Pádraig Ó Tuama on Finding Uncommon Ground

This week we are rebroadcasting our interview with Pádraig Ó Tuama, originally aired in September of 2019. The Isle of Éire (Ireland) is rich with stories held by the land, both ancient and modern, laden with both fierce culture and colonial violence. Pádraig Ó Tuama perceives these complex layers of history with acute insights into the lingering impacts of imperialism and sectarianism that have divided Ireland. By acknowledging deeply rooted cultural pain, Pádraig calls for Irish, English, and the rest of us to heal by reckoning with the past and embracing the creative potential held within our differences. Enter a poetic journey where the land awaits us beyond the divide of borders, history, and suffering. Ayana and Pádraig explore the language of uncommon belonging; how we must learn from our shame, the life cycle of violence, and how to confront the inheritance of privilege. Poet and theologian, Pádraig Ó Tuama’s work centers around themes of language, power, conflict, and religion. Pádraig presents Poetry Unbound with On Being Studios and in late 2019 was named Theologian in Residence for On Being, innovating in bringing art and theology into public and civic life. From 2014-2019 he was the leader of the Corrymeela Community, Ireland’s oldest peace and reconciliation community.

Sometimes a simple reframe helps us consider how we want to exist in the world. For instance, will we consider ourselves “wealth owners” or “wealth holders”?

As wealth changes hands, we have a choice to make both individually and collectively; to further entrench racial and economic inequalities, or alternatively, to build a regenerative economy where wealth is more fairly distributed. The latter option opens the door to reconcile our wrongs through a strategy that addresses damage we’ve caused within our communities and the natural world.

Helping the Rich Let Go
By Chuck Collins

A new generation of wealth advisers helps wealthy people give away their money instead of hoard it.

Over the next 20 years, a minimum of $35 trillion, and up to $70 trillion, in wealth will transfer from the post-World War II generation to the next younger generation. Most of that wealth will flow in the upper canopy of the wealth forest, between family members in the world’s wealthiest 0.1%.

This intergenerational transfer will only further entrench racial and economic inequalities, aided by a veritable army of financial professionals devoted to minimizing taxes and maximizing family inheritances within narrow bloodlines.

But some beneficiaries of this system are working to disrupt it, with the help of financial advisers who have a very different outlook from the rest of their profession. They are redirecting this wealth to solve big problems, like climate disruption and racial inequity.  And this has created a new ethos among some of the elite and their financial advisers: “wealth minimization.”

Jody Wiser, an investor with inherited wealth from Portland, Oregon, saw a change in culture when her investment advisory firm went through a change in ownership. “I was soured to them when their quarterly podcast began with a CPA who advises clients to move to states with no income taxes,” she says. She told the firm that their anti-tax bias was why she was transferring her assets away from them.

“Some people inherit a ‘trusted family wealth adviser’ along with money,” says Nora Leccese, the high-net-wealth and family philanthropy coordinator at Resource Generation, a multiracial community of young people with wealth committed to the equitable distribution of wealth, land, and power. “These advisers show up with a bias for accumulation and against redistribution.”

This puts some wealthy family members on a collision course with the “wealth defense industry,” professionals whose training is entirely focused on excessive accumulation and fostering inherited-wealth dynasties. As I wrote in my book, The Wealth Hoarders, this sector includes the tax attorneys, accountants, wealth managers, and family office staffers who are paid millions to hide trillions. They have a toolbox of tricks and dodges—anonymous shell corporations, offshore bank accounts, dynasty trusts, complex transactions—to sequester and place wealth beyond the reach of taxation and accountability. They are the accomplices to tax avoidance, wealth hoarding, and entrenched inequality.

That’s what makes it all the more amazing to meet Stephanie Brobbey, the founder of Good Ancestor Movement Ltd., a new U.K.-based wealth advisory firm devoted to wealth minimization. Brobbey spent a decade working as an attorney in London’s bustling private wealth sector; her new firm is now disrupting industry norms.

“There are two prevailing narratives that the wealth advisory profession has internalized,” explains Brobbey, who was born in London to parents from Ghana. “The first is that excessive wealth accumulation is completely acceptable if not desirable. The second is that taxation is synonymous with waste. That’s the water that our profession swims in.”

Brobbey believes when it comes to taxation, we’ve lost our way completely. “Many economic elites in society have cultivated this distrust in government so that we don’t associate tax with the public investments we depend on every day,” she says. “Our job is to be good ancestors, to redefine the notion of legacy beyond the Global North concept of bloodlines and toward a broader understanding of community.”

Brobbey uses the language of “wealth holders” rather than “wealth owners.” “We are pioneering a radically different path for wealth stewardship—to move from a system of wealth extraction to a regenerative economy where wealth is more fairly distributed.”

There are examples of wealthy families redirecting their wealth to heal the harms created by the initial extraction of that wealth.

Good Ancestor has developed a program where clients move through three stages as they create an alternative wealth minimization plan. The first stage is to work with clients to understand their wealth story and “reimagine wealth.” This includes exploring their upbringing, the sources of wealth, and the values communicated along with the money. “There are many forms of resistance to be navigated that are rooted in our socialization and how an individual’s wealth history has been shaped,” Brobbey says.

“There are several critical questions that people with wealth should be asking ourselves but are afraid to consider,” says Leonie Taylor, who is a lead organizer at Resource Justice, the U.K. cousin of Resource Generation. The work “is so exciting precisely because it provides the intellectual grounding and space for these important conversations to take place, which can, through proactive shifts in our behavior, contribute to transformative and systemic change.”

