| The WAMM Board voted unanimously to sign on to the statement below at our July 20, 2010, board meeting. WAMM has a long history of working in coalition with many multiracial organizations. However, the leadership and membership of WAMM has historically been almost all white. Organizationally, we have decided to address how our “whiteness” shapes us. Within the next month, our board will begin to read collectively Witnessing Whiteness: The Need to Talk about Race & How to Do It (2nd edition) by Shelly Tochluk. We urge you to go to the website of “Let's Build a U.S. for All of Us: No Room for Racism” and sign on individually.
Let's Build a U.S. for All of Us: No Room for Racism
Statement & Call to Action
We long for a country that lifts all of us up, dares to care, offers love, generosity, and justice. We reject the racism that keeps us divided. We celebrate our interdependence and our capacity to love our neighbors as ourselves.
We are white people standing together for a community of caring. Racism is not just a thing of the past; it continues to be woven into all of our institutions and structures, privileging those of us who are white and creating inequities for people of color. Racism is used to confuse us, make us forget that our lives and futures are interconnected. We believe that racism, in all its forms, robs us all of our humanity.
We are white people standing against the racism we see, hear, and feel as the nation’s right wing and some in the media whip up a backlash of fear about the leadership of President Obama, the first African American president of the United States, and the agenda for change on which he was elected.
We see blatant racism showing up in hostile signs, words and actions at “tea parties,” demonstrations, and town hall meetings; in the effort to stop schoolchildren from listening to the president, something school children have done since the dawn of radio; in public tolerance of ministers who openly pray for the president’s death; in the scapegoating of immigrants; and in the organized attacks on people and groups working for urgently needed change. Far beyond legitimate disagreement over policies, these are old fear-and-smear tactics used by those who profit as we fight among ourselves.
The stresses of financial meltdown, unemployment, environmental crisis, and war make us an easy target for race-based fearmongering. But this time we will not be fooled and we will not be divided. We understand how our lives are shaped by race, by class, by gender, by whom we love and where we come from. We also honor our deep connections each to the other as we work together to solve pressing problems.
Our ability to transform this country into one that truly works for all of us – where we effectively address our serious economic and environmental problems – is made possible only in a racially just society. Let’s work together to build what Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. called “the Beloved Community.”
We can take action. The first step is to say together: “There is no room for racism in a U.S. for all of us.”
(see www.usforallofus.org)
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