By Phyllis A. Unterschuetz and Eugene F. Unterschuetz
Wilmette, Illinois
We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us. —John Steinbeck, Travels With Charlie: In Search of America
C o ntents Acknowledgments...................................................................1 Foreword.................................................................................7 Preface.................................................................................. 11 Introduction......................................................................... 21 Part 1: Before 1997............................................................. 27 1 First Grade......................................................................29 2 Confrontations............................................................... 31 3 Crack in the Wall........................................................... 41 4 Window of Opportunity................................................53 5 Separated at Birth...........................................................63 Part 2: 1997–2002................................................................... 73 6 A Leap of Faith...............................................................79 7 Looking for Simon.......................................................... 93 8 Be Careful What You Wish For.................................... 103 9 That’s a Lid....................................................................117 10 The Promise................................................................. 125 11 Photo Retouch.............................................................. 139 12 Delicate Beige............................................................... 145 13 Two and a Half Hours.................................................. 155
vii
c o ntents
14 15 16 17 18 19
Eve’s Little Serpent........................................................ 165 Electric Fly.................................................................... 181 The Moor and the Minstrel.......................................... 195 The Pitch......................................................................209 Hands........................................................................... 215 Body Language.............................................................225
Part 3: 2005–2009................................................................ 235 20 Snowbird......................................................................239 21 Magic...........................................................................253 22 Moose Tracks................................................................263 23 Images..........................................................................277 24 Robbed!........................................................................283 25 The Word.....................................................................295 26 Safe Haven...................................................................305 27 Lightning Rod.............................................................. 313 28 Of Horse Riders and Kings........................................... 321 29 Assimilation.................................................................. 331 30 Reflections from the Road............................................ 337 31 Keep up the Work.........................................................343 Conclusion......................................................................... 355 Notes..................................................................................359 Bibliography.......................................................................363
viii
Foreword For decades, the race relations publishing industry has been saturated with popular and academic books on various aspects of race in the United States. Many of these books have greatly contributed to the expansion of our understanding of the historical origins of racism, the impact of racism on racial minorities, and the social construction of white racial identity. As a history professor for over three decades, I have taught many courses on race relations but often failed to find experience-based books that focused on building genuine and loving relationships among people of racially diverse backgrounds. Over the years, I have been particularly interested in the history of interracial and multiracial unity in the United States and the roles of the courageous black and white Americans who dedicated their lives to the struggle for racial justice and the promotion of unity and cooperation among racially diverse peoples. These souls are the precious agents of change that have contributed so much to the healing of the nation’s racial wounds. Many whites have played a crucial and vital role in this healing process. From the abolitionist and civil rights movements to the present-day struggle for racial justice and racial unity, there has always been a brave band of whites willing to forsake comfort and 7
foreword
safety to join their sisters and brothers of color in their struggle for human dignity. By reaching out beyond their comfort zone to learn firsthand about the pain and suffering of the so-called “racial other,” these white sisters and brothers have continued one of the longest and most cherished traditions in American race relations—that of standing up for equality and justice. Longing: Stories of Racial Healing, written by husband and wife team Phyllis and Eugene Unterschuetz, is a personal account that contributes to this long tradition of caring whites who choose to make a difference by doing all they can to improve race relations in the United States. This book of stories is destined to stand out among the welter of race relations books published in the last decade. It is a collection of personal stories by a white middle-age Bahá’í couple who decided to leave their comfortable Chicago suburban home and embark on a spiritual journey of racial healing and, at times, painful self-discovery. In their introduction to Part I, Phyllis and Gene wrote, “We were like many other whites in this country; we believed that all people were created equal, that unity was a wonderful goal that would eventually come to pass, and that we had some part to play in its realization. We had grown up with all the same conditioning and misinformation that everyone in this country receives and had both spent the majority of our lives in nearly all-white environments. We were well-intentioned—but quite ignorant—white folks.” They readily admitted that, not unlike many “well-intentioned whites,” while they talked about unity of all people, they chose to raise their children in a white suburb—a choice that many whites made that contributed to the perpetuation of residential racial segregation and 8
