If a Tree Falls and I Don’t Hear It

A sermon delivered at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation (Blacksburg, VA), January 13, 2008, by the Reverend Christine Brownlie.

A few weeks ago, the winter winds that went roaring through our streets and around our hills damaged the white pine tree that stands between my house and my neighbor’s house. Several very large branches came crashing down. I heard the noise, and I went out to investigate. I did not notice anything of significance, so I hurried back inside to get ready to come to our Sunday services.

It wasn’t until I returned home and read an e-mail message from my neighbor that I understood what had happened. Looking at the great heavy branches lying in our backyards, I was thankful that our homes had been spared and that my neighbor, who was also at home at the time, wasn’t injured.

It took a couple of days to get the mess taken care of, but at least for me, once the branches had been hauled off, I forgot the shock of seeing what had happened and the worries I had about the possibility that the tree was a threat to my safety. Oh well! That’s over. On to the next thing.

A couple of days later, I began to realize that my neighbor and I weren’t the only ones who had to deal with the aftermath of that Sunday-morning wind. Piles of branches and sawed-up limbs appeared on the curb here and there in our neighborhood. I felt a twinge of sadness at each pile of storm-torn limbs. I imagined that the people who owned these trees shared my feelings of shock, distress, and sadness.

One afternoon when I was out for a walk, I stopped and chatted with a neighbor as he dumped some small white pine branches on the curb for pick-up. He confided to me that most of the tree had come down, and that he was delighted. For years, he and his wife and kids had bickered over that tree. He thought it was just a “junk tree” and a haven for the squirrels that he detested. He could hardly wait to gas up the chain saw and have at the remains of the tree trunk.

I was surprised by his attitude. As a born tree-hugger, I tend to see all trees as amazing creations, and I nearly always feel a pang of sadness when one is damaged or has to come down. And I assumed that every other decent human being felt the same way. And if they didn’t, they should. That’s just the way we should all think and feel! At least that’s how I think life should be.

We all see the world through the very small lens of our own worldview. My life experience is unique. And so is yours, and so is the experience of the person across the street and the person across the country and the person on the other side of the globe. It’s true that as human beings, we all have things in common that make it possible for us to relate to one another despite differences of language and culture and all the other variables that make us separate individuals. But the differences matter, even when we don’t understand them.

I have learned this lesson over and over. Sometimes the lesson was very painful. I grew up in Minnesota, and my education included a very Northern view of the event that I was taught to call the “Civil War.” From our Northern perspective, this war was about slavery — plain and simple. The claims about states rights were just a cover-up to us. It was clear to us which side of the country was on the “right” side. (Our side!) Who fired the first shot? (They did!) And who deserved to win? (We did!) But so far as I was concerned, the Civil War was something that was ancient history. This is what I grew up with, and this was the perspective I carried with me when I moved to Alabama.

It didn’t take me long to discover that my understanding of the Civil War was not shared by those who were born as Southerners. For many of these folks, the Civil War might be over, but it was not forgotten. The smaller, locally owned stores nearly always had stack of newsprint magazines that contained stories of valiant Confederates soldiers, their brave ladies who had to deal with the Yankees when they tried to take over the plantation or homestead, and loyal slaves. Usually there was a story or two about the atrocities committed by the despicable Yankees as they marched through the Southern towns and countryside. When I lived in Tuscaloosa Alabama, the home of the University of Alabama, five members of the congregation at different times took me on tours of the campus that always included a stop at the site where the first library stood until the “Yankees” burned it down.

I quickly learned not to look astonished when someone spoke of the “War of Northern Aggression.” I confess that I was stunned when a woman in her early twenties told me that one reason for the inferiority complex that she thought many Southerners carried was that “We in the South were an occupied people.” She spoke with such emotion, that one would think this had happened within her lifetime.

I didn’t get it. I really didn’t get it. Fortunately I knew that the fact that I didn’t get it did not mean that the people who expressed such pain and grief were stupid or silly or just living in the past. I knew that if I wanted to minister to these congregations, I would have to educate myself about the history of their people and their communities. I would have to have an open mind and an open heart and try to understand — as best I could — an interpretation of history that was very different from what I believed to be true. Just because I was unaware of the great suffering of people in the Confederate States, doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen or that it doesn’t matter. Just because I think they should be over it, doesn’t mean that my perspective is the right one or that it holds all of the truth about the situation.

I began to read about the history of the “War of Northern Aggression” and what happened to the people and the social and economic fabric of that region after the war ended. In one community, I joined an interfaith, inter-racial community group and listened to the conversations about the history of that city and all that the people had endured over a century and a half. I didn’t agree with every word and opinion I heard, but I also reminded myself that I could never really know what it was like to grow up in Alabama or to come from a family that had suffered loss and humiliation during the Civil War.

My time in Alabama was difficult for many reasons, but it was also extremely valuable. I’ve always thought of myself as a very open-minded person who was tolerant of differing viewpoints. What I had to confront was that my viewpoint was also very narrow, and while I might think I’m RIGHT, there are other people — good honest thoughtful people — who see the world very differently than I do.

I can honestly say that after reading some of the books that my Southern congregants shared with me, I now have a better grasp of their view of the Civil War. I understand why that young woman felt that the people of her region had endured a period of occupation after that war. I will never fully understand the Southern worldview, and I will never be fully attuned to Southern ways and Southern culture. But I’m no longer so willing to say that I’m right and they’re wrong on every point on which we disagree. I have a broader — and I hope deeper — understanding of this event and the tragedies that surrounded it.

These days when I’m confronted by someone with a sincerely held world view that just doesn’t meld with my view, I try to remember that my best response is not an “oh well, live and let live.” My best response is to do some investigating in a sincere effort to try to understand what the other person believes to be true.

