Rebecca Gonzalez-Campoy, Beloved Community Communications Team

​Reparations. This word elicits many responses, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual: fear, anticipation, lament, joy, confusion, clarity of purpose, resistance, courage. Reparations means different things to many people. Reparations to the descendants of slavery might be monetary. Reparations to Native American nations would more likely be through returning land, enforcing tribal rights, and honoring treaties. This month, Unity Church delves deeper into conversation about reparations within and among congregants in various spaces, defining what it is and is not, exploring the difference between individual and organizational reparations.

I am participating in the Reparations Learning Table, a four-part series about the basics of reparations, offered by Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light. Led by Jessica Intermill and Liz Loeb, we began with this working definition of reparations:

With this definition in mind, Intermill and Loeb explained what reparations is not:

• Charity — charity is philanthropic giving with strings attached. At the root of reparations is returning wealth that wasn’t ours to begin with;
• An apology — although that’s necessary. Reparations recognize that we benefit here today even if we didn’t “cause” the original harm; 
• Purchasing — while support of Buy Black or Native businesses is crucial, doing so is not returning what was taken;
• Forgiveness — our work is our responsibility.

Perhaps the easiest way to visualize the concept of reparations is to refer to a graphic that Intermill calls the Reparatory Eco Map.
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Reparations is the intersection of the five sectors — Truth Telling, Spiritual Practice, Political Solidarity, Relationships, and Wealth Return. All are essential, and yet none is sufficient on its own. Each component leads to another with no starting point and no stopping point, meaning that regardless of what portal you enter, the act of reparations is lifelong, generational work. This is about shifting how we live in connection with others and with history. 

Learning the language of reparations is essential to making this work accessible, allowing anyone to take those first steps. We may enter the Eco Map at different portals. I began at Truth Telling. My white parents could not conceive any more children after me so they turned to adoption. My father had a strong interest in the Ojibwe community and so in 1966 my parents adopted a baby from the White Earth Reservation. In spite of their efforts to connect my brother to his heritage, white society on the North Shore of Lake Superior wasn’t having it, and my brother experienced racism such that he ultimately became estranged from us. In addition, thanks to diligent family history work by one of my sons, I now know that one of my ancestors dealt in land theft from an Indigenous nation in Massachusetts. 

We may have identifiable personal reasons to get involved with reparations, or we may simply know that we are responsible for the continuation of today’s disparities. Whatever the reason, our work must disrupt systems, not merely apply band-aids and call it good. 

For those who want to learn more about reparations, be sure to register for the Truth and Healing Indigenous and Climate Justice Series sponsored by Unity’s Indigenous Justice and Act of the Earth Community Outreach Ministry Teams. Session Five will be held Wednesday, March 1, at 7:10 p.m., in Robbins Parlor. The topic is land and reparations and the guest speaker will be Jessica Intermill from Minnesota Interfaith Power & Light.

You may also register for the remaining Reparations Learning Table sessions. Previous meetings were recorded and are available to view upon registration.

Resources

• NDN Collective Land Back
• Indian Land Tenure Foundation
• St. Paul City Council Reparations Commission
• Native Governance Center - Beyond Land Acknowledgment

​Laura Park, Beloved Community Staff Team
 
On November 30, Angela Wilcox and I presented the last of four programs on the Double Helix Model of Faith Formation and Antiracist Multiculturalism. This Wellspring Wednesday program focused on the characteristics of white dominant culture and the practice of the antidotes to those characteristics as a way of making the antiracist multicultural practices side of the Double Helix more concrete. We briefly described these four characteristics:

• Urgency
• Right to Comfort
• Perfectionism
• Binary Thinking

Angela noted that how you react to not understanding the double helix is a wonderful opportunity for practicing the antidotes to white supremacy culture. There was a collective moment of recognition when Angela said that the problem isn’t that you don’t understand, the problem is that you’re uncomfortable with not understanding. “So what will you do about your discomfort?” she asked.