foreword
racial isolation. Phyllis and Gene set out to correct this decision as best they could by making different choices, which they present in this book. Their journey took them around the country, where they visited dozens of communities in which they conducted racial unity workshops that focused on healing the racial divide. They engaged in a very deliberate effort to learn more about the delicate nature of black / white relations. In the process, they shared stories of their “ignorance and mistakes” to illustrate “specific points about how [white] racial conditioning works.” This took courage. Few whites are willing to delve into their racial past and wrestle with their racial demons in front of an audience or in a book! It is far easier to engage in polite, nonthreatening racial chatter or write “objective” academic works about race while staying at a safe distance from uncomfortable racial interactions. By choosing the racial “road less traveled,” the Unterschuetzes opened up new and more challenging domains of racial healing, especially between blacks and whites. They pushed the envelope of racial unity discourse by demonstrating how much more whites are capable of achieving in racial healing and unity when they make conscious choices to reach out and embrace racial minorities on their own terms. This was often tough and scary, with no readable road map to serve as a guide. One can almost feel the pain and anguish of the authors’ self-discovery as they share stories of how their racial conditioning over the years affected their interactions with African-Americans. The stories reveal how the Unterschuetzes made special efforts to connect with African-Americans and learned to listen to their heartbreaking stories about their daily life experiences in which they encountered racism. 9
foreword
Eugene recounts embarrassing interactions with African-Americans in which he felt “inept, clumsy, and ignorant.” Phyllis learns about black mothers’ fears for their black sons, who are growing up in a racist society, and she compares them to her white son’s racial privilege in the same society. These efforts to reach out and connect with the so-called “racial other” is based upon the authors’ spiritual beliefs and their years of involvement in the multiracial and multicultural Bahá’í community. “We are all part of one organic unit,” write the authors in the introduction, “and our Creator has placed the same drive in this body as in each of its cells—the desire to thrive and be healthy in all aspects, to evolve, to become more refined, more efficient, and more closely attuned to our purpose.” One cannot walk away from this book and count it as just another interesting read on race relations. For whites, the book is a primer on how best to engage in racial self-discovery and reflection in the realm of meaningful racial change without the burden of guilt and shame. For people of color, especially those who have grown tired of the seemingly endless and often fruitless discussions on race, these stories will renew their faith in that band of brave white souls who remain dedicated to the healing of racial wounds and the promotion of the unity of humankind. —Dr. Richard Thomas, coauthor of Lights of the Spirit; author of Understanding Interracial Unity and Life For Us Is What We Make It, which was awarded the Wesley Logan Prize in African Diaspora History
10
Preface On February 19 of the year 2000, we stood at the front of a room in a building near downtown New Orleans. Outside, the city was busy preparing for Mardi Gras; inside, a small audience of AfricanAmericans sat facing us, listening attentively. We recounted some of the things we’d learned in two and a half years on the road and explained how we as white Americans had been conditioned to perceive race in general, and black people in particular. They were a patient and encouraging audience, but at one point a woman in the back of the room stood up and asked, “Who exactly are you talking to here? Shouldn’t you be out there telling this to white folks?” The only response we could think of was, “Well, this is what we have to say, and you’re the ones who showed up to hear it.” Then we assured them that our goal was to share our understanding with white folks as frequently as possible. The book you’re holding in your hands is our attempt to do just that; it’s a collection of true stories that illustrate what we have come to know about racial conditioning over the course of a ten-year journey around the United States. We invite you, whatever your ethnic background, to share this journey with us, and we’re confident that
11
pr e fa c e
