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APIUUs
-- Extending Our Diversity Beyond Black and White Newspaper blurb: Chalice Lighting Presentation I have been a member of this church now for more than 27 years. During that time, I have met only a handful of Asian/Pacific Islanders who attended this church off and on. In preparation for this talk, I went back to our membership book to find out how many Asian/Pacific Islanders have signed the book in the 50 years of our church's history. Make a guess. How many do you think? Zero to five? Six to ten? More than ten? I counted exactly five! Prit Chowdhuri joined in 1975 and remained a member until he moved to Tennessee some time in the 80s. I joined in 1976. Dharam Ahluwalia and his then 14-year-old son Jugnu joined in 1996 and both became inactive shortly after. My own daughter Jenni ChunLian Gaffney joined last year after her first General Assembly experience totally wowed her. Today, Jenni and I are the only active Asian American members of this church. What do the five of us have in common besides our Asian heritage? Prit Chowdhuri, Dharam Ahluwalia and I are (or was in one case) married to white folks while Jugnu and Jenni are the offspring of bi-racial unions. Other ethnic minorities in our church's membership, current and past, also have one common denomination: inter-racial marriage. Here are some examples that come to mind: Eva Montoya with Dale Arnink, Valerie Adams with John Faucett, Ky with Nancy Tecumseh, Ron with Charlotte Christian, Palmira with Bill Clodious, and Ceci Tadfor Little with Tom Little. I cannot think of an exception. I know that our founding fathers were white people from the elite circles of New England, and that we have been predominantly white, but do we minorities have to marry white folks to get a foot in the door? Asian/Pacific Islanders currently make up 4% of our nation's total population and we follow closely behind Hispanic as the next fastest-growing ethnic minority. Whereas twenty years ago, the majority of our immigrant population and naturalized citizens were white, today more than half of them are non-white. When Mike and I were married more than a third of a century ago, inter-racial marriages were not common anywhere, particularly in Malaysia where I came from. The discrimination and ostracism we have suffered as an inter-racial couple came from those closest and dearest to us as a result of the fear they held of the unknown, Today in the United States, multi-racial families, through marriage or adoption, are everywhere. Let's have a show of hands if you consider your immediate family multi-racial. Keep those hands up. How about your extended family? Look around you and see who our multi-racial families are! A report found on the website of the Association of MultiEthnic Americans estimates that up to 5% of the 2000 census respondents have marked more than one boxes to identify their ethnic and racial background. The true figure would have been higher if there had been more choices than available on the form. My two-year-old granddaughter Jade QiHui Portillos has her roots stretched over four continents and at least eight countries of origin. On her paternal grandfather's side, she claims Spain and Mexico; on her paternal grandmother's side, she claims France and the United States; on her maternal grandfather's side, she claims Scotland and South Africa and on her maternal grandmother's side, she claims China and Malaysia. The face of our nation is changing rapidly. It's been predicted that in fifty years, there will not be one single majority race in our nation. The 2000 census result shows that Los Alamos County, with 4% Asians, ranks highest of all the counties in New Mexico in our Asian population. In addition, Los Alamos County has 12% Hispanic which is lower than the state average, and 0.03% African Americans, which is much, much lower than the national average. Statistically speaking, we expect to have 6.4 Asian/Pacific Islander UUs, or APIUUs for short, in this congregation. There are only two today: Jenni and myself. Where are the rest of them? Statistically speaking, we expect to have more than 10,000 APIUUs in North America. The "Fulfilling Our Promise" survey conducted by the UUA in 1997 gives the following breakdown of our racial and ethnic demographic. Are you ready for this? Get out your calculators!
