reid asked: How can I acceptably say what weighs heavily on my mind & heart? I have deep concerns that will impact our Society & broader society in coming years. I will raise more questions than I answer. I'm impatient with untruths from misinformation or deliberate disinformation, in media, schools, & top elected officials. COVID-19 has uncovered hard realities many of us were reluctant to admit existed, let alone confront. There are structural & institutional forces we have ignored that we can ignore no longer. I will educate Friends on Truth, our historical realities as slave-owners & slavery supporters & its continued impact. I will clarify ambiguities & redefine words in continuing revelation.
I hope for deeper, more accurate understanding of all social interactions' roots, solutions to problems, as we begin with truth. I hope we play a more committed, important role in seeking justice, not expect others to do it for us. My ancestors are North America's Indigenous inhabitants, chattel slaves kidnapped from Africa, slave masters from Europe. My ancestral oppressors & oppressed lived under the same ideals of liberty & equality. Quaker faith was introduced to me in 11th grade at Westtown School in 1950 and continued at Haverford. My self-fulfillment expanded in unimagined ways; I became a conscientious objector. I commit my Self to acting on Truth, Peace, Equality, Community, & Justice Testimonies. I will ask Friends to acknowledge the impact of institutional and systemic racism; to consider a comprehensive retrospective justice program to help remove the historical inequities, inhumanity, & oppressive legacy of chattel slavery. For decades I have been involved in correcting misinformation and disinformation among Friends & in the outside world.
Bayard Rustin's name was removed as co-author to Speak Truth to Power; McCarthyism, racism, homophobia were the forces at work. I worked on the AFSC board to return his name to its rightful place as co-author. Paul Robeson was removed from Rutgers University & US history as a renowned athlete, singer, actor, human rights activist, mainly because of the Red Scare of McCarthyism. I re-introduced Robeson to the world & initiated an honorary doctorate for him before he died. Americans were told African students were mistreated in Moscow; the opposite was true. Glorification of British colonialism was disinformation, especially in the education field. Neglect of education forced many Africans to go to USSR for education & training. I am trying to educate Friends & others on how justice might be achieved in the 21st century & how retrospective justice might be done. Our world is built upon systemic injustice & intentionally divided by race.
Defining Race, Racism, & Institutional Racism—What does "race" and "racism" mean? What should they mean? Race [allowed for sweeping disinformation] by perception of a "inferior caste" that "required" domination, "civilizing," by a self-perceived "superior" caste. Racism breaks down into individual & institutional racism; Power + Prejudice = Racism. Institutionally, it isn't just prejudice or an act of discrimination. It is the power to act on one's negative feelings about people of different skin colors, ethicities, races, castes. Institutional racism is racism embedded in the laws and procedures of an institution. Through it the power of white supremacy becomes legitimate and normalized, by keeping "them" in their place.
Pope Alexander VI justified & formalized taking of "discovered land" from Non-Christian indigenous people & killing them if they refused to convert. US Supreme treated that act as law in Johnson v. M'Intosh, giving "European nations absolute right to New World land." The poll instituted in some states disenfranchised many African Americans & poor whites from exercising the right to vote. This and many other discriminatory laws allowed economic, political, sexual, & social exploitation & abuse to run rampant. Systemic discrimination or institutional racism is not necessarily a conscious act or intentional. It still benefits one caste over another.
Race: Chattel Slavery & Quakers in the US—The classification designed to give privilege & power to 1 caste over others is painful for perpetrator & victim alike, with a legacy of hatred, prejudice, & white supremacy. It began with slave trade in the 15th century & continues still today. Americans are obsessed with race. For African Americans, the single most influential event related to race has been the tragedy of chattel slavery. They've been stigmatized by their: "Dark Continent" origins; skin color; centuries in slavery. The European part in slavery stretched 3,500 miles on the Western African coast & 500-1,000 miles inland. An estimated 12 million Africans were taken; about 10.5 million survived voyage.
Chattel slavery was characterized by domination, oppression, & a dehumanization process, emphasized by Florida Governor Richard Keith Call in a letter to the North: "Here was animal in man form ... without spirit or pride of character ... A wild barbarian, tamed & civilized by slavery's discipline. Ryan Jordan wrote on Quaker reaction to slavery, synthesizing & analyzing dilemmas faced by Quakers & others who weren't sure how far or fast to go in advocating abolition. Some actively advocated for abolition, including Captain Paul Cuffe, the African-Indigenous American Quaker shipowner. Many individual Friends & meetings tried to halt efforts of abolitionists, some regarding it as a "contaminating influence," & denouncing anti-slavery men. Abolitionist William Bassett was disowned by New England YM in 1840
New York Times groundbreaking 1619 Project reveals how US economic-political-cultural-social system has been a slave economy dependent on African labor. Abolition of slavery did not halt white-supremacist ideo-logy that "black people belonged to an inferior, subhuman race. The modern industrialized society grew through continued legal exploitation, dehumanization, systemic & direct violence, which persists in the 21st century.
Legacy of Slavery in the US: Structural Violence—I am concerned by tendencies to look at symptoms & not causes; we never gain full understanding of violence's scope. Quakers assume: If only they had accurate knowledge, they would be respectful & sympathetic of different people, cultures, & societies. We must define structural violence & then determine how to confront it as it so cleverly evades us. Professor Johan Galtung distinguishes among several types of violence, stating that "violence is present when human beings are being influenced [such that what they achieve] is below their potential realizations. Structural violence refers to political & economic inequalities built into social structures ... The lower end of the socio-economic scale are materially and psychologically deprived of fulfillment. We are conditioned not to see it, or to feel we cannot change it."
Mahatma Gandhi said poverty was the worst form of violence. W.E.B. DuBois urges 12 million Negroes to not be ashamed of being grandchildren of slaves. Dishonor lies in being a slave owner. "Truth ever is, untruth never was." Gandhi's teachings were later used by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. & Bayard Rustin. Minister Malcolm made overtures to Dr. King's family to collaborate before Malcolm was assassinated. Bill Sutherland cites "interconnected roots of violence," and racism, sexism, capitalism, heterosexism, ageism as "structural & institutional roots of conflict. Nonviolent protest includes "strikes, boycotts, fasts, mass demonstrations.
Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara argues that a society based on systemic violence is not truly peaceful. "Justice is the condition for peace, the path, way. Only through justice can true & lasting peace be achieved. Palestinian & Quaker activist Jean Zaru cites multiple types of structural violence to which we here add 2. [Pamphlet's author lists an average of more than 5 practices under each type]: Direct Violence; Economic Structural Violence; Political Structural Violence; Cultural Structural Violence; Religious Structural Violence; Environmental Structural Violence; Health Structural Violence; Educational Structural Violence. Structural Violence is widereaching; the difficulty is its perceived complexity. Resistance challenges, speaks truth to power, & is refusal to be neglected & disregarded. We must challenge head-on poverty, sexism, racism, etc. Direct violence is a symptom of systemic violence. We must be activists, and we must be anti-violent.
A Proposed Plan of Action: Education & Retrospective Justice—How can we individually & collectively rectify slavery's legacy & its impact on descendants of enslaved & enslaver? My 3-part plan is: education or re-education on slavery & its legacy; program for retrospective justice; revitalized justice testimony.
How do we use Quaker space as alternative information centers to counteract "politics of erasure," & disinformation? The BlackQuaker Project celebrates lives and contributions of Quakers of Color Worldwide. University of MA Amherst has Quakers of Color International Archive. There is a list of resources at www.theblackquakerproject.org/resources.
Sir Hilary Beckles said: "[It] is not about retribution & anger; it is about atonement & building bridges across lines of moral justice. Retrospective Justice is attempts to administer justice decades or centuries after the commission of severe injustice or injustices, "crimes against humanity." It is a less emotional, positive term. It's not about the money. Damages have qualitative, psychological, sociological, cultural meaning. 18th century Rhode Island Friends said: "Surely perpetrators should atone for the offense by offering some kind of amends to their victim." There has never been a unified approach from the Society of Friends toward the legacy of slavery.
I am proposing the following steps to individuals, meetings and organizations inside & outside of Friends: Formal acknowledgement of offense; commitment to truth-telling; making amends. These are based on the Slavery & Justice report, written by the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery & Justice in 2006. The committee established the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity, "directed at particular groups of people, who were thoroughly degraded & dehumanized; its effects have lasted until the current day through social stigma and formal institutions. Retributive justice is no longer possible. Brown held that: "Some crimes are so atrocious that the damage they do extends beyond victims & perpetrators to encompass entire societies.
The Society needs to acknowledge that Quakers have been slave owners and supporter of the transatlantic slave trade. Some Quakers are now researching their families' involvement in the trade and how their families profit from that in the 21st century. The truth needs telling, in all its complexity. A clear historical record needs to be created and inscribed into the collective memory of relevant institutions or nations. How can Quakers provide retrospective justice for our involvement in this crime against humanity? There needs to be an annual day of remembrance. A day of international acknowledgement already exists on March 25. We are obligated to acknowledge this reality as a majority atrocity in Quaker US & world history.
Making amends would entail a commitment to a massive development effort, similar to the US government's post-war Marshall Plan, and would aim at reconciliation & healing. Similar failed efforts were made during post-Emancipation years. [Notable successful steps in this direction include] the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C. and Sir Hilary Beckles' efforts as chairman of an effort at reparations for the Caribbean. £20 million has been set aside. Actually, very little has been done to compensate for years of unremunerated toil, or to bridge the racial chasm.
Robust Active Justice Testimony—In 2008, my Black Quaker Project formed an Ad Hoc Working Group for Justice Testimony. We identified that "justice has a 2-fold meaning: spiritual (righteousness, observing divine law; temporal: fair-dealing, integrity, seeking to live in nonviolence, compassion redemption & love. Queries: How might a Justice testimony help Friends in spiritual & temporal practices? How does our meeting respond to the need for justice? How does not seeking justice affect our spiritual lives? If compassion is love in action, what is justice in action? How does oppression dehumanize & dim the Light in all? How are you open to new light, [in this case, the light from a fuller sense of justice]?
I have asked Friends to look at societal problems through new lenses: to confront systemic violence; to recognize institutional & systemic racism; to consider a comprehensive retrospective justice program to remove inequities & inhumanity of slavery and its long-standing after-effects; address the continuing injustice reinforced by misinformation & disinformation in media, education & political discourse. I hope taking action becomes widespread within & beyond Quakers [to include all faithful people].
415. Living our Testimony on Equality: A White Friend’s Experience (by Patience A. Schenck; 2011)
About the Author—Patience A. Schenk has made her spiritual home at Annapolis (MD) Friends Meeting since 1966. After retiring from paid work, she experienced a call to focus on anti-racism work. In 2002 she founded the Baltimore YM Working Group on Racism, and clerked it for 5 years. She serves on the Annapolis Human Relations Commission. She feels much enriched by the enlarged perspective she has gained by examining her white identity and learning how people of other identities see the world.
Introduction/ Why are we Still Talking About Race?—There is that of God in everyone, which makes us all worthy of infinite respect. There is [always] the potential for the infinite love of God to manifest itself. I feel greatly enriched by the particular ways I have learned to see beyond the limitations of the dominant American culture. I have a vision of a Religious Society of Friends in which we truly welcome to our communities anyone [of any color] who yearns to find God in silence.
[While we have an African American president], from 2000 to 2010, the number of hate groups in the US grew from 602 to 1002. I run into middle-aged African Americans who were once my students; they are still living in public housing. Americans with European-sounding names are 50% more likely to be called for a job interview than those with African-American-sounding names.
Racism has a number of aspects: personal prejudice; institutional racism; cultural racism. As individuals we have very little control over institutional & cultural racism, but we benefit by it. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “We will have to repent … not merely for the hateful words & actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” Today’s prejudice & discrimination are usually manifested in much more subtle ways. How do we live our testimony on equality? An important piece that is often left unexamined is the experience of being white in a racist society; whites must have an awareness of their own racial experience. I have learned a lot over the years. I have also fallen short of expectations. I want understand what is happening so I can do better. Reflecting on experience will help you gain awareness and give you an opportunity to re-evaluate experiences. It is with God’s help that we glimpse the complexities of race, face our discomfort, and dare to challenge injustice.
Being White—A relative in describing the people of a trip to New Mexico said: “They were about 1/3 Mexicans, 1/3 Indians, & 1/3—um, you know, regular people.” Whites see themselves as “regular people.” Others are exotic or interesting, but different, “diverse.” White people haven’t had to be bicultural; they don’t have an opportunity to take a good look at what it means to be white. Thinking we are the norm is part of white culture. Peggy McIntosh’s list of “white privileges” includes: easy to be with my own race; moving to an affordable, desirable area; neighbors will be neutral or pleasant; shopping alone without being followed or harassed; being credited with creating our nation; my skin color doesn’t hurt the appearance of financial reliability; my unattractive habits won’t be attributed to the habits of my race. “White privilege” is having these benefits & taking them for granted.
According to DNA studies, modern humans have no separate classifiable subspecies (races). Genes for all traits, desirable and undesirable, can be found across all races. To pretend to ignore someone’s race is to not see that person. Color blindness isn't helpful. White Quakers have much to be proud of in the area of the abolition of slavery (See “Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship” by Vanessa Julye and Donna McDaniel). Friends wore cultural blinders, were caught up in the dominant culture, & were guided by their own social and economic interests. It took nearly a century for them to end slavery. Friends did not encourage or even invite African Americans to attend meeting for worship and sometimes denied membership. Most Friends schools did not integrate any earlier in the mid-20th century than any other private school. Some Friends worked to end enslavement and discrimination, some dragged their feet. [We need to learn from our shortcomings] and not idealize the past.
Racial Messages in Early Life—I grew up in a small almost all-white town on the Mississippi River in IL prior to the civil rights period. My parents made lunch for an African American kindergarten classmate when the local restaurant refused to serve her. My grandparents invited an African American college professor to dinner. I could see that people’s skin color, unlike their hair color, was a loaded subject, but no explanations were forthcoming. Black people were equal to us, but not part of our social network.
We moved to the Chicago suburbs & I had classmates of color. My higher-level classes in high school were almost all white; I don’t remember reflecting on that. Only white kids attended a Saturday night recreation center. I assumed that the black students preferred to have their own place. In college, my African American friend couldn’t join us in most restaurants or any movie theaters, & was denied a place in the choir at the local Catholic church. I invited my friend to visit me, but had second thoughts about seeing a black man I met at summer camp.
I passively absorbed varied and mixed messages about race. Discrimination was wrong, but I should not make white people feel uncomfortable. I have learned a lot by examining these messages, spoken and unspoken. [Journaling Queries]: What did people say at the dinner table about a different race and how did others respond? When friends of another race were invited to dinner, what was that like? How was your family hurt or benefited by race? Did someone not get into a 1st choice college or job “because of affirmative action? We are not responsible for the messages we were given through our community and culture. We are responsible for bringing them to consciousness and making choices conforming to Quaker belief.
Making Sense of Race as an Adult—I found myself in a classroom with 46 black, mostly over-aged 6th graders. The average reading level was well below grade level. That year I learned that it isn't just about good will. There were dynamics in race relations that I didn't understand. [Many had roots in the South], & had broken out of South Chicago to live in west Chicago. Their parents faced massive job discrimination. I had no sense of these conditions when I taught these children; that came 50 years later. I learned a lot and had a few significant breakthroughs. I wrote my master’s thesis on black and white children’s perceptions of black and white teachers.
I still didn’t understand institutional racism. I wanted to hire a cleaning woman; they normally worked for $8/ day. I couldn’t explain to my daughter why I hired a college student for that wage, instead of paying the African American woman more. In the 1990s I had to face how superficial my relationships were with people of color. I found myself the only white at meetings in a black church basement. Over time I got to know people, & gained a comfort level that I [still] cherish. It has been a joy to work with others who feel the same passion I feel.
The Unconscious Mind—Almost everyone underestimates the influence the unconscious mind has on his or her behavior. A person can be non-prejudiced at a conscious level, but at an unconscious level have a racist view point such as that which still pervades American culture. I absorbed my parents’ attitudes, both conscious & unconscious. In a test, good & bad words were paired with black & white faces. Those with a white preference respond faster when white faces & good words are on the same side of the screen. When black faces & good words are paired, the person tends to get confused & slow down. This explains my initial discomfort in that church basement. The saddest thing is that many people of color also show an unconscious preference for white faces.
Why are white perceptions and black perceptions of interracial interactions so different? The distinction between unconscious and conscious assumptions helps explain the differences between white perceptions and black perceptions of interracial interactions. Also, when we look back at interactions with someone different from ourselves, we remember our part based on our words and thoughts (i.e. conscious values about race). The other person remembers the interaction based on body language & eye contact, evidence of discomfort (i.e. unconscious attitudes). By being aware of our discomfort, we can make a conscious effort to relax & reach for the complete individuality of the visitor. From infancy, the baby learns to make fine distinctions between faces within the ethnic group they are raised in. Unfamiliar ethnic groups are dealt with by the conscious brain which takes a second longer. I have to work at distinguishing faces of people of color, & I do not always do a good job.
Roadblocks to Living Our Testimony of Equality—A major roadblock is that people often do not like to talk about race. People of color have come to expect that white people may not take them seriously. Talk of race among whites brings up feelings of defensiveness. When anonymous questions about race were asked for, almost 20% of them asked why we were still talking about race.
I wrote a chapter on race; when I read it, [I got a long, awkward silence] & then the comment: “I wouldn’t read that; it’s so preachy.” The one African American student said it wasn’t preachy. “They just couldn’t handle it.” After that I switched from writing to leading workshops. It was years before I tried writing about race again. Political correctness is an unfortunate concept, placing the emphasis on words instead of actions, on appearance rather than significance; it masks real discrimination. [Journaling Queries]: When did you feel afraid to speak up about a racial situation? When did you speak up & later regret it? What was that like? What did you learn?
Another roadblock is the fact that when white people talk race with people of color, we need to differentiate between good intentions & our words’ impact; impact is what affects the hearer. The belief that people who haven’t met their goals haven’t tried hard enough needs to be confronted. Whites realizing they got where they are partly from racial advantages requires a lot of humility. [Compared to a black family], a white] family’s members are more likely to get a better job, they are less likely to be insulted, they have more options in housing, & so on.
The term “white privilege” implies that white people live privileged lives. Those who are in mediocre jobs can’t see how they are privileged. Being told there are benefits to being white is easier to hear. The resistance to affirmative action is evidence of how little we see the advantages we have. Our own stereotypes can continue to interfere with our ability to live the testimony of equality. I have embarrassed myself with my stereotyped expectations. Communication can be hard because of others’ stereotypes as well. Many monthly meetings said they would have to have music to attract black people. I would startle them by saying white people want music too.
Quaker Resources—Friends have often felt led in ways that ran counter to prevailing culture; we learned to cope with discomfort & support one another in our leadings. In our own time we have had to negotiate between commitment to peace & the belief in American culture that supporting military operations is patriotism. We have had to learn to demand integrity in the face of [opposing views], which requires self-honesty, mutual support, & prayer. Community cares about us & holds us accountable. Simplicity teaches us to put God before material gain & love one another. Experience of equality in business meetings is experiencing letting go of power & seeking God’s will together. This may help white people imagine giving up power or privilege we enjoy because of race.
What Individuals Can Do—I am not an environmental activist, but I do have a responsibility to recycle, to not waste energy and natural resources, to show political concern for the environment. I have [the basic] responsibility to refrain from laughing at racist jokes, to practice fair hiring practices and equity in general.
As a white Friend you can: read authors of color, both fiction & nonfiction; reflect on your racial history [at a progressively deeper level]; get to know people of a different race; trust that people of color know their own experience; give up defensiveness & be open to different perceptions of [racially-charged] events; notice your surroundings [from a racial perspective]; notice your initial reactions to people of color; be aware of media’s racial stereotypes; speak up, don't let insensitive comments pass; expect to make mistakes; be gentle with yourself and others; remember this is God’s work, for we are led to love one another; pray for the strength to persist.
What Meetings Can Do—Look for natural links to a racially diverse community [or a community of color], rather than propose something out of the blue to arbitrarily create diversity; 1st be a community of people learning about race & racism & examining our own racial experience; appropriate outreach opportunities will follow; workshops on diversity; a Deconstructing Racism Group to share dilemmas we may experienced regarding race, or unexpected offense taken of something we said; make use of affirmative action in hiring; include “non-white” newspapers in promoting speakers or programs; utilize yearly meeting resources for workshops dealing with race; discerning what is essential to our form of Quakerism & what is a matter of style. May we have enough courage, imagination, persistence, & love to learn to truly live our testimony on equality & to create the beloved com-munity in our meetings.
Queries: How are institutional racism and cultural racism different from individual prejudice? What are the benefits of being white? Why is it a “deeply spiritual experience” to take racism seriously? What messages of racism did you absorb as you were growing up? What can white Quakers do to welcome visitors of color into Friends meetings? Have you sought to counter racist comments or actions? What resources do Friends have for living our testimony on equality?
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Friends and Slavery—Human brotherhood attracts us to the black people’s plight. White racist attitudes and institutions have obscured our vision, repelled us from black people, and allowed us to turn our backs on injustice. We are proud of the fact that Quakers ended slavery within Friends Society nearly 100 years before the Civil War. What of the more than 100 years [of slavery] prior to that?
Thomas Drake writes: “In Barbados … George Fox found many slave-holders among Barbados Friends in 1671. Lewis Morris bequeathed some of his to leading Quakers … Both William Penn & John Bowne of Flushing [had slaves of their own]… Most Friends accepted slavery as they found it, without much qualm or question.” Nor was every Quaker slave-owner free of cruelty. We can't escape responsibility for over a century of involvement in this inhumanity to man, including a mother cruelly & violently separated from her children.
After Friends Freed Their Slaves—American Quakers confined their fellowship with red men and black men mostly to benevolences … Friends only reluctantly opened their Society to colored members. John Woolman struggled with his own Mount Holly Meeting over their long refusal to accept the membership of the black man William Bowen. The application of Abigail Franks, “⅛ Negro, ⅜ Indian,” took 3 years and went through Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings, instead of taking less than a year and being handled by the Preparative Meeting. Henry Cadbury cites other cases of black applicants, whose sincerity and conviction Friends did not question, but who nevertheless faced the same kind of procrastination, perhaps for many years.
[Exemplary black Quaker sea captains would nonetheless] have to face the humiliation of being assigned special back seats in a Philadelphia Meetinghouse. Haddonfield, NJ also had a special bench in the back of the room “reserved for colored attenders.” It doesn’t take much imagination to sense the devastating, [humiliating] impact of delayed applications & special seating must have had on black applicants and new members.