people of all colors will find encouragement, hope, and inspiration within these pages. If someone had told us in 1997 that we would coauthor a book about racial healing, we would have been highly skeptical. We were not writers—Gene was a graphic artist, and Phyllis worked for a German company. Neither of us is a researcher, journalist, or scholar; in fact, we have no academic credentials in the area of race studies. There were other, less traditional forces at work guiding us on this path. While some authors have purposefully undertaken adventures to gather information for their books, we got drawn into the adventure first, unaware of what we were researching or why. It was only after we’d been traveling for several years that it occurred to us we’d been given a mandate to publish our findings. In the fall of 1996, we were living in a big, empty house in the Chicago suburbs. Our older daughter had moved to Washington and gotten married, our younger daughter was gone for a year of volunteer service in Israel, and our son had flown to Australia to do his own year of service. We were rattling around within our suddenly quiet walls feeling somewhat left behind, and we decided that we should travel and engage in service, too. So at the end of September, 1997, we set out on what we thought would be a six-month trip to visit Bahá’ís around the United States. We have both been members of the Bahá’í Faith most of our lives; its teachings form the basis of our spiritual identities and the focal point of our activities. It is a young religion, and its communities are in various stages of development; traveling around the country to meet with them seemed like a great idea. We would get to know our fellow Bahá’ís from different backgrounds and at the same time have 12
pr e fa c e
the opportunity to render a service and share our beliefs with others. It’s what Bahá’ís call “travel-teaching.” Then, after a half year or so, we would return and move into a smaller house. That was our plan. So we sold our home, transferred our belongings into a very small travel-trailer, and set out late one night driving east. We began our journey in New England with very little understanding of what we were actually going to do. We had contacted communities ahead of time and offered to give presentations, for the Bahá’ís themselves or for public meetings, and had sent them a list of topics we felt comfortable speaking about. Included on this list were subjects such as the equality of women and men, the spiritual education of children, the agreement of science and religion, and the elimination of racial prejudice. We assumed different groups would have various interests and were prepared to give impromptu talks on any of these issues. By the time we left the second community on our itinerary, our focus had narrowed considerably. In one of his stories, Gene writes about an occurrence that Phyllis named the hairdresser/taxi driver/bartender phenomenon. Apparently because we were itinerant, people seemed to feel safe talking to us, and somehow—we don’t know why—our African-American Bahá’í brothers and sisters began telling us of their experiences with racism. And once we became attuned to their pain, our list of topics was reduced to one: the elimination of racial prejudice. In the third community we visited, all the Bahá’ís we met were black; they took us in like long-lost relatives, and because we were receptive, their stories poured out. By the time we had travelled down the east coast into the southern states, there was no other subject we wanted to talk about. 13
pr e fa c e
In two of our stories, you will read more about what happened to us in South Carolina. We had the opportunity and the honor of facilitating a series of workshops on creating racial unity, and that experience changed us so thoroughly that we felt utterly different from the two people who had left the Midwest only a few months before. Combining Gene’s previous training as a race unity dialog facilitator with the new materials we’d developed, we created a workshop entitled “From the Same Dust” that we began presenting for the communities we visited. The more workshops we facilitated, the more often we messed up. We said things that hurt people’s feelings, we let slip our unconscious stereotypes; we had stepped out of our theoretical understanding of racism and into the spotlight, where our own racial conditioning was exposed for all to see. At some point there was a shift, and we realized we were no longer simply rendering a service for the benefit of others; this was our own personal issue. We were so embarrassed by our mistakes that sometimes we felt like quitting. But we had an unending source of love, support, and encouragement; our new African-American friends, whether Bahá’ís or not, never gave up on us. They told us we must keep moving, learning, and sharing what we learned with others as we travelled. And this, more than anything else, explains why nearly all the stories in this book are about the relationship between blacks and whites. As we got braver, we began talking about our ignorance and mistakes during our workshops to illustrate specific points about how racial conditioning works. It quickly became clear that these personal anecdotes were by far the most effective part of our presentations; workshop participants responded by spontaneously revealing their 14
pr e fa c e
own painful or embarrassing incidents, and people of all ethnic backgrounds shared anger, confusion, and frustration. More importantly, they shared honesty, courage, and hope. Eventually we stopped presenting workshops altogether and concentrated instead on storytelling followed by group discussions. It was at this point that we began writing the stories down for the sake of consistency, and soon people were encouraging us to put them into book form. And that is how Longing: Stories of Racial Healing came into being. The experiences you’ll read about took place all over the United States and involved individuals from a wide range of economic, occupational, and educational backgrounds. Each story is a memoir; the people are all real, although we’ve changed their names and avoided mentioning their locations to protect their privacy. Our interactions and conversations with them are related here as faithfully as possible. It was always our intention to portray each person authentically; we have used accurate physical descriptions—although not with so much detail that someone might be identified—and we also tried to capture speech patterns, in particular with the use of Southern dialect. This use of dialect in no way implies lack of education or sophistication; it is merely the standard way of speaking in that region. Even though we put much effort into creating truthful depictions, we relied only on our own recollections and journal entries; in some cases, the accounts were written years after the events took place, so we are not claiming perfect recall. With a few exceptions, Gene’s and Phyllis’s stories alternate throughout the book, and they are presented somewhat chronologically. However, they do not form one single, cohesive narrative with a beginning, middle, and end. Everything we experienced was in15