The second stage is removing barriers to change, which may include technical financial planning along with coaching or cognitive support. “We have to build new neural pathways to rethink wealth and how much is too much,” Brobbey says.

The third stage is identifying how to redistribute excess wealth so it is both reparative and regenerative. Brobbey says, “We ask our clients, ‘What harm may have been caused in the process of the extraction or ongoing accumulation of this wealth? Were there groups of people [who] were harmed? Was there ecological harm? And what, based on this, is imperative for you to do?’”

In this process of redistribution, Brobbey aims to “decenter” traditional philanthropy. “It is a problem that excessive wealth accumulation is a prerequisite for embarking into the world of philanthropy,” she says. “Too much philanthropic activity reinforces the power and replicates the structural inequalities that led to the wealth inequalities.”

Redistribution outside philanthropy can take the form of paying taxes—at the local, state and federal level. It can mean transferring assets into community-controlled ventures, forming partnerships with social movements and communities that have been excluded from wealth for generations. There are examples of wealthy families redirecting their wealth to heal the harms created by the initial extraction of that wealth.

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund was established by the sons of John D. Rockefeller Jr. in 1940 from wealth that came originally from the Standard Oil Company. The fund publicly divested from the fossil fuel sector in 2014 and redirected its $1.2 billion in assets to campaigns for clean energy. Recognizing the harms caused by oil extraction, Rockefeller family members took a powerful action to boost the divestment movement.

Resource Generation is rethinking how it relates to financial advisers, helping their members navigate a field that is biased against redistribution. To be included on their referral list, the organization is now inviting financial advisers like Good Ancestors to fill out a survey that includes how they would respond to various scenarios, including a client that wants to give away 10% of their wealth every year for 10 years to racial justice groups. “Believe it or not, there is a growing market for anti-capitalist wealth advisers,” says Leccese of Resource Generation.

More than 100 Resource Generation members have gone through 10-month-long “praxis” groups—part study, part personal support—to move toward radical redistribution. Part of this is a session that Leccese frames as, “How much is enough for me? How much is enough for the world? How much is too much to keep?”

“What really inspires me is the potential of the great wealth transfer,” says Brobbey, referring to the trillions about to be handed off to younger generations. “We want to be ready and optimistic that there will be people who want to radically redistribute this wealth for repair and regeneration.”

The firm is helping to give “early adopters” the support and oxygen they need to disrupt the system, says Brobbey.

“Our clients will be partners in pursuing a radically different vision of the world,” she adds. “This is a lifelong journey of healing for all of us as we try to recover a lost story—or write a new economic story of justice and collective liberation.”

This article was originally published by Yes! Magazine

Undersong: To be free from unhelpful conclusions and verdicts

Zen Shorts
by Jon Muth
Excerpt: The Farmer’s Luck

There was once an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day, his horse ran away. “Such bad luck!” his neighbors said. “Maybe,” replied the farmer. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it two other wild horses. “Such good luck!” his neighbors said. “Maybe,” replied the farmer. The following day, his son tried to ride one of the wild horses, was thrown off, and broke his leg. “Such bad luck!” his neighbors said. “Maybe,” replied the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army to fight in a war. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. “Such good luck!” his neighbors said. “Maybe,” replied the farmer.

“You need to ask ME!”: On place names, changing names, and strategies of conquest
By Greg Jarrell

I started getting calls and emails a few months ago from a couple of development companies who were introducing new plans down the street. Their reps were looking for some combination of buy-in, or solidarity, or absolution, all of which I ran out of a while back. I’m not sure they’re mine to give anyway, but regardless, the tanks are dry.

The plans for which they were seeking forgiveness rather than permission involved a series of renovated and new buildings. The specific plots are centered around some commercial properties between my neighborhood, Enderly Park, and the next one over, Seversville. The plans fit squarely in the day’s trends: tall, airy warehouses turned into offices; five stories of apartments on top of a garage and a few commercial spaces. It’s all pleasant. In a neutral world, it’s the kind of place I might like to have an office for writing, with a coffee shop nearby, and the greenway just across the creek for a long walk when the words won’t come. But the world is decidedly not neutral, and pretending about its neutrality is to help drive the bulldozer your neighbors are standing in front of.

At some point in my conversation with the developer, I asked the hot-button question: With the apartments you are building, what portion are reserved for those being displaced by the rapidly rising costs of housing nearby? The answer: “Sir, we decided to forego any affordable housing options with these structures.” This was no less distressing for being entirely predictable.

Landlords and portfolio holders, together with local government, have spent decades disinvesting in this ZIP code. Now they’re ready to cash in. Charlotte is one of the hottest real estate markets in the country. Prices are soaring as institutional investors and their local agents search for rental housing and potential adaptive reuse projects. One recent study by the real estate company Redfin found that 42% of homes sold in my 28208 ZIP code in 2021 were purchased by investors. In nearby 28214 and 28216, more than 50% of home sales went to investors. The insatiable appetite for land – for that is what those investors value more than structures – will further destabilize neighborhoods, which is to say, people and the spaces that support them. Most of those harmed in my ZIP code will be Black, yet another injury in a centuries-long series of exploits for cheaper land and labor. Rents will be paid as tribute to faceless lords in far-off places, people accountable only to spreadsheets. The biblical image that comes to my mind is from Psalm 59: speculators prowl the city like coyotes, and “each evening they come back…they roam about for food, and growl if they do not get their fill”(vv. 14-15).

