Like many in the UU blogosphere, I’ve been following the conversation about racism, UUism, and brown bag lunches. I will write a post responding to all of this, or more reflecting on it, but I have really learned a lot from all the discussion.
While I hear Trivum and Ellis’s concerns (see links below) that this isn’t the most ideal thing to spend so much energy on, I’d like to suggest that the issue is not really about brown bag lunches, but bigger issues of semantics, language, justice, love, race, oppression, and how to handle these issues as congregations, as an association, as a faith, as individuals, and so on. The whole “to say brown bag or not” issue is just the narrow, clearly minor, topic that happens to be the ground on which these larger issues and tensions are being discussed. For me, the question is how can we live out the love and justice that is so important to us? In community and as individuals?
Also, for seminarians, no matter what you think about the anti-racism/anti-oppression work in Unitarian Universalism and how we should grapple with racism, this is an important conversation given the importance of anti-racism in the ordination/MFC process.
In case you don’t have time or energy to track down all the responses and various discussions on this topic, I’ve tried to gather together all the various posts. Let me know if I missed anything.
(As I was proofing this post, I realize that it could seem like I am coming down on one side or the other about this whole thing, which I am not. For now, my point is only that the discussion is helpful to learn about the work that some are doing, the work others are doing, and to take a pulse on how this issue is playing out in the association.)
Original post where Peacebang comments on an article in the Quest Magazine: http://www.peacebang.com/2007/05/28/brown-bag-lunch/ Also note that the comments in this post and many of them are important parts of the conversation as well.
Here is the article in Quest Magazine that Peacebang is responding to: http://clf.uua.org/quest/2007/06/#mummert
Responses and related posts (in no particular order):
Here is short response (in Peacebang’s comments) by Melissa Mummert who wrote the article that appeared in Quest: www.peacebang.com/2007/05/28/brown-bag-lunch/#comment-4301
Ministrare Blog (Rev. Sean Parker)
A discussion between Chalice Chick and Rev. Sean on some of the broader questions related to racism and UUism (and Anti-Racism/Anti-Oppression)
Jess’s Journal
Left Coast Unitarian: Smells Like School Spirit or Be True To Your School Part II?
Surviving the Workday (Ms. Theologian)
This sort of Sucks (On Issues of Language)
Barry’s Mom’s Blog: Education at Starr King
The Hunan Scooter Blog: Be True to Your School Now!
The Socinian
Toward a Theology of Anti-Oppression — or not
The Chalice Blog
CC and Sparker say a quick hello
So are we saying here at anti-racism and critical thinking are mutually exclusive?
The Lively Tradition
Philocrities: Brown bag landmines, culling the affiliates, and more
Trivium: Brown Bag – Shmown Bag
Post Office Mission: I’m putting a brown bag over my head
Peacebang: Original post and this one So is this about anti-oppression or is this about school spirit?
Boy in the Bands: Why Starr King?
Making Chutney: My two cents on the Brown Bag Controversy
Paul Wilczynski’s Observations
(very short post) Brown Bag Racism
iMinister: The Brown Bag of Pain
A Perfect World: Beware Evildoer!
Tracking down all the posts must have been a huge job. Thank you for doing this!
[…] the hub-a-bub about General Assembly, and the not too distant brown bag controversy as had me thinking about what it means to be part of a faith, part of an association, and just what […]
Oh dear. . .
It looks like Rev. Diane Rollert of the alleged Unitarian Church of Montreal is quite oblivious to the Starr*k raving “brown bag lunch” controversy. ;-)
Straight from the home page of this alleged U*U “Church” –
What’s New
Friday, September 28, 2007
The Unitarian Church of Montreal has a wealth of activities; you can just sample or get more involved in this community. In the month of September, you can
Join Rev. Diane Rollert for a new season of Seeking the Sacred in Stories, a brown bag lunch group meeting at noon on September 25th (copies of the story available at the UCM office).
How terribly un-PC of you Rev. Rollert. . .
[…] of saying something “wrong” about anti-racism work, since it can be (lest we all forget the brown bag controversy last year) a sensitive subject in our denomination. I think it will help me be more anti-racist (or, framed […]