I imagine I’m not alone in having spent quite a lot of time lately thinking about our recent congregational conversations and some of the ways that systemic racism and bias show up at Plymouth. It may seem unrelated, but one of the places my thoughts went was to how I’ve approached the world and my place in it for over 50 years now as a feminist, although as an 8-year old, I didn’t have the word “feminist” in my vocabulary – I just knew that certain things were unfair to and disrespectful of girls and women. I was the kid who questioned gender norms and spoke out about whose voices were valued and whose were not. I double-majored in Women’s Studies and Psychology in college and have been an advocate for women and girls basically all my life.
And yet, I am sexist. I struggle against the biases I carry, but they show up all the time. In fact, they were apparent at the very beginning of the congregational conversation on February 6th (about the Council letter pertaining to Rev. Steve Davis’s departure) when I automatically thought the male partner in a (heterosexual) married couple had asked in the chat that we open with prayer when it was actually the woman’s request.
I’ve learned over the years that this sexist bias of mine is especially likely to surface when I’m stressed, but really, it comes up all the time – in meetings where I get overly focused on wondering what the men in the room think, the music I gravitate towards, the weight I give news articles written by people with men’s names versus women’s names (and how unsettled I tend to feel when I can’t tell the person’s gender). Obviously there’s a lot going on here, some of which probably goes well beyond sexism.
And as you might have guessed, it’s painful to me that I carry these biases. Although I understand how conditioning operates, it’s very frustrating that after all these years and all the work I’ve done, here they are, full on, in my face, in public (and in private).
Circling back to systemic racism and bias, my experiences with my own internalized sexism lead me to conclude that although I can’t will myself not to have blind spots when it comes to race, I can admit to them when they surface, including when someone gives me the gift of pointing them out to me. I can say things like “Darn, I did it again,” and “I’m sorry, I wasn’t giving you the benefit of the doubt – I see now that racial bias was influencing how I saw that situation.” And knowing better makes space for doing better – not perfect, but better.
These are fairly new thoughts for me and as such, are pretty untested, but I offer them in case they are helpful in some small way as we lean into the work of building beloved community together.
May we rejoice when we see things about ourselves that help us do better in the world and may grace abound when we’re tender and raw from the new-found clarity. -Tracy Simpson, Moderator, Plymouth UCC