Among the most eye-catching of the plans in the new nearby development was their idea to give the space a new name. It’s an in-between space, they said. It is neither Enderly Park or Seversville. It needs some branding.

And perhaps it is in-between. But tossing a focus-group name onto something feels like an answer in search of a question. And it plows over the long story of how development and naming and the colonial project of extraction has worked.

A place name has layers of meaning inside it. Names form identity. They help to build solidarity among people. Names identify a set of shared experiences, even for those who do not know one another. They point to common spaces and geographical features. Place names sometimes elicit strong negative responses as a reaction to adverse experiences from people inside them, or as a reaction to prejudicial assumptions made by people outside them.

Place names often call back history that helps illuminate the current conditions of the place. That is the case in Enderly Park, so named by the Alexander family when they sold off their father Syd’s farm, called Enderly. There’s plenty that is troubling about the place’s history. Syd Alexander came from a family of enslavers, and joined the Confederate Army to defend the institution of slavery. During the important 1898 and 1900 elections in North Carolina, he sided with the white supremacists seeking to establish Jim Crow, eventually landing a seat in the US House of Representatives. A history like that might call for a name change. But only by the careful consideration of those who have suffered under years of white supremacist tyranny, and only with their collective vision in mind.

I talked with my neighbor Michelle Hagens about the planning underway, and specifically about the naming. She is a Black woman who has lived here most of her 44 years. She knows the streetscape with the intimacy of an old friendship. Michelle speaks with authority. She is always insightful. She gave me permission to record her words and publish them here. Here’s what Michelle has to say, lightly edited for clarity:

“When you’re coming into my area, you need to hear me. No, it ain’t ‘you need to hear me.’ You’re gonna hear me…. If you want to change something, you need to talk to me. You need to go and talk to Dot [a long-time neighbor]. You need to go talk to some of these families that’s been here 15, 20, 30 years before y’all want to come and change something.

“What I want to tell them – this is my ingredient: Where do you live? No, seriously? Do you live over here off Tuckaseegee? Your whole council, everybody that’s backing you. Do y’all live over here? Have you seen the blood, sweat, tears that’s been poured into this neighborhood? Have you seen the people that’s been here, living here, that’s fought and gave up because y’all didn’t want to do nothing for us?

“But let the lily white people with privilege come over here? Oh, that’s when you see the police around here. That’s when the police talk to you with some sense. But when we was fighting [for a better place], they didn’t give a shit about us. They talked to us like we was dogs.

“Have y’all experienced anything over here [in order] to change anything? What gives you the right to even ask? What gives you the right? Oh, because you bought something? Because you got some money in your pocket? Like, really, that’s what makes you feel like you could change something? You need to ask me if you can change anything. Because I live over here, I’ve lived the lifestyle of Tuckaseegee.”

Naming is power. Re-naming is an exertion of power that seeks to establish proprietorship and to draw new lines of exclusion and inclusion. In his book Conquest: How Societies Overwhelm Others, David Day points out that naming is one of the consistent strategies used by conquering groups across human history. Colonizing and settling groups establish legal justification, draw new maps, rename places, fortify borders, till the soil, tell new foundational stories, and people the lands. The eventual end of conquest is always extraction. Sometimes it is complete expulsion, even genocide. The story of conquest is not foreign to this continent. It is not even foreign to this city, as the Catawba people can testify. Naming a space – or re-naming it – is part of an old story whose ending we already know.

Among the things that strikes me in Michelle’s words is that she readily imagines a world of belonging that is defined outside of economic possession. She can imagine what the propertied class cannot, namely a world where she belongs, along with her family and the neighbors she has loved. That is precisely what the economics dominated by white supremacy cannot imagine. Naming a place is a cheap substitute for belonging to it. Nevertheless, the battle over what the place is called is now the site of a larger struggle that will help determine what kind of city this will become, and who it will be for.

This post was originally published for Trespasses of the Holy, a Substack newsletter by Greg Jarrell.

white supremacy culture
by Tema Okun

■ I dedicate this piece to the late Kenneth Jones, a long-time colleague, mentor, and friend who helped me become wise about many things and kept me honest about everything else. I love you and miss you beyond words.

■ This piece on white supremacy culture builds on the work of many people, including (but not limited to) Andrea Ayvazian, Bree Carlson, Beverly Daniel Tatum, M.E. Dueker, Nancy Emond, Kenneth Jones, Jonn Lunsford, Sharon Martinas, Joan Olsson, David Rogers, James Williams, Sally Yee, as well as the work of Grassroots Leadership, Equity Institute Inc, the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, the Challenging White Supremacy workshop, the Lillie Allen Institute, the Western States Center, and the contributions of hundreds of participants in the DR process.

* These sections are based on the work of Daniel Buford, a lead trainer with the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond who has done extensive research on white supremacy culture.

