miracle is beginning to happen in and around New England Yearly Meeting (NEYM): we are beginning to look at our own racism! What brought this about might be helpful to other yearly meetings. For about 30 years New England Yearly Meeting's Prejudice and Poverty Committee had been encouraging New England Friends to look closely at racism issues-without much response. In addition, some New England Friends of Color (we have very few) have expressed their own discomfort, pain even, at the climate surrounding them in their meetings. They were usually not heard, their expressions of pain some-times being viewed as "over sensitivity."

What has changed in the atmosphere of NEYM? Currently the key personnel (yearly meeting clerk, clerk of Yearly Meeting Ministry and Council and our Field Secretary) are not only open to-but welcoming of discussion on racism issues.

But there was also a catalyst: Friends General Conference conducted a workshop, the "Reality of Racism," at NEYM Sessions during the summer of 2000-led by Vince Buscemi of New York Yearly Meeting and our own Jim Varner. In spite of having held workshops on racism at many previous NEYM Sessions, this one was taken more seriously. Why? It was attended by about five or six Friends of Color and a good number of white parents of children of color (apparently these people were most important in later results). These parents expressed pain at their children's not feeling truly welcomed in meetings. The workshop took this message to Ministry and Council, and Ministry and Council listened! Why did New England Friends listen more receptively to these parents than we had ever listened to Friends of Color among us? Is it because these parents are white? Do we take statements from white Friends more seriously?

Yearly Meeting Ministry and Council continues to listen! A Working Party on Racism has formed within that council. It held a workshop on racism for its members. Ministry and Council asked for, and has been granted, a whole evening at yearly meeting 2002 sessions to work with all sessions attenders (about 300 people) on our own personal racism issues. And racism issues will be the subject of one day's worship sharing at yearly meeting sessions.

Our Working Party on Racism continues to plan for future work. There is a new "White Privilege, a Workshop on Racism" as a part of New England Yearly Meeting Ministry and Council's Traveling Ministries Program. We are developing book and video bibliographies as resources for yearly meeting and hope to add more workshops to the Traveling Ministries Program.

A key to racism now being taken seriously is the belief that our own (usually unconscious) racism affects our spiritual well being. Racism can no longer be dismissed simply as a political action issue; we must look within ourselves.

FGConnections Spring 2002 Home