It was just at this time that other churches were expressing the same kind of racism, which contributed to the deep bifurcation of the American Christian Church along racial lines. Ambrose Reeves, former South African Anglican bishop said: “In those times when the church had more freedom than it now has, it was largely content to reproduce the social pattern of secular society in the life of the Christian community.” Have not Friends been “content” to do much the same? As we reflect on the Quaker struggle against slavery, it is important for us to recognize that to labor for a man’s freedom from bondage is not necessarily to accept him as a human being and an equal. Being moved by the love of God [in one context of suffering] does not prevent one from expressing racist attitude toward [those same suffering children] in another context.
The Post-Civil War Period/Friends Education—One of the often-forgotten periods of American history is just after the Civil War, when former slaves held political office in Washington & throughout the South, were given equal service in hotels & restaurants, & were able to travel freely on public transportation. The late 1800’s saw all this achievement swept away. “Jim Crow” was imposed with a vengeance. Those who objected were beaten down by political maneuvering & the terror of the Ku Klux Klan. Examples can be given of individual Friends and Friends’ groups who registered protests & tried organize against [the oppression]. In general Friends failed to respond to the new challenge & tended to accept & become captives of the new caste system.
After the Civil War, Friends were very concerned about education for former slaves, and set up a variety of institutions in which the freedmen could be educated. Yet we only have to go back a little over 40 years [from now] to find that no Quaker schools or colleges had any black enrollees. Swarthmore [made the “mistake” of enrolling a light-skinned Negro] and, as Charles Darlington write: “After much heart-searching by the college administration and the Board, the boy and his parents were told that he could not be permitted to enter.” In 1932, Swarthmore was still holding to the same segregationist policy. Max Jergen, a prominent black YMCA staff person, could not get his children into any Philadelphia Quaker school.
Decisions to drop discriminatory policies came with agonizing slowness. Only 4/20 Quaker schools in 1945 had any black enrollment. By 1960 black students made up less than 2% total enrollment. A black student’s mother writes to Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C.: “I am shocked to know that a Quaker institution … would reject a child on the basis of color … It seems to me that this situation should call for a reexamination of your basic religious teachings.” When I pressed Sidwell’s headmaster on this, he asked me if I had a daughter & if I would want her to marry a black man, as if this, the oldest of racist arguments, would settle the matter.
Friends at Leisure/Friends at Home—[At camps, social clubs & organizations, Friends condone, support & practice segregation]. A combination of policies & practices guaranteed that black people would be denied freedom of choice in housing & would be herded together into inadequate ghetto areas. “Restrictive covenants” & real estate boards adopted policies [which restricted Negro access to housing]. For black home-seekers who have tried to exercise freedom of choice in housing it means the humiliation of constant turndowns.
It wasn't until the 1950’s that Friends began any organized efforts to counter housing-discrimination. Before this surge of interest, it seems clear that nearly all Friends who purchased homes in white areas either signed restrictive covenant, or bought through real estate brokers who discriminate racially. Most Quakers continue to live in relatively affluent, segregated, all-white communities and only a minority raise a protest against the rigid barriers that exclude blacks. Quakers builders and real estate brokers either quietly go along with the housing industry’s racism or actually help further discrimination. There is a real estate trust, controlled by Quakers in Wilmington, DE which has been developing housing on a completely white-only high-income basis.
Friends and the Elderly—In 1963, a study of 12 Philadelphia-area boarding homes run by Friends showed that none had ever had a Negro guest. I want to explore the rationalizations we have developed which allow us to be content with injustice. Someone almost always says that the homes are for Friends, even though there is a black membership in the Society, and nearly all Friends’ homes now accept non-Friends.
Unfortunately, we have in the past given some very strong hints to the black community that they are not wanted in our facilities. One home describes itself as a “boarding home for white men and women 60 years and over. Most black people who see this listing will assume that we are racially restrictive. Another rationalization is based on a Negro’s insufficient income. Friends rarely think in terms of providing assistance to elderly black people. [Friends seem to think] that we have fulfilled our obligation to our testimonies once we have decided among ourselves that we will not continue to discriminate.
Surely this view is an unwarranted sanctification of a bad status quo. The fact that a practice has been in existence for decades does not mean that it is right or wise, no matter how “natural” it may seem. If we now content ourselves with letting our inner circle know that we are finally ready to act with some measure of brotherhood, then we continue to perpetuate the old segregated pattern. [It is small wonder we are] lumped with other white people as “dishonest” and “deceitful.”
WHERE ARE WE AS FRIENDS?/WHAT CAN WE DO?—The examples given above show clearly that we have helped to deepen racial problems as well as having made modest attempts at solving them. [There are further examples in Friends’ business practices and a general apathy in the face of racism]. Assuming that we stand on a solid foundation of past achievement, too often leads to an unwarranted stance of pride and complacency, and a sense that we have only to make minor adjustments.
We need to drop this smugness and sense of self-satisfaction and heed the biblical call for repentance. There is every likelihood that we will have to radically re-structure our religious and social institutions to make them more open to God’s voice and better vehicles for his will. [The idea that we have contributed to the black community’s suffering must be balanced by knowledge of the love of God for us undeserving Quakers, which will sustain us towards restitution and new challenges. Here are a few proposals for fundamental change.
Internal Education/Striving for Institutional Integrity/New Kinds of Friends’ Meetings—Established Quaker institutions need to implement comprehensive education programs, aimed at Quakerdom itself, funded and supported so that they reach the widest possible spectrum of Friends with a message of urgency. We should educate ourselves about racism with the same seriousness that we educate in the 3 R’s.
How can we “operate” on ourselves and remove the cancer cells of racism which are running around in our own body? Members would do well to commit themselves to a common discipline of study & prayer to prepare themselves to fulfill their task with all possible love & understanding. Each Quaker institution needs to be approached in its own individual way. [The methods of dialogue or direct non-violent action could be used].
Surely God is calling us to new responses in the midst of the present racial crisis, but our ears are too easily clogged. [Perhaps] Friends should be experimenting, with new kinds of meetings for worship whose “vocation” is to make its members more attuned to God’s call in the crying human needs and revolutions around us. A group in a Houston medical center found their worship tremendously deepened when it was bracketed by hours of service to poverty-stricken and neglected patients. A group choosing to meet in different places, sometimes with instruments and singing has met in the midst of an urban crisis, done a singing demonstration in front of a draft board, a silent vigil to protest housing discrimination, met outside local prisons, and in a Black Panther medical clinic. I urge experimentation with more relevant and open forms.
The Broader Movement Against Racism and Poverty/Financing Change—It is extremely important that we recognize that racism and poverty are closely interrelated problems in American society. [In general, the criminal system, health insurance, pollution, housing, and tax laws are disproportionate against the poor. Friends have an opportunity to join the struggle to work for a society which will sustain and enhance human dignity.
One of our most important contributions to this struggle can be in the area of nonviolence. [We as Quakers have sympathy for nonviolent civil rights demonstrations, but seldom act on that sympathy]. The National Committee of Black Churchmen said of white churches: “They blessed & gave approval to King’s nonviolence while not taking nonviolence seriously themselves.” Nonviolence involves open visible, public confrontation with injustice & oppression, & often inspires violent retaliation on the part of the oppressors.
[History shows us people willing to be whipped, hated, insulted and persecuted for the cause of right]. Where are we taking up the nonviolent cross? Are we too ready to be conformed to the world as it is? Do we shy away from action which might disrupt its so-called peace? Friends must both participate in and initiate sustained nonviolent movements against social injustice, and risk suffering on behalf of Truth. If we can make such a commitment, we will enter the struggle with integrity and spiritual strength. How can we re-examine our present Quaker affluence and see how our funds can be spent less on “Quaker maintenance,” and more on the measures which will free ourselves and our society from racism?
IN CONCLUSION—Can Friends once again become a force for the transformation of our religious Society & society at large? [Or will the transformation come from] certain individual Friends who simply won't let the Society of Friends rest until we live up to our professions? Instead of having Quaker backing, they will be misunderstood & criticized by Friends. God won't let them rest—& they will not let the Society of Friends rest. Rabbi Abraham Heschel said that God is personally affected by what man does to man. Reverence for God must be shown in attitudes and acts which show reverence for man. The greatest heresy is despair.
God is in search of humankind, urging, hoping, waiting for humankind to do God’s will. If we rely on God, we can heal and cure. We know that God’s love not only calls us to create more compassionate society, but that God also enables us and empowers us to work for brotherhood, provided that we seek to do God’s will. The same black friend of Friends (Richard Stenhouse), who criticized at the beginning of this pamphlet, also said that there is a desperate need today for “the historical and prophetic role of the Religious Society of Friends.”
We must have a new repentant concept of our ambiguous history in racial matters, & lay aside racist attitudes & practices. [& though] there are dark days ahead, in the words of a hymn: “What though the tempest loudly roars,/ I hear the Truth it liveth …Since Love is Lord of Heaven & earth,/How can I keep from singing?”
Campus rebels and Black Power supporters are both in the minority. All great changes are initiated by minorities. The revolt of youth represents a compelling and creative impatience with America as it is. Rebel youth feel that American foreign policy should not be influenced by the ideologies of the middle-aged spread nor by the interests of wealthy investors.
I personally found, on almost every campus I visited, a feeling of shame about America, a conviction that the bureaucrats, politicians, and businessmen had betrayed something that American youth had wanted to treasure. [Some expect] them to simmer down in middle age. God grant that they may not simmer down. Their explosive power is needed to build the new world of men. It is the vision of America, the servant of the world.
Now, these young people aren't perfect, nor the revolt infallible. There is too little discipline in the American home, school, & university. Some of the student reactions are simply lack of discipline and of self-discipline, some are love of revolt for revolt’s sake. These are not angels, they are our sons and daughters. If they do not think exactly like us, thank God for it. When they defy us, it is youth’s way of expressing a despair of receiving help. We should mingle the 2 themes of angry revolt and the timeless [truths] which belong to all humanity.
In the background is the love of men for women which has not greatly altered since the Garden of Eden. And, though we have been unworthy custodians of them, morality & faith remain. It is high time that we sought to arrive at a truce in the battle of the generations. [The “folly of youth”] is rather the wise folly of truth. Our young people won’t come back to us; we must go to them. [What matters more than them loving us] is that they love truth and that is a noble love. To youth I would say: “Do not give up the things you are fighting for. [There are particles of gold] in the loyalties and even the fears of your parents; they are worth finding.”
[Black Power & Complacent Whites]— Black Power leaders' menacing, threatening speeches are fanning the flames in youthful hearts, which burst out into riots. The Black Power movement is substituting apartheid for integration, which must surely remain the American, human ideal. Power, black or white, is the wrong goal; the ideal is service. Black Power is a people’s protest; they have [endured] on deferred hopes for over a century.
The protest is against whites who defend segregation, which includes assassination & which continues to despise the black man for his color. Openly & bitterly he attacks us white liberals who have failed to deliver, & now blame him for using his methods when ours have failed. If we haven’t done our best to help, with sufficient urgency, then we are accessories to the black man’s crimes of riot & arson. Alan Paton [of South Africa] writes: “We are going to have to go on building while we are being hated. I doubt whether any nation has ever before been faced with such a task.” To this must be added that we shall suffer because we deserved to suffer.
Let us now address ourselves to the average complacent American, a man not very good nor very bad. You are the men who do not start riots, nor profess hatred toward Negroes, but who move away if one penetrates into your select suburb. You are the men who if you have to promote often do not promote a black man lest his being put over the heads of white men cause difficulty. What are complacent white men to do with Black Power? [Using force] will lead to brutal force, secret police, a war with the world’s non-white majority.
Hatred must be met with love, violent revolution by prompt, honest and effective reform. It must be done now if America is to save its soul, its heritage and its place in the world. [If inter-racial couples] cannot travel together south of Alexandria, what effect will this have on Africans being told how liberal and tolerant the US claims to be? What value would it have for Chinese propaganda? The time for action is now, now, NOW!
[Black Power & Mature Response]—It would be better if the Negro community & the white community would join hands & defeat the white minority which so obstinately denies the black equal rights. Black Power is an emotion rather than a policy. Black Power, let white America know what you are aiming at, other than a barren emotion of perpetual hatred and revenge; teaching hatred is the devil’s work. Black Power exalts race. Racism does not become holy by changing its color. Black Power is tremendously important. The new America needs leaders like Stokeley Carmichael or James Baldwin, with their positive as well as their negative politics.
I was astonished & saddened to find that so many young people in the universities had lost faith in America and its institutions. It is no light thing for young America to be ashamed of America, and their feelings should be analyzed. What honest American can say that there is no truth to [the concerns about inappropriate influences in foreign policies and campaign politics]? There are patches of old solid America with its ancient and solid loyalties [that need to be brought together with the feelings behind] the tumult of the universities. Where do we who are older stand in all this? We must above all things be willing to learn [from the young], while remaining ourselves. Many middle-aged and elderly people, in their desire not to be obsolete, try to work themselves up to accept what in fact they cannot accept. The one loyalty that must never fail is loyalty to one’s real inner self. Penitence for our failures is certainly called for, but not a maudlin remorse that inhibits action.
[Confronting Evil and Obsession]—The evil that youth generally and Black Power in particular see in modern America is to be recognized and fought as evil. But hatred cannot be conquered by more hatred. [You can love those who] persist in fostering resentment, carrying them in your heart and praying for them, though certainly not at them. The truth is that all obsessions are wrong.
[In obsession with sex, one] misses the real joy of sex until one escapes from the obsession. Black may say to white, or white to black: “Sir, you have but 2 subjects, yourself & myself, & I am heartily sick of both,” in reaction against 1960’s universal race obsession. A certain type of Christian asks you if you are saved, & the very thought predisposes you in favor of damnation. He treats you as a potential scalp to be added to his collection. What truth he has might gain an entrance if he sometimes talked about something else. A new America, a new world can best be built by persons who are truly persons & who approach other person as persons. Sanity & power will come from a healthy interest in all life, with peace & racial equality as the background of life.
[Faith and Meeting Black Power]—If we are to live the abundant life we must have faith—some sort of faith. “What think ye of Christ? is as pertinent a question now as it was when it was 1st raised. Formulate our faith as we will, a faith we must have if we are to face life. When will you let go of the thinking and gamble your whole life on this faith? Will you choose at 50; at 60; at 70? Without that faith which results in action, you cannot even have the quiet strength by which action is sustained. Let us not be satisfied to make processions, protests and placards a mere substitute for prayer, love, and quiet faith.
What kind of a world is it that young America should be building? surely a human world. Here we come into conflict with Black Power, which wrongly demands apartheid in American student residences while rightly denouncing it in South Africa. Surely young white America & young black America can find some way out of this impasse. There is a new America to be born, which will stand for the best values of humanity in peace [& equality]. In the end our thanks is due to Black Power for putting before us [the question of equality].
[We can] surrender to Black Power, riots & arson, [& the idea] that color is fundamental. [We can] suppress Black Power & destroy forever the picture of the US as an example of freedom. Or we can meet Black Power with positive achievement & genuine caring, to make real the equality which the US has taken as its nominal ideal for the last hundred years and more. It is to side with Black Power’s call for urgent action, & rebellious youth’s aims at making America’s ideals of peace, freedom & justice real & not just talk. It is the ordinary everyday American who will have to do this. Delay is as dangerous as refusal. [If one of the other 2 courses is taken], that will spell disaster, humiliation & failure for the America that deep in our hearts we all love.
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254. To Martin Luther King, with love: a southern Quaker’s tribute (by David W. Pitre; 1984)
About the Author—David W. Pitre was born in Opelousas, Louisiana, on June 5, 1951. He has lived in several southern states, & received his education in Southern states, completing a Ph.D. in English at the Univ. of SC (1980). This pamphlet reflects years of appreciation & assimilation of the writing & faith of Martin Luther King. [I & other Quakers are interested in] King’s mystical perception of God, his pacifism, & his determination to find the Divine Spark in the most unlovable person. My reasons for writing this essay are explained by a quote from King: “I am moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my heart…”
In the final analysis, we must all choose the world we live in, & the world we see. I choose to see a world of possibility, & I choose to embrace Quakerly hope, not despair, as the spiritual impetus of life. David W. Pitre
“Quaker ethics is based on feeling and not on reason … We can trust our deeper feelings as a guide to behavior better than we can trust our reason.” Howard Brinton
I—The 1st time I ever “saw” Martin Luther King, Jr., I was in a car on US 190 between Opelousas and Baton Rouge [There was a billboard implying that King was “a bad nigger” and a “Communist agitator.”] He was dangerous because he questioned all of the assumptions of the society I had been born into. [There was another time when adults accompanied 4 black boys as they “invaded” a “whites only” city pool]. The stunned, fearful behavior of the adults confirmed the wrongfulness of integration. [In 1968, I laughed along with other white boys as they celebrated the assassination of King in front of a grieving black girl].
As a 1st-semester freshman I had gone from supporting George Wallace to complaining that George McGovern was “too establishment.” [The class in general objected to King’s message as “impractical” idealism and “unrealistic” impatience. In “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King wrote: “I have wept over the laxity of the Church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love.” [We have been told to wait. After a long list of violent racist acts and discrimination], King writes: “you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over…” What awed me was King’s determination to appeal to the higher selves of his readers and oppressors. As I read through the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” I cried freely, at 1st hurtfully in remorse, then therapeutically in reconciliation and realization. “Dr. King” became my friend Martin. Surely Martin Luther King is a “Friend of Truth”; surely he is a “Friend in Christ.”
II—In my racist experience & growth beyond them lies a tale of God’s gentle though powerful persuasion. As a Quaker, I’ve often considered how the tranquil power of agape & caritas works slowly and often in spite of our egos and worldly aspirations. As Edward L. Wallant wrote: “Answers come in little glimmers to your soul.” This is not to say that my discovery of King as an intellectual and philosophical companion marked the end of anger, confusion, or self-contempt. A seed of peace had been planted, but several years of germination remained.
In my remaining college years, Suspicion and cynicism replaced naiveté and complacency. I failed to retain an understanding of and feel for the love King preached and to embrace the gentleness and depth of his faith. And yet that stage was as necessary for me as its predecessor. [I noted King’s response to Vietnam]: “I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion…” It was also during this period that I began to read about the Quakers’ involvement in anti-war activities. My introduction to and embracing of Quakerism reflects the same spiritual leading as that which changed my intellectual admiration for Martin Luther King to an affection for him and his life’s message.
My autobiography & Stephen B. Oates’ King biography indicate that faith & love & Divine Will often seem unfathomable to people impatient for change. Friend Harold Loukes [says that King] did not delude himself that “bad men are good men [but looked] for the goodness in bad men.” King’s assimilation of Gandhi’s Satyagraha provided the psychological element of his nonviolent resistance. King writes: “Gandhi was probably the 1st person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful & effective social force on a large scale.” The nonviolent resistance I witnessed in the swimming pool did not prompt long-term fear. I was able finally to assess & then intellectually & spiritually to outgrow, racism & segregation. Had King not offered the “creative tension” at the swimming pool, nothing would have changed. King wrote that neither violent rebellion nor passively waiting for the white race to grant it voluntarily would work. To become a participant in “justified violence” is to justify all violence.
As King understood and practiced it, civil disobedience as a form of peace-witnessing is no substitute for mediation and compromise, and should be the last resort. During all his marches and boycotts, King constantly requested meetings for reconciliation and negotiation. The Birmingham Commitment Card said: “REMEMBER always that the nonviolent movement in Birmingham seeks justice and reconciliation—not victory.” Nonviolent protest can, in the wrong frame of mind and heart, be destructively aggressive, [even coercive]. The world needs teachers more than it needs martyrs. Gandhi and King both understood well that violence can be conveyed by attitude and by language, as well as by physical behavior.
The late Wade Mackie of AFSC is a Quaker exemplar of King’s philosophy. He never harbored resentment for the segregationists. Instead, Wade preferred “to give them the chance to do the right thing.” Civil obedience too often provoked unwarranted brutality. As King, Wade, and Mel Zuck illustrate it was also a time of love, of finding unexpected connections. Mel told of Friends encountering a group of angry Klansmen. They invited the Klansmen to have tea and coffee with them. Then, they “strove with them” to see their actions and their beliefs in light of their professed Christianity. To be sure, few if any of the Klansmen changed their minds at the time; neither did I when 1st exposed to integration. To grow impatient for quick change is to confuse the satisfactions of the ego with the Spirit-sustained determination of the faithful servant. Maybe the Friends’ [patient] love yielded remorse, sympathy, empathy, understanding, reform, freedom [for all concerned].
I needed to hear of other ways of dealing with a form of oppression whose spiritual tool was greater than physical segregation of races. What Mel related was an account of behavior which drew upon hope and not hate, redemption and not revenge. After all of the reflection and all of the moments of heart-understanding, I find myself an unlikely exponent of a Way of Gentleness, an equally unlikely Quaker, and autobiographical chronicler of the glory of Martin Luther King’s civil-rights movement. If King’s beloved community requires patience, long-term faith, and intentional sustained love, history testifies to the grimness of the alternatives. In the final analysis, we must all choose the world we live in, and the world we see. I choose to see a world of possibility, and I choose to embrace Quakerly hope, not despair, as the spiritual impetus of life.
III—In assessing Martin Luther King’s Dream, I believe that I also necessarily gauge the real power of Quakerism to work change through its practical mysticism and its idealistic appeal to humankind’s higher Self. King wrote: “Genuine integration will come when men are obedient to the unenforceable … which are met by one’s commitment to an inner law, law written on the heart, [which] produces love.”
[A friend approached me, noticed I was reading King’s biography] and strode angrily away. My silent response, filled with love and divinely furnished patience, spoke more eloquently than any articulated protest. There are other disquieting indications that the Promised Land is within our reach but beyond our grasp. The Klan still operates openly with local cooperation in some areas of Alabama and Georgia. The resistance to the Martin Luther King holiday is reminiscent of earlier attitudes and attempts to discredit him.
One problem familiar to any worker for peace and social-justice causes is the reluctance of some black leaders to give social justice/civil rights issues priority. Black officeholders need to spearhead judicial and legislative handling of them. Black legislators often feel that the plight of black citizens is hopeless. It is hard to justify legislation which benefits “only a minority” of the state’s citizens. Another problem is the tendency of some black politicians to view elective office and its perquisites as a means of attaining, and then maintaining personal success, status and power. They exhibit the same reluctance and timidity King found and regretted among the prominent and well-to-do black clergy of his own time. Merely holding elective office isn’t enough; what’s still lacking too often is altruism and a vision of hope. And yet there is more reason to hope than to despair. Now, across the South, women, Blacks, and Hispanics serve as mayors of the largest cities.
My rhetoric classes express disbelief when I provide background for rhetorical analysis of King’s “I have a dream speech.” The idea of “white only” and “colored” signs and facilities now seems preposterous. [A cross was burned on the lawn of black student for having an “integrated” slumber party]. Her integrated circle of friends would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. Friendship is now more desirable, more normal, than fear.
