RE: Report on the UUCA Survey Controversy

RE: Report on the UUCA Survey Controversy

TO: UUCA Board

FROM: Rev. Makar, Senior Minister

DATE: September 12, 2017

Note: ARAOMC means “Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression, Multi-Culturalism”

Background

On March 12, 2017, 97% of voting members present at a Special Congregational meeting voted to sell our building. The offer had come seemingly out of nowhere, and even though we had no idea where we would land next, the overwhelming consensus was that this was a good move for us to make.

The weeks running up to the March 12 vote saw UUCA leaders working overtime to negotiate the right deal. Naturally, it meant that, for a couple weeks post March 12, leaders stepped back to catch a breath. But things started gearing up again in April, as multiple teams were formed to plan and carry through all the tasks related to our upcoming move. Collectively, these teams are called the “Project Phoenix.”

One of these teams, the “Strategy Team,” was charged with collecting data about congregant preferences for where to situate our new building, what the preferred building features should be, etc. It created a survey meant to collect such data. It did all this without the team responsible for general oversight on Project Phoenix as a whole (The “Steering Team”) having been formed. For various reasons, its formation was delayed.

The Survey

They survey included Likert scales that prompted participants to rate the desirability of certain criteria for our new location. Among the various sets of criteria to be rated was a list of communities by racial demographic Some communities mentioned were: African American communities, Latino communities, and Asian communities. White communities was not given as an option because, during various planned conversations with congregants, no one expressed a desire to move to a more-white community.

The Strategy Team has provided a report on how these questions were developed. See Appendix.

Regardless of intent, the impact was nevertheless very hurtful.

A common theme that arose from interviews with both people of color and white people at UUCA is the feeling of discomfort that the questions raised. The reported reason for not expressing these concerns to leadership are as follows:

(1) many trusted that the survey designers knew what they were doing,

(2) surveys irritate them and they just wanted to get through as fast as possible,

(3) or they just dismissed the questions and didn’t answer them.

Report of issues with survey

Someone DID speak up after the survey was launched, however. She, Erica Hazra, is a person of color who took her concern to the UUCA Board President Erin Stanfill. It is important to note that other people of color went to Erica with their concerns but had grown weary of speaking their truth. This was by no means the first time that Erica and other people of color have encountered micro/macroaggressions in the UUCA community and had taken their concerns to board members and UUCA’s ministers. Consequently, the harm caused by this survey is not an isolated incident and the intensity of the reactions to it is a representation of these open wounds.

The Strategy Team, in all its messages out to the congregation, repeatedly encouraged people to share comments and concerns with them directly, but Erica said that she did not trust that her concern would be received in a way that would do it full justice.

Erica took her concern to the Board President-Elect (now President), who in turn shared it with the Strategy Team, which readily admitted that the questions were hurtful and could have been phrased much better, but that pragmatic considerations prevented them from rewriting the questions. Hundreds of survey responses had already come in; and to change some questions midstream would create two sets of results, thus undermining the significance of the data.

It was at this point that the Board President-Elect brought the Senior Minister in, and while he acknowledged the hurtful impact of the questions, he was also aware of the overall anxiety in the congregational system about finding our new home and how leadership were being “pecked to death” by people’s continuous questions about where we were in the moving process. So he too saw wisdom in the pragmatic argument and did not push back to say, Stop. Reconsider. Chart a different path forward.

Flawed logic in the “pragmatic” choice

Within the UUCA “bubble,” folks knew that many UUCA members were concerned about gentrifying neighborhoods, and that’s what it would mean to select the “undesirable” option. But others could equally have chosen that option for outright racist reasons.

We can’t tell.

Public perception, however, did view it as sheer instance of racism. To set up a questionnaire that allows people to call a majority people of color neighborhood “undesirable” is racist. And when there is no comparable question about living in a white community, it reinforces the centering of whiteness in our thinking.

Furthermore, from the “outside the UUCA bubble” perspective, to press on ahead with the survey despite the hurt it’s causing says (1) data is more important than respect for people and community, and (2) people of color are once again having to prove themselves, having to defend their experience of reality against people who don’t get it.

Publication of survey to social media

Ten days later, a snapshot of this section of the survey was posted on Facebook. Thousands of people saw questions which allowed survey participants to rate racially identified neighborhoods as “desirable” or “undesirable.” This ignited a conversation that engaged UUCA members, UUA leaders, BLUU, others in the UU faith and the general public.

UUCA responses to the Facebook fallout are also instructive. Many Facebook comments were venomous in their outrage. Many UUCA folks felt completely misunderstood, embarrassed, and angry at the way folks outside our community with little to no knowledge of what was really going on felt equipped to judge, and to do so with such certainty. The majority of UUCA folks who felt this are white.

