Spirit in Action
Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights
The topic is race, racism & religion, both within Quaker meetings and in America at-large. Paul Kriese co-ediited Black Fire: African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights, and he draws on his experience growing up in a black neighborhood and his academic formation in Political Science and Peace Studies to shine the Light on race relations.
- Broadcast on:
- 14 Aug 2011
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- other
[music] Let us sing this song for the healing of the world That we may hear as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along And our lives will feel the echo of our healing [music] Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark Helpes Me. Each week, I'll be bringing you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action, and progressive efforts. I'll be tracing the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred food in your own life. Let us sing this song for the dreaming of the world That we may dream as one With every voice, with every song We will move this world along Today's Spirit in Action interview was recorded in early July at the Friends General Conference gathering in Grinnell, Iowa. In attendance were two of the three co-editors of Black Fire, African American Quakers on spirituality and human rights. As I'm sure most of you are aware, I'm a Quaker, and you might think this is a parochial book or topic. It's not. What you'll find in today's program is delving into the issues surrounding racism, discussion and insights which are applicable to all American society. And although Quakers have, generally, a very positive image with respect to race relations due to a history which includes many pioneers against racism, segregation, and slavery, this is not a pure white palette. Yes, there's a lot of good, but there's also plenty of dark spots and failures, and my hope is that by inviting you into this examination of our past, we all learn how to make a better future for people of all races, and that we learn to examine what holds us back from real community with all of our co-travelers on this planet. Specifically, we'll be visiting with Paul Kreese, one of the co-editors of Black Fire. Paul, as you'll hear, grew up in a black community, although he is white, so he has always closely identified with African Americans. He has a PhD in political science from Purdue and an MA in Peace Studies from Erlen College. He is currently Associate Professor of Politics at Indiana University East. Paul Kreese is co-author of three books, including Social Justice, Poverty and Race, Normative and Empirical Points of View, and much research and many articles on race. In a moment, we'll go to the 2011 FGC Gathering at the Grinnell University campus in Iowa to speak with today's Spirit and Action Gas, Paul Kreese, but first, I want to start you out with half of a wonderful song by David Massengill. Number one in America deals with racism over the past half century. As I said, I'll play about half of it now and finish it at the end of this interview. Spoiler alert, there's a couple true, hopeful stories in the second half, so remember to listen all the way to the end. It's a great song by a great musician. Number one in America by David Massengill. A sitting on my mother's knee watching him as an Andy on TV. It must was Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, little girl is tugging at his sleeve, singing "I Have a Dog, my own color, please." He said, "Honey, you can make the leaves." Just then came a call on a telephone, it was the mayor asked if my daddy was home. This was for his ears alone. Mom and me listened on the second floor. May you say the freedom rides are on their way, they'll be here by Christmas day, our laws they found to disobey. 'Cause our schools as white as the Milky Way. Well now we're really in a fix, can't let them show us our black countries. But once we let the races meet us, it's goodbye Jim Crow politics. First it's 40 acres and a mule, then they want to swim and I'll swim and poop, but it soon never won't go to school. Where we would talk the golden rule, imagine them telling us how to live. Imagine them telling us how to live. We're number one in America, number one in America. Beat the drummer up and say, "Oh, the call me in Birmingham." Oh, to be number one in America. Vax handles first a right to vote, oh I'd tear it as old as she wrote. Back at the bus, don't rock the boat, separate but equal by the throat. That was 20 or years ago, with change in the status quo. The freedom land is lying low. It shackled down on a rotten rule. And a black-skinned man still gets the snub. He applies to the country club, but he still gets high to trim the shrubs. Get down on the floor and scrub. And there's a business man held on his yacht. He's a venous sunshine patriot, and all this talk about forecast. He says it's all a common plot to beat number one. In America, number one in America. Beat the drummer up and say, "Oh, the call me in Birmingham." Dynamite in a best church. Fourteen-eight girls lost to the lurch. Firehoses and the billy clothes. Holy dogs and the racist thugs and not the writers. And an inchy and mop. Long men say they're only people rich and young. To stay. Number one in America. [music] Thank you very much, Paul, for joining us. Thank you for having me. And I'll mention also that Madeline Shafer is co-host today for Spirit and Action. Madeline, it's great to have you here. Yeah, thank you for letting me join in the conversation. Let's jump right in. I think, Paul, that you have a pretty long association with Quakers. Does it go back to the womb, I think? And it goes back, at least it's always the womb. And if you do genealogical, it's further than that, but it certainly goes back that far. Never tempted to leave? Why would I leave home? Sometimes some of us want to leave because the religious society of friends is an