This is a list of characteristics of white supremacy culture that show up in our organizations. Culture is powerful precisely because it is so present and at the same time so very difficult to name or identify. The characteristics listed below are damaging because they are used as norms and standards without being pro- actively named or chosen by the group. They are damaging because they promote white supremacy thinking. Because we all live in a white supremacy culture, these characteristics show up in the attitudes and behaviors of all of us – people of color and white people. Therefore, these attitudes and behaviors can show up in any group or organization, whether it is white-led or predominantly white or people of color-led or predominantly people of color.

perfectionism*

• little appreciation expressed among people for the work that others are doing; appreciation that is expressed usually directed to those who get most of the credit anyway
• more common is to point out either how the person or work is inadequate
• or even more common, to talk to others about the inadequacies of a person or
their work without ever talking directly to them
• mistakes are seen as personal, i.e. they reflect badly on the person making them
as opposed to being seen for what they are – mistakes
• making a mistake is confused with being a mistake, doing wrong with being
wrong
• little time, energy, or money put into reflection or identifying lessons learned
that can improve practice, in other words little or no learning from mistakes • tendency to identify what’s wrong; little ability to identify, name, and
appreciate what’s right
• often internally felt, in other words the perfectionist fails to appreciate her own good work, more often pointing out his faults or ‘failures,’ focusing on inadequacies and mistakes rather than learning from them; the person works
with a harsh and constant inner critic

antidotes: develop a culture of appreciation, where the organization takes time to make sure that people’s work and efforts are appreciated; develop a learning organization, where it is expected that everyone will make mistakes and those mistakes offer opportunities for learning; create an environment where people can recognize that mistakes sometimes lead to positive results; separate the person from the mistake; when offering feedback, always speak to the things that went well before offering criticism; ask people to offer specific suggestions for how to do things differently when offering criticism; realize that being your own worst critic does not actually improve the work, often contributes to low morale among the group, and does not help you or the group to realize the benefit of learning from mistakes

sense of urgency

• continued sense of urgency that makes it difficult to take time to be inclusive, encourage democratic and/or thoughtful decision-making, to think long-term, to consider consequences
• frequently results in sacrificing potential allies for quick or highly visible results, for example sacrificing interests of communities of color in order to win victories for white people (seen as default or norm community)
• reinforced by funding proposals which promise too much work for too little money and by funders who expect too much for too little
antidotes: realistic workplans; leadership which understands that things take longer than anyone expects; discuss and plan for what it means to set goals of inclusivity and diversity, particularly in terms of time; learn from past experience how long things take; write realistic funding proposals with realistic time frames; be clear about how you will make good decisions in an atmosphere of urgency; realize that rushing decisions takes more time in the long run because inevitably people who didn’t get a chance to voice their thoughts and feelings will at best resent and at worst undermine the decision because they were left unheard

defensiveness

• the organizational structure is set up and much energy spent trying to prevent abuse and protect power as it exists rather than to facilitate the best out of each person or to clarify who has power and how they are expected to use it
• because of either/or thinking (see below), criticism of those with power is viewed as threatening and inappropriate (or rude)
• people respond to new or challenging ideas with defensiveness, making it very difficult to raise these ideas
• a lot of energy in the organization is spent trying to make sure that people’s feelings aren’t getting hurt or working around defensive people
• white people spend energy defending against charges of racism instead of
examining how racism might actually be happening
• the defensiveness of people in power creates an oppressive culture
antidotes: understand that structure cannot in and of itself facilitate or prevent abuse; understand the link between defensiveness and fear (of losing power, losing face, losing comfort, losing privilege); work on your own defensiveness; name defensiveness as a problem when it is one; give people credit for being able to handle more than you think; discuss the ways in which defensiveness or resistance to new ideas gets in the way of the mission

quantity over quality*

• all resources of organization are directed toward producing measurable goals
• things that can be measured are more highly valued than things that cannot, 
for example numbers of people attending a meeting, newsletter circulation, money spent are valued more than quality of relationships, democratic decision-making, ability to constructively deal with conflict
• little or no value attached to process; if it can’t be measured, it has no value
• discomfort with emotion and feelings
• no understanding that when there is a conflict between content (the agenda of 
the meeting) and process (people’s need to be heard or engaged), process will prevail (for example, you may get through the agenda, but if you haven’t paid attention to people’s need to be heard, the decisions made at the meeting are undermined and/or disregarded)
antidotes: include process or quality goals in your planning; make sure your organization has a values statement which expresses the ways in which you want to do your work; make sure this is a living document and that people are using it in their day to day work; look for ways to measure process goals (for example if you have a goal of inclusivity, think about ways you can measure whether or not you have achieved that goal); learn to recognize those times when you need to get off the agenda in order to address people’s underlying concerns

worship of the written word

• if it’s not in a memo, it doesn’t exist
• the organization does not take into account or value other ways in which 
information gets shared
• those with strong documentation and writing skills are more highly valued, 
even in organizations where ability to relate to others is key to the mission
antidotes: take the time to analyze how people inside and outside the organization get and share information; figure out which things need to be written down and come up with alternative ways to document what is happening; work to recognize the contributions and skills that every person brings to the organization (for example, the ability to build relationships with those who are important to the organization’s mission); make sure anything written can be clearly understood (avoid academic language, ‘buzz’ words, etc.)

only one right way

• the belief there is one right way to do things and once people are introduced to the right way, they will see the light and adopt it
• when they do not adapt or change, then something is wrong with them (the other, those not changing), not with us (those who ‘know’ the right way)
• similar to the missionary who does not see value in the culture of other communities, sees only value in their beliefs about what is good
antidotes: accept that there are many ways to get to the same goal; once the group has made a decision about which way will be taken, honor that decision and see what you and the organization will learn from taking that way, even and especially if it is not the way you would have chosen; work on developing the ability to notice when people do things differently and how those different ways might improve your approach; look for the tendency for a group or a person to keep pushing the same point over and over out of a belief that there is only one right way and then name it; when working with communities from a different culture than yours or your organization’s, be clear that you have some learning to do about the communities’ ways of doing; never assume that you or your organization know what’s best for the community in isolation from meaningful relationships with that community

