The event described below is part of a series of initiatives of the Anti-Racism Taskforce of the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church. See below for details.
The color of concert music is white. Its gender: male. So goes the popular perception. To start a conversation on t.....continued>
Below is a 3:30-minute video of a small but momentous occasion. My son Aaron—a wonderful musician and talented teacher and conductor—leading the Gage Middle School orchestra, Riverside, California. He’s been teaching there for 20 years and thousands of students. When he first got to Ri.....continued>
We celebrate the Church’s “birth” on Pentecost Sunday, the day the promised Holy Spirit arrived. This year we celebrated on May 20th, a Sunday where at my church—one of the most diverse in America—its large Filipino group took charge of the service. The VIDEO below sh.....continued>
This is the first of 16 short excerpts from my radio series Voices and Freedoms: A History of Jazz. Based on my book of the same name, the series (and book) were produced at the University of Virginia in the nation’s Bicentennial Year. The show, syndicated by the Intercollegiate Broadcasting.....continued>
May 2020 Update: Another “I-Can’t-Breathe” incident. I could not watch the video of the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 26, 2020. But I heard it while my wife described to me what she was seeing: a police man with his knee on the neck of an already-subdued bl.....continued>
“CBS” (COOL BLACK SICKNESS) a song DAN GUZMAN co-wrote and performs with Brad Hoskins. Fat Cats, Moses in the desert with the Great I Am, bleeding seas, and things tumbling from the sky. Apocalyptic dread. Cool grooves. It not only sounds good—it&#.....continued>
Update: IN APRIL 2018, EMMANUEL HOUSE MERGED WITH LONG-TIME PARTNER ORGANIZATION THE JOSEPH CORPORATION TO BECOME The Neighbor Project. THIS INCREASED THE NUMBER OF FAMILIES SERVED FROM AROUND 25 AT THE TIME OF SENATOR DURBIN’S VISIT TO NOW, IN 2020, A NUMBER APPROACHING 3000. WATCH A VIDEO.....continued>
Rick Guzman is The Neighbor Project’s Executive Director, and so important was his talk during The Neighbor Project’s 2020 virtual gala that I have posted a VIDEO of it below all by itself for anyone who did not watch the whole 45-minute gala, or even the 19-minute Gala Highlights I recently did for this site.
His talk highlighted The Neighbor Project’s impressive growth since early 2018, when Emmanuel House merged with The Joseph Corporation to create The Neighbor Project (see link below for this story), and casted a vision for its expanding service to financially vulnerable families and individuals for the rest of 2020, then 2021 and beyond.
He casted this vision in the larger context of loving our neighbors enough to invest in them, saying, “We have to believe in our neighbors enough to invest in them, invest in others the way we would want to be invested in…[so] we can keep working to break down the barriers to home ownership, which are the single largest driver of this nation’s wealth gap.” That wealth gap is unbelievably enormous (see my article “Graphic Inequality”) and even larger is the Racial Wealth Gap.
He set all this in the largest context of all by quoting from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.” “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” King wrote. “We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”
This talk is an example of what we need more of in this time of protest and soul-searching. It ties practical action into a deep vision of our mutuality, and vice versa: it ties that deep vision to practical steps that make that vision a reality in our everyday lives. And more, it’s also a question of Who Leads?—a question playing out in the protests and other anti-racists actions across our nation today. Writing in 1970, Robert Greenleaf, who started the field of Servant Leadership, said, “…the next 30 years will be marked as the period when the dark skinned and…the alienated of the world assert their claims…” and were not “led by a privileged elite…It may be that the best that some of today’s privileged can do is to stand aside and serve by helping when asked and as instructed.” Guzman expresses his belief that, “If we enlist and empower and engage financially vulnerable populations with opportunities…these otherwise vulnerable populations can quickly become contributing members and leaders for our communities.” That’s an expanded version of a core belief he’s expressed many times: “Every person has a God-given ability to contribute.”
The VIDEO below shows highlights from The Neighbor Project’s 2020 Gala, a 45-minute virtual event that’s been edited down to about 19 minutes. You’ll see four produced videos: an Intro to The Neighbor Project that I was privileged to narrate, an animation about the workings of the new Financial Empowerment Center (a first-of-its-kind joint venture of The Neighbor Project with the City of Aurora), and two moving stories about families that have gone through The Neighbor Project’s programs. You’ll also see snippets of our hosts, Cheryl Pacilio and Peter Burchard. And you’ll see The Neighbor Project’s executive director, Rick Guzman, cast a vision for 2020-21 and beyond.
