Spirit in Action
Fit For Freedom, Not For Friendship - Donna McDaniel and Vanessa Julye
(upbeat music) ♪ Let us sing there is song for the healing of the world ♪ ♪ And we may hear that song with every voice ♪ ♪ With every song we will move this world along ♪ ♪ And my lives will feel the echo of our healing ♪ - Welcome to Spirit in Action. My name is Mark helps 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 there is song for the dreaming of the world ♪ ♪ And we may dream as one ♪ ♪ With every voice, with every song we will move this world along ♪ - Today's Spirit in Action gas are Vanessa July and Donna McDaniel, co-authors of a newly released book, Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship. The subtitle is Quakers, African Americans, and the Myth of Racial Justice. It's a thoroughly researched examination of both the positive and negative history of racial justice within a religious group generally thought to be one of the best in dealing with the issue. But the truth is much more mixed than that. Vanessa and Donna are both Quakers, Vanessa being an African American and Donna a European American. So the examination of the issues and history benefited from a wide range of insights. Now let's go to the Virginia Tech Campus, host of the 2009 gathering of a national Quaker group called Friends General Conference for a Spirit in Action visit with the co-authors of Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship, Vanessa July and Donna McDaniel. - Thanks so much Vanessa and Donna for joining me for Spirit in Action. - You're welcome. - Happy to be here. - When was your release party for Fit for Freedom? When did this actually come out and you started going to your signing party seeing being jet-setted across the country? (laughs) - Our release party was actually on February 5th of this year. It was a large event. We had over 200 people come actually, it's very nice. We had Tribe One perform and Charlotte Blake Austin, she's an African American storyteller who also spoke at our book release party and then Donna and I each spoke at the party. - Was this in Philadelphia? - It was in Philadelphia and it was at the Arch Street Meeting House at 4th and Arch. - If you go on our website, you can just look up Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship. There's a video of the opening event, the launch of the book. Both what we said and I think parts of Tribe One and the other, but you can find that there if you're just dying of curiosity. - How long has this project been in the making? I think it's not been the last year, right? - I looked and your book has so many footnotes that I'm tempted to just study that section of the book for a year just to get ready. This is thoroughly documented. It must have taken an incredible amount of research. - It did, we worked on it for seven years. - And we'd like to assure people when they first look at the book, the first thought everybody has including me is it's so big. So we'd like to say right away the last 200 pages are footnotes and the bibliography. And so the text itself is a little under 400 pages. - But it's actually smaller than it originally was envisioned. Originally we're going to have two volumes published. - One would have been up until 1900 and the other the 20th century 'cause there are very different kinds of research that we had to do for each one. And it would have given us a lot more space to say there's plenty of more information. So some of that will appear on our website to things that didn't make it into the book. - Is this the first installment then in a trilogy or something? I mean. - No. - Or maybe seven years was enough in this project. It must have taken just an incredible amount of dedication to get into this project knowing the scope of what you were going into. What led you into this degree of work? - We didn't know what we were getting into. That's the key to the whole thing. Very true. What we started out with was a small book. Oh, not even an inch thick, I think, called Black Quakers Brief Biographies that had been put together by a friend who published it himself and had been around for a while. And it was interesting but FGC wanted to make it more professional and to add some more information and really just kind of update it. - So the brief biographies of Black Quakers is actually out of print. So that was also one of the reasons for a general conference wanted to republish it and had gotten permission to do it. But when Donna and I didn't know each other before this project and we met for the first time here, actually, 2001, during the gathering when it was here at Blacksburg. And we talked about the project and felt that it was much more interesting to write a book about the relationship between European Americans and African American Quakers than necessarily to republish a book of African American biographies. We met with a committee that was formed to assist us with the book. And they said, we were welcome to change the project if that's what we wanted to do. - I know Vanessa that you have a support committee based out of your monthly meeting. I'm not sure with you, Donna, what the situation is. Is this something that is connected at all with that support committee, Vanessa, or do you get in on this tour or is she going to get supported? - I have one, why don't you-- - Are you both in the same, what meetings are you from? - Oh, no, no, no. I'm from Philadelphia. My meeting is Central Philadelphia monthly meeting. - I'm from New England. Early meeting and my meeting is Framingham, which is about 25 miles west of Boston. - You said you met in 2001. Were you both being courted to be co-authors for this revision? How did the two of you come together on this project? - Well, I had been doing a number of things in my life that felt like separate projects, a lot to do with racism, but nothing that was large enough to make a big difference. And so I decided I wanted to find something that I'd be willing to spend a good chunk of my time on. And I sent out an email to people that I know who would know what's going on in Boston. And I thought, well, you know, I can hook up with some organization or whatever. And I got an email back 20 minutes later from Becky Phipps, who's a New England friend who was on the religious ed committee at that point of the Friends General Conference, and said, well, there's this book we've been wanting to update. And so I came into it that way. And then the search began. That was in the spring, Grand March of 2001. Along the way, some people at Pendle Hill, a Quaker Retreat Center near Philadelphia, found out about the book. And I was able to have a scholarship to be there for a year to begin the research. And that was an enormous gift and blessing. But what the committee wanted was an African-American author as well. And Vanessa had already been courted, as you said, but she wasn't available. - You weren't available, Vanessa. - That's correct. I wasn't available. I had a very full life. - When you met Donna, you said I'm available. (laughs) - That's nice. - That way. (laughs) - What happened was the organization that I was working with shut down and laid us off. So then I was home about a day in my phone rang and was a very good friend of mine, an African-American Quaker from New York yearly meeting who said she was sorry to hear that I didn't have a job and the organization had actually shut down. 