Overview
Transforming our Quaker meetings into communities of anti-racist action and solidarity involves more than individual actions or superficial changes. To become truly transformed, we must look at our structures, our decision-making processes, our policies and procedures, our use of resources, and our commitment to each other. As we address how white supremacy culture shows up on our organizations, we are invited to experiment with new ways of being together and to reflect on the question of what is truly Quaker in our practices, while letting go of the dynamics of white culture that lead to pain, division, and oppression. This is hard work and calls for creativity, honesty, and perseverance.
If you have five minutes…
Reflect on this passage from early Friends:
“Take heed, dear Friends, to the promptings of love and truth in your hearts. Seek to live in affection as true Friends in your Meetings, in your families, in all your dealings with others, and in your relationship with outward society. The power of God is not used to compel us to Truth; therefore, let us renounce for ourselves the power of any person over any other and, compelling no one, seek to lead others to Truth through love. Let us teach by being ourselves teachable.”
-extract from the epistles of the Yearly Meeting of Pennsylvania and the Jerseys, 1694 and 1695
If you have twenty minutes…
Read this Friends Journal Article: Friends, Race, and Systemic Change by Andrea Ayvazian
Here is what I am concerned about, and what I see as the challenges that lie ahead: [Within Quaker culture, there is a] great emphasis on diversity, which I believe is misplaced. The emphasis should be on antiracism. I do not think integrating Quaker meetings should be your focus. Quaker meetings throughout New England could remain exactly as they are today, predominantly white, not increase their diversity at all, and still be antiracist. A New Englander recently asked: “How does this relate to my meeting, which is small and all white, in a small town that is all white?” I don’t actually think a lack of diversity is your problem; I think a fundamental shift in your self‐identity is needed. Antiracist churches and meetings are possible even in northern, rural Vermont, the whitest state in the Union.
Friends Journal, October 2003
Read this list of characteristics of White Supremacy Culture by Tema Okun, published by Dismantling Racism.
This is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture that show up in our organizations. Culture is powerful precisely because it is so present and at the same time so very difficult to name or identify. The characteristics listed below are damaging because they are used as norms and standards without being proactively named or chosen by the group. They are damaging because they promote white supremacy thinking.
What parallels do you see between white supremacy culture and “Quaker culture”?
The article also describes antidotes to white supremacy culture. What steps might we need to take to begin disrupting white supremacy that shows up in the way Quakers worship, do business, or relate to each other?
If you have an hour…
Learn about the Institutional Assessment on Systemic Racism within Friends General Conference, which can serve as a model for acknowledging and beginning to address organizational change within our Quaker bodies:
- The call for an institutional assessment of racism within FGC’s institutional culture grew out of an incident at the 2016 Gathering.
- FGC hired Crossroads Antiracism Organizing & Training to train the task group and guide their work.
- In October 2018, the Institutional Assessment Task Force asked Central Committee (FGC’s governing body) to commit FGC to becoming an anti-racist institution. Many Friends saw clearly that doing so is a spiritual commitment to help FGC and the Religious Society of Friends become the Beloved Community that Spirit calls us to be. Central Committee found unity and FGC has now affirmed its commitment to becoming an anti-racist organization through the processes and actions described in the minute and the summary report. The minute, recommendations, and report from the Institutional Assessment Task Force can be read here. While it is true that the body reached strong unity, it is also important to stress that the discernment at Central Committee was challenging for many Friends. This underscores the ways that even when we are largely united in moving forward, systemic racism inserts itself in a myriad of dispiriting ways.
- FGC invites Friends to share widely the findings and recommendations of the Institutional Assessment, in the hopes that our experience may help you as your yearly and monthly meeting seek to address issues of systemic racism within your meeting.
Tools for Transforming Our Organizations…
Atlanta Friends Meeting offers a set of queries to guide Quaker process, committee work, welcoming newcomers, materials in the meetinghouse and library, and the social life of the meeting along anti-racist principles.
As a way of living up to our beliefs and reaching our goal of an inclusive community, we continue to ask groups and committees with the Meeting to regularly reflect on a set of queries in order to be more intentional about processes and practices that work to eliminate institutional racism and foster a welcoming multicultural, multiracial community within the Meeting.
– Queries from “Our Role As Individuals In America’s Racial History” (ORAIIARH), Revised 2009
Dismantling Racism Action Tools: This page includes the following tools: Giving Feedback, information about the role of Change Teams and Caucuses in race equity work, race equity principles for taking action, and a race equity tool for organizations in developing explicit goals.
Queries for Conversation
What have you committed to, to take action against systemic racism within your faith community? What specific first action will you take? When?
What does it feel like to name and share this commitment with others?