paternalism

• decision-making is clear to those with power and unclear to those without it
• those with power think they are capable of making decisions for and in the 
interests of those without power
• those with power often don’t think it is important or necessary to understand 
the viewpoint or experience of those for whom they are making decisions
• those without power understand they do not have it and understand who does
• those without power do not really know how decisions get made and who 
makes what decisions, and yet they are completely familiar with the impact of those decisions on them
antidotes: make sure that everyone knows and understands who makes what decisions in the organization; make sure everyone knows and understands their level of responsibility and authority in the organization; include people who are affected by decisions in the decision-making

either/or thinking*

• things are either/or — good/bad, right/wrong, with us/against us
• closely linked to perfectionism in making it difficult to learn from mistakes or accommodate conflict
• no sense that things can be both/and
• results in trying to simplify complex things, for example believing that poverty is simply a result of lack of education
• creates conflict and increases sense of urgency, as people feel they have to make decisions to do either this or that, with no time or encouragement to consider alternatives, particularly those which may require more time or resources
• often used by those with a clear agenda or goal to push those who are still thinking or reflecting to make a choice between ‘a’ or ‘b’ without acknowledging a need for time and creativity to come up with more options
antidotes: notice when people use ‘either/or’ language and push to come up with more than two alternatives; notice when people are simplifying complex issues, particularly when the stakes seem high or an urgent decision needs to be made; slow it down and encourage people to do a deeper analysis; when people are faced with an urgent decision, take a break and give people some breathing room to think creatively; avoid making decisions under extreme pressure

power hoarding

• little, if any, value around sharing power
• power seen as limited, only so much to go around
• those with power feel threatened when anyone suggests changes in how things should be done in the organization, feel suggestions for change are a reflection on their leadership
• those with power don’t see themselves as hoarding power or as feeling threatened
• those with power assume they have the best interests of the organization at heart and assume those wanting change are ill-informed (stupid), emotional, inexperienced
antidotes: include power sharing in your organization’s values statement; discuss what good leadership looks like and make sure people understand that a good leader develops the power and skills of others; understand that change is inevitable and challenges to your leadership can be healthy and productive; make sure the organization is focused on the mission

fear of open conflict

• people in power are scared of expressed conflict and try to ignore it or run from it
• when someone raises an issue that causes discomfort, the response is to blame the person for raising the issue rather than to look at the issue which is actually causing the problem
• emphasis on being polite
• equating the raising of difficult issues with being impolite, rude, or out of line
antidotes: role play ways to handle conflict before conflict happens; distinguish between being polite and raising hard issues; don’t require those who raise hard issues to raise them in ‘acceptable’ ways, especially if you are using the ways in which issues are raised as an excuse not to address those issues; once a conflict is resolved, take the opportunity to revisit it and see how
it might have been handled differently

individualism*

• little experience or comfort working as part of a team
• people in organization believe they are responsible for solving problems alone
• accountability, if any, goes up and down, not sideways to peers or to those the organization is set up to serve
• desire for individual recognition and credit
• leads to isolation
• competition more highly valued than cooperation and where cooperation is valued, little time or resources devoted to developing skills in how to cooperate
• creates a lack of accountability, as the organization values those who can get things done on their own without needing supervision or guidance
antidotes: include teamwork as an important value in your values statement; make sure the organization is working towards shared goals and people understand how working together will improve performance; evaluate people’s ability to work in a team as well as their ability to get the job done; make sure that credit is given to all those who participate in an effort, not just the leaders or most public person; make people accountable as a group rather than as individuals; create a culture where people bring problems to the group; use staff meetings as a place to solve problems, not just a place to report activities

i’m the only one

• connected to individualism, the belief that if something is going to get done right, ‘I’ have to do it
• little or no ability to delegate work to others
antidotes: evaluate people based on their ability to delegate to others; evaluate people based on their ability to work as part of a team to accomplish shared goals

progress is bigger, more*

• observed in how we define success (success is always bigger, more)
• progress is an organization which expands (adds staff, adds projects) or develops the ability to serve more people (regardless of how well they are serving them)
• gives no value, not even negative value, to its cost, for example, increased accountability to funders as the budget grows, ways in which those we serve may be exploited, excluded, or underserved as we focus on how many we are serving instead of quality of service or values created by the ways in which we serve
antidotes: create Seventh Generation thinking by asking how the actions of the group now will affect people seven generations from now; make sure that any cost/benefit analysis includes all the costs, not just the financial ones, for example the cost in morale, the cost in credibility, the cost in the use of resources; include process goals in your planning, for example make sure that your goals speak to how you want to do your work, not just what you want to do; ask those you work with and for to evaluate your performance

objectivity*

• the belief that there is such a thing as being objective or ‘neutral’
• the belief that emotions are inherently destructive, irrational, and should not play a role in decision-making or group process
• invalidating people who show emotion
• requiring people to think in a linear (logical) fashion and ignoring or invalidating those who think in other ways
• impatience with any thinking that does not appear ‘logical’
antidotes: realize that everybody has a world view and that everybody’s world view affects the way they understand things; realize this means you too; push yourself to sit with discomfort when people are expressing themselves in ways which are not familiar to you; assume that everybody has a valid point and your job is to understand what that point is

right to comfort

• the belief that those with power have a right to emotional and psychological comfort (another aspect of valuing ‘logic’ over emotion)
• scapegoating those who cause discomfort
• equating individual acts of unfairness against white people with systemic 
racism which daily targets people of color
antidotes: understand that discomfort is at the root of all growth and learning; welcome it as much as you can; deepen your political analysis of racism and oppression so you have a strong understanding of how your personal experience and feelings fit into a larger picture; don’t take everything personally

One of the purposes of listing characteristics of white supremacy culture is to point out how organizations which unconsciously use these characteristics as their norms and standards make it difficult, if not impossible, to open the door to other cultural norms and standards. As a result, many of our organizations, while saying we want to be multi-cultural, really only allow other people and cultures to come in if they adapt or conform to already existing cultural norms. Being able to identify and name the cultural norms and standards you want is a first step to making room for a truly multi-cultural organization.