'Cause it was a good organization. It was called Green Circle. And it was an organization that helped children and adults appreciate and understand difference. We talked about that. And part of its importance, actually, too, for me, was that it was established by an African-American member of my meeting, Central Philadelphia, who was working with Philadelphia yearly meeting at the time and developed this tool, the Green Circle Program, to help children understand and appreciate difference. So that added to the sadness to me of the organization being shut down. Then she said, so now you have more free time. How would you be willing to work on the book? I was engaged and about to get married and did have a teenage son at the time. So I said that was gonna be making a big commitment and then I needed to talk to with my husband. And she also offered to assist with fundraising for me to be able to have the time to write the book because FGC doesn't pay authors to write books. So this is actually the first book in a sense that FGC really has commissioned in the way that it has. Most books, authors submit manuscripts to French General Conference to be published so that they're already written. - You asked about support committees. So Vanessa has a support committee for her ministry, which she can explain in a minute. And we had a committee from FGC that actually turned out not to be a very effective way to have a support committee. People all over the country who we never get to meet but maybe once a year. So I had a group of three people in my meeting who were my support committee and were very supportive. And the problem was that I always felt like I didn't have time. You know, I needed a lot of support but I didn't have time to be supported which is why I needed support. So that was very helpful. And they still are very interested in what's going on and the person taking the pictures now is one of them. - What about your support committee Vanessa? What's that like, how long has it been around and how much is it focused on the book? - I have a support committee made up of at this time, four members of my meetings at Central Philadelphia. And I've had it since 2000. In 2000, I received a letter from French General Conference asking me if I would participate in the traveling ministries program. In order to do that, I needed to go through a process of clearness with my meeting. And the interesting about it was the cleanest process was really important for me because it helped me to understand that I do have a ministry. The ministry that it was clear that I have is a ministry around working with Quakers specifically around the issue of racism and that I facilitate workshops, good presentations for Quaker meetings, monthly and yearly meetings around the issue of race. Then I also specifically, when I'm traveling, bring together friends of color for us to get an opportunity to meet each other and to get to know each other and share some of our struggles and some of our joys about being a member of the religious society of friends. So that was established in 2000. The book is a part of my ministry because I also am now still facilitating workshops and bringing together friends of color. And I work part-time for French General Conference as their coordinator for the Committee for Ministry and Racism. And in the past seven years, we've been working on the book. So my support committee supports me in all of those things. We meet on a monthly basis except for July and August. And like Donna, it's kind of a challenge because they always have to start with my calendar. Okay, so one of you in town and then finding out, okay, these are the days I'm in town and when is everybody else in town? - Do you do a lot of traveling with this? - I do, I've been doing a lot of traveling actually since 2000 with my ministry. And since February, Donna and I, well, I guess really it started when we went to Baltimore, which was in May that she and I went and visited Baltimore and Washington, DC and did some presentations there for the book. - I want to mention there's a website out there. Vanessa july.quaker.org is where you can find a little bit of information about this. Vanessa is spelled pretty much as you would expect. And July is spelled pretty much as you'd expect. But to me, it seems like Old English. You have an extra E at the end of words. So it's July with an E.quaker.org. And on there, they have a statement administered by Central Philadelphia monthly meeting back in 2002 about Vanessa's ministry. I just want to read how that meeting has stated their support for this ministry that she's carrying on. The overall vision of Vanessa's ministry is to help humanity remember its wholeness. Within this context, her leading is specifically to focus on the religious society of friends as this is her spiritual home. By sharing knowledge, offering healing and raising our level of awareness, Vanessa's ministry empowers friends to collectively translate new consciousness into new actions that will ultimately remove the barriers that exist both historically and presently between people. And to that, I say amen. Which is why I invited you here for a spirit in action. That kind of worked to heal the world. And it sometimes means that we have to walk through the sticky molasses. [LAUGHTER] One thing I'd say about your book is that it is an unflinching look at history, specifically friends and African-Americans in general. Just the whole relationship with the society of friends and how that's dealt with people of African descent who weren't part of friends, those who were, those who wanted to be, but were not accepted. And so we have to admit that Quakers get a lot of kudos for having participated in getting this slavery underground railroad, et cetera. And we are no way are saints. And this book is full of non-saint moments. I'd say this book is unflinching in how it looks at that history. See, it's the real nitty gritty. I'm imagining that there's a whole lot of Quakers who are flinching horribly as you come bearing your gift. What's the reaction then? It's been mixed. We've had actually much more positive response to it than we anticipated. So I know there were several times when we were discovering the material and then when we decided what we were going to include in the book, feeling some anxiety around, well, how are