In an article entitled "America's Religious Profile" by John Rakestraw Jr., published in the July/August issue of UU World, the author opens with this statement, "Increasing evidence suggests that America's religious face is changing." He goes on to say that conservative Christian organizations on college campuses these days are filled with Asian American students. "The number of Asian-American members of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship chapters across the United States has grown from 693 to more than 4000 in 20 years. Many of these students are children of immigrants who converted to Christianity either before or shortly after their move." Here we are looking at young Asian Americans who are seeking spiritual homes. Why aren't they coming to us? Why are they flocking to conservative Christianity? Frank Wu, author of the book "Yellow: Race In American Beyond Black and White," offers one explanation to this phenomenon. Being a second generation Chinese American himself, he suggests that many of them, like him, grow up being pulled in two opposite directions: on one side is the parental pressure at home to retain their cultural identity and on the other side is the social pressure at school to conform. They end up seeking refuge in the security of belonging to mainstream America, which, unfortunately, comes saddled with consumerism and a chewing-gum pop culture. This refuge includes the tendency to gravitate towards mainstream religions. UUism is definitely not one of your mainstream religions, although we have so much to offer these young people. But first they must find us, which is not an easy task because we UUs are so very good at playing hide and don't seek us. We shy away from telling others about our religious beliefs for fear of proselytizing. Most of us don't wear our religion on our sleeves or declare our faith with bold bumper sticker statements like, "Uncommon Denomination - Unitarian Universalism." By the way, I still have lots of these bumper stickers that I brought back from GA. I've sold five of them so far and only two of us have put them on our car bumpers. They don't do any good stuck on your bathroom door, you know? They need to be seen! Anyway, if you are interested in telling the world who you are, see me after this presentation! In our Mission/Vision statement, we say, "We seek to be an intentionally diverse religious community…" How are we intentionally diverse? Are we as diverse inside our sanctuary walls as outside them? If not, these walls are acting as filters. In other words, our religious practices are filters that let some in and keep others out. I'm not talking about affirmative action with point system, like in college admission, which has been declared illegal. What I'm talking about is statistical distribution. During a panel discussion at this year's General Assembly in Boston, the Rev. Bill Sinkford, our African American UUA President, in response to a question from the floor on what our congregations should be doing in order to be more racially diverse, responded that we should not reach out to minorities simply because we want to increase the number of non-white faces in our congregations. Such number-based outreach makes us feel good about ourselves. "Look at us," we in Los Alamos may congratulate ourselves once the correct proportions are reached, "We are diverse. We have 12% Hispanic, 5% gay and lesbian, 4% Asian and 0.03% African American, the same percentages inside as outside our sanctuary walls. Now we're done!" True outreach to racial minorities, Sinkford offered, needs to be grounded in a spiritual understanding of what we UUs have to offer people from other cultures and races. Our outreach should be rooted in sharing the "good news" that we have to offer, not in a desire to feel less guilty about the whiteness of our congregations. Now that I have established that this intentional outreach is devoid of guilt but is rather the opening of our mind and our hearts to embrace all of humanity in all of its wonderful colors beyond black and white, let us now explore the how's. What I'm going to say this morning is directed at extending our diversity to include more Asian/Pacific Islanders, but the same format, with some fine tuning, may be use to reach out to other minority groups. I'll put the first ball on the Asian/Pacific court. This is Commandment Number One directed at the Asian/Pacific Islander UUs in our midst, however small our number. Be present. Be active. In other words: Be visible. Be involved. Recently, during a staff meeting, Jim Macomber said to me, "I have noticed quite a number of Asian visitors lately, thanks to you." "But," I stammered, "I didn't do anything. It was Ed Sayre's ESL classes that brought them here." "That too," he agreed. "But you should take some of the credit. Just by being present here every Sunday morning, you make them feel welcomed." There's truth in that statement. Although we proudly proclaim our individualism, we tend to gather together with people like ourselves. In other words: ornithological specimens of identical plumage congregate in close proximity. Many of my Chinese friends, when invited to attend a special program here at our church, or to a potluck dinner or a party, would get on the phone and call one another up to find out who else have been invited. "Are you going? If you are not going, I'm not going." They don't feel comfortable being the only ones to show up. So when you invite your Asian friends to any church function, be sure to invite more than one families and to assure them that you'll be there to greet them. We Asian UUs need to be more involved in our chosen faith communities. In doing so, we serve many purposes. Firstly, our presence provides affirmation to Asian visitors of like mind who are