all-too-human institution. And part of this essay is in here point out our failings. So even though Quakers were early involved in work for equality, we're opposed to slavery. A number of individual Quakers were involved in underground railroad, etc. Even though Quakers worked with Martin Luther King, in spite of all of that, Quakers, again, in spite of their high ideals of equality that go back, have dragged their feet sometimes and sometimes they've done embarrassing things. Well, as you said, Quakers are human. And I think it's important to note that because all too often, the people that we revere, we put on pedestals and take them out of reach. And then that makes sure that we aren't involved. And the whole idea is to realize wall broke and wall jaded. We're all not where we should be. But given that, there were still some bright spots. And that means even flawed individuals can be involved. If we say, "Witchy, I can't do that, they're just too good." And friends are part of the American culture, part of the American experience. And the other reality of the United States is real racist nation. Have been from the beginning of Constitution is racist. Many of our Supreme Court decisions, on and on and on. So how can you not live in that environment and not be involved in it? Having said that, friends do have a very good background in history, but they're human. And what that says is that the ones that were doing it, the ones that they can involve, deserve an extra amount of praise. Because it's all, it's much more difficult to go against the in-group. They just go against people who you're not with. And friends read friends out in the meeting for being involved in abolition. Friends got in trouble for standing up for equality just as much as they got in trouble for not. And friends have a human history, well-meaning people who wanted to be loved by. And there were laws against African Americans holding off, leaving certain parts of town. And so sometimes it was, "Well, I don't want to break the law." But then my responses were, "There's two sets of others. God's law, and there's man's law." And God's law always comes first. Does this mean we always do that? But if we're doing what we're supposed to be doing, that's what happens. Also, there was a lot of folklore. There was the folklore that African Americans aren't friends because they jump around a lot in singing and praising. And unprogrammed friends aren't like that. Well, that's a mythology. It's a racist mythology because there are lots of unprogrammed African Americans. There were meetings that y'all come into our meeting but sit in the back of the room. Or, gee, you've been in attendance for 15 years, but that's okay. You know, there's a lot of cultural assumptions there. In the '60s, there was a lot of cultural assumptions that Quaker collages. That said, "Well, we let you onto our campus that at least you can do is not raise hackles, so not expect stuff." And that's not necessarily positive, but it's real. And the only way you can right wrongs is to recognize it there. And the bottom line for me as friends can do that, have done that. We'll do that. But they have to be told, you know, you're not exactly where you need to be. And this is where you've been, and this is where you are, and this is where you need to be. So what we did is very selective vignettes of African American Quakers, or African Americans very close to Quakers, who combined religion and politics, which is a real issue of mine. How do you have speaking truth to power? Well, the power, it's a white power structure. And a lot of Quakers are in the white power structures, especially in Quaker collages. They weren't always as responsive. Earlem College, and I know something about because they've been rich men. One of the first African Americans wanted to date and marry a Caucasian girl, and they convinced him not to do it while he was there. Some of the presidents of Earlem College haven't been entirely respectful of the African American, the whole idea of reparations, and I can go on and on. Those are serious issues, and friends haven't always been on their forefront. We need to recognize that to understand how much we really have done, but how much we need to go. FGC is wonderful in the sense that they're publishing it, because we haven't gotten a lot of African Americans published, either. Well, I'm glad that you're part of the effort. I think what I want to start with here is a little bit of the history each of us three have personally with racism. I think we're in somewhat different generations. You're 65, I'm 57, and Madeleine is 24. Is 24. Madeleine, what's your experience with racism growing up? My experience with racism, wow. I grew up in a middle upper-class family, going to Quaker school, lived in a pretty nice area. So it was not something that I needed to confront. I attended Friends Child Care Center, Friends Child Care, which is right next to American Friends Service Committee, where my mother worked, and it was a very mixed, lots of different races and classes there. So I was definitely exposed to a lot of races, but then I went to Friends schools, which really does a lot to bring in different races, but it's incredibly expensive, and so the reality of that is that it's pretty white. But I think in terms of when I had my most transformative experience with the race was when I went to a work camp in West Philadelphia, there was a conversation at night with a man who had been in prison and that held a lot of rage against white people, but then had kind of had this transformation, and I was working to heal the wounds of racism. And we had this incredibly powerful discussion, and that completely blew open my, you know, I experienced a lot of guilt. I think I was about 15, opened up my eyes to race, which I think, to a certain degree in my generation, there was this sense that the problem had been solved, you know? And then I think when I was 15, I was like, wow, you know, the