friends going to feel about this? Because in our title, it says, "The Myth of Racial Justice." And we specifically chose that because there are many myths about friends' work with racial justice. So people who did the work, many of them were specific individuals, several of whom actually were not in unity with our meetings when they were working, for which now the religious society of friends as a whole has been accredited with a reputation for doing that work when actually the reality is the majority of friends were no different than the general public. We have had an amazing reaction, I think, far better than I might have thought with people who are, as Mark had said, impressed with the research and the thoroughness and that. And so I'm very, I don't know what I would have done if somehow nobody liked it or wanted to read it, all that seven years of work. And our goal was to tell the truth in the good Quaker's sense of speak truth to power. And we feel that by telling the truth that we will be able to move forward. It's not simply to know about our past. But in understanding that there are lots of, in the book, there are lots of things that I hope friends recognize about us now that we're happening in the past, but there's still here and that that will help us. - Why is it such a big deal for you? Why spend seven years if you're a mic? Most of us, that means something like a tenth of our life. That's a major portion to invest in something. Was it because you were getting rich that the spun right in court was so significant? - Right, right. - Unlike any other Quaker project I've ever seen. - You know, the TV fame and Oprah's show and Mark's program, you know, how good can it get? - Yeah, good. - You have much technical. - You know, as we said, we didn't have any idea at the beginning that it would be seven years. Part of that was because of changes. Part of it, we have to say, was because the first editor was Barbara Hershkowitz and she died three years ago, I think, and that brought some changes with other people's views of what the book would be that weren't exactly the direction we were going in. That's when it went from two volumes to one, which may have been the best thing. I don't necessarily regret it, but it meant that it took longer than we thought. So I just knew from the beginning that I was going to do this project, no matter what it took. The second year that we worked on it after the year I was in Philadelphia, we met in places where we could be together for two weeks out of every month, for a year and a half, actually. And that was really grueling. And it was, you know, I'd drive home, we'd pack up, we'd unpack, we'd move into someplace. That was very hard. But I just knew that I was going to do whatever it took. - My question is, Donna, why? I mean, you're one of the sunburn challenged people on this earth. Why is racism such a big deal for you? - I don't have a really great explanation. I've written a little bit in the beginning of the book that I had some relatives who were very prejudiced. I was growing up in the 30s and 40s, and they were equal opportunity prejudice against Jews and blacks and anybody else who wasn't a wasp. And I think some part of me just felt like that wasn't the way I liked to look at other people. That's a little vague. More specifically, sometime in the late '80s, I worked on a project in Boston called Youth at Risk. And that was working with youth who were incredibly at risk. The next step was jail. Most of them were African Americans. And I got to know them. We went away and did things in isolated locations. And it was very intense practically around the clock. And I was a volunteer for that and helped raise money for 10 years. And I got to know these kids. And I loved them. And I got to the point where I couldn't stand the thought that their lives were being lost because of racism. That's it. I couldn't walk. I was working downtown Boston at that point. And I couldn't walk downtown on the streets without, if I saw a black kid before, I would kind of just keep walking along the sidewalk, not necessarily looking anywhere. And I realized, those might be one of the kids that I was just with for a month. And it was a whole year program that we were mentoring them. And so I needed to look at them. And that was really, I don't know. They became people maybe? Yes, exactly. They became people instead of others. One of the boys that I would love. Sure. Thanks for that. Vanessa, what led you to you work this ministry? It's a ministry about holding the world. It's easy enough when you're faced with oppression in some form. And racism, even in its underground ways, is oppression. One of the choices people can make is anger. And it's like, I don't only think to do with you. Why did you choose healing? It's a wonderful gift to us that you did. And I'm thankful that you did. Why did you just get pissed and leave? Quakerism is my home. This is clearly where I belong. And leaving wasn't going to change anything. It wasn't going to change anything for me. It wasn't going to change anything in the religious society of friends, racism, and prejudice as a part of the world and the United States. And regardless of what religion I went into, if I left Quakerism, I'm sure I would have experienced it there or other issues. And my family is from-- and my mother's side is from the Church of Christ. There is very male-dominated. At least the women are in charge here, right? Yes, yes, we-- It's true right there. We have at least equal value, which is not true from the Church for which my family belongs on my mother's side. So my father came from Baptist. But neither of my parents practiced their religion because they both had been very wounded in their religions that they left. So I guess I'm breaking a chain in that respect and staying. But I firmly believe you can't make a change from the outside. That has got to come from the inside, whether a Jew as an individual or people who are working within the religious society of friends. I was very fortunate that in 1994, I attended my first French General Conference Gathering. And at that gathering, French General Conference had a workshop for the first time titled Internalized Depression for People of Color Only. I missed the first day of the workshop, which was good that I missed the first day of the workshop, I think, because they spent the first day of the workshop convincing a white man who showed up that he had no right to be in the workshop. But it was such a wonderful experience being with other friends of color who were here at French General Conference, walking around with them and finding that some of the experiences that I would have, that I would question, well, was that just me, or walking by and saying hello to people and having them look elsewhere, look down, not speak back. Now, I realized as an African-American that I was raised