Partial Bibliography:

Notes from People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond Workshop, Oakland, CA, spring 1999. Notes from Challenging White Supremacy Workshop, San Francisco, CA, spring 1999. Beverly Daniel Tatum, Why Are All

the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? NY: HarperCollins, 1997. Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words. NY: Context Books, 2000. Paul Kivel, Uprooting Racism. PA: New Society Publishers, 1996. Anne Wilson Schaef, Living in Process. NY: Ballantine, 1998. For complete bibliography, see complete notebook for dRwork’s Dismantling Racism process.

dRworks is a group of trainers, educators and organizers working to build
strong progressive anti-racist organizations and institutions. dRworks can be reached at www.dismantlingracism.org.

The Role of Government
By Walter Brueggemann

Give the king our justice, O God,
and righteousness to a king’s son.
May he judge your people with righteousness,
and your poor with justice.
May the mountains yield prosperity for the people,
and the hills, in righteousness.
May he defend the cause of the poor of the people,
give deliverance to the needy,
and crush the oppressor…
For he delivers the needy when they call,
the poor and those who have no helper.
He has pity on the weak and needy,
and saves the lives of the needy.
From oppression and violence he redeems their life;
and precious is their blood in his sight (Psalm 72:1-4, 12-14).

If you, dear reader, skipped over the biblical text cited above in order to get to this exposition, please go back and pay close attention to those verses. These remarkable verses are a part of a Psalm that was likely read (or performed) at high occasions of royal liturgy. It is an articulation of the deepest claims of neighborly covenant to which the king (the government!) was answerable. If we notice the other verses of this Psalm, it becomes clear that the prosperity, abundance, and wellbeing of the regime depended upon attentiveness to the most vulnerable neighbors. This claim intends to contradict any illusion the king might entertain that his prosperity and wellbeing depended otherwise upon the amassing of wealth, power, arms, or wisdom.

The point of the Psalm is all the more poignant when it is recognized that the superscription to this Psalm, tersely enough, is “of Solomon.” This deliberate connection of Solomon to this Psalm is an ironic acknowledgment that Solomon, of all the kings of ancient Israel, is the one who most counted on wealth, power, arms, and wisdom to sustain and assure his throne. Thus Solomon is narrated in the Bible as the most aggressively predatory of all of Israel’s kings. And now, in the cadence of this liturgy, the king and his government are reminded that his rule is based on an unsubstantiated illusion.

This intersection between this stark liturgic claim and political reality poses sharply for us, “What is the role of government?” The matter was of course in dispute in ancient Israel (see Deuteronomy 17:14-20, I Samuel 8:11-18); it continues among us to be in dispute.

Is America renowned because of its capacity for wealth, power, and wisdom (of which we have plenty), or is its greatness deeply linked to its attentiveness to our most vulnerable neighbors?

This either/or is very deep in biblical faith, and is front and center in our current political economy.

I was led to think again about Psalm 72 because I have been reading The Broken Constitution: Lincoln, Slavery, and the Refounding of America by Noah Feldman. The book concerns the complex ambiguous relationship Abraham Lincoln had with the U.S. Constitution as he slowly worked his way toward the Emancipation Proclamation. In short, Feldman’s thesis is this:

§ The original U.S. Constitution was a compromised constitution, a compromise made with the South in order to voice an explicit sanction for the maintenance and continuation of slavery. The constitution was compromised in that it lacked any moral sense about the matter. Lincoln initially judged that it was a binding legal agreement deserving “reverence” only insofar as it was based solely on “reason, cold, calculating, unimpassioned reason” (316).

§  Lincoln judged that the South, by its “rebellion” (secession) had broken that constitution. In response Lincoln felt ready to violate the constitution in open and willing ways both by violating the right of habeas corpus and by suppression of newspapers. He judged such actions legitimate in light of the action of the South in breaking the Constitution.

§  Slowly Lincoln worked his way to moral passion concerning slavery. His rhetoric built in the direction of moral passion culminating in the Gettysburg Address wherein he could speak of a “new birth of freedom.” That “new birth of freedom” came with the Emancipation Proclamation and the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution that resulted in a new moral, redeemed constitution. Thus concerning the “better angels” about which Lincoln spoke: “Put in terms of Lincoln’s own political theology, the angels could easily be understood as the messengers who carried with them the truth of the new moral Constitution that followed from breaking the original Constitution of slavery” (318).

Feldman’s final statement is filled with both realism and hope:

Yet persistent inequality still exists in the United States, including inequality before the law, of the kind the moral Constitution prohibits. The reality is that the moral Constitution, like all constitutions, is not an end state but a promise of ongoing effort. Through the Constitution, we define our national project. But we never fully achieve it. Lincoln’s legacy, then, is not the accomplishment of a genuinely moral Constitution. It is the breaking of the compromise Constitution — and the hope and promise of moral Constitution that will always be in the process of being redeemed (327).