But there was a contingent of UUCA folks, mostly people of color but some white allies, who saw the outraged comments coming from Facebook as vindication that, yes, the survey questions are manifestations of the operation of White Supremacy culture at UUCA. How else to explain why thousands of people outside of the UUCA community saw something that most folks within UUCA did not? Or if they did, why they didn’t they speak up? Stop the process? Take a different, more inclusive course?

Some Observations

1. The sale of the building and the work of moving UUCA to a new location has generated intense anxiety in the system, that intensifies every other change and conflict. System theorists also point out how systems that undergoing radical change (even where positive) can unconsciously self-sabotage themselves, which is a legitimate possibility for us here at UUCA.

2. Given congregational anxiety, there has been a felt need to go fast. This has warped our sense of priorities:

·  speed vs. ensuring general oversight and consistency with our values as a faith community

·  speed vs. approaches that might be slower, but emphasize inclusion.

3. People of all ethnicities (including white) felt uncomfortable with the questions but the vast majority did not speak up.

4. There is a perceived lack of trustworthy space within which to address ARAOMC-related concerns at UUCA.

5. There is confusion and uncertainty about how to address breakdowns in our community covenant in race-related situations.

6. There is a weariness that has settled upon many people of color congregants at UUCA as, over time, they experience their reality being questioned, denied, and defended against. There is a breakdown of trust.

7. Pragmatic considerations were cited as reasons for not emphasizing an approach that serves inclusion. White supremacy logic often takes the form of pragmatic considerations.

8. Among white congregants, it’s been so very easy for them to put their focus on how Facebook people were cruel, rather than on the fact that thousands of people outside of UUCA saw something in the questions that they didn’t see, together with the genuine hurtful impact of the questions on people of color.

9. White supremacy culture is pernicious and has a push-down, pop-up effect. For years now, UUCA has been hard at work addressing white supremacy as part of its Anti-Racism, Anti-Oppression, Multiculturalism Initiative (ARAOMC) that the entire congregation voted to commit itself to just last year. (See http://www.uuca.org/araomc-2/ to find out more.) But white supremacy culture is insidious. You work hard to exterminate it. You push it down and away in some places, but in others it pops right up.

Some Actions Moving Forward

This is not a complete list of actions. An ARAOMC Strategy Team is being established to create a plan that integrates all these actions and paces out the rate of change so that, ultimately, the work ahead can be sustainable and truly impactful.

1. Establish oversight on Project Phoenix (and everything else at UUCA) that emphasizes ARAOMC as a priority

·  Establish a Project Phoenix Steering Team.

·  Establish an ARAOMC team responsible for vetting processes and documents.

2. Correct our priorities so that they are more fully in line with our Unitarian Universalist values. Soothe our anxieties about the move. Trust that speed does not necessarily lead to the best results.

3. Rebuild trust with people of color congregants, current and former.

·  UUCA leaders need to acknowledge and accept responsibility for past hurtful actions, apologize for out failures, and always work to be nondefensive and humble.

·  Host a Community Conversation on June 11 about the survey controversy.

·  Reach out to people of color in the UUCA community and those who have left us over racial micro/macroaggressions.

4. Create space within UUCA that people can trust to do full justice to ARAOMC-related concerns. This includes formalizing processes that address relationship breakdowns.

·  Formalize a people of color caucus within UUCA.

·  Revise our UUCA Covenant of Healthy Relationships, together with our Breach of Covenant Process, in light of our ARAOMC commitment.

·  Establish a Healthy Relationships Team that supports the work of addressing ARAOMC concerns and rebuilding broken relationships.

·  Learn ways to manage conversations ARAOMC-related conversations on the City that balance freedom of expression with respectfulness of expression.

·  Review our bylaws and policies with an ARAOMC perspective and recommend/make changes.

·  In general, work to define what “ARAOMC lens” means and institute processes that support it in all meetings/committees/groups.

5. Encourage continued culture change at UUCA

·  Use Middle Hour to continue raising emotional intelligence about white supremacy

·  Sermon series in 2017 entitled “Relational Activism,” with a focus on what allied behavior looks like. Criss Crass will be one of the speakers.

·  Other educational and training experiences (including some that enable people to attend to and speak up about feelings of discomfort). This includes annual anti-racism trainings for Staff, Board, Nominating Committee, and other lay leaders, with budgetary implications.

6. Establish/strengthen ties with UU-related and other organizations that resonate with our ARAOMC commitment (like ARE, DRUUMM and BLUU).

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