No Author: Empowerment

This was tedious reading.  I am grateful that I read Morrison-Read before it to get the real flavor.  This is written as heartlessly as Morrison-Reed accuses the Unitarians of being.

I will say, that although I appreciated the more detail into the BAC/BAWA controversy, I didn't find anything here that put Unitarianism, Universalism or UU'ism outside of cultural norms for the time.  Of course, it reads like a penance, a self-flogging for all the world to see.  It served/s (hopefully) as a confession of sins forming a starting off point for new beginnings, not anchored to our, or America's past fear of non-white cultures.

I appreciated Chapters 9 and 10 which served as Monarch notes for the whole work.

The compelling quote for me was the MLK quote about peace being either negative (lack of conflict) or active (justice), with MLK arguing for active peace and my definition being more passive.  I have struggled with this in the past, but until reading it in this context, hadn't considered fully the influence of my race on my viewpoint.  I still think its a matter of semantics, as I do know the difference between peace and justice, but I am still working through that and this reading has helped.

Essentially regarding institutional management of the BAC/BAWA process, the UUA made commitments it couldn't keep because it was blissfully, at that point, unaware of its financial situation.  It made what in retrospect would appear to be the wrong choice, crystalizing a fracture at a time when that fracture had finally resolved to action.  The influence of the powerful was white, New Englander and that influence won.  Clearly when this happens, both sides are to blame, but emotions were running high on this subject at this time.  Integration and assimilation were giving way to true multiculturalism and that pain was ill-timed.

It seemed like it was mismanaged and then sterilized.  What ever happened to the BAC?  Where did it go - meaning the people?  I have heard that Sinkford was part of and then apart from the movement.  I wonder if cooler heads could have prevailed on either side or if it was a time for the establishment to drop its defenses and walk its walk.

I did some research on the UUA website and found that we do have offices of Multicultural Growth and Witness and a Social Justice Empowerment Program that although I couldn't tie them directly back to the Commissions recommendations, would surely have had their source at the same spring.