This talk is so important you canwatch just Rick’s talk HERE now, or go back to it after you’ve watched the gala excerpt below. His talk occurs at the 10:26 mark of these highlights and is followed by a beautiful video called “Khai’s Story.”
What you won’t see is enough of is Cheryl and Peter’s wonderful hosting job, part of which was to raise money for The Neighbor Project.
BUT YOU CAN STILL DONATE !!!
Go to The Neighbor Project website and click on the conspicuous Donate button. As Rick Guzman has said many times, The Neighbor Project doesn’t do things for people, it does things with people, not just the many families and individuals it serves, but all people who come along side to donate and volunteer.
This has included the many volunteers from Exelon Generation. They’re pictured at left working at Bryan House, where much of The Neighbor Project started. Rick and Desiree Guzman founded it in 2007 as a living memorial to the youngest member of our family, Bryan Emmanuel Guzman, whom we lost shortly after his 21st birthday. It served five families, helping them gain financial and social stability through home ownership. When it grew to become Emmanuel House, it served 25. With the merger of Emmanuel House and long-time partner The Joseph Corporation, The Neighbor Project came into being, and the number served, especially if you count those who have already come to the Financial Empowerment Center, has jumped to well over a thousand, with thousands more not a too-distant prospect.
But to return to Exelon Generation. For the sake of time, what you won’t see at all on the VIDEO below is Rick presenting a special award recognizing the scores of volunteers and the tens of thousands of dollars Exelon has invested in The Neighbor Project. For only the second time ever, Rick presented a Co-Founder’s award. Brad Fewell, pictured at left, accepted it for Exelon Generation. He’s Senior Vice President and Regulatory and General Counsel for the organization. “I don’t know if we’d even exist without you,” Rick said, just before bestowing the award.
You can see the giving of this award, Fewell’s response, and the naming of so many other sponsors, by watching the full gala telecast. Go to The Neighbor Project website and click on the Watch the Recording button just under the “Light Up the Night” banner. Along with Exelon Generation’s outstanding, long-term commitment, so many other’s have sponsored The Neighbor Project and its events, including the 2020 gala. To name just a very few: BMO Harris, Old Second, and 1st Midwest banks, Johnson & Johnson, Thrivent Financial, Waubonsee Community College, plus Aurora’s Mayor and all 12 of its City Council members. There are many more, and watching the full gala you’ll hear the names of individual donors, and even those who held parties to watch the gala. Even my little group, pictured at left, got a shout out: “Dr. Richard Guzman and his JEDI friends at church!” Cheryl said. JEDI stands for Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion. It’s a ministry at my church trying to make a small difference. The roots of The Neighbor Project were small, too, and now it’s so much bigger, with an even bigger vision to empower people—people often marginalized by society—to help lead our nation out of the huge inequities we’re confronted with today.
Christian theology has white supremacist leanings. Perhaps the majority of religious and philosophical systems do as well, but Christian theology definitely does—at least when it comes to its ideas about salvation and holiness. James Baldwin has been all over our recent discussions of race in the U.S. because his take on racism has been about the deepest, most complex we’ve ever had. But he also noted a very “simple” root of racism: the color of evil and damnation is black, the color of goodness and salvation is white. This is one of the major ideas in the VIDEO below, which shows a talk I gave at the launch of a pilot project called the Clergy Peer Reflection and Engagement Series (CPRES), aimed at helping United Methodist clergy in the Northern Illinois Conference be more bold to speak about anti-racism from the pulpit and to lead their congregations and communities in anti-racist activities. I take another run at this general topic in my sermon “How Holy Was Jesus.”
Perhaps an unlikely prompt for theological reflection?
When I was younger, I was a church song leader, leading congregations in songs like: “Lord, Jesus, I want to be perfectly whole / I want you forever to live in my soul. / Break down every idol, strike down every foe. / Now wash me and I will be whiter than snow.” / Chorus: “Whiter than snow, yes whiter than snow. / Now wash me and I will be whiter than snow.” White, white, white. And beyond this that lust for purity and separation that is at the heart of all white supremacist thinking. The root meaning of “holy” is to be “set aside,” separated from the unholy and profane. White, white, white, and its connection to Holy, holy, holy is a drumming rhythm deep in the Christian soul, driving us away from blackness. “Yes,” my pastor, Kyunhae Anna Shin, blurted out at a Zoom meeting of a ministry team we had just a day after I gave the talk below. “Right from the beginning, our theology makes us want to be white!”
The relationship to racism seems clear. Whiteness, and its attendant purity and separation, is instilled very deep in our souls as the thing we want most of all. And when we encounter blackness we react instinctively, either to try to wipe it out violently or— perhaps more subtly but eventually more “effectively”—to wash it clean: to make it acceptable by washing away its “contaminants” and making it as white as possible.