and that not everybody is raised to do that. That is something I think also happens more often in the South, that people just on the street speak to each other whether they know each other or not. That and some of the other incidents that occur that we spent each morning in the workshop talking about how our day had been the day before and some of the experiences we had, just so that we could process it together with each other. It was a very powerful experience for me. And originally, my ministry really started around supporting other friends of color in the religious society of friends because that had been such a powerful experience for me. So coming together in other ways, that year I also had an opportunity to go to the Fellowship of Friends of African descent for the first time. And it was meeting on Chinese campus, which I know was involved with Quakers in some way. I wasn't clear then, as I am now, of what that connection was. But being on the campus, being at a Quaker conference where the majority of people there were people of African descent, was just an amazing experience for me. At that time, I was working for Friends World Committee for Consultation section of the Americas and most of the Quaker gatherings that I had attended prior to going to the Fellowship, there were just a handful of African Americans. And sometimes I was the only one at certain Friends World Committee events. So it gradually changed to, well, yes, it's important to support people of color and to help us remain in the religious society of friends. But there's also change that needs to happen here and that change is not gonna happen unless we reach out to white friends and work with European Americans and help European Americans be aware of that racism, yes, it does exist alive and well in the religious society of friends. And once you can get friends to open their eyes to that, then you can go on to further steps of, well, okay, so what is some of that and what is that coming from? And how can we change that? Don and I just spent this week facilitating a workshop on fit for freedom in which we had people of color and European Americans in our workshop, 24 participants. - Yep, that's a big workshop and a lot of people work with. How'd it go? I mean, this is the last day of this gathering, the Friends General Conference gathering held at Blacksburg, Virginia. How did it go, 24 people? Maybe everyone who was ready to confront their racism were the people who were in the workshop or maybe some people had some good learning curve going on. - I think that we had kind of an advanced group. I'm not sure there was anybody who needed to be convinced that such a thing exists as racism or white privilege. One of the best things about it was that we had a number of young friends, three of whom were multiracial and participated fully in very inspiring ways. And we had a number of other African American adults who were part of the workshop. And that's a great gift. So many times it is white people. But I mean, it's obviously it adds a whole nother dimension and contributes greatly to us. And I hope to them as well to understand that there are people of European descent who are very committed to ending racism. We like to speak of working for racial justice rather than ending racism because people get all weird about the word racism. Well, I'm not a racist and I'm not this and you can argue your time away. So we like to think that it's easier to talk about the benefits of white privilege, which we have simply by being white. We didn't ask for it. We don't have to do anything except be white. So the workshop was, we had a couple of DVDs that the group was just really taken with and saying things like we're taking them back to our meetings. So they were fired up about Wednesday. They were ready to talk about, well, this is what I want to do when I go home. That's like the workshop leader's dream. So I felt like it was really very successful and they wanted to have more time. That's the other dream of a workshop leader is to have people say, well, do we have to end now? Can't we stay another week? - In the workshop, Donna mentioned that we had African Americans. But we also had Latin American person and also some Asian Americans. So although the workshop was focused around African Americans, we did have some other people of color in the workshop. They said they went it more time. And one person said, it's just, week has gone by so fast. And I've never experienced that here before at a friend's general conference. And today was the last day and it was a hard day. Partially because of the accidents and the deaths that we've had here, which put people in emotional place, but we did actually have a, an incident that occurred yesterday that was a learning incident for the group, but a painful one for some friends. And we were able to come back today and have an opportunity to process that. - You mean within the workshop? - Yes. - Was it important that you too, as co-authors, a fit for freedom, not for friendship, was it important that one of you be of European descent and another of African, was that an intentional choice and why was that? - It was an intentional choice. I don't know if it had to have been that way. And a part of the reasoning that it wasn't intentional choice is because Donna came to the project first and the committee that had accepted her offer to work on the both Black Quakers was very clear that they wanted to have an African American co-author. Because the original manuscript of Black Quakers was edited by a European American man. There are some authors, it's a collection really of, I would say, articles around different African Americans, some of whom are Quakers, that are written by different individuals. I remember one, I don't, there may be more than one, but at least one person was of African descent. So the subcommittee was very clear that for redoing the book, that they wanted to make sure that there was an African American co-author because as Donna and I found out in working together, we did really see the world differently. There were many nights and afternoons and mornings where we had conversations looking at an issue that we had discovered and talking about the different perspectives of how I saw it as an African American and how she saw it as a European American. - Is conversation in that sentence, is that a euphemism for struggles, arguments? - We did disagree on things. We did see it through different eyes and it was a blessing from me to really learn what it means to be part of the dominant culture. There are things I don't need to see. It would usually get down to that. I mean, we would have had something we're both working on and reading and Vanessa, and I think, oh, this is great for this chapter and Vanessa say, where are the African American voices? How does that look through African American eyes? So