Racial Audit Reflection
The Racial Audit Task Force has been working for a long time. Since November 2019 when we were named by the MFSA Board. We last saw one another face to face in St. Petersburg, Florida, Feb. 15-16, 2020. Since that time we have met at least every month via zoom. I have come to treasure the little boxes which frame a small window into task force members’ homes or offices. Even in the midst of a pandemic, task force members have moved across the country and around the corner, have changed jobs or appointments, have had good days and hard days, have faced home disasters, and marked milestone life events. We have had little glimpses into such big events, though maybe not in the same way as if we could have met in person for a day or two at a time.
I have mixed feelings about the Racial Audit Task Force. I am incredibly grateful to have engaged in this vitally important work with this amazing team of people. I would encourage other organizations to engage in this work, examination, and reflection. And I hope I am not called upon to be a part of another racial audit task force. As invaluable as this work is, it is hard and discomforting. When the work of this task force began, I thought I understood racism. I thought I understood how to dismantle racism. I looked at the ministry I had done in recent appointments and believed that I was anti-racist. How little I knew... how little I understood... how feeble were my previous efforts... how performative those efforts were.
Before being a part of the Racial Audit Task Force, I might have on occasion noticed that I was at an event that was all white people, or I might not have noticed. And certainly did not ask, "Why were there no people of color?" Nor did I ask, "What is it about this event and how it came to be that it hinders people of color from being a part of this?" If this is important or enjoyable for me, then would it not also be important or enjoyable for people of color? For most of my life, I never noticed people of color were missing from my church, from my classmates, from my affinity groups. Such is the power of white privilege, such is the insidiousness of racism in our society today.
There is hope. There is hope. A white friend shared with me that several years ago when their family moved from a very diverse community in one part of the country to a very homogenous community in another part of the country, their teenager asked after a couple of weeks, “Where are the other people?” The teenager had noticed that people of color were missing from their new community and asked about it. This gives me hope, a younger generation is starting to take notice in ways that we older generations need to learn to do.
Who is missing? Why are they missing? What is it about how this organization I am a part of, discourages or hinders people of color from being a part? These are some of the questions that people holding privilege
need to start asking.
This is one of many examples of how I became aware through working with the Racial Audit Task Force that I am a product of a racist system, in a racist society, working for a racist institution. Kyrie Eleison.
People of white privilege, we must do better. We must do better.
Grace, peace, Rev. Dr. Mary Kay Totty
Seward UMC, Seward, Nebraska