pr e fa c e
fluenced by what we’d learned in previous communities, and in that sense the stories, taken as a whole, relate one continual journey from ignorance to deeper understanding. But each story is also complete by itself; each relates an interaction—sometimes with flashbacks or subplots—and ends with some kind of resolution. The month, year, and state are listed at the beginning of each chapter; these refer to the main event in the narrative and will hopefully help our readers make sense out of our erratic itinerary. Several stories include brief quotations from the central figures of the Bahá’í Faith; they have been used to clarify concepts and to explain the reasons for our beliefs and decisions. These citations are from the religion’s Founder, Bahá’u’lláh, His son ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, and His great-grandson Shoghi Effendi. The passages were written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and contain terms— such as “the colored” and “colored people”—that were standard usage at the time. Most of the stories are followed by commentaries in which we attempt to uncover the deeper truths underlying actual incidents and to define not only the broad concepts but also our own private thoughts and feelings. These insights have come with time and as a result of processing our thoughts together, having additional experiences, and receiving feedback from our listeners, both black and white. They were not things we realized at the time the events in the stories took place; frequently, we didn’t even have the words to express the deeper meaning at that time. In fact, everything you will read in this book is the result of an intricate and dynamic process of learning. We had interactions with people and then came home to our RV and talked together about 16
pr e fa c e
what had happened, sometimes for weeks following particularly poignant or intense experiences. We asked each other questions: Did you hear what I heard? What did that mean? Where have we heard that before? How did you feel? What are you going to do? Then we shared our conclusions with others and incorporated their reactions into our understanding. We put all of that into our stories, read them to diverse audiences, and through comments from our listeners discovered even more layers that we’d been unaware of. When it came time to decide which stories would be included in this book, we chose the ones that shouted to be told, the ones that chronicled an epiphany or a deep sense of shift, which we frequently understood only in retrospect. Because we have had mostly shared experiences, you’ll find overlapping insights in our commentaries; we’ve processed these occurrences together so thoroughly that it often seems as if we’re speaking with one voice. But at the same time, our insights are deeply influenced by gender and by our very different personalities. We’re not proposing universally applicable solutions to the problems caused by race, nor do we mean to suggest that our decisions were always right and should be used as examples in all situations, because what we decided to do in each case was influenced by our individual temperaments, conditioning, life experiences, and level of understanding at the time. We might do something different now. Thirteen years after our decision to travel, we are still meeting new people and still learning more about ourselves. Our hope is that you will be encouraged by our stories to find answers of your own. We understand that there are many other serious issues besides race that need to be addressed in order for this country to become 17
pr e fa c e
a just and nurturing place, and we’re well aware that many other groups have been the targets of prejudice and discrimination. This book, however, is specifically about how racism has ruptured the connection between white and black people living in the United States, and how bonds of friendship can heal that rupture and give us back the freedom to behave according to our noble design. One of the best ways to use this book, we believe, is as a starting point for group discussion. You may want to read a story first, then allow people to share their own experiences, thoughts, and feelings before reading the commentary. This approach gives group members the freedom to express themselves without being influenced by our interpretations of the events. It is our hope that the book will also be used for personal reference and inspiration, for in our stories you will meet the people who inspired and uplifted us, who instructed and challenged and loved us. We found them everywhere we went in this richly blessed country. We have a photo that clearly depicts the beginning of our travels. In this picture Gene is hammering a “For Sale By Owner” sign into the ground in front of our split-level suburban home. In the driveway behind him sits our newly purchased Nomad travel-trailer, all shiny and ready to go, and the big blue van that will haul it along the highways of the United States and into the heart of our as yet unimagined journey. The trailer is quite modest by RV standards— just 22’ long and 8’ wide—nothing fancy. In fact, it was beginning to seem awfully small that day as we made trip after trip from the house, carrying sheets, towels, pots and pans, art books, and small appliances, all of which we crammed into our little box on wheels.
18
End of this sample. To learn more or to purchase this book, Please visit Bahaibookstore.com or your favorite bookseller.