that was very important. And sometimes there were long discussions and I'm very grateful for the really interesting discussions that we had on particular things. I want to say one more thing about why it's important besides in the development of the book, it was important. I think it's also important to the credibility that we offer. If this book had been written by one person of either race, if Vanessa had written it, I'd be afraid that there'd be any number of people who would say, that's another black person complaining and that's the way she sees it. It would be very hard for some people not to be defensive and feel attacked by an African American 'cause that's what happens. - And be able to discount it because, you know, it hasn't got both experiences in there. - And then on the other hand, if I wrote it, I don't think that it would have the same impact. I think it's really important. It's part of the essence of the book that it's been written by two people who have come together and I hope that we represent what we want to do in the end is namely to be together. - If you just tuned in, you're listening to a Northern Spirit radio production called Spirit and Action. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet. You can always find these programs by on my website, northernspiritradio.org. On there, you can find this interview and many others with wonderful people working to heal the world. And today, we have two people who are working for the whole of humanity. They've co-written a book called Fit For Freedom, Not For Friendship, Vanessa July and Donna McDaniel, worked for seven long years. But finally, this year, their long labors paid off. And they're with me here on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, where we're learning some more about the whole process. And I was wondering, I haven't heard anything out of the book yet and I'd really like to hear some of the book. If you could pick out passages, stuff that particularly was telling moments for you. The part of it that spoke the most to me is what happened after the Civil War, the period that we call Reconstruction, which didn't reconstruct anything except, well, we say slavery in another guise, which was sharecropping. So there was never the kind of opportunity that we'd like to think when people say things like, well, after all the Civil War was a long time ago and slavery ended, and what's the matter with these people? And they had plenty of opportunity, never, really, unless you consider being afraid of some group like the Ku Klux Klan as equal opportunity or having the drinking fountains and all the desegregation and not being allowed to move from where you worked, even if you were, quote, unquote, a free person, you couldn't move because your boss would threaten you. If you move, you'll never get a job any other place. I mean, the whole, we can go on and on for that. But the other element of it that meant so much to me in explaining why racism has been so persistent in this country is that during that same time, something called scientific racism, where anthropologists, including Louis Agassi of Harvard, developed a hierarchy of human beings. And at the bottom are Africans. And at the top are we know who the qualities assigned, which are innate, being that the people at the bottom are lazy, slothful, lustful, all the unfortunate adjectives you can think of. - I can't identify those adjectives sometimes. And at the top are nice blonde people like you who have all the good qualities. And it was a purposeful campaign. Using that became popular magazines. It appeared in whatever. Two paint African-Americans as lazy people who best should stay in the South, the Northerners were benefiting and enormously by slavery. Don't let anybody kid you about that. And they were just as invested in keeping them in the South. And so I think that first of all, there was an equal opportunity. And secondly, there was a purposeful campaign to make sure that there wasn't any kind of opportunity for most people. And we all can think of exceptions and just be amazed that some people could get through all the obstacles. And that went on to the early 1900s. And then we had people moving North to try to get better opportunity in what happened in the North. You end up without good paying jobs and unable to move out of where you live because of real estate. And that's kind of a quick history of it. But that's the part that is the most important to me. And I think, as I said before, explains why we still have persistent problems. What about you Vanessa? For me, learning about the work of North Carolina friends was just an amazing find. And we talk about in chapter four, that's titled "Friends in Freed People" and the section about migration. The friends that are now in Ohio and Indiana, many of them, their ancestors came from North Carolina. And they moved to North Carolina because of their experience that they had with enslavement during that time and with the state. And I just wanna read to a little section here. It says, "North Carolina friends "was perhaps the most profound experience of resettlement." From an early point, the yearly meeting had argued against enslavement. In a 1779 petition to the state assembly, protesting legislation that curved the rights of people of African descent, the yearly meeting declared not only that such acts violated the nation's founding documents that called into question the assembly's authority to govern. Being fully persuaded that freedom is the natural right of all mankind, the petition stated. We fully believe them to be a contradiction of the declaration and bill of rights on which depends your authority to make laws. North Carolinians generally accused the Quakers of inciting ill feeling and action. In 1791, a grand jury declared that the great peril and danger of insurrection was a consequence of Quakers who corrupt the enslaved, turn them against the enslavers and protect fugitives. In the rest of the chapter, it talks about the experience of North Carolina friends having that they would free those that they enslaved and what would happen was that then the people who were enslaved would be picked up and resold. They were termed Quaker-free Negroes. And so one of the solutions they came up with was the individual members of North Carolina the yearly meeting would sell their enslaved Africans to the yearly meeting so that they were still, they were not emancipated, so they couldn't be resold, but they were not working for the yearly meeting. They were reading their own lives. Some assisted African Americans and people of African descent with leaving the state, some going west to Ohio and Indiana. So I'm going to Haiti, leaving the country. And then many of the North Carolina friends actually moved out there themselves because as you heard that there were many people who were not Quakers in North