problem, we can talk about it, but the problem has not been solved. And, you know, I've had friends, I also went to a really nice, very expensive liberal arts college in Minnesota, and I said to one of my friends who I was so frustrated because they weren't political at all, and I said to them, like, and he was saying, you know, I'm post-racism. And like, that was something that really bugged me and was like a big point of contention between us, because we kind of get this sense that because I'm liberal, I vote Democrat, I'm not a racist, that racism doesn't exist, but that's easy for us to say as white people living a very privileged lives. So that's been my experience with racism. Those are the first that just come to mind. Well, I was born in 1954. That was the year of Brown versus Board of Education, you know, all deliberate speed. They got to get integrating schools, so on. Of course, I didn't realize that at the age of zero, but I grew up in basically a small town Wisconsin family where the racism was part of the structure of life. You don't recognize it if you live in the milieu, and that's what I lived in. So I grew up using the N-word for Brazil nuts, and any mini-minimo, et cetera. It's right in there. And I don't remember any talk about blacks being inferior to whites. In fact, at one point when I was seven, we moved down to Texas, and I went to school and integrated school in Texas. So I didn't know of racism as that, but my dad had some very strong racist identity. At a certain point, my older sister brought home a black friend to our house. My dad kicked him out. It's that kind of embarrassing thing, and my dad learned and changed over the years, and I don't think by the time he died, he was nearly that same person. So I got to live through it, but one of the things is that, you know, I graduated high school in 1972. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and '60s had already happened. There had been major change. Blacks had gone from being Negroes to collards to blacks to, and, you know, of course, African-Americans or Afro-Americans. I've seen these changes, and at one point it was non-violence with Dr. Martin Luther King, and then I lived through the experience of riots in Milwaukee and race riots and so on. So that's part of what I've seen in my life, and then I went and lived in Africa for two years in the Peace Corps, so I was in a village where I was the white person. So I got to be the minority, and I was a privileged minority, so it's not the same as being black in the U.S., but I did realize at one point when there were demonstrations against colonists, I looked around and I said, "There's only one person here who has the skin color of colonists." So I could feel being in the minority there, too. It doesn't make me be wise about it, but I've been able to see growth happening in our culture, and I recognized that we've got a lot more to go. Paul, what about you? Oh, well, mine's entirely different from either one of yours. I grew up very poor in a slum area above New York where 85% of the population was African-American, 10% was Hispanic, 3% with Native American, and 2% were white and quicker. And we didn't live there because we chose it. We lived there because that's what we could afford, because not all Quakers are middle class, not all Quakers go to boarding school. So I grew up in a black neighborhood going to a black school. The first woman I can remember growing in love with was Diana Ross, and I know more about black music than I was about white music. Then I went to co-college in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, which was 90% white, and I associated with the janitors and the groundskeeper, because those were my people. But it was also quicker, and so I grew up with all of the wonderful stories of Quakers, because I also grew up fighting redlining and housing discrimination, my meaning. And so we were very active. My parents were very supportive of that. But I kept getting these conflicting realities. Here's on one side, all of this one where stuff Quakers have done and continue, because I was part of the civil rights arena. I was down south. But I saw this distinction between an all white mean for worship, and our background, we're talking about how wonderful it is. And we believed in civil rights, and there's no question about that. But we didn't live it, because the Quaker meeting was not in my neighborhood. We had to leave on the Quaker meeting, which was in an all white neighborhood. So Quakers were racist not because they chose to be, but because of their economic and political environment, dictated it. And so when I went to college, I had people say to me, "How come you're spending all your time with them?" And I go, "What do you mean? Will you spend all your time with Africa?" And I said, "For those of you who I grew up with." And they started talking about the civil rights movement, and all of those niggas and things like that, and I go, "But wait a minute. These are my friends. These are truly my friends. These were the people I grew up with." And I saw this dichotomy in being someone who's very analytical and questioning, and I went down south. And I said, "No, this is not right." I mean, if Quakers are who they say they are, we need to do some revisioning. And I can't tell you how many discussions I got in with fellow Quakers and say, "Well, but they're disruptive. They're all asking for things." And my response is, "Well, maybe they deserve the things they're asking for." Well, if all welfare babies will go down to welfare office on any day, 90% of the people are standing out getting handouts on black. So where do we get this? We get this from the culture, which says, "If you're white or white, if you're black, stay back." And as an academic, not surprisingly doing research on race and ethnic and things like that, I came to a realization that African-American Quakers were pretty invisible, not invisible because of their lives been visible because