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Catholic Sisters dealing with and fighting Racism
Check out this article Heeding founders’ call, women religious combat racism by Kate Childs Graham in National Catholic Reporter (Feb. 27, 2010). Here are some selections (links mine) …
In 1945, when Mary Paul heard God’s call to religious life, she could not enter any community of women religious in her hometown of Philadelphia, including the Sisters of Mercy. Not because her vocation was untrue, but because she was a person of color. At the time, women of color in the city were referred to three orders: the Oblate Sisters of Providence in Baltimore, the Franciscan Handmaids of Mary in Harlem, N.Y., or the Sisters of the Holy Family in New Orleans — communities comprised mostly of women of color. Paul entered the Baltimore order. Her story is the story of many other women of color who were refused entrance to so-called “white” communities.
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The Sisters of Providence engaged an organization called Crossroads. Founded in 1986, Crossroads provides ways to understand and combat institutional racism, while establishing structures of accountability to people of color. The organization offers a series of trainings that “provide a framework for institutions that are striving to achieve antiracist and anti-oppressive transformation.” They also help institutions analyze any internal policies and procedures that maintain white privilege, and create antiracism teams that “build an intervention strategy to dismantle these oppressive systems.”
The Sinsinawa Dominicans and Sisters of Mercy have also turned to Crossroads. For all three communities, the journey with the organization began with a two-and-a-half day training, “Analyzing and Understanding Systemic Racism,” which explores the history of racism in the United States, how racism still exists in institutions today, and how this affects people of color and white people.
This first training for the Sisters of Providence was in 1997. “We weren’t just addressing personal prejudice,” said Sr. Jenny Howard. “We all have prejudice about something. What made it different for us was that the definition was: Personal prejudice plus misuse of power by systems and institutions equals racism.”
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However, the work goes much deeper than providing trainings. It is also about looking at power and privilege and the structures that keep white privilege in place.
“As a white person, I am so accustomed to access,” Howard explained. “Any motel, any restaurant, any neighborhood. Yet I know that experience is not the same for some of the other members of the antiracism team. I will never forget the day, when one of our persons of color from our team said to me, ‘Jenny, you can think about racism whenever you want to. I have to think about racism every day of my life.’
“I haven’t done anything to earn these opportunities, these rights, these freedoms, this access,” Howard said. “So, how can we use this power of privilege in a positive way to work together for racial justice?”
Read the whole article Catholic Sisters Combat Racism.
What are you thoughts this?
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{ 2 comments }
Awesome article. We are blessed to have an African-American candidate right now.
get this… i’m 46. i’ve lived in (all-too-backwards) tennessee most of that time. and i have never, ever seen a sister of color except when i lived in haiti for 9 months and in the last 5 years when a trio of hispanic nuns came to town.
still, i never even considered sisters might encounter prejudice on that count.
white access has always bothered me, though. i admire anyone who even knows how to approach the issue.
interestingly, in a recent debate about whether health care is a basic human right or a privilege, a friend with an african-american mother and a white father said she would never support health care for immigrants because… in the 1950s african-americans died in the streets when hospitals refused to treat them for not having adequate insurance. in her mind, she “earned” the right to health care somehow, so everyone else should have to earn it, too. i could never get a clear understanding of how she thought she earned her health care, but i was baffled that her position wasn’t exactly opposite. health care is just one thing that whites in this country get easily compared to people of color. few people seem to question this.
i think the world is insane.