Carolina who were very upset with the Quakers and what they were doing. - I so, so support the people who were able to make that hard decision because they were making it under duress. It's one thing to say I'm not racist when it costs me nothing to not be a jerk. But to say I'm going to give up my home I'm going to give up my livelihood. I'm going to change this. I'm going to give up my white privilege as a number of those North Carolinians did. That's something to be proud of. But the other thing I want to say is I can't take too much credit for anything that any Quaker did. Number one, I wasn't race Quaker. I just affiliate with the group because I like a lot about it. But it's also true that I can't be blamed for it just because someone else who had my name or something like I'm responsible for my actions today. And so what's most important to me always is to confront the racism to work for the redistribution, to work for world peace on a person by person basis right now. So I have to have some questions. How do we get there? I mean, we write the book and we now know, yes, it's much more insidious than we thought. It's not as clean as we thought before. How do we get to the place where we get rid of this undercurrent which we're still carrying with us? I think that first of all, that as we said, we think that telling the truth is the first step. I would hope that, for example, the things that I mentioned about Reconstruction would make people stop and think about, again, why there are parts of cities which we would still call ghettos, or why there are still problems that we all think should have been solved a long time ago and everybody would live happily ever after. So I think that I would hope that we could change attitudes about why people are stuck in poverty and all the associated things. I think at one point in the 20th century, the occasion was, I mean, there's a lot more detail about it, but we began to blame the victim rather than the circumstances. And I think we need to go back to understanding the circumstances that made some people create a condition that they simply could not get out of. And secondly, I think there are a lot of good programs now. I think having a president who's African-American and so intelligent and well-spoken, even if you don't like his politics, it's hard to ignore that. It's not the answer for those who say, well, race isn't over, no it isn't. I think that in the end, what we have to do is be willing to have conversations about it with smaller groups of people, be willing to talk. And so I would hope the more that people can talk about it with each other, it's been so hard to talk about, but also the more that we can talk about it with people of other races, the better it is. I don't think there's a huge sweeping kind of thing that we can think of. One of the DVDs that we showed ends with some information about the Episcopal Church, which has issued an apology for their complicity with racism, for their benefit over the years of racism, with promises to learn more about that and to create programs to deal with it and that kind of thing. I would have some hope that other groups would consider that. The US Senate just apologized, but made it very clear that they would have nothing to do with reparations. And reparations is a very difficult. And one of those issues we can also start arguing about that and never get to the main point. So if we talk about repairing relationships and apologizing, but it's a long haul, but I'm hopeful, I'm very hopeful. I mean, who would ever believe that we would have had an African-American president? I just find it miraculous. - I tend to think of them as president of European descent. I say that in part because the way that we characterize these things is really amazing. As I was reading the book, I was aware it says, you know, those of African descent. And then I realized we are all, 100% of us. We're all of African descent. Some came more recently, I guess. And some people, maybe it was 20,000 years ago, I don't know how the timeline goes on this exactly. But the point being, it's superficial differences. Now, I noticed something with the U of Vanessa, which I'm not used to thinking of. And mind you, I lived in Africa for two years. I was a Peace Corps volunteer in West Africa. You have freckles. - Yes, I do. - And I tend to think freckles is something that only the Irish get or something like that. Maybe that's a bit limiting in my part. But I don't think I ever saw freckles the entire time I was in Togo. So, you know, how much of a mix are we in the world? I'm not sure Africans are the people who live in Togo who've grown up there. There are all different colors along the way too. I'm not sure that there's any such thing as, I'm not European and I'm not Asiatic, I'm not whatever. I don't know if there's any of that in the world. - I do know that I do have some Irish ancestors in my family. I also have Native American ancestors in my family. And actually I had a person telling me that my freckles are brown as opposed to black and that the people from Africa who have African freckles are darker than the freckles that I have are more characteristic of Native Americans. So, I've never heard that before. But we talked a lot about the book and whether or not to identify people throughout the race or ethnicity and how to identify people by their race and ethnicity and who would be identified and who wouldn't be identified. And we had several historians who read our book. We wanted to be as accurate as possible. And there were many people who didn't like the fact that we identified European Americans as well as African American. And that was something that was clearly from my perspective of when I read books these days that you assume everyone is European American unless otherwise stated. - I picked that up when I read the book. I said, okay, African descent and the European descent. It feels a little bit cumbersome to have to spell everybody else. But you're on equal footing. - Yes. - I realize how often someone who is of the minority whether that's religious or whatever, it's like you're one of the folks except for the Jews in town or you're one of the folks except for the gays in town or anybody can be marginalized. You're a regular person or you spell out your resume. - Right. In doing this work, there are times where I feel like, okay, well, a way to help whites understand is to just swap it and say, okay, so if you're reading a book where everybody they're talking about then you assume that they're African American because if they're identified, if they're not, what would that be like for a European American to experience that? And sometimes from doing things like that, you do get an aha moment from a European American and some people have changed their lifestyle from having experience when they were white of being a minority of either