we're not talking about them. And hence, "Black Fire" is the first book of original essays by African-American Quakers on race and social justice that's ever been published. And here it is, the year 2011. Again, the book we're talking about is "Black Fire African-American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights." It's co-edited by Harold Weaver or Hal Weaver, Paul Kreese, and Steve Angel are the three main editors and Nash and Emma Lipinski-Wernher in there as well. So Paul, what was it that brought about this book? How did this get started? Because you've talked about some of the background. There's an easy amount of denial within the religious society of rights about racism. How did it get there? And this is one reason why I've stayed with him. This is that he stands in, particularly with the French General Conference because there was a conference that several years ago, FGC did a conference on racism in Pittsburgh. And I was selected from my yearly meeting to go. I was wanted to represent this from Ohio Valley Meeting. While I was there and getting some of my colleagues upset because I said things, they said, "Well, I'm not a racist. Look, I'm here." And I said, "Yeah, and you're going back to your white neighborhood." But I met Hal Weaver there, and Hal Weaver is African-American. One of the original people involved in black study movements in the United States. He had done some work on film in African-Americans. And I've done a lot of stuff. And so we said, "Oh, I've been looking for a white person who I could write a book with who I could feel comfortable with, and I wanted him to be quicker." And given the fact that I spent the weekend, I was there not always being gentle to my colleagues. He thought I'd be a good person. And so we began that a few years later. Hal was at a conference. And Steve Angel, who's written on African-American history and works at Ederlum's School of Religion. And he's done a lot of work. He taught at a historic black college for 10, 13 years. But he's in religion. I mean, Steven is a professor of religion. And he thought it'd be a good combination. And so we brought Steve on board. Then FGC was there to get some funding. And Barbara Mays, an excellent, excellent editor, helped put this together. And now we'll happily go around the country and talk about it. And it's not just for Quakers. It's for people involved in the issues of religion and politics. So what does it take to be a spiritual, or strong, but the social and political, active person can do to go together? The history of race. And so there's all sorts of things in there, human relations and political times, which I'm involved in. So it's a good compilation of all the ways in the beginning of the United States. There needs to be another volume, which will include people outside the United States. But we wanted to have one which is manageable and focused. And so we talked only about that. And we wanted to have women as well as men, because again, women are another group of people who happen always been allowed to sit at the table. So we're pretty proud of the book. And for me, it's both a religious testimony and a political science testimony. It goes way back to before the U.S. was a country. William Bohn was one of the early folks in this. I think you had the decision, by the way, that you weren't going to include any living people in this. You had to be dead to get into this book. It's a high price pay, but there's the memorial of the book. William Bohn was kind of interesting in several ways. And his transformation was so clearly a conviction of spirit. And then how that led to what he dealt with when he dealt with race. He was not an uppity black, but he was so conscientious. In many ways, I feel like his life and that of John Wilman had heavy overlaps. You're responsible for a certain number of the writings in here. William Bohn didn't happen to be one of your favorites. No, not one, but he's a good example. I mean, people have always said to me who know me as a political activist. They assumed that my political activism came from being a life-on Democrat, which is not true. My political activism comes from the Bible that says you are stewards of the earth. And it is your responsibility to make that earth a better place. It just seems to me that health care and social security and child care are the way that I want to increase the benefits of the earth. So friends sometimes forget that a religious testimony can be completely totally grounded in practical political reality, but the reason I do it is because I'm a steward of the earth, not because I'm a Democrat. Although I think Democrats do a pretty good job of being stewards of the earth. But it's that combination that we saw. That's why we picked the people. We picked people who saw their religious faith actively in the world. And I'm afraid to say, "I believe in God, and therefore I'm going to help those people in poverty." Of the people that were included, can you give me your number one hero? And can you list your number one hero who didn't get included? The one that you said, "I really want this person in there, but it didn't fit." The person who, if I could live, I would go back to it, would really crease your mind. She is probably one of my favorite Quakers of all time short. And her only problem is she wasn't black, I guess. Yes, that was her problem. But the person, the one that, George Sawyer, was the first director of African American studies there in college, born and raised in Indianapolis, but lived in Richmond for much of his life. The first director of African American studies who got into a fit with Tom Jones, in the name of Documenting History of this. George Stewart wrote an article in "Friends Journal," which is in the book, saying that it's all right for friends to talk about being on the barricades, but when it comes to African Americans in unique work, that's a different story. And Tom Jones was not happy because he said