Why Anti-Racism Will Fail: A Response

Why Anti-Racism Will Fail: A Response

A 3 page response. David Bumbaugh affirms Thandeka's stance "I thank Thandeka for helping me understand the way issues of race have been used to distract us from questions of power-who has it, who uses it, who is served by it."

Bumbaugh concludes thus: Finally, Thandeka has helped me put into sharper focus the essentially narcissistic nature of the "anti-racism agenda." Because it helps us avoid the topic we are most uncomfortable addressing, the question of class, it relieves us of responsibility for a world going to hell in a hand-basket. We delude ourselves into believing that if we can become "anti-racist" and create an "anti-racist UUA"-though no one has explained to me what such an eventuality might look like-that somehow the world be a better place. All the while, power continues to concentrate in the hands of fewer and fewer people, the massive transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich goes on unabated, beneath a façade of prosperity the social safety net is shredded and in tatters, and the spoliation of the earth continues apace. It is unclear to me how an "anti-racist" Unitarian Universalist Association, even if we could achieve it, would make the larger world significantly or measurably better, fairer, more just or more merciful. I fear that our inward-directed "anti-racist agenda" is but an indication that, to misquote the prophet, we "have sold the poor for an eased conscience and the needy for an empty slogan."

David Bumbaugh