On a July 4th PBS broadcast, James Earl Jones read King’s “I have a Dream” speech. He read it with great emotion, and finally wept, as did the rest of us. 20 years have merely enhanced the hopeful vision so beautifully painted in 1963; they have freed a lot of us from a cycle of oppression; they have showed us that Martin Luther King did not ask too much; we loved too little. Love and faith can help undo 300 years of fear and faithlessness.
IV—King’s call to me isn’t the mythic one to adventure, but the call to faith & all that is encompassed within that broad category. He brought out, in spite of determined ego-resistance, an idealism that combines unconditional love & stamina. King taught me, by letting his life speak, that love is a choice and not some outer state that is forcibly implanted in our awareness. The hero is heroic not in spite of his or her flaws but because of his or her great struggle with them; so it was with King. Gentleness and a sense of God’s constantly revitalizing love became real to the point that King thought of his death with peace and a sense of accepting inevitability.
And all of his miscalculations and weaknesses simply heighten the heroic: this passionate very human man makes heroic behavior something not just for Nobel laureates but also for share croppers, for itinerant ministers, for the long-suffering and the powerless, even for the fearful segregationist and racist. He was a quintessential American Patriot whose idealism drew upon both religious hope and the Constitution, a complementing influence that has been under emphasized in focusing on King’s more “revolutionary” thought.
When he was loved and feted, he gave the glory to God, to his co-workers, and especially to his long-suffering black people. When he was vilified, he suffered privately but endured patiently and willingly, under-standing that carrying the Cross was finally less important than spreading its Light. Above all, King cultivated Christian caritas, fellowship, and reconciliation among God’s peoples. He sought to walk in the Light & thus to spread it, ever widening into Dark. In “Where do we go from Here?” he wrote: “There is nothing to keep us from re-molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands unto we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.” The recurrent theme of hope and benevolence reverberates throughout King’s life and writings. He not only led me to love him and what he stood for, but also he would not let me hate my earlier self or my past.
I didn’t want to write this essay. Too much that I have been ashamed of for too long had to be reexamined. I have realized the impact on me of King & Quakerism only by the strength of the cathartic release from my past and my forgiveness and reconciliation with it. Howard Brinton said: “Quaker ethics is based on feeling and not on reason … We can trust our deeper feelings as a guide to behavior better than we can trust our reason.” Neither the unreasoning fear of racism nor the unloving anger of misguided political activism could withstand the Light that King taught me or the gentle power of love that has touched my life in quiet steady ways.
King led me, in an intensely personal way, to understand in my heart and not just with my mind, the tranquil strength of agape, of caritas, and therefore of social justice and fellowship. Martin Luther King speaks my mind and lifts up my spirit. At long last, I celebrate his life.
[About the Author]—Edgar H. Brookes was born in Smethwick, England in 1897. He attended the University of South Africa & the London School of Economics. He was involved in the South African Institute for Race Relations (1920s). He became a senator in 1937 for 15 years, representing mostly black Zululand in Parliament. He was the black Adams College’s principal 1933-1945. He was Professor of History & Political Science at the University of Natal.
Foreword—There is no man in South Africa better fitted to write about his country than Edgar Brookes. He is cut off from the main sources of political power, largely because of his views on race questions. These letters are deeply Christian; [they acknowledge] racial fears, social injustices, & historical determinants while exalting righteousness. Nowhere will South African Christians find a better teacher than the one in Three Letters. Alan Paton
Introduction—There are still to be found in South Africa a small band of enlightened liberals. Edgar Brookes is a compassionate Christian liberal. Even his enemies could not deny that he understood them almost better than they understood themselves. The use of a letter to a young Afrikaner, a young English-speaker, and a young African makes an unusually flexible and happy vehicle for sharing his deepest insights.
The Afrikaner letter speaks the bleak truth that African participation in government is inevitable. He depicts what might happen if they make a Trek inward. The letter to the English South African is devoted to challenging a decision to return to England & persuading him to remain. He reassures the African he will win, & asks him: “[When your time comes, can you rise to greatness instead of giving in to justified hate?]” Olive Schreiner says through one of her characters: “Through his half-closed eyelids, he saw [eastward] one faint thin line, thin as a hair’s width, that edged the hill tops. He whispered in the darkness: ‘Dawn is coming.’ They with fast-closed eyelids murmured, ‘He lies, there is no dawn.’ Nevertheless, day broke.” Douglas V. Steere
I. To the Afrikaner—My dear Koos, we both sincerely love South Africa & have a sincere Christian faith. You must know in your hearts of hearts that the African will win, that he must sooner or later be given the vote & other political rights. Senator N. C. Havenga said [for thousands of Afrikaners]: I will be killed if I must be, but I won't commit suicide.” What you fear is the utter ruin of the Afrikaner people, & I understand & share that fear.
Continued and obstinate refusal to treat the Africans as fellow-citizens will ensure this ruin. As Christians must we not believe that God will look after all that is worthwhile in the Afrikaner achievement, if we truly do what we feel to be right? My quarrel with so many outside critics [is their] self-righteous advice given without love. They do not seem to understand the Afrikaner’s struggle, [what it has cost, what it will cost]. My recognition of the beauty of Afrikaans led me to a hot resentment at the attitude of my many fellow South African of English descent when they talked of “kitchen Dutch.”
I soon realized that nationalism would not give the Africans or even the English-speaking a fair deal unless they accepted all its tenets, but it held me for a few impressionable years. I felt then, and I still feel, the tragedy of the War of 1899-1902, the agony of surrender. I understood then and still understand, the miracle of revival, the flowering of Afrikaans literature out of defeat's ashes. By ways, some good, some bad, Afrikanerdom triumphed. South Africa today is as if Kruger and not Milner had won the War.
For decades South Africans have evaded the truth. Apartheid is such an evasion; ultimately it is a supreme irrelevancy. Our Christian faith's very heart is death & utter failure, leading to redemption & to new & abundant life. I understand very well why you & others have supported “Bantustans” & apartheid. We give freedom to the Africans in their own areas without imperiling our own national achievement. We give them the vote in their own areas for a legislature which has really provincial status at most, & no hope for a vote, for the sovereign Parliament. [Likewise] the Indians & people of mixed races have no vote for Parliament & no areas of their own.
Morally it is wrong to deny people fundamental rights in the land of their birth merely because they are what their birth made them. Politically it is inconceivable that we shall be allowed to go on indefinitely denying these rights against the opinion of Africa and the outside world. Can we delude ourselves any longer with the argument that the Africans are sub-human or not entitled to elementary rights?
[Politically], the choice you have is between a country where Africans have equal rights or a society where African Nationalists have predominant rights. The longer we persist in refusing rights to Africans, the more likely we are, to eventually be ruled by militant African nationalists. I don't want to see all [white African] things “gone with the wind.” How much we may receive, & how many unexpected beauties may be discovered as we come in honesty & faith to do our best with the facts as they are. Aren't you willing to try it in your own country, however altered the circumstances? If you can't dominate South Africa, you may yet serve her.
There is a way out. It is to put your hand into God’s hand & go into the dark with God. The truth must be faced, the facts of the situation accepted, i.e. the inevitability of equal rights for Africans & non-whites. In some ways I am more troubled about the white child than about the black child. Our children must grow up terribly restricted, because freedom is so dangerous for the regime which will increasingly have to become a police state to maintain itself; [facing the world outside of South Africa will come as a great shock to our children].
Many think in terms of a little White African State at the tip of Africa. The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that we need to share our country, not balkanize it. [In an abundant country, people suffer from malnutrition, low wages and highly restrictive and unfair labor practices]. But the biggest thing is the insult to personality, the refusal to recognize a man as a man because he is black.
You said that our critics overseas didn't understand us or our conditions, the high, heartbreaking cost of moving to equal rights. They understand the principle that a man is a man & can't be used as a mere means to the end of another man’s conscience. Many Afrikaners are ill at ease or dislike the policies of our government. What ever your final judgment may be, don't stop ⅔ of the way along, ending with yet more evasion, an improved version of apartheid. Having decided, speak out boldly like a man & stand by what you honestly believe to be right. Such an Afrikaner fears imprisonment, ostracism, hatred, & accusations of being a traitor to one’s people. The African intellectual who pleads for moderate courses & friendliness to whites is subject to similar intimidation, or even worse. [If we are to go down for this principle, let us go down as servants of truth & love].
One of the worst aspects of our national policy during recent years has been the increasing difficulty of meeting naturally people of another color. [When they meet whites], Africans take the chance of saying actually more than all that they feel. Whites either take fright or try to show how liberal they are. Real friendship forgets the race barrier instead of being obsessed by it. One’s heart is happy where Europe, Asia, and Africa meet. God’s call is never to set us back or to make our lives poorer or thinner. It is always a call to greater riches, to more abundant life. To believe this with all your heart is faith.
II. To the English-speaking South African—I still feel angry & almost baffled at the blind complacency of my fellow South Africans of English speech. We cut a most unheroic figure between the Africans & the Afrikaners, on the whole contented to be a more or less grumbling appendage to Afrikanerdom. [After] all our pioneer fathers had done for our country, how comes it that their children are content with so inglorious a role today.
We followed Botha and Smuts and became one people. Botha died before the failure of his policy became clear. Smuts lived to see his best ideals shattered in his own country by his own people. A giant in intellect, a world figure who served the British Commonwealth and the League of Nations, a man whose mind was liberal and nobly liberal in all world issues; he signed both the League of Nations and the UN charters. Nonetheless he faltered and failed before the deepest issue of our country’s life—the issue of color.
We English-speaking South Africans are too apt to feel that we are not responsible for the color-bar and for apartheid. We are a part of it all, supporters of the Nationalist color policies. Yet weak as we have been, and unheroic though our position is, we are still of great potential value to South Africa. We are one of the best and most natural links between South Africa and the outside world. I feel very strongly that we should not run away from our desperate situation lightly or easily.
The cream of our young manhood has been skimmed for WWI, WWII, & now in a political emigration. There is strength, wisdom & love among those who are left. It hurts to find ourselves expendable. England, which gladly took our hearts’ loyalty & love in 1914 and 1939, has let us go. Even if we had been in the right, she couldn't have stood by us without antagonizing fatally African & Asian Commonwealth members. Can we expect her to support us when she is convinced, & rightly convinced, that we are in the wrong?
Would to God that we, realizing we have passed our point of no return, would not waste ourselves in unavailing sorrow for the “good old days,” but would go forward, the only direction in which courage and virtue can function. Anything must be done rather than moaning and groaning. Complete despair is destructive of all action. There has always been an ineffective white man’s boundary. Many people view the sane, commonsense action of living with and working with human beings of race different from themselves as impossible idealism.
In English-medium Universities, the persistent barring of challenging books and the systematic slanting of new has had its effect. And what of your Church schools? How can a school be so untrue to the ideals of the Church which founded it? We have kept our fees high, and the result is that we have too many sons of rich fathers; richness breeds cowardice. Surely there is a place in South Africa for the English heritage of freedom. Make no mistake. Freedom and apartheid cannot live together. [Those supporting apartheid out of fear] must realize that they are making, even if unwillingly, a decisive choice against freedom. One’s children and one’s grandchildren will suffer for one’s compromise with evil.
Under the present set-up we have a vote indeed, but of what value is our vote, seeing that scales are so weighted that the friends of freedom must always remain in the minority? Do not interpret this as meaning that we must take sides for the African against the Afrikaner. The threefold obligation of love still rests upon us. We must hold fast to all 3 loyalties, to both the other 2 as well as our own. This way of freedom and love is the only way that leads to abundant life. Each of us in South has our own call and our own responsibility, but our section of the South African people must uphold this immense truth of freedom.
III. To the African—In most parts of the continent Africans are lifting up their heads as free men, with none to say them nay. This is God’s day. Who else has brought it about? In this great day I can understand, my dear Jabula, impatience with the South African white. In your own and your only country, you are being denied the freedom which your fellow Africans are enjoying elsewhere.
James Baldwin’s point in The Fire Next Time is that the black man cannot integrate with the white on the basis of receiving only. He has something to give, and this must be received with reverence. [When] the “liberal” white man comes to give only, it is inevitably thought of as patronizing, and despite all his enthusiasm and genuine self-sacrifice is still justly resented, to his great perplexity.
You are what you are. What you are is an African influenced by western knowledge & experience. The tremendous [European] impact on African life brought harm & suffering. It greatly increased the evil of slavery. It also brought you new truths of science, easier material living, better agriculture; it brought you Christian faith [through missionaries]. They were sometimes selfish men & sometimes mistaken men. Many of them loved you & your people with a genuine love, respect & liking which can only have come from God. They preserved many of your oral traditions & your oral masterpieces of verse. If you repudiate the western culture & Christian faith which are part of you, apartheid wins. Is the only way out that of force? Force in South Africa can only win if the masses are brought in, led by demagogic & unscrupulous leaders, & a sort of Mau-Mau movement is started.
I cannot decide these issues for you. All that I can do as your old teacher is to suggest certain lines of thought that may help you. Is nationalism only wrong when it is Afrikaner nationalism? Nationalism that reacts aggressively to others, that separates where there [ought to be] unity, that protects what is no longer in need of protection, that is bitter in the moment of victory is evil, whether African or Afrikaner.
I think that Africans are exploiting Communists [to influence the Americans]. Everyone who is striving for liberation is in danger of being influenced by Communist propaganda. We Christians have a call to do our utmost for a just society and no society with a color-bar is or can ever begin to be a just society. One’s obsession with politics is really a disloyalty, since the life of an emergent nation, if it is to be a permanently victorious life, must include many things which completely transcend the State and politics generally. One chooses for one’s self and one’s people a meager existence, an arid home of rock and sand, who subjects family, Church, university to political intrigue, to the preaching of hatred, to the lust for power.
What will you do with the white man, your enemy, your fellow-citizen, your fellow man? Can you hold out no better hope for him than to live quietly without any real political power? One African minister said to me after an orgy of arson, rape & murder had brought substantial material gain for the Africans: “Dutch Reformed ministers preach nationalism from the pulpits, & see where their people have got to. Why shouldn’t we preach nationalism from ours?” I quoted from Jesus’ 3rd temptation: “All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down & worship me … Thou shalt worship the Lord the God & God only shalt thou serve.”
The African’s form of intimidation is being called a “sell out,” a “good boy,” or an “Uncle Tom.” In the end the most extreme men, white or black seem to triumph, & they have all the political prizes to offer. We can't be happy shouting slogans with which we disagree & following ways we despise. We must be true to ourselves. I feel that there is a very considerable difference between some of the African States which take an interest in our affairs and ourselves. To key the liberation movement to Pan-Africanism is to introduce an element of vain hatred, doomed to frustration because even in the most favorable circumstances it can never wholly succeed.
I cannot bargain with you, for I have nothing to offer except the almost pathetic good-will of a small minority. I only ask you to be truly yourself. Acculturation is not necessarily a bad thing. You are more than a westernized man: you are a MAN—IN Christ. I long passionately for the emancipation of your group and of the Indians and people of mixed races. I long for the best for them and for us all. My sorrow and love for my country is constantly with me, and also my joy in being called to serve God in such a difficult situation at such a time of grace. My love for you and for Africa [is] very great. God be with you.
[The Pacifist's Dilemma/ Failing the Young]—Pacifists have at once a religious conviction against the use of violence, & an awareness that the world is tending more & more toward the use of violence. We are in a society that is making war unavoidable & is at the same time condemning millions to a poor, mean, dangerous, frightening & hopeless life. As pacifists we are dissatisfied with pacifist preparations, ["evangelising"], protests, propaganda, conferences, fund-raising; it is not enough. [Some see pacifism] as the one way by which society may reach adulthood and finally learn war no more. It is learned from earliest infancy throughout life.
Pacifism means that the whole self must be made effective for peace. Making non-violence a tool, our whole armory of offense and defense, is a task from which we can hold nothing back. To serve the ideal of peace with one's whole life may mean going farther than anybody has yet gone. Each of us must find our own way to serve with our whole life. It is a way of life that uses diverse gifts, every gift and talent, however humble. Francis of Assisi's community had those with executive talent, musical, carpentry, cooking, or speaking skills, and some who were merely simple and devoted. Today we are wasting or reprimanding by neglect many special abilities & much capacity for devotion. [It is a combination] of willingness, and availability of place and method.
I think we older people are failing young men & women in this. They come with a readiness for devotion that older people have forgotten. They are ready to give all. They ask only that they may be used for the future. We don't know what to say except to tell them to train themselves for this or that. And when they have attained techniques, skills, & professional training, we still can't tell them how to use themselves to make peace prevail.
[Cells, Seed or Germ Groups]—These groups meet regularly & practice techniques by which group solidarity [is built]. If undertaken without complete realignment of one's work, way of living, all of one's life, they add to the unhealthy division within a person who must go to work knowing one is negating or not implementing one's pacifism. A real, effective pacifist cell or seed group finds out how to be a working unit in some larger, growing, transforming community. There are many possible examples of such larger communities. The best example is the rural community in an area where poverty has gone almost to its limit. Such is the sharecropper belt, where the workers' misery & apathy & the owners' fear & frustration bring a long trail of violence & disintegration. This group & similar groups can help pacifists out of their dilemma by letting us help them our of theirs.
How could we begin to make pacifism effective in the sharecropper's situation? In a simple community with land tenure & loan availability, a co-operative to some extent, there is self-containment & a low standard of living. It can be a community where families have a good life that grows in an atmosphere of work, health, companionship, & being functional & of service to the whole life of the community. It will use & increase its soil re-sources, promote education & recreation that thoroughly uses people's interest, energy & unrest. Mutual help associations can take the place of expensive health services & inadequate security systems now in place. I believe that it would grow soundly, if it included a percentage of people committed to the work of opening this way for peace by growing people capable of peace. Peace is there as a creative force, currently blocked by interests of self and family, race and class nation, boundaries which riddle a humankind that can only thrive in united effort.
[Cell's or Seed's Task]—The cell's or seed's members would 1st have to grow peace inside themselves. We would grow into the task as it went along. 2nd, their group life must be made deeply peaceable. They must discover how to lay hold of powers and resources that keep away stale weariness, mental and physical. They must learn how to re-create and recuperate without vacations, "getting away for awhile," or going to the movies. As nearly as they can they must learn to live upon what they can so earn, and to deal with the resulting poverty. They must learn to draw strength from their inner and group life, letting it draw them into full community participation; it should not be a screen between them and an uncongenial environment. The community at large needs to feel welcome in, and hopefully drawn to their more intimate group life. They must work out truly democratic processes in their group business and in the larger community business.
This plan for lifelong pacifism means discipline through poverty, through work, through maximum responsibility for others with minimum authority. There needs to be awareness of all the currents of life at all the levels of life, from the world's currents, [to nation], to community, to cell or group, to our self. Thousands of such pacifists will be needed to make a noticeable impression, yet even a few can create a pattern. Pacifists must ask of themselves the degree of dedication which recognizes that one owes nothing to one's self except to live as if one had many lives and could spare one to bring peace, and to live as if he had only one life and dared not waste it on anything less than the future of humankind, God's image.
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12. A Standard of Living (by Mildred Binns Young; 1941)
About the Author—Mildred Binns Young was born in Ohio and attended Friends schools and Western Reserve University. She lived for some years at Westtown School, where Wilmer Young was Dean of Boys. The Youngs then lived in the South, working under American Friends Service Committee for 19 years; 4 pamphlets came out of the experience. From 1955-1960 they were in residence at Pendle Hill.
[Introduction]—2 years ago I defended a chosen poverty as a keen tool for accomplishing work and a straight road to a clearer relationship with our world, and as freedom (PHP 6. Functional Poverty). Now I must go further and [discredit] our standard of living as contributing to the world's violence, and announcing the choice of poverty as a reasonable corollary to refusing to participate in that violence. Knowing the futility of getting and keeping, we still strive for it and are in need of re-orientation. I feel hesitant in saying this, because it is skirting the subject of economics of which I am ignorant, and calls into question a lifestyle I instinctively prize. The present moment painfully demonstrates that peace cannot be organized over a substructure of strife. We can be glad that we made the efforts at peace, even as we can be sure we did not strike deeply enough.
[Turning Back the Clock/ Lebenraum]—People say that "You can't turn back the clock." I suppose what is really meant is you can't turn back the calendar. But the careful man is forever setting his watch by a trustworthy source; a religious man must always be checking his life against the chronometer he relies on. We act as if man were irreversible, while he furiously catapults himself back into the depths of barbarity through his very devices of "progress." I propose not looking backward into an old world, but forward into a new world in which all the best that we have learned about the whole man will be met for everyone, and one's capacities called out in measures we can now only guess at. We have committed ourselves to progress without clarifying the aims.
It is not time, but direction we need to be concerned with. We are all at cross purposes within, one side of life bumping into the other side of life, like cars at an unregulated crossing. Kierkegaard calls it purity of heart, or to will one thing only. Our American standard of living, [echoed] elsewhere, is the deepest cause of violence today. Our forefathers forgot about freedom to worship and set out toward comfort as humankind's chief end.
I conceive that Hitler means by Lebenraum not only more space, but also scope for his people to live according to ideals, opportunities, & science set by America & Germany's other recent conquerors. [In their claimed superiority was the claim] that they should possess more because they could use them better, much as white men claim in a country 10% Negro. Germany has sacrificed the remainder of their generation to Lebenraum.
[John Woolman and Poverty]—I remember the enrichments and amplifications of the hard colonial life, many of which Ben Franklin was instrumental in bringing about. There also briefly lived a perhaps greater American, John Woolman. Where Franklin thought in terms of nurturing the colonies, Woolman thought of nurturing the straight, tender spirit of [each] man in whatever color skin, or quality dress or house. He saw slavery ending in civil clash and a long-lasting aftermath. He saw [the consequences of shipping luxuries and producing goods cheaply on men's, women's, and child's labor]. He looked into the forest and saw how expanding American culture crowded and ruined the Indian. He looked about him and saw how workmen, servants, and animals were used for ease and gain. He wrote: "May we look upon our Treasures, and furniture of our houses and the Garments in which we array ourselves and try whether the seeds of war have any nourishment in our possessions or not. Holding Treasures in the Self pleasing Spirit is a Strong plant, the fruit whereof ripens fast."
His is a life we all feel back to as a touchstone, and I don't know the Friend who does not honor him. I look at our houses, our schools, our tables, and I wonder if it can be good for us to honor John Woolman in [only] our thoughts and words. It might result in schizophrenia, a split personality. Florence Sanville puts a different interpretation on Ananias' death after keeping back a part of the money and lying about it to the Apostle Peter. Sin was not the cause of death, but a split personality. "He tried to subject himself to 2 opposing controls."