Tom Jones was the president of Rome College in a well-known Quaker. Took him to task for not being supportive enough of the college and other people being nice to him. And the point is that we end up being colonialist mentally by saying, well, we expected you to be nice. Well, my question is, well, why? What makes you any different for me if someone's been hurt, someone should say I've been hurt? And we should know better than that, because we saw that happening. We saw that happening in Richmond, Indiana, where African Americans had to go to the back door to get service. And the reason I like George Sawyer is that the other question is, well, civil rights movement is over. We don't have to worry about race anymore, or we're post-racial now. Well, we're not. We're better off than we were, and friends are in the forefront of that. But unfortunately, if friends have the reputation, they have to live up to that reputation. I was just wondering if you think that perhaps the reason why these writings have gone unnoticed, and these people have not been remembered throughout Quaker history, is because of the very challenging nature of what they wrote. Well, I think so. I mean, no one likes to be challenged. No one likes to be told that what you think you've done, you really haven't done. And there are a lot of people out there who are nasty. I mean, not all African Americans are sweet, wonderful, lovely folks. There are things out there that are not accurate. But then your response should be to sit down with them and say, okay, what is it that you think I've done? Let's see what we can do to arrange this instead of say, well, you don't understand. I was in the civil rights movement. Well, yeah, but you went home. I mean, when people say, well, you were in the civil rights movement, I'd say, yeah, but I went back to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. You had to stay here. My face wasn't black. You're as it is. It's that cultural insensitivity and living on laurels, and we should not say, what did we do yesterday? We should say, what have we not done today? No, no, is that a hard sell? Yeah. But we've got a good reputation and we need to live up to it. Absolutely. One of the things that struck me in the book and reading through the essays, again, things change with the centuries and decades coming through those centuries. Quakers, of course, have always been heavily involved in peace work and nonviolence work. Equality has been there from the start, and at a certain point, particularly after the assassination of Martin Luther King, they ran into each other. At that point, a large number of people in the populace said, this nonviolence thing has failed. It's not working. The Quakers, who had been very nonviolently oriented and were very excited about the work Martin Luther King Jr. I think were torn particularly when they were African-American. They felt so clearly that. And I think some of the pieces you edited highlighted that. Could you talk about that issue and how it came forth? Yeah. Again, it's different definitions of nonviolence. It's different definitions of peace. You come out of that from where you're at. You come out of an environment where you're used to seeing people who don't look like you, not friendly to you. You can have a different response than if you grew up in them. They put everybody's wonderful and nice and loving. Everybody likes each other. And I still hold to the doctrine of nonviolence. But nonviolence is not... People get a bad image of nonviolence that is sitting there and running something beat on you saying, I love you, I love you. Not necessarily. I mean, that's the eighth form of nonviolence, but it's not the only form. Another form of nonviolence is being honestly speaking to the truth and saying, this is what I see, friend. If you don't see the same thing, then we need to talk about it. And don't tell me what you've done in the past. Tell me where you are now and what you're doing now. I worked for Obama and I'm very happy to do so partly because he was African-American. But partly because he knows how to get things done nonviolence. As a community organizer, you take where you're at and you move on. And I think that's something that many trends got lost in the civil rights movement. And he said, this is the only way you can do nonviolence, these peaceful demonstrations. And if you don't do it this way, then it's not nonviolence. And I think nonviolence can be stressful. Look at Poland, luck violence and the solidarity movement. They hope that we do communism nonviolence. Okay, so I think nonviolence gets a bad rap as something that's positive and not political and not struggling and not in your face. What nonviolence says is we can work this out and may take some time and we may not like each other for a while. And I believe you can do it because there's that regarding you and there's that regarding me. We just have to find it. And I'm not always going to agree if you disagree. It's not necessarily negative. It becomes a response of mutual understanding and then moving on. Everybody has to be treated human, which means everybody has to be seen as having a piece of the truth. You can't have the piece of the truth if I'm always right and you're not. One of the things that I think we want to distress in this is that, yes, there were some stressful things done. Billington Dunmore got up in New York to a meeting and said, you owe us reparations. Now reparations, it's an only economic. If you have to understand that a lot of the things you have, you have because of us, you did not pay us for the cotton gin. You did not pay us for the zipper. You did not pay us for the railroad coupler. You did not pay us for the process that made plasma. We died in order to do that. You profited it from that. And we're not necessarily asking you for money, but we're asking you to understand that we're much a part of this country as you are. The first person died in Revolutionary War with