being the only male around or being the only white person growing up in their environment that they realized that that really did change the way that they looked at the world. So that we all are products of our environment but also the divisions that have occurred among us in many ways have been in some ways imposed on us because if you watch little kids playing with each other, they generally don't have those differences in those distinctions that we teach them. And I admit that I taught my child things that I felt he needed to know as an African American male in this world that yes, you can do anything you want except you need to remember that you're an African American male and as a reloaded that you're a target and so that you've always got to be aware of your surroundings. In some ways, we need to be doing that to survive but when can we get past that and how do we get past that? What are the things that we need to change over the generation to change that so that that innocence that we have of youth of, oh, I'll play with anybody, I don't care, that stays and doesn't get gradually taught out of us? - As the book goes on, we're getting closer and closer to today and as we get closer and closer to today, the defensiveness grows up I think because it's one thing if you say 200 years ago, the Quakers who were fighting against slavery were still themselves racist, the separate but equal or whatever attitudes they carried at that time, that's them but closer and closer to 2009, that's us, that's not them. - Yes. - I mean, I have to look back at my own childhood. My father was clearly racist. He grew up from a small town in Wisconsin. He's a wonderful man in many, many ways and he's racist. And so I grew up calling Brazil nuts with the N word. - Yes. - Inini Minimo, I didn't know what I was saying as I grew up and I was ashamed to help guilt about it by the time I reached high school because I knew better by then, my father still would use the word though so I can say, okay, by this time I could take responsibility for myself. - We do actually in the epilogue, you were asking me what are some of the things we can do and Donna mentioned conversation which is very important talking about the issue of racism because it's like the elephant in the room or I'd like the story of the emperor with no clothes that no one is mentioning. But I talk about some of the things that we can do to work on this issue of racism and changing it but yeah. - Talking is one of them, I'm curious about more because some people although get out of it is guilt. - No, I hope not. - And guilt is so non-productive. - Correct. - So what's the better reaction? I see it, I recognize the error. What's the next step for me and for others that is actually gonna do something good? - Well, I said earlier that there are some whites who have been in environments in which they were not surrounded by whites. I know several years ago, French General Conference gathering that doing a worship that occurred, there was actually a Latino woman who was wounded from a statement that was made at that gathering and she has a very close friend who's European American who was just devastated from that experience. Had they not been close friends, I don't know if that person would have had the same reaction that they did. I know that there are people in my meeting who are doing work around racism because of knowing me, because of experiences that have happened to me or with my son when he was younger and a part of Quakerism. One thing is definitely that it is very easy for whites in the United States of America to live in a world when you're just surrounded where everyone you go to work with is white, people that you interact with that are white, people in your family are all white, and that is just living in a cocoon in some ways. So getting out there, getting to know people of color, if you have people of color in your workplace, getting to know more than their name, getting to know about their family, going to lunch with them, seeing if you can establish a relationship, now they may not want it, so you have to also be aware of that, but they're African American or Latin American, Asian American organizations that you can be a part of, but to step out there and to not have your role, just be focused in around being European American. - What we need is exchange programs between communities, if we all flipped every year, not everyone, but just kind of in miscellaneous directions, we can be much more conscientious. You do traveling workshops? The two of you have done presentations together, traveling workshops? - Yes, I do. - Say a little bit about what you've been doing. - Well, for the workshops, what I try to do is find out from the meeting where they are, what are their needs in the meeting, then what I do is take that information and then try and develop a workshop around where they are to also what it is they want to accomplish for my time of being there. The challenge is always time. It's wonderful having a weekend where I can start Friday evening and have all day Saturday and then go into Sunday morning, but that's usually very rare that I can have that amount of time. So my goal is to provide meetings with an opportunity to look at themselves. - And the two of you together, Donna and Vanessa, you've done some activities together. - We've done a number of things going to monthly meetings lately and we have a very full schedule actually up through next summer, so going to yearly meetings. We also go, and this is one of the major points, we also go to things that are not Quaker sponsored. The National Freedom Network has an annual conference. We were at that in Philadelphia last year and we'll go to Indianapolis this year. I went to a conference in New England called Black New England, which is a title that surprises any number of people. And so we have a couple of other examples like that where they're primarily non Quakers. And I think that's important because we can be a Quaker presence. It's also important because the book really speaks, yes, it has Quakers in the title and a lot of Quakers in it, but it also speaks to people of any denomination because in the end, what we found is that Quakers are not a whole lot different than anybody else, although we like to think that we are. So I'm very convinced that there are messages that will help any person who's of whatever racial background or whatever understand better how things have happened in our country regarding racism. - Again, we're talking with Vanessa July and Donna McDaniel. Their co-authors of book called Fit For Freedom, Not For Friendship, came out early this past year. And I'm speaking to them on the campus Virginia Tech, which is in Blacksburg, Virginia as part of the Friends General Conference Gathering. I'm your host, Mark Helpsmeet, and you can always hear this program again by my