John Woolman saw where the expanding standard of material life was tending, how one's possession of goods ends in goods possessing one. He saw that large enterprises couldn't be formed without doing injury to workers. He is something of a authority to many of us. He seems to have known how to express his sense of God in his relationship to others. Poverty & physical work appeared as the very core of his testimony about outward life. His loving concern was verified by his own freedom from motives of self-seeking, his sensitive rejection of any comfort or pleasure that could not be had without burdening another. As long as we have made little of or set aside Woolman’s testimony of poverty, we have squandered the heritage we have in his life-record. If he had known how science and mechanics would develop, he would have felt even more the necessity of regulating his bodily life according to its simplest needs, & the need to nurture that of God which he saw in every man.
[Poverty vs. Simplicity]—Simplicity is a treacherous word; advertisements specialize in it too. Poverty is a clean, clear, word; I mean [voluntary] poverty. It can still be voluntary even if it lands one in a spot there is no backing out of, or if one has never had anything else. I will try to distinguish between this poverty & poverty with few blessings & no excuses. Jesus commanded poverty of disciples much like what John Woolman lived.
Gandhi said: "Civilization ... consists not in the multiplication but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants." He also said that possessing without needing a thing, is stealing a thing. Both Jesus and Gandhi gave these instructions to those who are in leadership training. The nonviolent pacifist is offering one's self as pathfinder and exemplar in a totally unaccepted way of life. One must substantiate in one's own life one's claim that only real values are indispensable. While one clings to values that can demonstrably be defended [only] by superior armament, one is caught in a contradiction.
[Economy of Abundance]—For some decades now the American standard of living has been the pattern of standards everywhere. Even agriculture [ignored critical scientific facts] in using the one crop system, ruining the land & sinking farm people to a more helpless bondage than that of the wage-workers of industry. We talked of "economy of abundance" and "distribution." Seldom have we stopped to examine whether or not the standard itself is such a good one that it is worth distributing. I am one who has never wearied of our modern scene, its new cars and appliances, fashion, social life, and city life. I once thought that all would be well if we could only spread these delights of modern life to all our people; I no longer believe that. Have we yet to get a hold of a "standard of living" that is appropriate and workable to spread to everyone?
Do recent mental health discoveries offset the strains of the modern life we promote enough to raise the level of national health? One writer writes of "maximum satisfactions" & that "It is a crime against humanity when anybody performs any essential work with less than maximum efficiency, and the use of the best ma-chines for that particular job." He has accepted "progress" too uncritically. There are other satisfactions in work besides that of finishing as quickly as possible, other resources to be conserved besides time & physical energy.
[International Application and Defense of the American Standard ...]—Internationally, ambitious statesmen based their policies on making their countries approach the American record of popular consumption. So Japan must reach out into China; Britain must hold India and Egypt; Poland must hold to her seaport at all costs. Germany must take refuge in a regimented efficiency economy, lose all civil rights, and conquer her neighbors. Russia resorts to a proletarian dictatorship to [match American production].
America never relaxed her effort to extend herself & keep the lead. Tariffs, US marines, Mexican oil, US gunboats on the Yangtze are reminders of American interests' scope. We find everywhere reference to defense of Democracy, saving the American way of life, safeguarding our liberties. What is it really that Americans are all so avid to defend? [& there are forgotten American folk who don't participate in the American dream].
Advertisements are a good index to the real temper of our people. While children and whole people are hungry in Europe and the Far East, we boast of inexpensive "meat upon the table." And in a world where peace is now the tenderest and most wistfully far-off dream, is the temper of Americans indeed such that it is good psychology to say "In a world of strife, there's peace in Beer?"
Because modern life's machine is made out of vast numbers of needs, hopes, beliefs, & fears, we can personify it & say it has no sense of direction. To one who relies on spiritual & interior forces rather than on violence, belongs the task of locating a new center, making realignment, facing a new direction, setting one's watch by eternal sun without reference [to the local, cultural time]. With one's watch well-set, one's life will fall into a new schedule; one mustn't expect to feel no dislocations; the benefits will more than compensate for the strains.
II: [Pacifist as Plant]—If our standard of living is a root cause of war, acquiescence in it makes us partners in violence & war. As pacifists & leaders in the use of an untried strength, we must re-orient in the specific direction of the dayspring of peace. We can never relax efforts to influence the movements of our time. Wars must cease; degrading, depleting poverty must be cured. We are to society as plants are to soil. There are replenishing & exhausting plants; the more replenishers grow the better the soil becomes; exhausting plants cause the reverse. The replenishing plant lespedeza cures the damage done by [the exhausting] cotton. Replenishers aren't parasitic, often make excellent forage, & have pretty & fragrant bloom. A great socialist once said: "While there is a lower class I am in it;/ while there is criminal class I am of it;/ while there is a soul in prison, I'm not free."
[Peace People in Isolation]—I shall take 3 samples of how a conventional standard of living isolates peace people: relations in business; relations in social work; "joining & sponsoring" activities. Quaker business people have always found their way difficult, & perhaps it will now be more difficult. Steering a pacifist, non-violent course among workers, partners, & customers was never easy. Government demands to unify in defense add to difficulties. The nonviolent pacifist may find one's self limited to small enterprises, having close participation with all concerned. One must regularly do productive handwork to connect with one's neighbor in physical labor.
That which created a profession of administering of aid to the poor is a symptom of the sickness into which headlong "progress" has thrown us. The heart's charity has always been too late, too little to undo society's wrongs. There were lines of beggars outside of Warsaw churches & charity largely got squandered; this wouldn't do in America. The people on relief are fulfilling their indispensable place in society, the only one we know how to offer them. Recognition of this has been a bread of bitter [resentment] to recipients of public relief.
Thousands of the best and brightest earn themselves a comfortable living by relieving the poor. Training in social work schools to my mind is mainly for protecting prospective social workers against the vocational diseases of the trade. Barricades of psychological devices are built around the social worker for one's safety. Charity givers and taxpayers are barricaded behind the social workers.
Von Huegel says of Ettore Vernazza: "It was one of [his] deepest convictions .. that only by actually living among the poor, poor yourself doing [their] work ... only by such fraternal-paternal sympathetic identification can such service really rise above the dreariness of officialism ... [and be] life directly touching life." The per-sistent unprofessionalism of Friends' relief work has often been a prime reason for effectiveness. This is lay-service which corresponds to the lay-ministry which is inseparable from our worship. [It sometimes leads to long-term] committed participation in the life of groups which modern systems have abused and beaten.
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19. Participation in Rural Life (by Mildred Binns Young; 1942)
About the Author—Mildred Binns Young was born in Ohio and attended Friends schools and Western Reserve University. She lived for some years at Westtown School, where Wilmer Young was Dean of Boys. The Youngs then lived in the South, working under American Friends Service Committee for 19 years; 4 pamphlets came out of the experience. From 1955-1960 they were in residence at Pendle Hill.
[Participation vs. Isolation]—Participation is a word which expresses well the Quaker view of social responsibility. To participate fully in the love of God, we must participate to the limit of our capacity in the passion of humankind. [Spiritual] beginners and seekers get lost from, or lost amid their fellowmen unless actual physical sharing is allowed them. It may be that the pacifist's discipline of uselessness during war is the sacrifice the world is now going to put upon the pacifist.
[There is isolation to be found in the educational process, as] we are to spend our youth learning to do something others can't do. Grading is based on individual performance, rather than how one uses one's best in cooperation with one's group. The degree to which one can outstrip one's fellows is the measure of one's promise and success. But humankind advances behind [expanding frontiers] pushed out by inventors and seers, and along broad fronts where the ranks are knit together in a closely correlated movement of the mass.
Personal success [has become so important that] parental ambition can hardly [stand] our young being merged rather than outstanding, [& it pushes the idea of outstanding to the point of becoming] a form of isolation. So upside down is our society that young people [excelling in working with people will be "promoted" out of where their talents lie into] administrative positions, where one is no longer responsible for anything but the delegation of responsibility. How is an administrator's delegation of responsibility a form of isolation? Even in nursing, with a very close participation in suffering, & at the pinnacle of success, the nurse no longer holds basins, bathes feverish bodies, or binds up wounds. [Their time is "better spent"] regulating institutions where patients are [cared for]. [With his doctor's degree, my friend is] "fitted to teach the teachers of social workers."
[Unrest Among Young Pacifists]—They were taught and still believe, to the despair of many of their teachers, that a modern war is not caused by the sin of one nation or the rise of perverted rulers. There is no peace until conditions of peace are laid deep in the structure of society; the oppression or neglect of a single human being contains the seed of war. One reason war is so hard to get rid of is that it draws people together in great shared efforts. This closeness and community of interest is a universal and timeless need of human beings. [In the everyday], a man is given no more satisfying goal than food, a roof, and paid-up life insurance for his widow. Youth rebels against such a program that is not worthy of the capacities given to one made in the image of God.
So great is the need for community of effort that it overcomes even the general fear of death. Men have always been seduced to war by the offer of an opportunity to die for something. We peace propagandists have cried out that soldiers are not sent out to die but to kill. In "total" war [on the farm and factory fronts, we are not given an opportunity to live for a common ideal but only to produce and produce so that the fighting few may continue to kill for the common ideal. Rather than "Keep them killing," the battlefield slogans say "Keep them flying," a smoke screen of words so that our hearts do not betray us.
[Pacifists and "a Return to the Soil"]—The pacifist sees war as a total evil, and one can only take part in what one does not know how to avoid. Those pacifists who are drafted are not free to choose their own line of effort. They are not permitted to prove their devotion or show their mettle or risk their lives. The pacifist may be tried by tedium, by nothingness in a time of urgency, by the ordeal of the side track. We pacifists have let slip a 20-year reprieve during which we might have built our vision into the foundations of society.
Instead, we have gone on educating our young for the isolation of personal success rather than the deep community of participation in the building of a world which cannot break out into war, a world based on peaceable relations at the heart of life. The maze of modern social organization offers almost no exit [from seeking personal success]. Among pacifist young people there is a wave of longing to try a "return to the soil." [There is even] a strong non-pacifist movement toward the land to press from it the basic munition of food. We seek to exploit the Earth for the purposes of total war. We are blocked by her exhaustion from our earlier attacks on her.
[In examining the path of "returning" to the land, some have] stipulated a partnership of God, human, beast, plant, & soil. Ignore any one of these & you may have production, but it will be temporary & destructive. Farming can be called a way of life; it is more than a business, profession, or skill; it includes peaceableness & com-munity. I will try to set forth some of its opportunities & satisfactions, & some of its requirements & disciplines.
[The Wholeness of the Farmer's Life]—The farmer is in cooperation with Nature, [especially animals], in supplying a common requirement of men & animals: food. Among people of the soil, the way is open for simple associations for mutual aid not often available for city dwellers. A city dweller is practically several different [barely inter-connected] people: producer; consumer; socializer; religious; family-person. Among all these compartments, the integration of one's personality becomes a major psychological problem; integration with a group becomes a major physical problem. [The question of how one will find] completeness can receive no answer.
The farmer's life can be a solid whole. [One's labor and one's physical needs, one's need of help and opportunities to help others are closely inter-connected]. Meditation need not be left behind when the farmer goes to work. Feet in the soil and head toward the sky, one is still in position for worship. One eats reverently the fruit of one's own cooperation with the forces of productiveness. One does not need [a separate time for] recreation; one is recreated moment by moment in one's work. The description of village festivals, marriages, and processions awakens an unappeased hunger within city-dwellers. Having none of their own, they fall back upon those which grew out of a healthier, more unified culture.
[Farming meets Mass-Production]—When I say that the farmer's life is a solid whole, and part of a vast cooperation, I am not speaking of farm life as we have it in most parts of the country now. With no abiding philosophy of the land to guide us, we went helter-skelter into a program of sheer enterprise that has obscured the intrinsic quality of farm life; that quality is almost everywhere lost. A long tale of slavery, neglect of soil, absentee ownership, insecurity of tenure, single-cropping, disregarding the [soil/ plant/ human/ animal inter-relationship]. And always, there is the perpetual draining off to the cities of [human resources] and natural wealth, which in some form or other must be returned to the land to avoid sterilizing the land. The national standard of converting wealth into cars, clothes and luxuries [is a threat to that return].
We have made of farm life a drudgery & disgrace, from which young people have for generations mainly studied to escape; civilization declines as farm life is [depleted &] debased. Young & vigorous people [need encouragement and] improved farm life to make of life on the land an example of true husbandry, true co-operation between God & humans, & a true pattern for peace. I have listened to accounts of farm life from first-generation city-dwellers from the great fertile areas of the Middle West. Their parents would achieve a measure of comfort in one place only to gather up their earnings and move on, [over and over again]. For some of these the farm is a nightmare memory and the worst thing they can think of for their children is a return to the land.
I have myself seen a good deal of farm life in areas where for generations there have been no scope for ambition. The desire to own farms has been almost quenched by the hand-to-mouth existence of tenant-farming or share-cropping. Land deteriorates, homes decay, home life grows impoverished. Some of the vigorous families escape to the mills & mines. The least competent drift into little towns & become day- or migrant-laborers. In industrial towns [the once-farmers are introduced to] lipstick, store clothes & installment-bought cars, but the impoverishment of life itself goes along with them & increases. There is also the slightly less depressing picture of the mechanized, commercial farm. They have little of the unique qualities of farm life. They are often just hard-pressed business undertakings with employer, employees, machines, animals, & soil existing only as cogs in a machine which produces commodities for sale; land & neighborhood are often ignored & impoverished.
[Picture of an Ideal Farm]—There are farm life experiences that do not fit any of the descriptions I have given. Some of us feel that with the end of the present war the moment may be ripe for a new philosophy of life on the land. We would like to be ready with some little pattern communities in which the full partnership of God, human, soil plant, and animal have been set as a conscious goal. We picture a group of family-sized farms, held in some form of secure tenure based on right use. Cooperation among them might begin with forest and pastures held and used in common, [as well as resources pooled for buying and selling. We should leave the forms of group activity to grow out of group needs and according to them. Nothing satisfactory can be arranged on preconceived lines here. Something is wanted that does not advance one group at the expense of another.
Within each family-sized farmstead and from early childhood, each family member shares in the work. As they grow older, they will have work suited to their interests and capacities. They will learn the discipline and joy of work, even the distasteful and very difficult, that was well-done. Even a very small person may work quite alone and still know themselves as part of a harmonious whole. A workshop will be part of the establishment, and articles of daily use will be made in it as family members have time and inclination.
On the housewife's side, it is necessary to [set priorities] suited to each family's need and each farm's situation and growing area. Weaving and spinning should come last or not at all, except when members of the family find a creative zest in weaving itself. Hand looms can't produce all the plain, durable, necessary clothes without eating into all other activities and becoming overwhelming. [Since looms] are big, noisy, and untidy, they should be something shared by the community at large. The loom is an example of needing careful examination of the validity of our preconceptions. [Practical hand-looming comes after]: gardening; canning; ground flour; baked bread; quilt-making; mending and making clothes; knitting; supply of spun material for loom.
[Leisure in a Life of Simplicity]—Where does leisure come into a rural or other style of life? Without strict simplicity standards, the answer is not at all. Unhappiness & overwork aren't caused by the little we have but by the much we want. [Looked at this way], a poor southern share cropper is [a better] candidate for a fresh start [than] the ambitious, ever-accumulating, more prosperous farmer. If a culture is to develop in farm groups, there must be leisure. [Throughout history], leisure for a culture of sorts was furnished by slaves or "lower class" citizens. [How widely available must cultural opportunities be before a culture is healthy & whole?] On the ideal farm, it can be found in the reduction of wants to actual needs, in collaborating rather than competing with neighbors, & [establishing a culture based] on values & standards relevant to their own way of life. If a farmer is to know the satisfaction of work well in hand and to enjoy fruitful leisure, one must accept the discipline of the seasons, the weather, daylight and dark, rain and sunshine.
The first thing to say about so-called labor-saving devices is that we need to become fully critical of them. Some multiply rather than save labor by increasing the conception of need. Refrigeration on a farm does not simplify the feeding of a family; it elaborates the food. Few of us realize how very simple diet can be and still furnish every single need. Widely-varied food is not a need and after a while it is not even a pleasure. It is a labor-producing one which creates the need for devices, kitchen tools, complicated utensils, [specialized implements] to beat, cook, chill, serve, and eat food. The question of heavy, powered farm machinery is more complicated. If there is force in asking whether the mule is working for the man or the man for the mule, there is more force in asking when a tractor has replaced the mule.
[Education in Farm Communities]—What shall education be in an ideal farming community? There is no need for much "progressive" education, which seeks to relate children to life. These children of farms will be already related to life. A rural life education must offer means for exit from that life for those who don't find it to be the "good life." Whatever basic training opens the way to true specialization which grows from innate gifts, that training every child should have no matter where one is born. Education is spiritlessly falling in step with an augmenting, not evolving society. The smallest schoolboy has already deduced that work serving primary common needs is menial & unworthy of aspiration. Secondary work which serves the top-heavy complexities of our society is honorable. Training of the head has been given a place of honor more than hand & heart's training.
Husbandry of the earth's resources has been degraded, not by the men of the soil so much as by the educators. Modern schools which replaced one-room rural schools certainly facilitated the escape of young people from the farms, but the education in these schools left farm life increasingly without a philosophy. 4-H clubs [have worked hard] in this default of the schools, but they are handicapped by emphasizing commercial success and the trappings of modernity in farming. No philosophy of farm life seems to emerge from their program.
It may be that education will have to move back into farm communities & be individualized for local needs. All that is taught will be taught so as to establish in the child's mind one's true relation to one's farm home, the larger community at hand & to the world out of sight. Education should be planned to help them find the way to the unique place which waits for the participation of every man & woman. It may be that rural communities such as we want can't grow until schools suited to them have been evolved. It will be a slow process of development as growth occurs & further growth as development proceeds. In the long look ahead, perhaps school & church in any farm neighborhood or other close-knit community should be the pivots around which common life revolves.
[Tenant Farmer and Sharecropper Community]—I find my hope is in the impoverished farm populations who are on poor farms because that is where they were born. They are unspoiled by the favoritism of a machine age and are suited for starting from the bare soil where the start will have to be made. They will not likely produce a philosophy or program of renewed rural life on their own. It is my conviction that some people with a vision of husbandry as a profoundly satisfactory example of the "good life" should become active farmers, so as to be kept out of mischief. If one is not kept busy one will try to create the [whole] crop, [rather than planting and watering the seeds of ideas one has come with, and waiting while they grow].
A healthy farm community can be built only upon healthy soil. It is made & kept healthy only by intimate work with it based on understanding, a reverence for its possibilities, needs, its role as the base of life for all generations. Realizing the obstacles confronting farmers requires becoming one. [The people with a husbandry vision who are ready to participate] can provide a liaison between agricultural scientists and the struggling farmer. [How can farmers and the prophets of farm life be supported while they earn at least part of their living from the soil, reclaim it, and slowly sketch in new designs for farm living]? They will need land tenure and operating capital between seedtime and harvest. Wealth has been taken from the soil, converted into money and machines, and the soil exhausted. No more logical use can be made of wealth than to return it to the soil through subsidies for right farming practices. The farmer of today is only to blame for further harm one does to already-damaged soil, and not even that if one's choices are starving one's soil or one's children.
[Religion of the Soil, Young People & Poverty]—The religion of the soil is having a revival today among educated and privileged people, who are tired of the dead weight of the accumulated stuff used as the measure of civilization. Liberal-minded older people believe in the better distribution of more and more stuff. Many young people look to drop this load and go back to simpler and more direct ways of living. Some of them haven't faced what it means to become dirt farmers. They should first serve strenuous apprenticeships in heart-breaking, existing conditions of narrowness, ignorance, erosion, prejudice, & meanness. And they will have to [contend with] the seduction of town-made values, which stands square across the path of a developing culture of farm life.
Young people on a mission as farmers will have to accept poverty, [as they understand it]. To their new neighbors it isn't poverty. To them poverty would mean hunger & nakedness, which many of them have known. For college-bred Americans being without plumbing, evenly-heated houses, cars or decent cars, vacations, washing machines, vacuums, fashionable clothes, insurance, savings, this is poverty. Harder than getting used to poverty's physical conditions is getting used to social isolation. Those around you don't even speak your language though they use the same words. And you aren't there to reform or to teach, but to participate. You must learn to let moments of dear delight in the meeting of minds compensate for hours of sterile separateness.
How have I made the most of myself; how have I done justice to my own possibilities; how have I fully used the capacities given me? Only as you can find or develop new values which you know outweigh the old values can you find peace and contentment. You must often go on working under a sense of uselessness. The conventions as to success are so ingrained sometimes, that you will feel you have been irresponsible toward your beloved partner or your children. The life that sets out to participate fully with abandoned or neglected groups in the shaping of freshly conceived patterns of success is a life for which the first requirement is to shift our values, truly and deeply, to new levels. [We shall require long "novitiates" or apprenticeships] before we commit ourselves to whole-hearted participation with others and with God in building the very earth on which a new culture may rise. The way is open for those with conviction, endurance, and patience, underlying like rock their vision.
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90. Insured by Hope (by Mildred Binns Young); 1956
About the Author—Mildred Binns Young was born in Ohio and attended Friends schools and Western Reserve University. She lived for some years at Westtown School, where Wilmer Young was Dean of Boys. The Youngs then lived in the South, working under American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) for 19 years; 4 pamphlets came out of the experience. From 1955-1960 they were in residence at Pendle Hill.
[Quotes from William James’ Varieties of Religious Experiences]: “I have often thought that in the old monkish poverty-worship, in spite of pedantry ... there might be something like that moral equivalent of war which we are seeking. . . English-speaking peoples have grown literally afraid to be poor . . . We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant . . . It is certain that the prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers.”
First as to my title: It struck me that the eternal succession of the seasons does in some real sense insure the person who works with soil & growing things . . . we can all be insured the same way. The knowledge [that] “we are all one body in Christ” makes us whole. I myself have come by slow, faltering, and partial steps to understand the relation of voluntary poverty to religious life, worship and commitment, wholeness and security.
It is now 20 years since we left Westtown School . . . and went south to work with sharecroppers. It may seem hard to see any logic in the claim that [recognition of the oneness of all human life] prescribes poverty. We started from no specific, religious convictions. We worked for a summer in Kentucky coal-mining villages . . . & the next summer we worked with unemployed men in North Philadelphia . . . who sought to help themselves.
The first American work camp was held in 1934. As the years have gone by, the work camp in its various forms has developed into an unparalleled instrument for educating young people in social problems. We came to believe that poverty and physical labor are a necessary discipline [for the leaders of revolutions].
After we had been [at the Delta Cooperative Farm in Mississippi for] 3 years, the American Friends Service Committee sponsored us in a small project with white and Negro tenant farmers in western South Carolina. We bought some large tracts of land and gradually sold it again in family-sized farms to tenants who had never had any secure tenure of the land they worked. We felt more careful for the self-respect of our neighbors than even for their diet. We wanted to cooperate and collaborate with our neighbors in making conditions better . . . and to not impose even improvements on them. The things we wanted most for them . . . were not what they wanted.