Christopher Pitts at it, who was African American. How often do we see African Americans as patriots? And so that's a type of nonviolence. The nonviolence that wants to say, okay, while equal, that means that we all have an equal place in the choir, and you need to recognize that. And the fact that you haven't recognized that may not be your fault, but it's now your responsibility. I tell my students that you may not have had slaves, as they're not responsible for that. But now that you know the history, now you're responsible making sure it doesn't happen again. You're listening to Spirit in Action. This is a Northern Spirit Radio Production website, northernspiritradio.org. My name is Mark Helpsmeet, your host for Spirit in Action. And today I'm honored to have as my co-host Madeline Shafer. She's producing a series of her own, but she's also assisting on Northern Spirit Radio Productions right now. Our guest is Paul Kreese, one of the co-editors of Black Fire, African American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights. It's a collection of writings over the centuries of those associated with Quakers who are African American. And it's a great glimpse into the interaction of spirituality, religion, and race issues, peace issues, of course, primary and there too. One of the things I wondered about for you, Paul, having grown up primarily Black area of town and identifying your people as the people you've grown up with, when the assassinations of the 1960s, first there was JFK, and there's Martin Luther King, and there's Bobby Kennedy, Malcolm X. I mean, there's a number of these assassinations. Did you two feel like, I guess, non-violence is not going to work? We can't bring about fine race relations without push coming to shove. That's one of the difference of basing your political reality on politics and humanie and basing your politics on God and on religion. I always believe that we can, if we listen to that voice within us, to do things that are cooperating and consensual and non-violent. But if we base too much on the world on politics, it won't fly to individuals, then we are eventually, you know, there's conflict, there's competition, there's arrogance, there's ego, and all of that involved. So if you just base it on the ability of people, then you're going to be constantly disappointed because people are people. And it's very difficult, you know, you have wives and children and mortgages and tooth repair and college tuition, and you have to do some things at times to do that. Someone once said you never get a PhD with a little squabbling in ways you might not have done it otherwise, and that's true. But there's always that sense that we can always do better, that there's always something there that's sparked, that ability to look to the best. And that's where my religious foundation comes in, is that I firmly believe that there's that regard and everyone, especially the people I disagree with. It doesn't mean I'm going to stop disagreeing with them all the time, but it means that I've often called a pathological optimist. Even when I know I shouldn't be positive, I am, because I know that if I stop, then why should I expect anybody else? If I don't go that extra mile, I'm going to ask everybody else, and that doesn't mean I'm always happy about it, because I'm not. But I think we're a work in progress. I mean, Quakerism is, if nothing else, continuing revelation. We don't know what's there. All we know is God's going to be there to help us. And with that, you go out and do the things you need to do. And yes, I'm always disappointed. My philosophy is that we don't always do it, but we can, that there's always the ability to do better. We just don't always choose it. And we feel backed up against the wall. And if we don't have examples of people who were backed up against the wall and found a window, then how can we, if a woman doesn't see themselves out in front, why expect them to do something? And if you don't see enough, the most wonderful thing about Obama being there like this, now I can say to my African American students, you too can be president. I can't tell you what that does for me. But that when that happened, had I said, well, it's not going to happen. It's racist, and it's never going to be anything else. Well, yeah, it's racist, and it's an ongoing, it's like alcohol addiction. You're never alcohol free, but I didn't take a drink today. It's just saying we're racism. We're not going to get rid of racism. It's just people get born and people move. But I can say today, I did something to help make this a better world. That's worth all of the problems. And sometimes I wish I didn't have that condition, but God gave it to me, and I guess. I'm glad you've got it. I'm glad it's a condition that I share, and so I'm glad to meet someone with the same diagnosis. I was wondering what your relationship was to African American Quakers during the '60s and '70s? Well, obviously, I've been involved a lot with African American Quakers in the '60s and '70s. There were very few of them. But people like Julian Bond, who was educated in the Quakers School, George School, as a matter of fact, and there were other African Americans who I worked with in the civil rights movement. So they were always--how Weaver was very involved in the civil rights movement when he was younger. You know, and I got into some really good discussions and really, really soul-searching. Because they said, "You're always asking me to non-violent. You're always asking me to tune yet a cheek." But you don't. You're always asking me to integrate, but you don't. And all I could say is, "Yeah, I do, and a lot of the people I know don't." And so it's up to us to show that you can do it. I had a friend of mine who used to do convict resolution seminars. A big, big, burly black man. You know, someone you would say is going to eat you up without even looking. And then there was me. And he would come in and say, "Well, you know, I