I’d like to take this idea of different worldviews a little further. A few weeks ago, a person I respect said that as far as she is concerned, racism is gone, and we just don’t need to keep harping on it anymore. Segregation has ended, and everyone has the same rights under the laws.

I’ve heard this before, and I know I’ll hear it again. I think I understand why many white people believe that racism is dead and gone. The signs with the words “Whites Only” over water fountains or in the windows of restaurants have disappeared. We’ve seen a rise in the number of black college students and black professionals. The only people who can use the “N” word in public and get away with it are rappers, and even they are starting to hear about it. Surely we’ve seen a huge increase in the number of black politicians?? What about Mr. Obama?? So I can understand why some people might think that racism was a problem in the bad old days, but it’s really not a big issue today.

Or is it? Could it be that for most white people in America, the issue of race has simply become invisible? My next door neighbors might be Hispanic or Black, which is a sure sign that equal housing rights are alive and well and a justification for our feeling rosy about this progress. What I might not see is that my neighbors are paying a higher rate on their mortgage than I am simply because they’re from a “minority” group.

Just this past year, Wells Fargo, my mortgage lender, was accused of racially biased lending practices. A similar accusation has been made against Countrywide. According to an attorney representing the plaintiffs, both banks are accused of raising interest rates or adding fees for black borrowers even after agreeing to make loans based on the borrower’s credit history and the values of the home.¹ A study of mortgage practices that was conducted in 1998, found that even when two applicants had nearly identical credit histories, a white applicant was much more likely to be approved than his or her African American counterpart.² But of course our neighbor wouldn’t be very likely to discuss the details of the family’s finances with us, so how could we know about this racist practice? So we assume that they’ve been treated fairly.

Even if they received the same mortgage rates and paid identical fees at the closing, our Hispanic or Black neighbors may find that their house payment takes a bigger bite out of the family budget because they earn less that we do, even if they hold jobs that are comparable to ours. Hiring discrimination still exists. Blacks and Hispanics tend to earn less. Most professionals in every field we can think of are white. The employment playing field is still not as level as we white folks might think it is.³

There’s another aspect to this economic disparity. Many white baby boomers can afford a healthy down payment because we have inherited money from our parents. This isn’t the case for the majority of African Americans, Hispanics, Asians, or Native people. Their grandparents and parents didn’t have the same opportunity to own property or amass wealth or even to pay into social security. The reality is that if you look at the white family at the medial point of the income spread for that group and the black family in the same position, the white family’s wealth is ten times greater.⁴

We all know that a family’s income and assets can be a determining factor for a child of any race or background. Sure, scholarships can make dreams come true and plenty of college students of every skin color work their way through school. But college or university can be a daunting prospect for a young person of color if he or she doesn’t know anyone who has ever attended an institution of higher learning. After reading about the re-segregation of our public schools throughout most of the nation and the falling test scores and graduation rates for African American and Hispanic students I suspect that the number of African-American students who even apply for admission to college will be dropping over the next few years.⁵ And if the statistics on the relationship between education and income are accurate, we can predict what this means for the future lives of these young people

All this stress and worry about paying for the house and college tuition is enough to make a person sick. But if my neighbor goes to the emergency room in the middle of the night with chest pain or some other complaint, he or she is likely to receive a different level of care than I might. I took a very quick look at an interesting study on emergency room care that many of us read in The Roanoke Times within the past couple of weeks. The study looked at how physicians prescribe pain medication to patients by race with the same conditions. The results were that white patients were given pain medications more often that any other racial group — even when the non-white patients were diagnosed with the same disease or problem as the white patients. ⁶

As I read this study, I was startled by a comment made by Dr. Thomas L. Fisher, an emergency room doctor at the University of Chicago Medical Center. Dr. Fisher, who is black, was not involved in the study. After he read the study and the disturbing outcome, he acknowledged that he himself is not immune to letting subconscious assumptions inappropriately influence his work as a doctor.

“If anybody argues they have no social biases that sway their clinical practice, they have not been thoughtful about the issue or they’re not being honest with themselves.”⁷

In my opinion, this is one of the most stunning statements on the tragic cost of racism that I’ve heard in a very long time. His words illustrate a deeply painful aspect of racism: the people who are the target of demeaning racist ideas incorporate these ideas into their own self-image and their beliefs about those in their own racial group.

Psychologists have found evidence of this in very young children. Some of you may remember a study that was reported on in the 70s involving young white and black children who were shown some dolls that were both black and while. The children were told to choose the “pretty” doll and nearly every child of either race chose a white doll. While more recent studies of a similar nature show a greater number of black children selecting black dolls, the problem of what some call “racial self-hatred” continues to this day.⁸ Dr. Fisher may have seen a potential drug abuser when treating a black patient and been reluctant to offer narcotics despite the patient’s misery. Whatever his assumptions, I was impressed by his honest assessment of himself.

I would encourage us all to take Dr. Fisher’s admonition to heart. If any of us believes that we have no biases about people, we probably need to dig a little deeper. If any of us is living with the assumption that racism is a thing of the past, we need to become more aware of the truth about our nation and the inequity that continues to this day. Our Unitarian Universalist values demand this of us-and more. We must speak out against the institutions that perpetuate a system of inequity and privilege based on race or gender or sexual orientation, or on nationality, physical abilities, or any other issue. We must become aware of the insidious and invisible racism that still weighs on our neighbors and friends who don’t enjoy the same privileges and implicit rights that are ours, simply because of the color of our skin. The agony and shame of racism must end, and we must care enough to make that happen.

May it be so.