While they [enjoyed prosperity] . . . we continued to live in a rather bare way. [We felt that] we must try to show them how to be content with their new state without wanting to raise ever further. For us, Poverty . . . means the strict limitation of goods that are for personal use . . . the opposite of the reckless abuse, misuse [and disrespect] of property. Even children can benefit from living in graceful, orderly, [and simple] surroundings.
For a long time I have preferred the word “poverty” to “simplicity” because I felt it was less ambiguous. “Simplicity” is an advertiser’s as much as an idealist’s word. But let us not confuse “poverty” with “destitution”; it is not possible to idealize “destitution.” For most human beings, destitution is ruinous to the spirit as well as the body. “Poverty” is better and more truly defined without adjectives. Poverty may be voluntary with one who . . . believes that it could never be right for him to have plenty while there are destitute people. Poverty can be taken up; true simplicity comes by the grace of God . . . only babes and great souls can be truly simple. We may equate simplicity in this sense with the term “poor in spirit.”
Poverty of material possessions ... isn't the same as “poverty in spirit,” this simplicity, purity of heart. Multitudes spend their lives in poverty, or with moderate possessions, without ever receiving the gift of simplicity. Paul Tillich has lately suggested that our high rate of mental illness is partly due to people’s need to escape from the pressure of responsibility for themselves, the pressure to succeed in the race for status & security.
There is another escape [from competition] . . . the escape into commitment to the whole of humanity. We should know . . . that “the level above which a man’s goods become superfluous . . . goes up and down according to the needs of the poor.” As the standard of living goes up, the fear of insecurity remains. People . . . wear out their lives in the struggle to feel secure. The full sharing of goods, as in the early Christian community . . . is now hardly seen except among such poor people [still unaffected] by modern enlightened social theory. The attempt to make secure whatever standard one has attained . . . inevitably cuts one off from one’s fellows.
Surely there can be no question that much of the dangerous strain between our country and other countries comes from our rich standard, which we are not willing to share, except piecemeal. . . out of our surplus. If Americans could . . . do with less . . . in order that the poorer nations might have necessities, we might become the leader of a peaceful world. What we can do personally is small but it is definite, and to do it can release us out of frustration . . . and into hope.
In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoievski says: True security is to be found in social solidarity than in isolated individual effort . . . A man must set an example, and so draw men’s soul out of their solitude, and spur them to some act of brotherly love, that the great idea not die.” There is much help in going as far as we can with our particular gifts in our particular circumstances.
John Woolman had a dream: “I was mixed in with [the mass of humanity] & [told] henceforth that I might not consider myself ... a separate being. I heard a soft melodious voice: ‘John Woolman is dead.’ I perceived ... that the language ... meant no more than the death of my own will.” He had come to that point by being 1st of all obedient to calls for very small sacrifices & duties, & then to ... greater ones. We can stand ever in sight of Jesus' [example] [who] took upon himself hope's whole burden; & laid on us … hope for humanity's burden.
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RACISM (7)
465. Race, Systemic Violence, and Retrospective Justice: African-American Quaker Scholar-Activist Challenges Conventional Narratives (by Harold D. Weaver; 2020)
Introduction—I am grateful for the chance to share my thoughts about achieving better society, drawing on Truth, Peace, Equality, Community, & Justice Testimonies. Ira Reid asked: How can I acceptably say what weighs heavily on my mind & heart? I have deep concerns that will impact our Society & broader society in coming years. I will raise more questions than I answer. I'm impatient with untruths from misinformation or deliberate disinformation, in media, schools, & top elected officials. COVID-19 has uncovered hard realities many of us were reluctant to admit existed, let alone confront. There are structural & institutional forces we have ignored that we can ignore no longer. I will educate Friends on Truth, our historical realities as slave-owners & slavery supporters & its continued impact. I will clarify ambiguities & redefine words in continuing revelation.
I hope for deeper, more accurate understanding of all social interactions' roots, solutions to problems, as we begin with truth. I hope we play a more committed, important role in seeking justice, not expect others to do it for us. My ancestors are North America's Indigenous inhabitants, chattel slaves kidnapped from Africa, slave masters from Europe. My ancestral oppressors & oppressed lived under the same ideals of liberty & equality. Quaker faith was introduced to me in 11th grade at Westtown School in 1950 and continued at Haverford. My self-fulfillment expanded in unimagined ways; I became a conscientious objector. I commit my Self to acting on Truth, Peace, Equality, Community, & Justice Testimonies. I will ask Friends to acknowledge the impact of institutional and systemic racism; to consider a comprehensive retrospective justice program to help remove the historical inequities, inhumanity, & oppressive legacy of chattel slavery. For decades I have been involved in correcting misinformation and disinformation among Friends & in the outside world.
Bayard Rustin's name was removed as co-author to Speak Truth to Power; McCarthyism, racism, homophobia were the forces at work. I worked on the AFSC board to return his name to its rightful place as co-author. Paul Robeson was removed from Rutgers University & US history as a renowned athlete, singer, actor, human rights activist, mainly because of the Red Scare of McCarthyism. I re-introduced Robeson to the world & initiated an honorary doctorate for him before he died. Americans were told African students were mistreated in Moscow; the opposite was true. Glorification of British colonialism was disinformation, especially in the education field. Neglect of education forced many Africans to go to USSR for education & training. I am trying to educate Friends & others on how justice might be achieved in the 21st century & how retrospective justice might be done. Our world is built upon systemic injustice & intentionally divided by race.
Defining Race, Racism, & Institutional Racism—What does "race" and "racism" mean? What should they mean? Race [allowed for sweeping disinformation] by perception of a "inferior caste" that "required" domination, "civilizing," by a self-perceived "superior" caste. Racism breaks down into individual & institutional racism; Power + Prejudice = Racism. Institutionally, it isn't just prejudice or an act of discrimination. It is the power to act on one's negative feelings about people of different skin colors, ethicities, races, castes. Institutional racism is racism embedded in the laws and procedures of an institution. Through it the power of white supremacy becomes legitimate and normalized, by keeping "them" in their place.
Pope Alexander VI justified & formalized taking of "discovered land" from Non-Christian indigenous people & killing them if they refused to convert. US Supreme treated that act as law in Johnson v. M'Intosh, giving "European nations absolute right to New World land." The poll instituted in some states disenfranchised many African Americans & poor whites from exercising the right to vote. This and many other discriminatory laws allowed economic, political, sexual, & social exploitation & abuse to run rampant. Systemic discrimination or institutional racism is not necessarily a conscious act or intentional. It still benefits one caste over another.
Race: Chattel Slavery & Quakers in the US—The classification designed to give privilege & power to 1 caste over others is painful for perpetrator & victim alike, with a legacy of hatred, prejudice, & white supremacy. It began with slave trade in the 15th century & continues still today. Americans are obsessed with race. For African Americans, the single most influential event related to race has been the tragedy of chattel slavery. They've been stigmatized by their: "Dark Continent" origins; skin color; centuries in slavery. The European part in slavery stretched 3,500 miles on the Western African coast & 500-1,000 miles inland. An estimated 12 million Africans were taken; about 10.5 million survived voyage.
Chattel slavery was characterized by domination, oppression, & a dehumanization process, emphasized by Florida Governor Richard Keith Call in a letter to the North: "Here was animal in man form ... without spirit or pride of character ... A wild barbarian, tamed & civilized by slavery's discipline. Ryan Jordan wrote on Quaker reaction to slavery, synthesizing & analyzing dilemmas faced by Quakers & others who weren't sure how far or fast to go in advocating abolition. Some actively advocated for abolition, including Captain Paul Cuffe, the African-Indigenous American Quaker shipowner. Many individual Friends & meetings tried to halt efforts of abolitionists, some regarding it as a "contaminating influence," & denouncing anti-slavery men. Abolitionist William Bassett was disowned by New England YM in 1840
New York Times groundbreaking 1619 Project reveals how US economic-political-cultural-social system has been a slave economy dependent on African labor. Abolition of slavery did not halt white-supremacist ideo-logy that "black people belonged to an inferior, subhuman race. The modern industrialized society grew through continued legal exploitation, dehumanization, systemic & direct violence, which persists in the 21st century.
Legacy of Slavery in the US: Structural Violence—I am concerned by tendencies to look at symptoms & not causes; we never gain full understanding of violence's scope. Quakers assume: If only they had accurate knowledge, they would be respectful & sympathetic of different people, cultures, & societies. We must define structural violence & then determine how to confront it as it so cleverly evades us. Professor Johan Galtung distinguishes among several types of violence, stating that "violence is present when human beings are being influenced [such that what they achieve] is below their potential realizations. Structural violence refers to political & economic inequalities built into social structures ... The lower end of the socio-economic scale are materially and psychologically deprived of fulfillment. We are conditioned not to see it, or to feel we cannot change it."
Mahatma Gandhi said poverty was the worst form of violence. W.E.B. DuBois urges 12 million Negroes to not be ashamed of being grandchildren of slaves. Dishonor lies in being a slave owner. "Truth ever is, untruth never was." Gandhi's teachings were later used by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. & Bayard Rustin. Minister Malcolm made overtures to Dr. King's family to collaborate before Malcolm was assassinated. Bill Sutherland cites "interconnected roots of violence," and racism, sexism, capitalism, heterosexism, ageism as "structural & institutional roots of conflict. Nonviolent protest includes "strikes, boycotts, fasts, mass demonstrations.
Brazilian Archbishop Dom Helder Camara argues that a society based on systemic violence is not truly peaceful. "Justice is the condition for peace, the path, way. Only through justice can true & lasting peace be achieved. Palestinian & Quaker activist Jean Zaru cites multiple types of structural violence to which we here add 2. [Pamphlet's author lists an average of more than 5 practices under each type]: Direct Violence; Economic Structural Violence; Political Structural Violence; Cultural Structural Violence; Religious Structural Violence; Environmental Structural Violence; Health Structural Violence; Educational Structural Violence. Structural Violence is widereaching; the difficulty is its perceived complexity. Resistance challenges, speaks truth to power, & is refusal to be neglected & disregarded. We must challenge head-on poverty, sexism, racism, etc. Direct violence is a symptom of systemic violence. We must be activists, and we must be anti-violent.
A Proposed Plan of Action: Education & Retrospective Justice—How can we individually & collectively rectify slavery's legacy & its impact on descendants of enslaved & enslaver? My 3-part plan is: education or re-education on slavery & its legacy; program for retrospective justice; revitalized justice testimony.
How do we use Quaker space as alternative information centers to counteract "politics of erasure," & disinformation? The BlackQuaker Project celebrates lives and contributions of Quakers of Color Worldwide. University of MA Amherst has Quakers of Color International Archive. There is a list of resources at www.theblackquakerproject.org/resources.
Sir Hilary Beckles said: "[It] is not about retribution & anger; it is about atonement & building bridges across lines of moral justice. Retrospective Justice is attempts to administer justice decades or centuries after the commission of severe injustice or injustices, "crimes against humanity." It is a less emotional, positive term. It's not about the money. Damages have qualitative, psychological, sociological, cultural meaning. 18th century Rhode Island Friends said: "Surely perpetrators should atone for the offense by offering some kind of amends to their victim." There has never been a unified approach from the Society of Friends toward the legacy of slavery.
I am proposing the following steps to individuals, meetings and organizations inside & outside of Friends: Formal acknowledgement of offense; commitment to truth-telling; making amends. These are based on the Slavery & Justice report, written by the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery & Justice in 2006. The committee established the transatlantic slave trade as a crime against humanity, "directed at particular groups of people, who were thoroughly degraded & dehumanized; its effects have lasted until the current day through social stigma and formal institutions. Retributive justice is no longer possible. Brown held that: "Some crimes are so atrocious that the damage they do extends beyond victims & perpetrators to encompass entire societies.
The Society needs to acknowledge that Quakers have been slave owners and supporter of the transatlantic slave trade. Some Quakers are now researching their families' involvement in the trade and how their families profit from that in the 21st century. The truth needs telling, in all its complexity. A clear historical record needs to be created and inscribed into the collective memory of relevant institutions or nations. How can Quakers provide retrospective justice for our involvement in this crime against humanity? There needs to be an annual day of remembrance. A day of international acknowledgement already exists on March 25. We are obligated to acknowledge this reality as a majority atrocity in Quaker US & world history.
Making amends would entail a commitment to a massive development effort, similar to the US government's post-war Marshall Plan, and would aim at reconciliation & healing. Similar failed efforts were made during post-Emancipation years. [Notable successful steps in this direction include] the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, D.C. and Sir Hilary Beckles' efforts as chairman of an effort at reparations for the Caribbean. £20 million has been set aside. Actually, very little has been done to compensate for years of unremunerated toil, or to bridge the racial chasm.
Robust Active Justice Testimony—In 2008, my Black Quaker Project formed an Ad Hoc Working Group for Justice Testimony. We identified that "justice has a 2-fold meaning: spiritual (righteousness, observing divine law; temporal: fair-dealing, integrity, seeking to live in nonviolence, compassion redemption & love. Queries: How might a Justice testimony help Friends in spiritual & temporal practices? How does our meeting respond to the need for justice? How does not seeking justice affect our spiritual lives? If compassion is love in action, what is justice in action? How does oppression dehumanize & dim the Light in all? How are you open to new light, [in this case, the light from a fuller sense of justice]?
I have asked Friends to look at societal problems through new lenses: to confront systemic violence; to recognize institutional & systemic racism; to consider a comprehensive retrospective justice program to remove inequities & inhumanity of slavery and its long-standing after-effects; address the continuing injustice reinforced by misinformation & disinformation in media, education & political discourse. I hope taking action becomes widespread within & beyond Quakers [to include all faithful people].
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415. Living our Testimony on Equality: A White Friend’s Experience (by Patience A. Schenck; 2011)
About the Author—Patience A. Schenk has made her spiritual home at Annapolis (MD) Friends Meeting since 1966. After retiring from paid work, she experienced a call to focus on anti-racism work. In 2002 she founded the Baltimore YM Working Group on Racism, and clerked it for 5 years. She serves on the Annapolis Human Relations Commission. She feels much enriched by the enlarged perspective she has gained by examining her white identity and learning how people of other identities see the world.
Introduction/ Why are we Still Talking About Race?—There is that of God in everyone, which makes us all worthy of infinite respect. There is [always] the potential for the infinite love of God to manifest itself. I feel greatly enriched by the particular ways I have learned to see beyond the limitations of the dominant American culture. I have a vision of a Religious Society of Friends in which we truly welcome to our communities anyone [of any color] who yearns to find God in silence.
[While we have an African American president], from 2000 to 2010, the number of hate groups in the US grew from 602 to 1002. I run into middle-aged African Americans who were once my students; they are still living in public housing. Americans with European-sounding names are 50% more likely to be called for a job interview than those with African-American-sounding names.
Racism has a number of aspects: personal prejudice; institutional racism; cultural racism. As individuals we have very little control over institutional & cultural racism, but we benefit by it. Martin Luther King, Jr. said: “We will have to repent … not merely for the hateful words & actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.” Today’s prejudice & discrimination are usually manifested in much more subtle ways. How do we live our testimony on equality? An important piece that is often left unexamined is the experience of being white in a racist society; whites must have an awareness of their own racial experience. I have learned a lot over the years. I have also fallen short of expectations. I want understand what is happening so I can do better. Reflecting on experience will help you gain awareness and give you an opportunity to re-evaluate experiences. It is with God’s help that we glimpse the complexities of race, face our discomfort, and dare to challenge injustice.
Being White—A relative in describing the people of a trip to New Mexico said: “They were about 1/3 Mexicans, 1/3 Indians, & 1/3—um, you know, regular people.” Whites see themselves as “regular people.” Others are exotic or interesting, but different, “diverse.” White people haven’t had to be bicultural; they don’t have an opportunity to take a good look at what it means to be white. Thinking we are the norm is part of white culture. Peggy McIntosh’s list of “white privileges” includes: easy to be with my own race; moving to an affordable, desirable area; neighbors will be neutral or pleasant; shopping alone without being followed or harassed; being credited with creating our nation; my skin color doesn’t hurt the appearance of financial reliability; my unattractive habits won’t be attributed to the habits of my race. “White privilege” is having these benefits & taking them for granted.
According to DNA studies, modern humans have no separate classifiable subspecies (races). Genes for all traits, desirable and undesirable, can be found across all races. To pretend to ignore someone’s race is to not see that person. Color blindness isn't helpful. White Quakers have much to be proud of in the area of the abolition of slavery (See “Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship” by Vanessa Julye and Donna McDaniel). Friends wore cultural blinders, were caught up in the dominant culture, & were guided by their own social and economic interests. It took nearly a century for them to end slavery. Friends did not encourage or even invite African Americans to attend meeting for worship and sometimes denied membership. Most Friends schools did not integrate any earlier in the mid-20th century than any other private school. Some Friends worked to end enslavement and discrimination, some dragged their feet. [We need to learn from our shortcomings] and not idealize the past.
Racial Messages in Early Life—I grew up in a small almost all-white town on the Mississippi River in IL prior to the civil rights period. My parents made lunch for an African American kindergarten classmate when the local restaurant refused to serve her. My grandparents invited an African American college professor to dinner. I could see that people’s skin color, unlike their hair color, was a loaded subject, but no explanations were forthcoming. Black people were equal to us, but not part of our social network.
We moved to the Chicago suburbs & I had classmates of color. My higher-level classes in high school were almost all white; I don’t remember reflecting on that. Only white kids attended a Saturday night recreation center. I assumed that the black students preferred to have their own place. In college, my African American friend couldn’t join us in most restaurants or any movie theaters, & was denied a place in the choir at the local Catholic church. I invited my friend to visit me, but had second thoughts about seeing a black man I met at summer camp.
I passively absorbed varied and mixed messages about race. Discrimination was wrong, but I should not make white people feel uncomfortable. I have learned a lot by examining these messages, spoken and unspoken. [Journaling Queries]: What did people say at the dinner table about a different race and how did others respond? When friends of another race were invited to dinner, what was that like? How was your family hurt or benefited by race? Did someone not get into a 1st choice college or job “because of affirmative action? We are not responsible for the messages we were given through our community and culture. We are responsible for bringing them to consciousness and making choices conforming to Quaker belief.
Making Sense of Race as an Adult—I found myself in a classroom with 46 black, mostly over-aged 6th graders. The average reading level was well below grade level. That year I learned that it isn't just about good will. There were dynamics in race relations that I didn't understand. [Many had roots in the South], & had broken out of South Chicago to live in west Chicago. Their parents faced massive job discrimination. I had no sense of these conditions when I taught these children; that came 50 years later. I learned a lot and had a few significant breakthroughs. I wrote my master’s thesis on black and white children’s perceptions of black and white teachers.
I still didn’t understand institutional racism. I wanted to hire a cleaning woman; they normally worked for $8/ day. I couldn’t explain to my daughter why I hired a college student for that wage, instead of paying the African American woman more. In the 1990s I had to face how superficial my relationships were with people of color. I found myself the only white at meetings in a black church basement. Over time I got to know people, & gained a comfort level that I [still] cherish. It has been a joy to work with others who feel the same passion I feel.
The Unconscious Mind—Almost everyone underestimates the influence the unconscious mind has on his or her behavior. A person can be non-prejudiced at a conscious level, but at an unconscious level have a racist view point such as that which still pervades American culture. I absorbed my parents’ attitudes, both conscious & unconscious. In a test, good & bad words were paired with black & white faces. Those with a white preference respond faster when white faces & good words are on the same side of the screen. When black faces & good words are paired, the person tends to get confused & slow down. This explains my initial discomfort in that church basement. The saddest thing is that many people of color also show an unconscious preference for white faces.
Why are white perceptions and black perceptions of interracial interactions so different? The distinction between unconscious and conscious assumptions helps explain the differences between white perceptions and black perceptions of interracial interactions. Also, when we look back at interactions with someone different from ourselves, we remember our part based on our words and thoughts (i.e. conscious values about race). The other person remembers the interaction based on body language & eye contact, evidence of discomfort (i.e. unconscious attitudes). By being aware of our discomfort, we can make a conscious effort to relax & reach for the complete individuality of the visitor. From infancy, the baby learns to make fine distinctions between faces within the ethnic group they are raised in. Unfamiliar ethnic groups are dealt with by the conscious brain which takes a second longer. I have to work at distinguishing faces of people of color, & I do not always do a good job.
Roadblocks to Living Our Testimony of Equality—A major roadblock is that people often do not like to talk about race. People of color have come to expect that white people may not take them seriously. Talk of race among whites brings up feelings of defensiveness. When anonymous questions about race were asked for, almost 20% of them asked why we were still talking about race.
I wrote a chapter on race; when I read it, [I got a long, awkward silence] & then the comment: “I wouldn’t read that; it’s so preachy.” The one African American student said it wasn’t preachy. “They just couldn’t handle it.” After that I switched from writing to leading workshops. It was years before I tried writing about race again. Political correctness is an unfortunate concept, placing the emphasis on words instead of actions, on appearance rather than significance; it masks real discrimination. [Journaling Queries]: When did you feel afraid to speak up about a racial situation? When did you speak up & later regret it? What was that like? What did you learn?
Another roadblock is the fact that when white people talk race with people of color, we need to differentiate between good intentions & our words’ impact; impact is what affects the hearer. The belief that people who haven’t met their goals haven’t tried hard enough needs to be confronted. Whites realizing they got where they are partly from racial advantages requires a lot of humility. [Compared to a black family], a white] family’s members are more likely to get a better job, they are less likely to be insulted, they have more options in housing, & so on.
The term “white privilege” implies that white people live privileged lives. Those who are in mediocre jobs can’t see how they are privileged. Being told there are benefits to being white is easier to hear. The resistance to affirmative action is evidence of how little we see the advantages we have. Our own stereotypes can continue to interfere with our ability to live the testimony of equality. I have embarrassed myself with my stereotyped expectations. Communication can be hard because of others’ stereotypes as well. Many monthly meetings said they would have to have music to attract black people. I would startle them by saying white people want music too.
Quaker Resources—Friends have often felt led in ways that ran counter to prevailing culture; we learned to cope with discomfort & support one another in our leadings. In our own time we have had to negotiate between commitment to peace & the belief in American culture that supporting military operations is patriotism. We have had to learn to demand integrity in the face of [opposing views], which requires self-honesty, mutual support, & prayer. Community cares about us & holds us accountable. Simplicity teaches us to put God before material gain & love one another. Experience of equality in business meetings is experiencing letting go of power & seeking God’s will together. This may help white people imagine giving up power or privilege we enjoy because of race.