It is sobering and hope-filled to read about the evolution of Lincoln’s thought and action in light of the royal mandate of Psalm 72. That Psalm assigns to the government responsibility for redress of injustice, exactly the kind of redress that Lincoln finally undertook.

It is no wonder that Lincoln’s presidential actions are freighted with sobriety and solemnity, because the redress of injustice is difficult and dangerous work. The Psalm leaves us in no doubt about the urgency of the matter. As Doris Kearns Goodwin has seen, Lincoln knew with remarkable awareness the combination of transformative vision and transactional shrewdness that was indispensable to good governance. His work brings about the redress of a shame-filled compromise. Feldman is surely correct that that hard work remains for us unfinished.

For all of his deliberate slowness, Lincoln caught the main claim of the Psalm; he made the government over which he presided an agent of redress.

For good reason Feldman has concluded that the Constitution is still “in process of being redeemed.” It is settled lore among us that those who have the most prefer a minimal government, whereas those in deep need inescapably hope for an activist government of effective redress. For good reason, against the massive force of money, power, and wisdom, the Psalm reminds us of the non-negotiable condition of communal prosperity and abundance.

In his speech, “How Long, not Long” in Montgomery on March 25, 1965, Martin Luther King concluded with this ringing affirmation:

I know you are asking today, “How long will it take?” Somebody’s asking “How long will prejudice blind the visions of men, darken their understanding, and drive bright-eyed wisdom from her sacred throne?” Somebody’s asking, “When will wounded justice, lying prostrate on the streets of Selma and Birmingham and communities all over the South, be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men?” … “How long will justice be crucified, and truth bear it?” I come to say to you this afternoon, however difficult the moment, however frustrating the hour, it will not be long, because “truth crushed to earth will rise again.” How long? Not long, because “no lie can live forever.” How long? Not long, because “you shall reap what you sow.”

King’s question persists along with Feldman’s verdict about being in the process of being redeemed. The question is “How long?” Not long indeed before the Constitution of Compromise becomes the Redeemed Restored Constitution of American justice. It is “not long” indeed before the moral reality of the poor, the needy, and the oppressed is fully recognized among us. It will not be long after the courage and imagination of moral urgency are mobilized among us.

This blog post was originally published on Church Anew

The Bottom-Up Revolution Podcast: Empowering Young People to Rebuild Homes

The ‘New Redlining’ Is Deciding Who Lives in Your Neighborhood
By Richard D. Kahlenberg

Housing segregation by race and class is a fountainhead of inequality in America, yet for generations, politicians have been terrified to address the issue. That is why it is so significant that President Biden has proposed, as part of his American Jobs Act, a $5 billion race-to-the-top competitive grants program to spur jurisdictions to “eliminate exclusionary zoning and harmful land use policies.”

Mr. Biden would reward localities that voluntarily agree to jettison “minimum lot sizes, mandatory parking requirements and prohibitions on multifamily housing.” The Biden administration is off to an important start, but over the course of his term, Mr. Biden should add sticks to the carrots he has already proposed.

Although zoning may seem like a technical, bureaucratic and decidedly local question, in reality the issue relates directly to three grand themes that Joe Biden ran on in the 2020 campaign: racial justice, respect for working-class people and national unity. Perhaps no single step would do more to advance those goals than tearing down the government-sponsored walls that keep Americans of different races and classes from living in the same communities, sharing the same public schools and getting a chance to know one another across racial, economic and political lines.

Economically discriminatory zoning policies — which say that you are not welcome in a community unless you can afford a single-family home, sometimes on a large plot of land — are not part of a distant, disgraceful past. In most American cities, zoning laws prohibit the construction of relatively affordable homes — duplexes, triplexes, quads and larger multifamily units — on three-quarters of residential land.

In the 2020 race, Mr. Biden said he was running to “restore the soul of our nation,” which had been damaged by President Donald Trump’s embrace of racism. Removing exclusionary barriers that keep millions of Black and Hispanic people out of safe neighborhoods with strong schools is central to the goal of advancing racial justice. Over the past several decades, as the sociologist Orlando Patterson has noted, Black people have been integrated into the nation’s political life and the military, “but the civil-rights movement failed to integrate Black Americans into the private domain of American life.”

Single-family exclusive zoning, which was adopted by communities shortly after the Supreme Court struck down explicit racial zoning in 1917, is what activists call the “new redlining.” Racial discrimination has created an enormous wealth gap between white and Black people, and single-family-only zoning perpetuates that inequality.

While exclusionary zoning laws are especially harmful to Black people, the discrimination is more broadly rooted in class snobbery — a second problem Mr. Biden highlighted in his campaign. As a proud product of Scranton, Pa., Mr. Biden said he would value the dignity of working people and not look down on anyone. The elitism Mr. Biden promised to reject helps explain why in virtually all-white communities like La Crosse, Wis., efforts to remedy economic segregation have received strong pushback from upper-income whites, and why middle-class Black communities have sometimes shown fierce resistance to low-income housing.

If race were the only factor driving exclusionary zoning, one would expect to see such policies most extensively promoted in communities where racial intolerance is highest, but in fact the most restrictive zoning is found in politically liberal cities, where racial views are more progressive. As Harvard’s Michael Sandel has noted, social psychologists have found that highly-educated elites “may denounce racism and sexism but are unapologetic about their negative attitudes toward the less educated.” Class discrimination helps explain why, despite a 25 percent decline in Black-white residential segregation since 1970, income segregation has more than doubled.

