Privilege and The Other (unabridged)
[This article is abridged from a longer one, published online at https://westernfriend.org/media/privilege-and-other-unabridged.]
[This article is abridged from a longer one, published online at https://westernfriend.org/media/privilege-and-other-unabridged.]
his is the manuscript of the keynote talk presented to Intermountain Yearly Meeting at its 2021 Annual Sessions by José Santos Woss.
Multnomah Monthly Meeting in Portland, Oregon, has a reputation of being one of the “more liberal” Quaker meetings. This is Portland, after all. There’s plenty of action and donations of money in the meeting around climate change, immigrant rights, and many other worthy social-justice causes. But when it comes to action around supporting Black Lives, there seems to be a hesitancy.
Dear Editor: I am a white male who has enjoyed some reasonable advantages, earned by exploiting opportunities that are often denied inappropriately to people of another race or gender, and I have also experienced prejudice myself, based on less obvious classifications. Even so, systemic racism is a real problem, even if not all challenges faced by people of color are based on race.
A tool for organizational assessment and change around commitment to racial justice.
Dear Friends:
My reaction to Zae Asa Illo’s article and the Friends-of-Color Epistle was one of sadness and frustration. How can we have a Friends-of-Color Epistle with a message that could have been written years ago? How can we have an article by an African-American Quaker, which is both personal and authentic yet not surprising?