understand. You know, white folks aren't that bad." And they were trying, and they were like, "Oh." And I'd go on there and say, "You know, you're wrong. White folks are the devil." Because what you have to do is you have to reverse things to let people see the other point of view. It's sort of like I used to convict resolution seminars. And before that, I'd say, "Now, some of you are going to do things that you may not like." And he said, "Well, I'm never fine. I don't get violent." Fine. So we would go through the convict resolution. And, of course, they would lose the court. And then I said, "Okay, now let's talk about the violence you never do." Or let's talk about the disagreements or the racists that you really are. Because unless we understand that we're all human, I mean, I was racist when we grew up. I didn't like white people. I mean, my first year in college, I refused to say, people would say, "You're white. No, I'm not. Well, of course I am." But what I was responding to was the hurt and the hatred pushed against people who I know were really good human beings simply because of something they couldn't help. And so I started identifying with the people, and these were the people that fit me when I was hungry. Remember, in a poor neighborhood, you pulled together. People gave me clothes when I didn't have them. People would defend me. They called very black folks who defended me in my middle school when other black folks wanted to take on because they just saw whitey. It's all about relationships. And one of the real problems we have is we live in segregated areas. So we don't have a chance to get to know African Americans. You don't get a chance to know the gay person next to you. You don't get a chance to know those folks who are just really good human beings with their flaws and their problems. And that's the hope, is that we can push people into having these dialogues. And I believe that once we have them, we're going to make success. And we're never going to do entirely because people get born, and they get born into this culture, and they have to be educated. And some are, and some never will be. But the fact that they were more there when I end my life than the ones when I began is of success. One of the very interesting folks featured in this book, "Black Fire," is Bayard Rustin. Yes. Bayard Rustin, evidently, he accepted toning down some of his words and let other people say them so that they wouldn't draw lightning. But I believe he was also gay at a time when that was probably worse than being black. Yes. Yes. And he's one of, he's one of the hell we very favored people. And Bayard is actually his pictures on cover because when we were deciding to do the cover, originally the cover was three silver lights workers all white. And he said, "No, no, we can't do that." But we wanted someone who showed the reality. Well, Bayard is just a perfect example, a non-viral person who is very much in the religious reality. And then again, that shows you the compromises that we ask African Americans to do in order to be in the choir. And he did it, and that's the point. The point is that these 300 years, all the things we have African Americans to do, they did pretty much. And so here we are asking them to give up a lot of who they are in order to fit in. And my response is, I'm surprised it took them to 300 years to start getting up on the high water and say, "Excuse me, that's too much." You're asking too much. We're human beings and we have a right, you know, as someone once said, "If you punch me, don't I have a right to say ouch?" And we're saying, "No, you don't, because we're letting you in the group that's making sure you get punched, and that should be privileged enough." And again, it's the cultural reality. It's growing up in a white environment. They intentionally do things, races, but that doesn't make them less so because someone didn't mean to punch you in the nose. It doesn't mean the spirit doesn't hurt. And don't have a right to say it hurts, even if you didn't do it on purpose. So why was at the William Penn Lecture this year an art street meeting in Philadelphia? And the lecture this year was George Lege, who does a lot of work with class. And he was talking about, he was referred to this book that you published. And he was saying that a lot of the reason that white Quakers were so reluctant to, and are still so reluctant to break any molds and to really be bold, especially when it came to civil rights movement, was class. Class was really more of the reason, perhaps, than just civil rights. I would disagree with George, it's more, but clearly it's much. I mean, Quaker is so middle class, most by middle class now. I mean, I'm clearly middle class now. You know, there is a class component to the neighborhoods. The neighborhoods where they've been, the places where we go are boarding schools. And people said, well, we never, we never committed, yes, you did. And because there was no way they could pay the tuition. And now some boarding schools are beginning to provide scholarship. But I got scholarships when I went because I got vacation rehabilitation scholarship. I got scholarships because my parents made under a certain amount of money. So my tuition was paid at Cole College, which is a very high class play. Why? Because I had a right because I was smart and all of that, but also because I was white. So it's those cultural realities. And George is absolutely, is absolutely incorrect. Is if we really want to show it a testimony of equality, then we're going to make sure that people can't afford to go to Oberlin or go to Cole College or go to all of these nice places. You're going to find money to send them and say, well, they're troublemakers. Why am I troublemaker? I'm going to troublemaker since the day I was born. But people call that spirited, what they call women I can't say on air. And what they say to blacks is that they're uppity or that they're violent. Well, part of what George