What Individuals Can Do—I am not an environmental activist, but I do have a responsibility to recycle, to not waste energy and natural resources, to show political concern for the environment. I have [the basic] responsibility to refrain from laughing at racist jokes, to practice fair hiring practices and equity in general.
As a white Friend you can: read authors of color, both fiction & nonfiction; reflect on your racial history [at a progressively deeper level]; get to know people of a different race; trust that people of color know their own experience; give up defensiveness & be open to different perceptions of [racially-charged] events; notice your surroundings [from a racial perspective]; notice your initial reactions to people of color; be aware of media’s racial stereotypes; speak up, don't let insensitive comments pass; expect to make mistakes; be gentle with yourself and others; remember this is God’s work, for we are led to love one another; pray for the strength to persist.
What Meetings Can Do—Look for natural links to a racially diverse community [or a community of color], rather than propose something out of the blue to arbitrarily create diversity; 1st be a community of people learning about race & racism & examining our own racial experience; appropriate outreach opportunities will follow; workshops on diversity; a Deconstructing Racism Group to share dilemmas we may experienced regarding race, or unexpected offense taken of something we said; make use of affirmative action in hiring; include “non-white” newspapers in promoting speakers or programs; utilize yearly meeting resources for workshops dealing with race; discerning what is essential to our form of Quakerism & what is a matter of style. May we have enough courage, imagination, persistence, & love to learn to truly live our testimony on equality & to create the beloved com-munity in our meetings.
Queries: How are institutional racism and cultural racism different from individual prejudice? What are the benefits of being white? Why is it a “deeply spiritual experience” to take racism seriously? What messages of racism did you absorb as you were growing up? What can white Quakers do to welcome visitors of color into Friends meetings? Have you sought to counter racist comments or actions? What resources do Friends have for living our testimony on equality?
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172. Friends & The Racial Crisis (by Richard Taylor; 1970)
About the Author—Dick Taylor has taught at the Martin Luther King School of Social Change at Crozier Theological Seminary, Chester, Pennsylvania. He writes: “I feel that much of the impetus of for my concerns comes from Friends’ testimonies and from my experience with Friends. It has made me aware of many points at which Friends are not living up to their beliefs. Most of my data and experience has been gathered from a lifetime spent largely in the Middle Atlantic States.”
[Introduction]—Richard Stenhouse writes: “Friends must share with all white Americans the very real distrust that most black Americans have of them, [a distrust which] the white man’s dishonesty and deceit in his dealings with Negroes forced upon them.” Are “dishonesty” and “deceit” too strong to apply accurately to Friends? When we call to mind Friends’ involvement in racial questions, our thinking tends to run along more positive, [historical] lines. In modern times, we are aware of the work of the American Friends Service Committee [among others] in building “true community among men.”
These comforting reflections ignore another pressing reality, & must be matched by a realization of the injury we have caused, suffering we have been a party to, & wrongs we haven’t attempted to set right. This pamphlet will review that “record” with an eye to Quaker practices which have fallen far short of Quaker ideals. We can’t repent for our ancestors sins; we can learn from them, & repent for those we perpetuate. If we don’t recognize the need for repentance, [we will operate as if] all we need to be fully effective is “increased dedication.”
THE AMBIVALENCE OF THE QUAKER WITNESS, PAST AND PRESENT
Thomas Drake writes: “In Barbados … George Fox found many slave-holders among Barbados Friends in 1671. Lewis Morris bequeathed some of his to leading Quakers … Both William Penn & John Bowne of Flushing [had slaves of their own]… Most Friends accepted slavery as they found it, without much qualm or question.” Nor was every Quaker slave-owner free of cruelty. We can't escape responsibility for over a century of involvement in this inhumanity to man, including a mother cruelly & violently separated from her children.
After Friends Freed Their Slaves—American Quakers confined their fellowship with red men and black men mostly to benevolences … Friends only reluctantly opened their Society to colored members. John Woolman struggled with his own Mount Holly Meeting over their long refusal to accept the membership of the black man William Bowen. The application of Abigail Franks, “⅛ Negro, ⅜ Indian,” took 3 years and went through Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly Meetings, instead of taking less than a year and being handled by the Preparative Meeting. Henry Cadbury cites other cases of black applicants, whose sincerity and conviction Friends did not question, but who nevertheless faced the same kind of procrastination, perhaps for many years.
[Exemplary black Quaker sea captains would nonetheless] have to face the humiliation of being assigned special back seats in a Philadelphia Meetinghouse. Haddonfield, NJ also had a special bench in the back of the room “reserved for colored attenders.” It doesn’t take much imagination to sense the devastating, [humiliating] impact of delayed applications & special seating must have had on black applicants and new members.
It was just at this time that other churches were expressing the same kind of racism, which contributed to the deep bifurcation of the American Christian Church along racial lines. Ambrose Reeves, former South African Anglican bishop said: “In those times when the church had more freedom than it now has, it was largely content to reproduce the social pattern of secular society in the life of the Christian community.” Have not Friends been “content” to do much the same? As we reflect on the Quaker struggle against slavery, it is important for us to recognize that to labor for a man’s freedom from bondage is not necessarily to accept him as a human being and an equal. Being moved by the love of God [in one context of suffering] does not prevent one from expressing racist attitude toward [those same suffering children] in another context.
The Post-Civil War Period/Friends Education—One of the often-forgotten periods of American history is just after the Civil War, when former slaves held political office in Washington & throughout the South, were given equal service in hotels & restaurants, & were able to travel freely on public transportation. The late 1800’s saw all this achievement swept away. “Jim Crow” was imposed with a vengeance. Those who objected were beaten down by political maneuvering & the terror of the Ku Klux Klan. Examples can be given of individual Friends and Friends’ groups who registered protests & tried organize against [the oppression]. In general Friends failed to respond to the new challenge & tended to accept & become captives of the new caste system.
After the Civil War, Friends were very concerned about education for former slaves, and set up a variety of institutions in which the freedmen could be educated. Yet we only have to go back a little over 40 years [from now] to find that no Quaker schools or colleges had any black enrollees. Swarthmore [made the “mistake” of enrolling a light-skinned Negro] and, as Charles Darlington write: “After much heart-searching by the college administration and the Board, the boy and his parents were told that he could not be permitted to enter.” In 1932, Swarthmore was still holding to the same segregationist policy. Max Jergen, a prominent black YMCA staff person, could not get his children into any Philadelphia Quaker school.
Decisions to drop discriminatory policies came with agonizing slowness. Only 4/20 Quaker schools in 1945 had any black enrollment. By 1960 black students made up less than 2% total enrollment. A black student’s mother writes to Sidwell Friends School in Washington D.C.: “I am shocked to know that a Quaker institution … would reject a child on the basis of color … It seems to me that this situation should call for a reexamination of your basic religious teachings.” When I pressed Sidwell’s headmaster on this, he asked me if I had a daughter & if I would want her to marry a black man, as if this, the oldest of racist arguments, would settle the matter.
Friends at Leisure/Friends at Home—[At camps, social clubs & organizations, Friends condone, support & practice segregation]. A combination of policies & practices guaranteed that black people would be denied freedom of choice in housing & would be herded together into inadequate ghetto areas. “Restrictive covenants” & real estate boards adopted policies [which restricted Negro access to housing]. For black home-seekers who have tried to exercise freedom of choice in housing it means the humiliation of constant turndowns.
It wasn't until the 1950’s that Friends began any organized efforts to counter housing-discrimination. Before this surge of interest, it seems clear that nearly all Friends who purchased homes in white areas either signed restrictive covenant, or bought through real estate brokers who discriminate racially. Most Quakers continue to live in relatively affluent, segregated, all-white communities and only a minority raise a protest against the rigid barriers that exclude blacks. Quakers builders and real estate brokers either quietly go along with the housing industry’s racism or actually help further discrimination. There is a real estate trust, controlled by Quakers in Wilmington, DE which has been developing housing on a completely white-only high-income basis.
Friends and the Elderly—In 1963, a study of 12 Philadelphia-area boarding homes run by Friends showed that none had ever had a Negro guest. I want to explore the rationalizations we have developed which allow us to be content with injustice. Someone almost always says that the homes are for Friends, even though there is a black membership in the Society, and nearly all Friends’ homes now accept non-Friends.
Unfortunately, we have in the past given some very strong hints to the black community that they are not wanted in our facilities. One home describes itself as a “boarding home for white men and women 60 years and over. Most black people who see this listing will assume that we are racially restrictive. Another rationalization is based on a Negro’s insufficient income. Friends rarely think in terms of providing assistance to elderly black people. [Friends seem to think] that we have fulfilled our obligation to our testimonies once we have decided among ourselves that we will not continue to discriminate.
Surely this view is an unwarranted sanctification of a bad status quo. The fact that a practice has been in existence for decades does not mean that it is right or wise, no matter how “natural” it may seem. If we now content ourselves with letting our inner circle know that we are finally ready to act with some measure of brotherhood, then we continue to perpetuate the old segregated pattern. [It is small wonder we are] lumped with other white people as “dishonest” and “deceitful.”
WHERE ARE WE AS FRIENDS?/WHAT CAN WE DO?—The examples given above show clearly that we have helped to deepen racial problems as well as having made modest attempts at solving them. [There are further examples in Friends’ business practices and a general apathy in the face of racism]. Assuming that we stand on a solid foundation of past achievement, too often leads to an unwarranted stance of pride and complacency, and a sense that we have only to make minor adjustments.
We need to drop this smugness and sense of self-satisfaction and heed the biblical call for repentance. There is every likelihood that we will have to radically re-structure our religious and social institutions to make them more open to God’s voice and better vehicles for his will. [The idea that we have contributed to the black community’s suffering must be balanced by knowledge of the love of God for us undeserving Quakers, which will sustain us towards restitution and new challenges. Here are a few proposals for fundamental change.
Internal Education/Striving for Institutional Integrity/New Kinds of Friends’ Meetings—Established Quaker institutions need to implement comprehensive education programs, aimed at Quakerdom itself, funded and supported so that they reach the widest possible spectrum of Friends with a message of urgency. We should educate ourselves about racism with the same seriousness that we educate in the 3 R’s.
How can we “operate” on ourselves and remove the cancer cells of racism which are running around in our own body? Members would do well to commit themselves to a common discipline of study & prayer to prepare themselves to fulfill their task with all possible love & understanding. Each Quaker institution needs to be approached in its own individual way. [The methods of dialogue or direct non-violent action could be used].
Surely God is calling us to new responses in the midst of the present racial crisis, but our ears are too easily clogged. [Perhaps] Friends should be experimenting, with new kinds of meetings for worship whose “vocation” is to make its members more attuned to God’s call in the crying human needs and revolutions around us. A group in a Houston medical center found their worship tremendously deepened when it was bracketed by hours of service to poverty-stricken and neglected patients. A group choosing to meet in different places, sometimes with instruments and singing has met in the midst of an urban crisis, done a singing demonstration in front of a draft board, a silent vigil to protest housing discrimination, met outside local prisons, and in a Black Panther medical clinic. I urge experimentation with more relevant and open forms.
The Broader Movement Against Racism and Poverty/Financing Change—It is extremely important that we recognize that racism and poverty are closely interrelated problems in American society. [In general, the criminal system, health insurance, pollution, housing, and tax laws are disproportionate against the poor. Friends have an opportunity to join the struggle to work for a society which will sustain and enhance human dignity.
One of our most important contributions to this struggle can be in the area of nonviolence. [We as Quakers have sympathy for nonviolent civil rights demonstrations, but seldom act on that sympathy]. The National Committee of Black Churchmen said of white churches: “They blessed & gave approval to King’s nonviolence while not taking nonviolence seriously themselves.” Nonviolence involves open visible, public confrontation with injustice & oppression, & often inspires violent retaliation on the part of the oppressors.
[History shows us people willing to be whipped, hated, insulted and persecuted for the cause of right]. Where are we taking up the nonviolent cross? Are we too ready to be conformed to the world as it is? Do we shy away from action which might disrupt its so-called peace? Friends must both participate in and initiate sustained nonviolent movements against social injustice, and risk suffering on behalf of Truth. If we can make such a commitment, we will enter the struggle with integrity and spiritual strength. How can we re-examine our present Quaker affluence and see how our funds can be spent less on “Quaker maintenance,” and more on the measures which will free ourselves and our society from racism?
IN CONCLUSION—Can Friends once again become a force for the transformation of our religious Society & society at large? [Or will the transformation come from] certain individual Friends who simply won't let the Society of Friends rest until we live up to our professions? Instead of having Quaker backing, they will be misunderstood & criticized by Friends. God won't let them rest—& they will not let the Society of Friends rest. Rabbi Abraham Heschel said that God is personally affected by what man does to man. Reverence for God must be shown in attitudes and acts which show reverence for man. The greatest heresy is despair.
God is in search of humankind, urging, hoping, waiting for humankind to do God’s will. If we rely on God, we can heal and cure. We know that God’s love not only calls us to create more compassionate society, but that God also enables us and empowers us to work for brotherhood, provided that we seek to do God’s will. The same black friend of Friends (Richard Stenhouse), who criticized at the beginning of this pamphlet, also said that there is a desperate need today for “the historical and prophetic role of the Religious Society of Friends.”
We must have a new repentant concept of our ambiguous history in racial matters, & lay aside racist attitudes & practices. [& though] there are dark days ahead, in the words of a hymn: “What though the tempest loudly roars,/ I hear the Truth it liveth …Since Love is Lord of Heaven & earth,/How can I keep from singing?”
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159. America in Travail (by Edgar H. Brookes; 1968)
About the Author—Edgar H. Brookes was born in Smethwick, England (1897). He attended South Africa University & the London School of Economics. He was involved in the South African Institute for Race Relations (1920s). He was a senator for 15 years (1937-51), representing black Zululand in Parliament. He was head of the Liberal Party until it dissolved. He was the black Adams College’s principal 1933-1945. He was Professor of History & Political Science at Natal University. This pamphlet is from a Pendle Hill lecture in May 1968.
[Student Revolt and the Older Generation]—I speak as one who in this situation has had to fight for unpopular truths at some risk and amid many difficulties. The 2 things that strike me most in the America of 1968 are the unrest on every campus and the activities of the Black Power movement. My 1st feeling is one of gratitude to God for youth in revolt for a truer, cleaner, nobler America, and for the passion of their search. About the Author—Edgar H. Brookes was born in Smethwick, England (1897). He attended South Africa University & the London School of Economics. He was involved in the South African Institute for Race Relations (1920s). He was a senator for 15 years (1937-51), representing black Zululand in Parliament. He was head of the Liberal Party until it dissolved. He was the black Adams College’s principal 1933-1945. He was Professor of History & Political Science at Natal University. This pamphlet is from a Pendle Hill lecture in May 1968.
Campus rebels and Black Power supporters are both in the minority. All great changes are initiated by minorities. The revolt of youth represents a compelling and creative impatience with America as it is. Rebel youth feel that American foreign policy should not be influenced by the ideologies of the middle-aged spread nor by the interests of wealthy investors.
I personally found, on almost every campus I visited, a feeling of shame about America, a conviction that the bureaucrats, politicians, and businessmen had betrayed something that American youth had wanted to treasure. [Some expect] them to simmer down in middle age. God grant that they may not simmer down. Their explosive power is needed to build the new world of men. It is the vision of America, the servant of the world.
Now, these young people aren't perfect, nor the revolt infallible. There is too little discipline in the American home, school, & university. Some of the student reactions are simply lack of discipline and of self-discipline, some are love of revolt for revolt’s sake. These are not angels, they are our sons and daughters. If they do not think exactly like us, thank God for it. When they defy us, it is youth’s way of expressing a despair of receiving help. We should mingle the 2 themes of angry revolt and the timeless [truths] which belong to all humanity.
In the background is the love of men for women which has not greatly altered since the Garden of Eden. And, though we have been unworthy custodians of them, morality & faith remain. It is high time that we sought to arrive at a truce in the battle of the generations. [The “folly of youth”] is rather the wise folly of truth. Our young people won’t come back to us; we must go to them. [What matters more than them loving us] is that they love truth and that is a noble love. To youth I would say: “Do not give up the things you are fighting for. [There are particles of gold] in the loyalties and even the fears of your parents; they are worth finding.”
[Black Power & Complacent Whites]— Black Power leaders' menacing, threatening speeches are fanning the flames in youthful hearts, which burst out into riots. The Black Power movement is substituting apartheid for integration, which must surely remain the American, human ideal. Power, black or white, is the wrong goal; the ideal is service. Black Power is a people’s protest; they have [endured] on deferred hopes for over a century.
The protest is against whites who defend segregation, which includes assassination & which continues to despise the black man for his color. Openly & bitterly he attacks us white liberals who have failed to deliver, & now blame him for using his methods when ours have failed. If we haven’t done our best to help, with sufficient urgency, then we are accessories to the black man’s crimes of riot & arson. Alan Paton [of South Africa] writes: “We are going to have to go on building while we are being hated. I doubt whether any nation has ever before been faced with such a task.” To this must be added that we shall suffer because we deserved to suffer.
Let us now address ourselves to the average complacent American, a man not very good nor very bad. You are the men who do not start riots, nor profess hatred toward Negroes, but who move away if one penetrates into your select suburb. You are the men who if you have to promote often do not promote a black man lest his being put over the heads of white men cause difficulty. What are complacent white men to do with Black Power? [Using force] will lead to brutal force, secret police, a war with the world’s non-white majority.
Hatred must be met with love, violent revolution by prompt, honest and effective reform. It must be done now if America is to save its soul, its heritage and its place in the world. [If inter-racial couples] cannot travel together south of Alexandria, what effect will this have on Africans being told how liberal and tolerant the US claims to be? What value would it have for Chinese propaganda? The time for action is now, now, NOW!
[Black Power & Mature Response]—It would be better if the Negro community & the white community would join hands & defeat the white minority which so obstinately denies the black equal rights. Black Power is an emotion rather than a policy. Black Power, let white America know what you are aiming at, other than a barren emotion of perpetual hatred and revenge; teaching hatred is the devil’s work. Black Power exalts race. Racism does not become holy by changing its color. Black Power is tremendously important. The new America needs leaders like Stokeley Carmichael or James Baldwin, with their positive as well as their negative politics.
I was astonished & saddened to find that so many young people in the universities had lost faith in America and its institutions. It is no light thing for young America to be ashamed of America, and their feelings should be analyzed. What honest American can say that there is no truth to [the concerns about inappropriate influences in foreign policies and campaign politics]? There are patches of old solid America with its ancient and solid loyalties [that need to be brought together with the feelings behind] the tumult of the universities. Where do we who are older stand in all this? We must above all things be willing to learn [from the young], while remaining ourselves. Many middle-aged and elderly people, in their desire not to be obsolete, try to work themselves up to accept what in fact they cannot accept. The one loyalty that must never fail is loyalty to one’s real inner self. Penitence for our failures is certainly called for, but not a maudlin remorse that inhibits action.
[Confronting Evil and Obsession]—The evil that youth generally and Black Power in particular see in modern America is to be recognized and fought as evil. But hatred cannot be conquered by more hatred. [You can love those who] persist in fostering resentment, carrying them in your heart and praying for them, though certainly not at them. The truth is that all obsessions are wrong.
[In obsession with sex, one] misses the real joy of sex until one escapes from the obsession. Black may say to white, or white to black: “Sir, you have but 2 subjects, yourself & myself, & I am heartily sick of both,” in reaction against 1960’s universal race obsession. A certain type of Christian asks you if you are saved, & the very thought predisposes you in favor of damnation. He treats you as a potential scalp to be added to his collection. What truth he has might gain an entrance if he sometimes talked about something else. A new America, a new world can best be built by persons who are truly persons & who approach other person as persons. Sanity & power will come from a healthy interest in all life, with peace & racial equality as the background of life.
[Faith and Meeting Black Power]—If we are to live the abundant life we must have faith—some sort of faith. “What think ye of Christ? is as pertinent a question now as it was when it was 1st raised. Formulate our faith as we will, a faith we must have if we are to face life. When will you let go of the thinking and gamble your whole life on this faith? Will you choose at 50; at 60; at 70? Without that faith which results in action, you cannot even have the quiet strength by which action is sustained. Let us not be satisfied to make processions, protests and placards a mere substitute for prayer, love, and quiet faith.
What kind of a world is it that young America should be building? surely a human world. Here we come into conflict with Black Power, which wrongly demands apartheid in American student residences while rightly denouncing it in South Africa. Surely young white America & young black America can find some way out of this impasse. There is a new America to be born, which will stand for the best values of humanity in peace [& equality]. In the end our thanks is due to Black Power for putting before us [the question of equality].
[We can] surrender to Black Power, riots & arson, [& the idea] that color is fundamental. [We can] suppress Black Power & destroy forever the picture of the US as an example of freedom. Or we can meet Black Power with positive achievement & genuine caring, to make real the equality which the US has taken as its nominal ideal for the last hundred years and more. It is to side with Black Power’s call for urgent action, & rebellious youth’s aims at making America’s ideals of peace, freedom & justice real & not just talk. It is the ordinary everyday American who will have to do this. Delay is as dangerous as refusal. [If one of the other 2 courses is taken], that will spell disaster, humiliation & failure for the America that deep in our hearts we all love.
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About the Author—David W. Pitre was born in Opelousas, Louisiana, on June 5, 1951. He has lived in several southern states, & received his education in Southern states, completing a Ph.D. in English at the Univ. of SC (1980). This pamphlet reflects years of appreciation & assimilation of the writing & faith of Martin Luther King. [I & other Quakers are interested in] King’s mystical perception of God, his pacifism, & his determination to find the Divine Spark in the most unlovable person. My reasons for writing this essay are explained by a quote from King: “I am moved to break the betrayal of my own silences and to speak from the burnings of my heart…”
In the final analysis, we must all choose the world we live in, & the world we see. I choose to see a world of possibility, & I choose to embrace Quakerly hope, not despair, as the spiritual impetus of life. David W. Pitre
“Quaker ethics is based on feeling and not on reason … We can trust our deeper feelings as a guide to behavior better than we can trust our reason.” Howard Brinton
I—The 1st time I ever “saw” Martin Luther King, Jr., I was in a car on US 190 between Opelousas and Baton Rouge [There was a billboard implying that King was “a bad nigger” and a “Communist agitator.”] He was dangerous because he questioned all of the assumptions of the society I had been born into. [There was another time when adults accompanied 4 black boys as they “invaded” a “whites only” city pool]. The stunned, fearful behavior of the adults confirmed the wrongfulness of integration. [In 1968, I laughed along with other white boys as they celebrated the assassination of King in front of a grieving black girl].