website, NortonSpiritRadio.org. On that site, you can post comments when we really appreciate comments, feedback from people. Our purpose is to raise up those people who are doing the work to heal the world. - You asked a while ago, is there anything that would make Quakers blush? I think, and especially in the 20th century, we've given plenary talks at a number of yearly meetings. And at the end, we read a letter that was written in a certain year to monthly meetings in Philadelphia, the meeting asking, you know, how many African-Americans do you have in your meeting? Do you have projects in your community with African-Americans? A list of questions like that. Do you outreach to African-Americans? Do you have them in your neighborhood? And the questions were actually asked in 1940, something like that. And what we say is that these questions could be asked today. We still have the same questions. And so as you go through the book, you realize that there's kind of an ebb and flow. And sometimes we have very big efforts and we get excited and we have lots of conferences and we talk about race. And then for some reason, it just kind of fades away. And then the same thing happens again. And so there's a pattern. And I think that pattern would make us blush a little bit to realize that we've made a lot of efforts and yet they haven't come to fruition. What I like to say especially, but what we believe is we, our prayer is that 25 years from now, there won't be two other people sitting here being interviewed by perhaps you or someone else saying the same thing, that it's time for Quakers to wake up and it's time that we've paid attention to this and this is the issue for the world. So our hope is that the end of this ebb and flow and now we make a big effort because this is a big effort. And I hope that this is kind of breaking the mold. - I'll hopefully argue that the change is really gonna be there, it's really gonna happen. I've seen the incredible change in my life. I remember in the early 80s when Jesse Jackson was running for president and I remember the cameras panning out to the audience and just the relief joy and the hope that I saw an African-Americans in the audience. And I said, wow, that is such a gift to see hope, to see the possibility, to see that we're no longer gonna, not in the back of the bus, but in fact, we're not just the front of the bus, we're not just the bus driver either. We've got the possibility of full and equal citizenship right along with all the other vibrant people of our nation. When I saw those pictures, it was transforming to me and I had already lived in Africa then. So I had a sense of a different place in the world. How hopeful are you that the religious society of friends and the entire society as a whole are getting to that whole place in the United States? - I'm hopeful the fact that the majority of the response to our book has been positive for me is very hopeful and that there are several monthly meetings who are including mine that are setting up book groups where they're going to actually read through the book and we have a study guide that if you go to the website piffforfreedom.org, you can see there's a study guide that you can order, you can either get the hard copy of it or you can pay for a PDF of the study guide to assist meetings. Also, we have a space there to make comments about the book on the website and then French General Conference trained 25 Quakers who agreed to be facilitators to assist meetings with working on the book by coming and giving a workshop for meetings. So, if any meeting is interested in that, they can just contact French General Conference and we can arrange for that to happen. So, French General Conference has put a lot of effort and resources behind this work and has been doing that for several years. The fact that my meeting, Central Philadelphia, has agreed for the next year that we're going to be addressing issues of racism within the meeting, we're planning retreats and different activities that can happen where we're specifically looking at the issues around race. Now, there are individuals in our meeting who are unhappy about that. There are some individuals in the meeting who went on and was talking about the fact that having both of us be authors or be credibility to it, well, even for some people, just having my name on it, discredits it. - Because of your bad spelling of July? (laughing) - No, because they're assuming that, you know, I'm just saying horrible things about the religious society of friends and it's my personal experience and that racism as a whole is really minuscule in the religious society of friends and if we're going to be addressing racism, it should be out in the world at large and stop wasting time with looking at it among ourselves. The sad thing for me is that if they read the book, then that will help them see that one, it's not all negative, that, as Don had said earlier, our goal was to put in a balanced view of what we were able to find, both the positive and the negative parts of our history. So we've done that. I think that if they read it, that they will find that racism is more than minuscule in the religious society of friends. - Sad to say. - Yes. - I do have hope. I've lived long enough to remember when people who lived together before they got married was absolutely astonishing. I mean, you would have been thrown out by your parents and they never speak to you again. - It's called living and sin. - Yes, that was it. - Yes, living and sin. Really, and I mean, I just, I'm stunned sometimes if I look back to the way it was in high school and the way it is now. So I have hope that human beings do change. There are other changes that we can think of. I have to live in hope because for me personally, I can't choose to live any other way. I wouldn't want to live in a world where there was no hope. I would be so depressed. So as I always say, I live in the question of whether what we do makes a difference, but I believe it does so that I can live the kind of life that I need to live. - Thank you both. For the seven years of work on this book, the rest of the years of your life where you've really been working with the issue, racial healing, bringing us together, helping us find our wholeness as a world is a great gift you give to it. So thank you both Vanessa and Donna. - Thank you very much for having us on your radio program. - For all that you do. - Today's spirit and action guests have been Vanessa July and Donna McDaniel. Their book is Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship. And you can check out more on their site. fitforfreedom.org. - The theme music for this program is Turning of the World, performed by Sarah Thompson. This spirit and 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. (upbeat music) ♪ 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 ♪ [MUSIC PLAYING]