talks about is that it's really, classes have different approaches to conflict. And that is really the crux or that's really where a lot of the problems come in. Where middle class people like to keep everything nice and smoothly. That's right. We like to have a sense of it to work around everything. Working class people are much more confrontational. So we kind of get scared of that. And we see it in black friends, especially when they're angry because they've been mistreated. Well, and we also see it in all odds. I mean heroin, which is a lower class and cocaine, which is upper class. The penalties for cocaine are a lot less for heroin. And again, it's the cultural sense. And again, it's that structural class reality. I know African-American people who are middle class enrichment who would never think of going down to the other side of town because they just don't. And I'm going, my God, your grandparents live down there. Well, we don't. Well, maybe you should. So again, yeah, class is very much a part of it. And of course, you know, class and religion and economics swirl in because there's a difference between Episcopal and score and storefront fundamentalists. But don't have religion. Well, that's not really religion. Well, who will you just say that God doesn't speak to them in a storefront as much as God speaks to you from the pulpit? Again, because the economic divide, poor whites and poor blacks tend to get the bad end of everything and then you blame for it. We're getting to the end of our hour here. I want to end with a question. And that is 25 words or less, or maybe up to 37. I'm not in charge here. This book, Black Fire, African-American Quakers on Spirituality and Human Rights. Why should our listeners want to read it? Well, they want to read it if they want to understand who they're living next door to. They want to understand it who their president is. They want to understand it. They want to understand their history, their background. They want to understand why this whole thing called white and black came. And if the Quakers, they want to understand it because they want to understand what they've done and what they need to do. Paul, I want to thank you for providing some light, and like you, I come from, I guess, a lower-class family. So I'm not afraid to mix it up at all. I'm happy for a little bit of noise. It doesn't scare me. It's really wonderful to meet another lower-class Quaker here. A lower-class Quaker, someone who will provide some yeast for our society to improve because what I think we all really want is for each of us to be the best person we can to help this world be the best world that can be. Well, and, you know, George Rochester is an itinerant person to couldn't read, so we're in good company. Again, Paul, thanks so much for joining me for Spirit in Action. Yes, thank you, Paul. Well, thank you both for letting me be here. That was Paul Kreese, co-editor of Blackfire, and as I promised, I'll end up with the second half of David Masengel's masterpiece on racism he saw growing up, number one in America. See you next week for Spirit in Action. ♪ To stay number one in America ♪ ♪ The Ku Klux Klan is still around with the permit to march in my hometown ♪ ♪ But only on Virginia's ground the Tennessee side turned them down ♪ ♪ The sheriff stood there with his deputy license a play to keep the peace ♪ ♪ But he made us this guarantee ♪ ♪ Like God, they'll not march into Tennessee ♪ ♪ Network cameras were a triple tear ♪ ♪ We lied to cry to religion ♪ ♪ But mostly we stood there with fear to the Ku Klux Klan ♪ ♪ Disappeared ♪ ♪ In some fall of distant dawn ♪ ♪ When the Black is president and not upon ♪ ♪ Well, they burn crosses on the White House long ♪ ♪ Then talk for those days by dawn ♪ ♪ Imagine them telling us how to live ♪ ♪ Imagine them telling us how to live ♪ ♪ When number one in America ♪ ♪ Number one in America ♪ ♪ We drove around the same overcoming Birmingham ♪ ♪ Oh, to me ♪ ♪ Number one in America ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ ♪ Last Christmas Eve at the Kmart store ♪ ♪ A white family there, they was dirtball ♪ ♪ Father said kids pick one toy no more ♪ ♪ Even though we can't afford ♪ ♪ I'll watch your son choose a basketball ♪ ♪ The oldest girl, the creosol show ♪ ♪ The littlest girl chose a black-skinned doll ♪ ♪ And she held it to her chest in all ♪ ♪ I'll watch it to see how they react ♪ ♪ Since they were white and the doll was black ♪ ♪ But the mom and dad were mad at the fact ♪ ♪ They just checked to see if the doll was correct ♪ ♪ So may you make a red mistake ♪ ♪ We're black and white, go ahead, hey ♪ ♪ 'Til they reached the freedom bank ♪ ♪ Where the lion lies out in the bank ♪ ♪ Oh, number one in America ♪ ♪ Number one in America ♪ ♪ Beat the drummer up the sand ♪ ♪ Oh, we're coming Birmingham ♪ ♪ Dynamite in a Baptist church ♪ ♪ Teenage girls lost in the dirt ♪ ♪ Firehoses and the billy clothes ♪ ♪ Of all his dogs and their racist thugs ♪ ♪ They're back o'clock ♪ ♪ Little rock ♪ ♪ Bob's old on the auction block ♪ ♪ Night of the writers ♪ ♪ And the legend mother long ♪ ♪ And they say they're only doing it ♪ ♪ Yeah ♪ ♪ To stay ♪ ♪ Number one in America ♪ ♪ Oh ♪ The theme music for this program is "Turning of the World," performed by Sarah Thompson. This Spirit in Action program is an effort of Northern Spirit Radio. You can listen to our programs and find links and information about us and our guests on our website, northernspiritradio.org. Thank you for listening. I am your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and I welcome your comments and stories of those leading lives of spiritual fruit. May you find deep roots to support you and grow steadily toward the light. This is Spirit in Action. ♪ With every voice ♪ ♪ With every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ ♪ With every voice ♪ ♪ With every song ♪ ♪ We will move this world home ♪ ♪ And our lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ (upbeat music)