As a 1st-semester freshman I had gone from supporting George Wallace to complaining that George McGovern was “too establishment.” [The class in general objected to King’s message as “impractical” idealism and “unrealistic” impatience. In “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King wrote: “I have wept over the laxity of the Church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love.” [We have been told to wait. After a long list of violent racist acts and discrimination], King writes: “you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over…” What awed me was King’s determination to appeal to the higher selves of his readers and oppressors. As I read through the “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” I cried freely, at 1st hurtfully in remorse, then therapeutically in reconciliation and realization. “Dr. King” became my friend Martin. Surely Martin Luther King is a “Friend of Truth”; surely he is a “Friend in Christ.”
II—In my racist experience & growth beyond them lies a tale of God’s gentle though powerful persuasion. As a Quaker, I’ve often considered how the tranquil power of agape & caritas works slowly and often in spite of our egos and worldly aspirations. As Edward L. Wallant wrote: “Answers come in little glimmers to your soul.” This is not to say that my discovery of King as an intellectual and philosophical companion marked the end of anger, confusion, or self-contempt. A seed of peace had been planted, but several years of germination remained.
In my remaining college years, Suspicion and cynicism replaced naiveté and complacency. I failed to retain an understanding of and feel for the love King preached and to embrace the gentleness and depth of his faith. And yet that stage was as necessary for me as its predecessor. [I noted King’s response to Vietnam]: “I ponder the madness of Vietnam and search within myself for ways to understand and respond in compassion…” It was also during this period that I began to read about the Quakers’ involvement in anti-war activities. My introduction to and embracing of Quakerism reflects the same spiritual leading as that which changed my intellectual admiration for Martin Luther King to an affection for him and his life’s message.
My autobiography & Stephen B. Oates’ King biography indicate that faith & love & Divine Will often seem unfathomable to people impatient for change. Friend Harold Loukes [says that King] did not delude himself that “bad men are good men [but looked] for the goodness in bad men.” King’s assimilation of Gandhi’s Satyagraha provided the psychological element of his nonviolent resistance. King writes: “Gandhi was probably the 1st person in history to lift the love ethic of Jesus above mere interaction between individuals to a powerful & effective social force on a large scale.” The nonviolent resistance I witnessed in the swimming pool did not prompt long-term fear. I was able finally to assess & then intellectually & spiritually to outgrow, racism & segregation. Had King not offered the “creative tension” at the swimming pool, nothing would have changed. King wrote that neither violent rebellion nor passively waiting for the white race to grant it voluntarily would work. To become a participant in “justified violence” is to justify all violence.
As King understood and practiced it, civil disobedience as a form of peace-witnessing is no substitute for mediation and compromise, and should be the last resort. During all his marches and boycotts, King constantly requested meetings for reconciliation and negotiation. The Birmingham Commitment Card said: “REMEMBER always that the nonviolent movement in Birmingham seeks justice and reconciliation—not victory.” Nonviolent protest can, in the wrong frame of mind and heart, be destructively aggressive, [even coercive]. The world needs teachers more than it needs martyrs. Gandhi and King both understood well that violence can be conveyed by attitude and by language, as well as by physical behavior.
The late Wade Mackie of AFSC is a Quaker exemplar of King’s philosophy. He never harbored resentment for the segregationists. Instead, Wade preferred “to give them the chance to do the right thing.” Civil obedience too often provoked unwarranted brutality. As King, Wade, and Mel Zuck illustrate it was also a time of love, of finding unexpected connections. Mel told of Friends encountering a group of angry Klansmen. They invited the Klansmen to have tea and coffee with them. Then, they “strove with them” to see their actions and their beliefs in light of their professed Christianity. To be sure, few if any of the Klansmen changed their minds at the time; neither did I when 1st exposed to integration. To grow impatient for quick change is to confuse the satisfactions of the ego with the Spirit-sustained determination of the faithful servant. Maybe the Friends’ [patient] love yielded remorse, sympathy, empathy, understanding, reform, freedom [for all concerned].
I needed to hear of other ways of dealing with a form of oppression whose spiritual tool was greater than physical segregation of races. What Mel related was an account of behavior which drew upon hope and not hate, redemption and not revenge. After all of the reflection and all of the moments of heart-understanding, I find myself an unlikely exponent of a Way of Gentleness, an equally unlikely Quaker, and autobiographical chronicler of the glory of Martin Luther King’s civil-rights movement. If King’s beloved community requires patience, long-term faith, and intentional sustained love, history testifies to the grimness of the alternatives. In the final analysis, we must all choose the world we live in, and the world we see. I choose to see a world of possibility, and I choose to embrace Quakerly hope, not despair, as the spiritual impetus of life.
III—In assessing Martin Luther King’s Dream, I believe that I also necessarily gauge the real power of Quakerism to work change through its practical mysticism and its idealistic appeal to humankind’s higher Self. King wrote: “Genuine integration will come when men are obedient to the unenforceable … which are met by one’s commitment to an inner law, law written on the heart, [which] produces love.”
[A friend approached me, noticed I was reading King’s biography] and strode angrily away. My silent response, filled with love and divinely furnished patience, spoke more eloquently than any articulated protest. There are other disquieting indications that the Promised Land is within our reach but beyond our grasp. The Klan still operates openly with local cooperation in some areas of Alabama and Georgia. The resistance to the Martin Luther King holiday is reminiscent of earlier attitudes and attempts to discredit him.
One problem familiar to any worker for peace and social-justice causes is the reluctance of some black leaders to give social justice/civil rights issues priority. Black officeholders need to spearhead judicial and legislative handling of them. Black legislators often feel that the plight of black citizens is hopeless. It is hard to justify legislation which benefits “only a minority” of the state’s citizens. Another problem is the tendency of some black politicians to view elective office and its perquisites as a means of attaining, and then maintaining personal success, status and power. They exhibit the same reluctance and timidity King found and regretted among the prominent and well-to-do black clergy of his own time. Merely holding elective office isn’t enough; what’s still lacking too often is altruism and a vision of hope. And yet there is more reason to hope than to despair. Now, across the South, women, Blacks, and Hispanics serve as mayors of the largest cities.
My rhetoric classes express disbelief when I provide background for rhetorical analysis of King’s “I have a dream speech.” The idea of “white only” and “colored” signs and facilities now seems preposterous. [A cross was burned on the lawn of black student for having an “integrated” slumber party]. Her integrated circle of friends would have been unthinkable 20 years ago. Friendship is now more desirable, more normal, than fear.
On a July 4th PBS broadcast, James Earl Jones read King’s “I have a Dream” speech. He read it with great emotion, and finally wept, as did the rest of us. 20 years have merely enhanced the hopeful vision so beautifully painted in 1963; they have freed a lot of us from a cycle of oppression; they have showed us that Martin Luther King did not ask too much; we loved too little. Love and faith can help undo 300 years of fear and faithlessness.
IV—King’s call to me isn’t the mythic one to adventure, but the call to faith & all that is encompassed within that broad category. He brought out, in spite of determined ego-resistance, an idealism that combines unconditional love & stamina. King taught me, by letting his life speak, that love is a choice and not some outer state that is forcibly implanted in our awareness. The hero is heroic not in spite of his or her flaws but because of his or her great struggle with them; so it was with King. Gentleness and a sense of God’s constantly revitalizing love became real to the point that King thought of his death with peace and a sense of accepting inevitability.
And all of his miscalculations and weaknesses simply heighten the heroic: this passionate very human man makes heroic behavior something not just for Nobel laureates but also for share croppers, for itinerant ministers, for the long-suffering and the powerless, even for the fearful segregationist and racist. He was a quintessential American Patriot whose idealism drew upon both religious hope and the Constitution, a complementing influence that has been under emphasized in focusing on King’s more “revolutionary” thought.
When he was loved and feted, he gave the glory to God, to his co-workers, and especially to his long-suffering black people. When he was vilified, he suffered privately but endured patiently and willingly, under-standing that carrying the Cross was finally less important than spreading its Light. Above all, King cultivated Christian caritas, fellowship, and reconciliation among God’s peoples. He sought to walk in the Light & thus to spread it, ever widening into Dark. In “Where do we go from Here?” he wrote: “There is nothing to keep us from re-molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands unto we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.” The recurrent theme of hope and benevolence reverberates throughout King’s life and writings. He not only led me to love him and what he stood for, but also he would not let me hate my earlier self or my past.
I didn’t want to write this essay. Too much that I have been ashamed of for too long had to be reexamined. I have realized the impact on me of King & Quakerism only by the strength of the cathartic release from my past and my forgiveness and reconciliation with it. Howard Brinton said: “Quaker ethics is based on feeling and not on reason … We can trust our deeper feelings as a guide to behavior better than we can trust our reason.” Neither the unreasoning fear of racism nor the unloving anger of misguided political activism could withstand the Light that King taught me or the gentle power of love that has touched my life in quiet steady ways.
King led me, in an intensely personal way, to understand in my heart and not just with my mind, the tranquil strength of agape, of caritas, and therefore of social justice and fellowship. Martin Luther King speaks my mind and lifts up my spirit. At long last, I celebrate his life.
139. Three letters from Africa (by Edgar H. Brookes; 1965)
Foreword—There is no man in South Africa better fitted to write about his country than Edgar Brookes. He is cut off from the main sources of political power, largely because of his views on race questions. These letters are deeply Christian; [they acknowledge] racial fears, social injustices, & historical determinants while exalting righteousness. Nowhere will South African Christians find a better teacher than the one in Three Letters. Alan Paton
Introduction—There are still to be found in South Africa a small band of enlightened liberals. Edgar Brookes is a compassionate Christian liberal. Even his enemies could not deny that he understood them almost better than they understood themselves. The use of a letter to a young Afrikaner, a young English-speaker, and a young African makes an unusually flexible and happy vehicle for sharing his deepest insights.
The Afrikaner letter speaks the bleak truth that African participation in government is inevitable. He depicts what might happen if they make a Trek inward. The letter to the English South African is devoted to challenging a decision to return to England & persuading him to remain. He reassures the African he will win, & asks him: “[When your time comes, can you rise to greatness instead of giving in to justified hate?]” Olive Schreiner says through one of her characters: “Through his half-closed eyelids, he saw [eastward] one faint thin line, thin as a hair’s width, that edged the hill tops. He whispered in the darkness: ‘Dawn is coming.’ They with fast-closed eyelids murmured, ‘He lies, there is no dawn.’ Nevertheless, day broke.” Douglas V. Steere
I. To the Afrikaner—My dear Koos, we both sincerely love South Africa & have a sincere Christian faith. You must know in your hearts of hearts that the African will win, that he must sooner or later be given the vote & other political rights. Senator N. C. Havenga said [for thousands of Afrikaners]: I will be killed if I must be, but I won't commit suicide.” What you fear is the utter ruin of the Afrikaner people, & I understand & share that fear.
Continued and obstinate refusal to treat the Africans as fellow-citizens will ensure this ruin. As Christians must we not believe that God will look after all that is worthwhile in the Afrikaner achievement, if we truly do what we feel to be right? My quarrel with so many outside critics [is their] self-righteous advice given without love. They do not seem to understand the Afrikaner’s struggle, [what it has cost, what it will cost]. My recognition of the beauty of Afrikaans led me to a hot resentment at the attitude of my many fellow South African of English descent when they talked of “kitchen Dutch.”
I soon realized that nationalism would not give the Africans or even the English-speaking a fair deal unless they accepted all its tenets, but it held me for a few impressionable years. I felt then, and I still feel, the tragedy of the War of 1899-1902, the agony of surrender. I understood then and still understand, the miracle of revival, the flowering of Afrikaans literature out of defeat's ashes. By ways, some good, some bad, Afrikanerdom triumphed. South Africa today is as if Kruger and not Milner had won the War.
For decades South Africans have evaded the truth. Apartheid is such an evasion; ultimately it is a supreme irrelevancy. Our Christian faith's very heart is death & utter failure, leading to redemption & to new & abundant life. I understand very well why you & others have supported “Bantustans” & apartheid. We give freedom to the Africans in their own areas without imperiling our own national achievement. We give them the vote in their own areas for a legislature which has really provincial status at most, & no hope for a vote, for the sovereign Parliament. [Likewise] the Indians & people of mixed races have no vote for Parliament & no areas of their own.
Morally it is wrong to deny people fundamental rights in the land of their birth merely because they are what their birth made them. Politically it is inconceivable that we shall be allowed to go on indefinitely denying these rights against the opinion of Africa and the outside world. Can we delude ourselves any longer with the argument that the Africans are sub-human or not entitled to elementary rights?
[Politically], the choice you have is between a country where Africans have equal rights or a society where African Nationalists have predominant rights. The longer we persist in refusing rights to Africans, the more likely we are, to eventually be ruled by militant African nationalists. I don't want to see all [white African] things “gone with the wind.” How much we may receive, & how many unexpected beauties may be discovered as we come in honesty & faith to do our best with the facts as they are. Aren't you willing to try it in your own country, however altered the circumstances? If you can't dominate South Africa, you may yet serve her.
There is a way out. It is to put your hand into God’s hand & go into the dark with God. The truth must be faced, the facts of the situation accepted, i.e. the inevitability of equal rights for Africans & non-whites. In some ways I am more troubled about the white child than about the black child. Our children must grow up terribly restricted, because freedom is so dangerous for the regime which will increasingly have to become a police state to maintain itself; [facing the world outside of South Africa will come as a great shock to our children].
Many think in terms of a little White African State at the tip of Africa. The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that we need to share our country, not balkanize it. [In an abundant country, people suffer from malnutrition, low wages and highly restrictive and unfair labor practices]. But the biggest thing is the insult to personality, the refusal to recognize a man as a man because he is black.
You said that our critics overseas didn't understand us or our conditions, the high, heartbreaking cost of moving to equal rights. They understand the principle that a man is a man & can't be used as a mere means to the end of another man’s conscience. Many Afrikaners are ill at ease or dislike the policies of our government. What ever your final judgment may be, don't stop ⅔ of the way along, ending with yet more evasion, an improved version of apartheid. Having decided, speak out boldly like a man & stand by what you honestly believe to be right. Such an Afrikaner fears imprisonment, ostracism, hatred, & accusations of being a traitor to one’s people. The African intellectual who pleads for moderate courses & friendliness to whites is subject to similar intimidation, or even worse. [If we are to go down for this principle, let us go down as servants of truth & love].
One of the worst aspects of our national policy during recent years has been the increasing difficulty of meeting naturally people of another color. [When they meet whites], Africans take the chance of saying actually more than all that they feel. Whites either take fright or try to show how liberal they are. Real friendship forgets the race barrier instead of being obsessed by it. One’s heart is happy where Europe, Asia, and Africa meet. God’s call is never to set us back or to make our lives poorer or thinner. It is always a call to greater riches, to more abundant life. To believe this with all your heart is faith.
II. To the English-speaking South African—I still feel angry & almost baffled at the blind complacency of my fellow South Africans of English speech. We cut a most unheroic figure between the Africans & the Afrikaners, on the whole contented to be a more or less grumbling appendage to Afrikanerdom. [After] all our pioneer fathers had done for our country, how comes it that their children are content with so inglorious a role today.
We followed Botha and Smuts and became one people. Botha died before the failure of his policy became clear. Smuts lived to see his best ideals shattered in his own country by his own people. A giant in intellect, a world figure who served the British Commonwealth and the League of Nations, a man whose mind was liberal and nobly liberal in all world issues; he signed both the League of Nations and the UN charters. Nonetheless he faltered and failed before the deepest issue of our country’s life—the issue of color.
We English-speaking South Africans are too apt to feel that we are not responsible for the color-bar and for apartheid. We are a part of it all, supporters of the Nationalist color policies. Yet weak as we have been, and unheroic though our position is, we are still of great potential value to South Africa. We are one of the best and most natural links between South Africa and the outside world. I feel very strongly that we should not run away from our desperate situation lightly or easily.
The cream of our young manhood has been skimmed for WWI, WWII, & now in a political emigration. There is strength, wisdom & love among those who are left. It hurts to find ourselves expendable. England, which gladly took our hearts’ loyalty & love in 1914 and 1939, has let us go. Even if we had been in the right, she couldn't have stood by us without antagonizing fatally African & Asian Commonwealth members. Can we expect her to support us when she is convinced, & rightly convinced, that we are in the wrong?
Would to God that we, realizing we have passed our point of no return, would not waste ourselves in unavailing sorrow for the “good old days,” but would go forward, the only direction in which courage and virtue can function. Anything must be done rather than moaning and groaning. Complete despair is destructive of all action. There has always been an ineffective white man’s boundary. Many people view the sane, commonsense action of living with and working with human beings of race different from themselves as impossible idealism.
In English-medium Universities, the persistent barring of challenging books and the systematic slanting of new has had its effect. And what of your Church schools? How can a school be so untrue to the ideals of the Church which founded it? We have kept our fees high, and the result is that we have too many sons of rich fathers; richness breeds cowardice. Surely there is a place in South Africa for the English heritage of freedom. Make no mistake. Freedom and apartheid cannot live together. [Those supporting apartheid out of fear] must realize that they are making, even if unwillingly, a decisive choice against freedom. One’s children and one’s grandchildren will suffer for one’s compromise with evil.
Under the present set-up we have a vote indeed, but of what value is our vote, seeing that scales are so weighted that the friends of freedom must always remain in the minority? Do not interpret this as meaning that we must take sides for the African against the Afrikaner. The threefold obligation of love still rests upon us. We must hold fast to all 3 loyalties, to both the other 2 as well as our own. This way of freedom and love is the only way that leads to abundant life. Each of us in South has our own call and our own responsibility, but our section of the South African people must uphold this immense truth of freedom.
III. To the African—In most parts of the continent Africans are lifting up their heads as free men, with none to say them nay. This is God’s day. Who else has brought it about? In this great day I can understand, my dear Jabula, impatience with the South African white. In your own and your only country, you are being denied the freedom which your fellow Africans are enjoying elsewhere.
James Baldwin’s point in The Fire Next Time is that the black man cannot integrate with the white on the basis of receiving only. He has something to give, and this must be received with reverence. [When] the “liberal” white man comes to give only, it is inevitably thought of as patronizing, and despite all his enthusiasm and genuine self-sacrifice is still justly resented, to his great perplexity.
You are what you are. What you are is an African influenced by western knowledge & experience. The tremendous [European] impact on African life brought harm & suffering. It greatly increased the evil of slavery. It also brought you new truths of science, easier material living, better agriculture; it brought you Christian faith [through missionaries]. They were sometimes selfish men & sometimes mistaken men. Many of them loved you & your people with a genuine love, respect & liking which can only have come from God. They preserved many of your oral traditions & your oral masterpieces of verse. If you repudiate the western culture & Christian faith which are part of you, apartheid wins. Is the only way out that of force? Force in South Africa can only win if the masses are brought in, led by demagogic & unscrupulous leaders, & a sort of Mau-Mau movement is started.
I cannot decide these issues for you. All that I can do as your old teacher is to suggest certain lines of thought that may help you. Is nationalism only wrong when it is Afrikaner nationalism? Nationalism that reacts aggressively to others, that separates where there [ought to be] unity, that protects what is no longer in need of protection, that is bitter in the moment of victory is evil, whether African or Afrikaner.
I think that Africans are exploiting Communists [to influence the Americans]. Everyone who is striving for liberation is in danger of being influenced by Communist propaganda. We Christians have a call to do our utmost for a just society and no society with a color-bar is or can ever begin to be a just society. One’s obsession with politics is really a disloyalty, since the life of an emergent nation, if it is to be a permanently victorious life, must include many things which completely transcend the State and politics generally. One chooses for one’s self and one’s people a meager existence, an arid home of rock and sand, who subjects family, Church, university to political intrigue, to the preaching of hatred, to the lust for power.
What will you do with the white man, your enemy, your fellow-citizen, your fellow man? Can you hold out no better hope for him than to live quietly without any real political power? One African minister said to me after an orgy of arson, rape & murder had brought substantial material gain for the Africans: “Dutch Reformed ministers preach nationalism from the pulpits, & see where their people have got to. Why shouldn’t we preach nationalism from ours?” I quoted from Jesus’ 3rd temptation: “All these things will I give thee if thou wilt fall down & worship me … Thou shalt worship the Lord the God & God only shalt thou serve.”
The African’s form of intimidation is being called a “sell out,” a “good boy,” or an “Uncle Tom.” In the end the most extreme men, white or black seem to triumph, & they have all the political prizes to offer. We can't be happy shouting slogans with which we disagree & following ways we despise. We must be true to ourselves. I feel that there is a very considerable difference between some of the African States which take an interest in our affairs and ourselves. To key the liberation movement to Pan-Africanism is to introduce an element of vain hatred, doomed to frustration because even in the most favorable circumstances it can never wholly succeed.
I cannot bargain with you, for I have nothing to offer except the almost pathetic good-will of a small minority. I only ask you to be truly yourself. Acculturation is not necessarily a bad thing. You are more than a westernized man: you are a MAN—IN Christ. I long passionately for the emancipation of your group and of the Indians and people of mixed races. I long for the best for them and for us all. My sorrow and love for my country is constantly with me, and also my joy in being called to serve God in such a difficult situation at such a time of grace. My love for you and for Africa [is] very great. God be with you.
293. The Ministry of Presence: Without Agenda in South Africa (by Avis Crowe; Dyckman Vermilye; 1990)
ABOUT THE AUTHORS—Avis Crowe is Methodist by birth and Quaker by convincement. [After beginning a career in theater, television, and the arts], Avis shifted gears in her late 30s and began her spiritual journey in earnest at Koinonia Partners in Georgia. Avis and Dyck met and married at Pendle Hill in 1984. Spiritual guidance, through group work and writing, has increasingly become the focus of Avis’s work.
Dyckman Vermilye is a Quaker by convincement and joined the Society when his interest group moved to Monthly Meeting status in the early 1950s. His Quaker life remained dormant for 30 years until he went to Pendle Hill as a student. He spent a year learning New Testament Greek as Friend-in-Residence at Woodbrooke.
I. DECISION—Live in South Africa? A peculiar, even foolish choice. It was a natural outgrowth of our experience of recent years. The Spirit was busy planting seeds in each of us for such a journey.
Dyck—As a student at Pendle Hill I was grappling with the “what next” question. Africa became a theme from which I could not escape as a student. A Zimbabwe couple came as Friends-in-Residence. There was a force working in me that I was unable to ignore. Harare, Zimbabwe became a ground of healing and growth.
Avis—During Dyck’s student year, I was winding up nearly 2 years as a volunteer at Koinonia Partners in Americus, Georgia, where they primarily built houses and sold them at no interest to the rural poor, mostly black. They run a farm, an international mail order business and a resident volunteer program. [They were so busy, they seemed to no longer have time for their neighbors]. I fantasized about just living among the neighbors.
In my “class” was a young family from Soweto, South Africa. I learn about “disposable people,” married couples forced to live separately. South Africa began to have names that belonged to real people with families, and dreams for the future. [The woman half of a couple from Cape Western Monthly Meeting, Capetown, urged people to come and help]. Mary said quite distinctly, “people like Avis and Dick.”[I]had no serious thought of going, but Dyck suggested we travel to Zimbabwe on our honeymoon. A poster in an Anglican Cathedral read: “Be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.”
