Background
BYM minutes:
Minute 17 from 2021 calls for BYM to become an anti-racist faith community.
– Tackling systemic racism is a spiritual imperative. (BYM Epistle 2020) … We declare our commitment to becoming an actively antiracist faith community. We are still wrestling with what this means for us. We have work to do and will return to this.
Minute 27 from 2022 calls for Friends to consider how Friends in Britain might make reparations for the slave trade.
– We have heard that love and justice also require us to consider deeply how the Society of Friends in Britain might make financial and other reparation for our part in the wrongs of the transatlanticslave trade.
R2R was set-up as a recognised group within Area Meeting in March 2022 but the original members came together as participants in a BYM training course in response to the murder of George Floyd in the US. We became convinced that such a group could aid CEQ Friends in the task of becoming an anti-racist faith community.
Racism is both systemic and individual and racist attitudes can be both in the unconscious as much as the conscious mind. We have come to see racism as a system that advantages some and disadvantages others. It is a deeply rooted part of European society with structures that were shaped by the slave trade and colonisation. Racism is much more than psychological attitudes, false ideas about biology or hateful words and actions. Racism not only affects all of us, it involves all of us.
Aims
In recognising that we are a predominantly white church, our aims are:
- To be a source of support and resource for CEQ Friends in the task of educating ourselves around our history and its links to colonisation, capitalism and the trans-Atlantic chattel slave trade; our ingrained assumptions and our impact, as white people, on Friends of colour.
- To offer support to Friends of colour who feel that impact. In this work we are not separate from other Friends but are conscious of the need for gentleness and humility in the face of our ignorance, naivety and/or fear. And the need to connect with others in BYM and in the wider communities of which we are a part.
- Hope to move CEQ towards the spiritual work BYM speaks about and towards a deepening of our understanding of our testimony to equality.
What we’ve been involved with:
- Running workshops, in person and online, open to members and attenders of CEQ on: racism; the human body’s responses to ideas of race and race related confrontation; Cadbury’s sourcing of chocolate.
- Visiting several Local Meetings to talk about our work.
- Supporting CEQ responses to Helen Minnis’ 2022 Swarthmore Lecture on white privilege within the Quaker movement and within the scientific community.
- Running a workshop at AM looking at the links between race and climate justice.
- Leading a volunteer historical research project looking at the links Quakers had to the slave trade and related industries.
- Participating in the BYM Racial Justice Network and BYM Reparations Research Group.
- Networking with some groups led by and for people of colour.
There is so much more to do and we welcome your suggestions and participation.