By addressing a problem common to America’s multiracial working class, reducing exclusionary barriers could also help promote Mr. Biden’s third big goal: national unity. Today, no two groups are more politically divided from each other than working-class whites and working-class people of color. For centuries, going back to Bacon’s Rebellion in 1676, right-wing politicians have successfully pitted these two groups against each other, but every once in a while, America breaks free of this grip, and lower-income and working-class people of all races come together and engage in what the Rev. William Barber II calls “fusion politics.”

It happened in 1968, when Mr. Biden’s hero Robert Kennedy brought together working-class Black, Latino and white constituencies in a presidential campaign that championed a liberalism without elitism and a populism without racism. It happened again in 1997 and 2009 in Texas, when Republican legislators representing white working-class voters and Democrats representing Black and Hispanic constituencies came together to support (and then to defend) the Texas top 10 percent plan to admit the strongest students in every high school to the University of Texas at Austin, despite the opposition of legislators representing wealthy white suburban districts that had dominated admissions for decades. And a similar coalition appears to be coming together in California, over the issue of exclusionary zoning. State Senator Scott Wiener, who has been trying to legalize multifamily living spaces, told me that Republican and Democratic legislators representing working-class communities have supported reform, while the opponents have one thing in common: They represent wealthier constituents who “wanted to keep certain people out of their community.”

Taking on exclusionary zoning also begins to address two other challenges the Biden administration has identified: the housing affordability crisis and climate change. Economists from across the political spectrum agree that zoning laws that ban anything but single-family homes artificially drive up prices by limiting the supply of housing that can be built in a region. At a time when the Covid-19 pandemic has left many Americans jobless and people are struggling to make rent or pay their mortgages, it is incomprehensible that ubiquitous government zoning policies would be permitted to make the housing affordability crisis worse by driving prices unnaturally higher.

Likewise, there is widespread agreement that laws banning the construction of multifamily housing promote damage to the planet. Single-family-exclusive zoning pushes new development further and further out from central cities, which lengthens commutes and increases the emissions of greenhouse gases. This is an especially big problem for employees who cannot work remotely at a computer. Families should always have the freedom to make personal choices about their living arrangements, but as the planet heats up, it is bizarre that government would explicitly prohibit construction of the most environmentally friendly options.

It is clear that the federal government has the authority to act on this issue. While zoning laws are locally constructed, the federal government has long cited its powers to regulate interstate commerce as a rationale for pursuing important aims: combating racial discrimination in zoning, protecting religious institutions from discriminatory zoning and overriding zoning laws to site cellphone towers.

Enactment of Mr. Biden’s proposal for federal grants to encourage local reforms would be an important first step and could provide a significant incentive for change, just as President Barack Obama’s race-to-the-top program for education helped alter state and local behavior toward charter schools. But there are many other additional opportunities Mr. Biden should explore.

In December 2020, the Century Foundation, where I work, assembled more than 20 of the nation’s leading thinkers on housing over Zoom — elected officials, civil rights activists, libertarians and researchers — to discuss eight possible options. The alternatives included reinstating and strengthening the Obama administration’s 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule that requires local governments to begin taking steps to dismantle segregation, as well as Mr. Obama’s 2013 guidance making clear that unjustified policies that have a racially discriminatory “disparate impact” are illegal even absent discriminatory intent. Another set of policies would require states, cities and counties receiving existing federal funding for public infrastructure and housing to develop strategies to reduce exclusionary zoning.

But Mr. Biden should go even further and create what is known as a private right of action — comparable to the one found in the 1968 Fair Housing Act — to allow victims of economically discriminatory government zoning policies to sue in federal court, just as victims of racial discrimination currently can. This Economic Fair Housing Act, which I have proposed and the Equitable Housing Institute has developed into statutory language, makes clear that state-sponsored economic discrimination is wrong, whether or not it has a racially disparate impact. And because it is wrong, the law should apply in every town and state in the country — not just those that want to participate in the new federal funding programs Mr. Biden’s proposal would provide.

For important historical reasons, being a class snob is not held in the same disrepute as being a racist. But in the context of exclusionary zoning laws, the message of the racist and the class snob is cut from the same cloth: Black families and working-class families are so degraded that the state should sponsor laws to make it illegal for anyone to build the types of housing they can afford. As we begin to come out of a pandemic in which grocery clerks, health care workers and truck drivers were recognized as everyday heroes, government discrimination against them must end.

Blue cities and states — most notably Minneapolis and Oregon — have recently led the way on eliminating single-family exclusive zoning, as a matter of racial justice, housing affordability and environmental protection. But conservatives often support this type of reform as well, because they don’t want government micromanaging what people can do on their own land. At the national level, some conservatives have joined liberals in championing reforms like the Yes in My Backyard Act, which seeks to discourage exclusionary zoning.

While democratic egalitarianism and the liberty to be free from government interference are values that are typically in tension with each other, in the case of exclusionary zoning reform, they point in the same direction. Perhaps for that reason, surveys suggest it is popular. In a 2019 Data for Progress poll, for example, voters were asked, “Would you support or oppose a policy to ensure smaller, lower-cost homes like duplexes, townhouses and garden apartments can be built in middle- and upper-class neighborhoods?”

Supporters outnumbered opponents two to one. After decades of federal inaction on this issue, Congress must move boldly to embrace the country’s anti-racist and anti-elitist mood to remove state-sponsored barriers that divide the nation’s people.

This article was originally published by the New York Times.