[We went] from Zimbabwe to Durban and then to Johannesburg where we stayed in the meetinghouse. We went to Capetown and stayed with Richard and Hilary Rosenthal who had sojourned at Pendle Hill.
Hilary told me about her work in a family service agency, the pain and frustration of trying to live authentic lives as white South Africans, beneficiaries of a system they were trying to change. [We returned to Pendle Hill for 2 more years, then retired]. Rather than join those who turned their backs on South Africans. I wanted to go and stand beside them, to say “Yes” with my presence.
We had to allow for the possibility that we might not be useful or wanted, that we could create problems for people who might feel responsible for us, that we might even put people in jeopardy. We did not engage in a formal clearness process; to do so never occurred to us; we just trusted that clearness would come naturally. One by one, the anticipated obstacles were removed, and the pieces fell into place.
Dyck—Richard made a rough budget of basic expenses [which made it clear] that my retirement income would probably be adequate to cover all costs. The risks to personal safety & health were matters to which I had given considerable attention before going to Zimbabwe. [In spite of violent incidents], I felt more secure there than I had on several occasions in US inner city neighborhoods; I also received excellent medical care there.
Avis—I realized our probable safety & the quality of lifestyle & medical care we could expect were the privilege of being white. I found that truth uncomfortable, but was willing to live with the reality. The decision had made itself. We were going to South Africa. We had felt a leading, spent time discerning the rightness of it & had acted on it. We didn’t know how long we would stay, nor did we know or care about what we would do.
II. THE WRONG QUESTION—Henri Nouwen asks: What greater ministry can be practiced than one which reflects that presence? [And answers: “A ‘pastoral presence’ is more important than any plan or project. More than anything, people want you to share their lives.” This ministry was an affirmation of what we wanted to be about in South Africa. “But what will you do?” was the 1st question people asked us; for us it was the wrong question. Our experiences had led us to believing to be with people is more important than to do for them.
We had no particular timetable, and were content to slip into the meeting and community as unobtrusively as possible, and simply let happen what would. We wrote: “We will be eager to learn from you and to contribute in any ways that seem appropriate or possible out of the resources that we bring with us.” We didn’t carry any answers with us. We want to save people from ignorance and poverty, [when] too often, it is we who are drowning in a poverty of spirit. We have much to learn from people all over the world.
Avis—I visited several sites where the Early Learning Resources Unit was helping mothers learn to play creatively with their children, using whatever limited resources & discards they could find & their imaginations.
Now & then we did find ourselves tripping over the impulse to show people how to do things, & to suggest a “better way.” Henri Nouwen wrote: “The 1st thing is to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and show them by words, gestures and actions that you love them.” The irony is that we found plenty to do. What we did arose out of who we were, of knowing & becoming known, of sharing stories and journeys with one another. The doing was never primary for us; the relationships were.
III. TRAVELING IN THE SPIRIT—Once the word was out that we would soon be on our way to South Africa, most people were supportive and wished us well.
Avis—When a Pendle Hill Board member expressed gratitude that we could make such a journey & that we would carry the love & concern of many Friends, I realized the possible communal dimension of our decision. We departed knowing we were being held in the Light by many Friends and were carrying their love and concern to the people of South Africa.
[For lettering writing] we made arrangements with Avis’ mother to copy & distribute a periodic newsletter for us. We tried to capture some of the flavor & texture of life in South Africa & introduced the people we encountered. We wrote separate accounts: the 2-in-1 letters provided a wider canvas than a joint report would have; we avoided political/social analysis. We did not think [of it as “writing epistles,” but] we may have stepped into the stream of Quaker tradition in this way. We don’t know how many people heard our informal reports [beyond those we distributed them to]. We felt we were traveling in the Spirit, that our decision was right & Spirit-led.
IV. CAPETOWN MEETING: Spiritual Home and Opportunity for Ministry—Cape Western MM was our gateway to the country and its people. [We were supported, nurtured, and nurturers for the 1½ years we were there]. Their reception of us was reserved. By becoming sojourning members, we hoped to declare our commitment to the meeting. We attended the Peace Work Committee, and Ministry and Oversight meetings. We started our Pendle Hill practice of inviting people from the meeting to simply drop in during the afternoon of the 1st Sunday of every month; there was no business to conduct, no issue to resolve.
Avis—During one of these afternoons, Scotty Morton shared her terror at [having a rifle pointed at her] at a squatters’ camp outside Cape Town; I shared one woman’s pain and anxiety for a fleeting moment. We sensed a hunger in the meeting for sharing and deepening the spiritual foundations of the work they were doing. We convened a weekly discussion group to explore the origins of Quaker thought and testimonies.
Dyck—There was interest in bible study in the meeting, and I was delighted to start up a weekly group. I also began to write a newsletter for local and distant members and attenders.
Avis—I got the Woodbrooke’s study program Gifts and Discoveries started at the meeting; almost the entire meeting participated; the bonds between the people of the meeting deepened. I also led retreats and weekly prayer meetings. [During one of the latter, Rommel invited the leaders of 2 sometimes violent factions to meet on the neutral ground of the meeting to work out their difference]. One of the groups never showed and the hour passed without incident; the Wednesday group is still meeting.
Dyck—None of what we did was arduous. Relating to people in various ways outside the meeting & facilitating activities that people wanted but hadn’t time to organize, we could contribute to the meeting’s spiritual life.
Neither of us had thought ourselves “ministers” before. Time is not perhaps, a direct contribution to the struggle for justice and peace in South Africa, but its relationship to that goal made the effort worthwhile.
V. ENGAGEMENT—Early in our sojourn we also moved around in the larger community. We made contact with the Black Sash & the South African Institute for Race Relations. We wanted to move slowly to wait for the things that seemed right to emerge naturally without [succumbing to] the “ought/should’ syndrome—either our own or somebody else’s. We became involved with Siseko, a small brick-making cooperative; we felt the grief when its project manager was shot to death as a suspected African National Congress guerilla.
Dyck—I tried to become an “enabler,” working several mornings a week; I helped them open a bank account. I tried not to do things for them, but to stand side by side with them as they learned. I tried to slip into their rhythm, to respect their needs and capabilities, and to step back and allow them to be who they were, even if it meant less efficiency and slower progress.
Avis—[I became involved with the Philani Nutrition Clinics; the Government provided minimal infrastructure]. From the beginning Philani was special to me. My own wish was simply to come and be there, “[babysitting].” I was asked to help with the typing backlog of staff-meeting minutes and project reports. I didn’t go to the clinics very often, [because of] my reticence as an “outsider,” but each time I went was deeply satisfying. The clinic embraced life, demonstrated life, and taught by example that life in all its noise and distress can be a celebration, even in the face of want, cruelty, disinterest.
I am done with great things, & big things, great institutions & big success, & I am for those tiny invisible molecular forces … creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water which, if you give them time, will rend the hardest monument to man’s pride. William James.
The South African Institute for Race Relations (SAIRR) is respected internationally for its biannual report of Apartheid statistics [& its craft shops]. It was a natural place for me to share interests in crafts & put in some time. I also processed applications to their scholarship fund. There was a branch of Koinonia in Cape Town, star-ted by a radical Dutch Reformed domineer, to bring mixed-race groups together in a comfortable, non-threatening setting.
Dyck—I had been invited as guest speaker & to lead a group discussion of conflict resolution. I assumed too much willingness on the part of blacks & coloreds to explore institutional violence. The people were clearly glad we were with them, & far more forgiving of our discomfort than we were. [Dyck was able to meet a Dutch Reformed Church’s high official, & to set up a series of very challenging meetings]. My own roots are Dutch. The Reformed Church was part of my history until my great-grandfather became an Episcopalian priest. I eagerly accepted an invitation to meet the Director. His responses made me feel I was being kept at arms’ length & that an open exchange wasn’t possible. I could see what pain must be his if he felt his belief system was being challenged. I wrote a critique of a Synod report, & he responded angrily. In our last meeting, he said he found it difficult to remain angry with me sitting across the desk from him. He expressed surprise at how few Southern African Quakers there were. We parted cordially, in spite of not reaching any satisfactory conclusions.
I may have been a prophetic witness in my relationship with this churchman as defined by Abraham Heschel: “A prophet is one who holds God & human person together at one time & at all times through profound love, powerful dissent, painful rebuke, & unwavering love. I don’t know if my words or my behavior have remained with him. I’m comfortable not knowing. Herbert Louckes: “An act of love that fails is as much part of divine life as a successful act; love is measured by its fullness, not by its reception.” Our own belief in the value of presence was affirmed over & over again in very basic & simple tasks we preformed & in our encounters.
VI. THE BIG ISSUE—[The weighty, difficult questions about South Africa are the wrong questions]. William James wrote: I am done with great things, big things, great institutions & big success. I am for tiny invisible molecular forces … creeping through the world’s crannies like rootlets, or like capillary oozing of water which, if you give them time, will rend the hardest monument to man’s pride. Rommel Roberts, [a full-time, colored peace-worker] said: “Most people lose sight the need for grass-roots work. Teaching mothers how to play with children is linked to the liberation of an entire country.” Our own bent [led us to make “small” contributions].
VII. INVITATION—We were granted a 6-month extension, [and could have gotten more 6-month extensions], but we chose not to live with that chronic uncertainty. We sense that our time in South Africa was drawing to a close and that it was right to leave. Also, we were brought face to face with the paradox that one of the ways we could “help” South Africa was to become involved in our own country. Part of the work of Koinonia, Ben encourages [and facilitates] South Africans, particularly white South Africans, to travel abroad.
But the traffic must be 2-way. It is important that we not engage in shunning—either as nations or as individuals. [What is needed is to] simply go with open heart and mind and the knowledge that the Spirit is working in you and in those you will meet. We need to set aside our American compulsion for speed, for instant diagnoses and quick fixes, for whirlwind entrances and exits. Those opting for early retirement, or younger people on sabbatical or before graduate school might consider South Africa.
There is no guarantee that just because the desire is there, permission will follow; the government is careful about those to whom they grant visas. [Ours were granted because we had friends in the country], and because Quakers have a long history in the country. Friends also enjoy an unusual freedom from government harassment as a direct result of their compassionate work with Afrikaner women and children during the Anglo-Boer War. The important thing is to go without preconceived expectations of what you might do there, or how helpful you might be. Go as a loving concerned person, “walking cheerfully over the earth.” A Friendly presence can be a blessing in places like South Africa, for both the host country and the sojourner.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS—Avis Crowe is Methodist by birth and Quaker by convincement. [After beginning a career in theater, television, and the arts], Avis shifted gears in her late 30s and began her spiritual journey in earnest at Koinonia Partners in Georgia. Avis and Dyck met and married at Pendle Hill in 1984. Spiritual guidance, through group work and writing, has increasingly become the focus of Avis’s work.
Dyckman Vermilye is a Quaker by convincement and joined the Society when his interest group moved to Monthly Meeting status in the early 1950s. His Quaker life remained dormant for 30 years until he went to Pendle Hill as a student. He spent a year learning New Testament Greek as Friend-in-Residence at Woodbrooke.
I. DECISION—Live in South Africa? A peculiar, even foolish choice. It was a natural outgrowth of our experience of recent years. The Spirit was busy planting seeds in each of us for such a journey.
Dyck—As a student at Pendle Hill I was grappling with the “what next” question. Africa became a theme from which I could not escape as a student. A Zimbabwe couple came as Friends-in-Residence. There was a force working in me that I was unable to ignore. Harare, Zimbabwe became a ground of healing and growth.
Avis—During Dyck’s student year, I was winding up nearly 2 years as a volunteer at Koinonia Partners in Americus, Georgia, where they primarily built houses and sold them at no interest to the rural poor, mostly black. They run a farm, an international mail order business and a resident volunteer program. [They were so busy, they seemed to no longer have time for their neighbors]. I fantasized about just living among the neighbors.
In my “class” was a young family from Soweto, South Africa. I learn about “disposable people,” married couples forced to live separately. South Africa began to have names that belonged to real people with families, and dreams for the future. [The woman half of a couple from Cape Western Monthly Meeting, Capetown, urged people to come and help]. Mary said quite distinctly, “people like Avis and Dick.”[I]had no serious thought of going, but Dyck suggested we travel to Zimbabwe on our honeymoon. A poster in an Anglican Cathedral read: “Be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.”
[We went] from Zimbabwe to Durban and then to Johannesburg where we stayed in the meetinghouse. We went to Capetown and stayed with Richard and Hilary Rosenthal who had sojourned at Pendle Hill.
Hilary told me about her work in a family service agency, the pain and frustration of trying to live authentic lives as white South Africans, beneficiaries of a system they were trying to change. [We returned to Pendle Hill for 2 more years, then retired]. Rather than join those who turned their backs on South Africans. I wanted to go and stand beside them, to say “Yes” with my presence.
We had to allow for the possibility that we might not be useful or wanted, that we could create problems for people who might feel responsible for us, that we might even put people in jeopardy. We did not engage in a formal clearness process; to do so never occurred to us; we just trusted that clearness would come naturally. One by one, the anticipated obstacles were removed, and the pieces fell into place.
Dyck—Richard made a rough budget of basic expenses [which made it clear] that my retirement income would probably be adequate to cover all costs. The risks to personal safety & health were matters to which I had given considerable attention before going to Zimbabwe. [In spite of violent incidents], I felt more secure there than I had on several occasions in US inner city neighborhoods; I also received excellent medical care there.
Avis—I realized our probable safety & the quality of lifestyle & medical care we could expect were the privilege of being white. I found that truth uncomfortable, but was willing to live with the reality. The decision had made itself. We were going to South Africa. We had felt a leading, spent time discerning the rightness of it & had acted on it. We didn’t know how long we would stay, nor did we know or care about what we would do.
II. THE WRONG QUESTION—Henri Nouwen asks: What greater ministry can be practiced than one which reflects that presence? [And answers: “A ‘pastoral presence’ is more important than any plan or project. More than anything, people want you to share their lives.” This ministry was an affirmation of what we wanted to be about in South Africa. “But what will you do?” was the 1st question people asked us; for us it was the wrong question. Our experiences had led us to believing to be with people is more important than to do for them.
We had no particular timetable, and were content to slip into the meeting and community as unobtrusively as possible, and simply let happen what would. We wrote: “We will be eager to learn from you and to contribute in any ways that seem appropriate or possible out of the resources that we bring with us.” We didn’t carry any answers with us. We want to save people from ignorance and poverty, [when] too often, it is we who are drowning in a poverty of spirit. We have much to learn from people all over the world.
Avis—I visited several sites where the Early Learning Resources Unit was helping mothers learn to play creatively with their children, using whatever limited resources & discards they could find & their imaginations.
Now & then we did find ourselves tripping over the impulse to show people how to do things, & to suggest a “better way.” Henri Nouwen wrote: “The 1st thing is to know people by name, to eat and drink with them, to listen to their stories and tell your own, and show them by words, gestures and actions that you love them.” The irony is that we found plenty to do. What we did arose out of who we were, of knowing & becoming known, of sharing stories and journeys with one another. The doing was never primary for us; the relationships were.
III. TRAVELING IN THE SPIRIT—Once the word was out that we would soon be on our way to South Africa, most people were supportive and wished us well.
Avis—When a Pendle Hill Board member expressed gratitude that we could make such a journey & that we would carry the love & concern of many Friends, I realized the possible communal dimension of our decision. We departed knowing we were being held in the Light by many Friends and were carrying their love and concern to the people of South Africa.
[For lettering writing] we made arrangements with Avis’ mother to copy & distribute a periodic newsletter for us. We tried to capture some of the flavor & texture of life in South Africa & introduced the people we encountered. We wrote separate accounts: the 2-in-1 letters provided a wider canvas than a joint report would have; we avoided political/social analysis. We did not think [of it as “writing epistles,” but] we may have stepped into the stream of Quaker tradition in this way. We don’t know how many people heard our informal reports [beyond those we distributed them to]. We felt we were traveling in the Spirit, that our decision was right & Spirit-led.
IV. CAPETOWN MEETING: Spiritual Home and Opportunity for Ministry—Cape Western MM was our gateway to the country and its people. [We were supported, nurtured, and nurturers for the 1½ years we were there]. Their reception of us was reserved. By becoming sojourning members, we hoped to declare our commitment to the meeting. We attended the Peace Work Committee, and Ministry and Oversight meetings. We started our Pendle Hill practice of inviting people from the meeting to simply drop in during the afternoon of the 1st Sunday of every month; there was no business to conduct, no issue to resolve.
Avis—During one of these afternoons, Scotty Morton shared her terror at [having a rifle pointed at her] at a squatters’ camp outside Cape Town; I shared one woman’s pain and anxiety for a fleeting moment. We sensed a hunger in the meeting for sharing and deepening the spiritual foundations of the work they were doing. We convened a weekly discussion group to explore the origins of Quaker thought and testimonies.
Dyck—There was interest in bible study in the meeting, and I was delighted to start up a weekly group. I also began to write a newsletter for local and distant members and attenders.
Avis—I got the Woodbrooke’s study program Gifts and Discoveries started at the meeting; almost the entire meeting participated; the bonds between the people of the meeting deepened. I also led retreats and weekly prayer meetings. [During one of the latter, Rommel invited the leaders of 2 sometimes violent factions to meet on the neutral ground of the meeting to work out their difference]. One of the groups never showed and the hour passed without incident; the Wednesday group is still meeting.
Dyck—None of what we did was arduous. Relating to people in various ways outside the meeting & facilitating activities that people wanted but hadn’t time to organize, we could contribute to the meeting’s spiritual life.
Neither of us had thought ourselves “ministers” before. Time is not perhaps, a direct contribution to the struggle for justice and peace in South Africa, but its relationship to that goal made the effort worthwhile.
V. ENGAGEMENT—Early in our sojourn we also moved around in the larger community. We made contact with the Black Sash & the South African Institute for Race Relations. We wanted to move slowly to wait for the things that seemed right to emerge naturally without [succumbing to] the “ought/should’ syndrome—either our own or somebody else’s. We became involved with Siseko, a small brick-making cooperative; we felt the grief when its project manager was shot to death as a suspected African National Congress guerilla.
Dyck—I tried to become an “enabler,” working several mornings a week; I helped them open a bank account. I tried not to do things for them, but to stand side by side with them as they learned. I tried to slip into their rhythm, to respect their needs and capabilities, and to step back and allow them to be who they were, even if it meant less efficiency and slower progress.
Avis—[I became involved with the Philani Nutrition Clinics; the Government provided minimal infrastructure]. From the beginning Philani was special to me. My own wish was simply to come and be there, “[babysitting].” I was asked to help with the typing backlog of staff-meeting minutes and project reports. I didn’t go to the clinics very often, [because of] my reticence as an “outsider,” but each time I went was deeply satisfying. The clinic embraced life, demonstrated life, and taught by example that life in all its noise and distress can be a celebration, even in the face of want, cruelty, disinterest.
I am done with great things, & big things, great institutions & big success, & I am for those tiny invisible molecular forces … creeping through the crannies of the world like so many rootlets, or like the capillary oozing of water which, if you give them time, will rend the hardest monument to man’s pride. William James.
The South African Institute for Race Relations (SAIRR) is respected internationally for its biannual report of Apartheid statistics [& its craft shops]. It was a natural place for me to share interests in crafts & put in some time. I also processed applications to their scholarship fund. There was a branch of Koinonia in Cape Town, star-ted by a radical Dutch Reformed domineer, to bring mixed-race groups together in a comfortable, non-threatening setting.
Dyck—I had been invited as guest speaker & to lead a group discussion of conflict resolution. I assumed too much willingness on the part of blacks & coloreds to explore institutional violence. The people were clearly glad we were with them, & far more forgiving of our discomfort than we were. [Dyck was able to meet a Dutch Reformed Church’s high official, & to set up a series of very challenging meetings]. My own roots are Dutch. The Reformed Church was part of my history until my great-grandfather became an Episcopalian priest. I eagerly accepted an invitation to meet the Director. His responses made me feel I was being kept at arms’ length & that an open exchange wasn’t possible. I could see what pain must be his if he felt his belief system was being challenged. I wrote a critique of a Synod report, & he responded angrily. In our last meeting, he said he found it difficult to remain angry with me sitting across the desk from him. He expressed surprise at how few Southern African Quakers there were. We parted cordially, in spite of not reaching any satisfactory conclusions.
I may have been a prophetic witness in my relationship with this churchman as defined by Abraham Heschel: “A prophet is one who holds God & human person together at one time & at all times through profound love, powerful dissent, painful rebuke, & unwavering love. I don’t know if my words or my behavior have remained with him. I’m comfortable not knowing. Herbert Louckes: “An act of love that fails is as much part of divine life as a successful act; love is measured by its fullness, not by its reception.” Our own belief in the value of presence was affirmed over & over again in very basic & simple tasks we preformed & in our encounters.
VI. THE BIG ISSUE—[The weighty, difficult questions about South Africa are the wrong questions]. William James wrote: I am done with great things, big things, great institutions & big success. I am for tiny invisible molecular forces … creeping through the world’s crannies like rootlets, or like capillary oozing of water which, if you give them time, will rend the hardest monument to man’s pride. Rommel Roberts, [a full-time, colored peace-worker] said: “Most people lose sight the need for grass-roots work. Teaching mothers how to play with children is linked to the liberation of an entire country.” Our own bent [led us to make “small” contributions].
VII. INVITATION—We were granted a 6-month extension, [and could have gotten more 6-month extensions], but we chose not to live with that chronic uncertainty. We sense that our time in South Africa was drawing to a close and that it was right to leave. Also, we were brought face to face with the paradox that one of the ways we could “help” South Africa was to become involved in our own country. Part of the work of Koinonia, Ben encourages [and facilitates] South Africans, particularly white South Africans, to travel abroad.
But the traffic must be 2-way. It is important that we not engage in shunning—either as nations or as individuals. [What is needed is to] simply go with open heart and mind and the knowledge that the Spirit is working in you and in those you will meet. We need to set aside our American compulsion for speed, for instant diagnoses and quick fixes, for whirlwind entrances and exits. Those opting for early retirement, or younger people on sabbatical or before graduate school might consider South Africa.
There is no guarantee that just because the desire is there, permission will follow; the government is careful about those to whom they grant visas. [Ours were granted because we had friends in the country], and because Quakers have a long history in the country. Friends also enjoy an unusual freedom from government harassment as a direct result of their compassionate work with Afrikaner women and children during the Anglo-Boer War. The important thing is to go without preconceived expectations of what you might do there, or how helpful you might be. Go as a loving concerned person, “walking cheerfully over the earth.” A Friendly presence can be a blessing in places like South Africa, for both the host country and the sojourner.
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