General Assembly: GA Presentations: Presenter views and opinions do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the UUA.

Crossing Borders II: Building Cross-racial Understanding

General Assembly 2009 Event 4065

< Part I

Sponsored by the General Assembly (GA) Planning Committee and Diverse and Revolutionary Unitarian Universalist Multicultural Ministries (DRUUMM). Speakers: Jorge Zeballos and the Rev. Clyde Grubbs.

In this second part of this two-part workshop, the participants separated into two working groups: a person-of-color caucus and a white caucus. Each caucus was asked to address two questions:

  1. What work is needed at the personal level to demonstrate a commitment to anti-racism?
  2. What work is needed at the institutional level (Unitarian Universalist Association) to demonstrate a commitment to anti-racism?

The responses are listed on pages 3 through 7 of the workshop notes (PDF, 7 pages) generated by and for this pair of workshops. Those generated by the white caucus are listed in the columns marked "W;" those by the people-of-color caucus are in the column marked "POC."

Returning to the larger group, the participants noted some similarities in the two lists, and some differences between them. But the primary question became "What can we do to move forward?"

One answer to that, as a starting point, is that there are many organizations and other resources currently available within Unitarian Universalism (UUism) that interested persons and congregations can join, work with, or go to for additional information and research. Some of these are:

Reported by Mike McNaughton; edited by Bill Lewis.