It’s often a surprise to many, especially white liberals, that people of color look on integration with a wary eye. Liberals also love, along with “integration,” other words people of color often care a lot less about, words like “diversity” and “full inclusion” When people of color look at the sorry conditions of their childrens’ schools, for example, they don’t care as much about “diversity” and the rest as about just wanting schools to be safe, bathrooms to be clean, and instruction to continue an actual full day.
Also, “integration” often means people of color giving up large areas of their identity to try to fit in, or being forced into doing things whites want in the way whites want things done. In the talk below I mention a podcast my wife Linda’s been listening to, and I’ve heard the bits and pieces she’s made me listen to. It’s called Nice White Parents, about how a group of white parents come in to a struggling minority school and just take over, eventually leaving the interests of that school, its students, and its community in a distant second place—all while “meaning well.” At heart we still love white saviorism. We give Best Picture Oscars to white savior films like Green Book and Driving Miss Daisy, which won its Best Picture Oscar the same year Do the Right Thing came out. But in a move confirming that Americans would rather talk about anything—anything—but race, Do the Right Thing was not even nominated!
In the VIDEO below, I propose thinking about integration differently, and consequently salvation and holiness differently as well. I base this on much I’ve read before, and on Taoism, but especially the music of Ray Charles. I tell of the moment I, as a kid, first heard him sing. The song was “Georgia on My Mind,” and to this day I don’t remember ever being so still. By the early 60’s, Ray Charles, perhaps the pre-eminent blues shouter in America, began recording and remaking white country music. He even remade “You Are My Sunshine,” as if to say: Hear this! This is what white being integrated into black sounds like. Ray Charles is probably an unlikely figure to inspire theological reflection, but his music said to me that people of color didn’t need to lose their identity to belong. Instead, whites could integrate into us.
Whiteness didn’t need to wipe out blackness or try to clean it up. It could integrate into blackness. It could stop trying to lead and always take things over and instead accept an equal mutuality with blackness, acknowledging that blackness is an inextricable and positive component of itself. Writing in 1970, Robert Greenleaf, who started the field of Servant Leadership, said, “…the next 30 years will be marked as the period when the dark skinned and…the alienated of the world assert their claims…” and were not “led by a privileged elite…It may be that the best that some of today’s privileged can do is to stand aside and serve by helping when asked and as instructed.” He was off by less than two decades. That time could be now, today, where who leads? is a question playing out in protests and other anti-racist actions all across the country. Whiteness integrating into blackness could lead to a fuller, more expansive vision of salvation and holiness. What if salvation were seen not as a process of whitening, but of darkening? What if holiness were not seen as a process of separating, setting oneself aside, but of embracing? One thing they always got after Jesus for was his refusal to separate himself from the supposedly profane. The continuing narrowness of our vision of salvation and holiness—a vision so clouded by whiteness—is one of the deep things blocking our ability to be more truly anti-racist.
♦ I recorded an introduction to myself played just before the talk I gave in the VIDEO BELOW. See it here in a post titled “Retirement and Race.” For two other series on race based on United Methodist events go to “Unpacking Racism” and to “Does It Matter If I’m a Racist?“—the lead post for the UMC anti-racism workshop Becoming the Beloved Community. Also, go to the Teaching Diversity page on this site, and for a five-part video series on Ray Charles, go to “Me and Brother Ray.” I would most recommend “Part 4: Signifying.”
Rick Guzman is The Neighbor Project’s Executive Director, and so important was his talk during The Neighbor Project’s 2020 virtual gala that I have posted a VIDEO of it below all by itself for anyone who did not watch the whole 45-minute gala, or even the 19-minute Gala Highlights I recently did for this site.
This talk is an example of what we need more of in this time of protest and soul-searching. It ties practical action into a deep vision of our mutuality, and vice versa: it ties that deep vision to practical steps that make that vision a reality in our everyday lives. And more, it’s also a question of Who Leads?—a question playing out in the protests and other anti-racists actions across our nation today. Writing in 1970, Robert Greenleaf, who started the field of Servant Leadership, said, “…the next 30 years will be marked as the period when the dark skinned and…the alienated of the world assert their claims…” and were not “led by a privileged elite…It may be that the best that some of today’s privileged can do is to stand aside and serve by helping when asked and as instructed.” Guzman expresses his belief that, “If we enlist and empower and engage financially vulnerable populations with opportunities…these otherwise vulnerable populations can quickly become contributing members and leaders for our communities.” That’s an expanded version of a core belief he’s expressed many times: “Every person has a God-given ability to contribute.”