attracted to our theology. Our saving message is a universal one that transcends race, ethnicity, economic and educational background. Our belief in the inherent worth and dignity of all people and our vision for a world community with justice and equity for all are values that are attractive to anyone with a sense of fairness. In particular, our strength in critical thinking and our acknowledgment of the value of reasoning are ideals that are especially attractive to the highly-educated scientific Asian communities in Los Alamos. Finally, our belief in the human possibility is one closely held by Asians whose histories speak again and again of human struggles and triumphs over adversities. Secondly, our presence and interaction with our non-Asian allies serve to dispel myths and stereotypes associated with our ethnicity that are prevalent in those communities with little or no contact with Asian/Pacific Islanders. About ten years ago, when Skip and Hedy Dunn's son Mark was getting married to Chikako, a woman he met in Japan, Skip brought in a newspaper clipping and read part of an article to us during Joy and Concerns. He read it with amusement and skepticism, I thought. The author had made a generalization and claimed that the reason white men prefer Asian wives is because Asian women are obedient, non-assertive, and demure. In other words: they are doormats. Everybody just looked in my direction and laughed. This is a stereotype, they were all thinking, that Kok Heong is definitely not! What better way to dispel negative stereotypes about us than by upholding the opposite! As Don Neeper recently said to me, "The best way to enlighten us clueless white folks is to interact with us authentically. You've got to be present." Thirdly, we serve as role models for those young Asian/Pacific Islander UUs who were adopted by UU parents in the 70s and 80s and who are now growing into young adults. According to one reliable source, the number of UU parents who adopted Asian/Pacific Islander children far outnumber those of other mainstream denominations. Although I don't have hard figures to prove this, I find this believable given that our liberal faith nurtures the spirit of adventure and questing, hence attracting many adventuresome folks! This new generation of Asian/Pacific adoptees is a new vital force in our denomination. At the last Annual Meeting of the Youth and Young Adult of Colors Caucus of DRUUMM, or YAYA for short, held in Washington DC this past May, a significant proportion of the attendees are APIUUs, many of them are adoptees with white UU parents. More than half of the Steering Committee elected are A/PIs. Finally, we add new cultural dimensions to our worship services and church programs by being resources for our congregations. Have you heard excerpts of the Dao De Jing in its original Mandarin, instead of translated into English, as printed in Singing the Living Traditions? There are six excerpts in here. Here's one: Number 602. Listen to the Mandarin version, to the subtle intonation, the rich sounds, the rhythm of the words, all of which are lost in the translation. [Ask Yü to read the passage from the Dao De Jing followed by my reading the text in English.] Thank you, Yü. So… how about asking someone who speaks a different language to read some of the translated texts in their original languages, then followed by the English translation as printed? This morning I did something unusual. I have asked my friend Yü to translate Albert Schweitzer's well-known Chalice Lighting reading into Mandarin and to read it for us. Yü has been attending church services here regularly for about a year now with her husband Wenguang. She's now working on a translation of the pamphlet "We Are Unitarian Universalists" into Mandarin. We hope that some day this brochure, which has been translated into Spanish, will be published in Mandarin and made available to all UU congregations. It's my hope that this particular brochure that tells so much about our theology, will one day be available in all major languages. During my first General Assembly in Spokane in 1995, I saw only one other Asian UU. She was a delegate from our Honolulu congregation in Hawaii. I'm seeing more and more Asian/Pacific Islander UUs in subsequent GAs, including Asian/Pacific Islander UU Ministers and ministerial candidates. Two years ago, during the GA in Cleveland, OH, I was approached by Young Kim, a Korean American UU who is married to the Rev. Suzelle Lynch. Suzelle is a contributing author of the book "Salted With Fire." Her essay, "Keeping the Ones We Raise: Evangelism to Our Children and Young Adults," is a must-read for every UU who is serious about retaining our young adults. Young was on the prowl to seek out and connect with other Asian UUs during GA in order to get a support group started. The way Young told it, "I was going down the escalator and I saw an Asian woman going up the other escalator, so I ran down the rest of the way and ran up the other escalator to try to catch her, but she disappeared into one of the workshops and I lost her. Later, I saw her again, and this time I invited her to join our email list." Young had started a yahoogroups email list for Asian UUs and there were about a dozen people on it at that time. We began organizing as a group on line. It took two years before we could find a time and obtained some funding for us to meet in Berkeley, California this past February. Seventeen Asian/Pacific Islanders, representing ethnic diversities that included East Indian, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Hapa, Philippino and mixed race, gathered together in an RE classroom of the Berkeley UU Fellowship. This historic gathering was the beginning of what is now known as A/PIC, an acronym for Asian/Pacific Islander