If Rep. Trey Radel Had Been Black…..

….and had been caught with 3 grams of cocaine, does anybody really think that he wouldn’t be on his way to jail with a felony charge? That he wouldn’t lose his right to vote in Florida? That he would no longer have a job?

So while we’re talking about the double standard that comes with being a member of Congress, let’s talk about how that double standard only applies to some, but not all.

Innovation Is A Class and Race Issue

I’m going to own this up front…I’m not thrilled about the UUA’s move from Beacon St. to the “innovation” district. And as I’ve thought about why, it came to me…this is a superficial move in order to maintain the status quo.

Why do I think the move to the “innovation” district is superficial? Mainly because I think it plays into the thinking, in some UU circles, that somehow by osmosis just being around “innovators” is going to magically change how UUs do church and by some miracle that will bring in all those spiritual-but-not-religious millennials.

But I also am hearing a bias that may not be there, because when I hear the some version of the word “innovate” being bandied about in UU circles I think it is a code for “let’s reach out to those highly educated young people who haven’t yet chosen to stay in and read the digital version of the New York Times on Sunday morning.”

So I hear a class (and to a lesser extent, race) bias when we are talking about innovation. Because in many ways innovation is a luxury. For huge swaths of the population, all they can think about is survival.

What’s our gospel to those who don’t have the luxury to innovate or whose innovation is surviving against incredible odds?

Should Integration Be The Goal?

History matters. And it haunts the present. from today’s Atlantic:

Nearly 60 years after the landmark Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that ordered school districts to desegregate, schools seem to be trending back toward their segregated pasts. In the 1968-69 school year, when the U.S. Department of Education started to enforce Brown, about 77 percent of black students and 55 percent of Latino students attended public schools that were more than half-minority. By the 2009-2010 school year, the picture wasn’t much better for black students, and it was far worse for Latinos: 74 percent of black students and 80 percent of Latino students went to schools that were more than half-minority. More than 40 percent of black and Latino students attended schools that were 90 percent to 100 percent minority.

So maybe it’s time to ask the question that everyone seems to want to avoid…. at what point does the push for integration (or multiracial [blank]) become the wrong objective?

The same question applies to Unitarian Universalism. In the supposed push to have multiracial congregations, shouldn’t the real push have been for UU congregations in minority neighborhoods (or at least not the discouragement of those types of congregations)?