Caucus, which is one of two caucuses of DRUUMM, an acronym for Diverse and Revolutionary UU Multi-cultural Ministries. DRUUMM began in 1997 as a support group for UU Ministers and Professionals of colors and is now an affiliate of the UUA with membership opened to all UUs of colors. As one member at the Berkeley meeting remarked, "I've never seen so many Asian UUs all together in one room!" And this person is from California, where there are proportionally more Asian UUs than there are here. We came away from this meeting with a draft Mission Statement, a Steering Committee of seven members and a list of action items a mile long. Within two days, we had a website up and running and two more email lists established. Within a week, an email went out on UUA-L, the largest email list on uua.org, announcing our existence. About the same time, District and Congregational Newsletter editors were asked to run a story about us in their newsletters. People now know that we exist. The Steering Committee of seven, of which I am one, conduct our business mostly online with frequent telephone conferences. By the time GA 2003 rolled around, we had secured two workshop slots on the program, plus a lecture and dinner reception off-site conducted at Tufts University as an outreach to the non-UU Asian community there. We also shared a booth with DRUUMM and OBGLTC (Office of Bi-sexual, Gay, Lesbian and Transgender Concerns) where we sold T-shirts, gave away posters, sold books and handed out the brochure "Asian American Voices In Unitarian Universalism." At this year's GA, I came across more than 30 Asian UUs, fourteen of whom showed up at our first General Meeting. Membership in the original yahoogroups email list has grown to 60. We are not a homogenous group. Far from it. Our ethnic background and religious journey are as different from one another's as those of yours and mine. We have come together to offer one another support in our individual spiritual journey as well as to form a collective resource for the UUA. We are all at different points in our own journey towards wholeness. Some of us have suffered racial discrimination of one sort or another and need a safe place to heal. All of us have come together seeking different things and giving back different talents. Some of us are still hurting from past injustices and are just now finding the strength to voice them out loud. I sometimes find myself at odds with others in the group because my own experience is so different. When, about a year ago, the group discussed the use of the word "Oriental" vs. the use of the word "Asian," I found myself in disagreement with the majority voice of the group because I am not offended by being called an oriental woman. To me, it's not what's being said, but what's intended by the speaker. But if the majority of Asians find this word offensive, and I understand why, then I'm willing to work in alliance with them to educate the public to use this word "properly." Some Asian Americans who are born and raised in this country bristle at being asked the question, "Where are you from?" because they feel like perpetual foreigners, always having to explain and justify their citizenship. I'm the opposite. I like being asked where I'm from. In fact, I like to tell people where I'm from without being asked, to add spice to the setting; for example, when a workshop leader wants to find out how far we've traveled to attend the workshop, I delight in telling him that I'm from Malaysia and he is impressed thinking that I have flown in all the way from Malaysia just to attend his workshop! Telling people where I'm from is a wonderful way to break the ice. It gives me a chance to tell them about my ethnic background right off the bat so that they don't make any clumsy mistake assuming I'm of another ethnicity, which often embarrasses them more than it does me. It helps me strike up an instant friendship. Am I marching to a different drum-beat? Or perhaps I, like those clueless white folks, "just don't get it", a phrase that many injured parties use over and over again as a defense mechanism rather than take the time to explain. There have been past injustices done to the Asian communities: the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; the Alien Land Act of 1913 barring alien immigrants from owning and leasing land; the Japanese Internment after Pearl Harbor; the case of Ozawa Takao vs. United States in 1922 when the Supreme Court ruled that Asians born in the US are not eligible for citizenship because they are not Caucasians; the murder of Vincent Chin in Detroit, MI and other hate crimes against Asian individuals and communities, denial of citizenship up until 1952 when the McCarran-Walter Act makes all races and nationalities eligible for USA immigration and citizenship, etc… etc… My focus is not to dwell on these past injustices, but to forgive and move forward. So here I'm offering a list of action items to help us move forward as a denomination and as individual congregations: 1. Search out and
appoint one individual from your congregation to serve as your congregational
representative for A/PIC. This person's explicit call is to make sure
that relevant information about A/PIC events, announcements and other
important issues are actively publicized in your congregation through
every known communication channels including congregational newsletter,
bulletin board, announcements, and during Joy and Concerns. To this end,
this person sis expected to subscribe to the existing apiuu-general email
list My real estate friends
tell me that the real estate business is all about "Location, location
and location." The work of extending our denomination's diversity
beyond black and white is all about "Timing, timing and timing."
The time is now! Let's move forward. |