Angela also shared the research about how learning to speak a second language requires developing a tolerance for ambiguity. She suggested that exploring and practicing the Double Helix is actually learning a new language.
We provided each table with a handout of the antidotes to the four characteristics as well as a list of possible spiritual practices. These spiritual practices included:

• Breathwork
• Chanting
• Recitation
• Lectio Divina (structured reflection on poetry)
• Gratitude Journal
• To-Be List
• Prayer
• Mindful Walking
• Time in Nature
• Worship
• Music
• Examen (prayerful reflection on the events of the day)

 
We asked each table group to pick one of the characteristics and discuss three questions:

• Where does this characteristic show up in your experience?
• What antidote might help you move through it—or sit with it?
• What spiritual practice could support your capacity for this work?

Right to comfort was chosen by the most groups, but the one perfectionism group ended up being the largest. When the groups reported back on their discussion, the perfectionism group shared that they struggled with understanding perfectionism as problematic, rather than something to be proud of, until they could see how it limited them or affected their work/relationships.
 
Many people recognized the importance of repetition to build skill to counter these dominant culture characteristics. As an invitation to build those skills we invited people to complete this sentence, printed on a slip of paper: 
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“I commit to practicing the Double Helix by using _____________________ as my daily spiritual practice to live the antidote _________________. “

People chose a range of spiritual practices to help them live into the desired antidote, including using deep breathing to live the antidote of welcoming discomfort; journaling to develop a culture of appreciation; maintaining a gratitude journal to counter perfectionism; mindful walking to notice urgency; and worship and meditation to go beyond either/or thinking.
Hopefully, people left the series—even just one of the sessions in the series—with a deeper appreciation for how the two sides of the Double Helix talk to one another in a life of faith. And, people were in community with others who are also grappling to understand this metaphor and model, so they know they're not alone in trying to understand. 

Lia Rivamonte, Beloved Community Communications Team

Recently, I found myself standing elbow to elbow in a local brewery teeming with Asian Americans grateful for the opportunity to be in community for a joyful cause — to drink beer and talk theater. Among them I recognized people whose ethnic and cultural roots were Hmong, Lao, Cambodian, Filipino, Japanese, Vietnamese, Chinese, Korean, and Indian. This only includes the people I actually know. “Asian American” serves as an umbrella term for a fast-growing 22 million people from more than 20 countries in East and Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. It was Theater Mu’s Open House at the BlackStack Brewery. We were all ages but mostly people in their 20s and 30s engaged in Twin Cities’ theater-making. 
Also, there was a smattering of white people, funders and longtime advocates of local theater. But they weren’t the focus of the event. They were there to support the future of Mu and its 30-year legacy of art centering on the lives of Asian Americans. This Minnesota arts organization is now the second largest Asian American theater in the country. 

I spotted Rick Shiomi, one of Mu’s founders, who after the first 20 years relinquished his role as artistic director to make room for new leadership and has moved on to form the Full Circle Theatre Company. We reminisced about those early days of Mu and the thrill of discovering a community of Asian American artists in the Twin Cities. 

Rick and I joked about all the times we’ve been questioned about our origins, “No, but where are you from, really?” In fact, on a recent flight back from New York City, the woman sitting next to him queried him. “I’m from Minnesota,” he said. The woman kept drilling, uninterested in hearing where he was actually born and raised. It was only when he told her his grandfather was from Japan, that she could rest her case. She knew he was a foreigner! 

Yes, many of us make light of it but we all recognize the deeper implications of being constantly regarded as alien in the country in which we were born and raised, and often where our parents were born and their parents before them. When we are continually asked where we come from, however innocent the question, we understand the answer may not satisfy the need to separate us from those who “belong” here. Our physical appearance alone is enough to spark suspicion, resentment, fear, and hatred. We need not even open our mouths to speak. Historically referred to as the “Yellow Peril” it is fear rooted in xenophobia and racism and the belief that the dark forces of the East will subsume the West. To extend that further, if we identify as Asian — regardless of citizenship —we cannot be trusted to hew to our American identity at the same time.

This and the long, sordid history of systemic racism and public violence against Asian Americans are the reasons why the recent spate of violence against us has unleashed in us such tremendous anger, fear, and sadness. The murder of a Chinese man in 1854 by a white person sparked the California Supreme Court ruling that people of Asian descent could not testify against a white person. Seventeen Chinese men and boys were lynched in Los Angeles in the Chinese Massacre of 1871. Racism was put into federal law by the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. In the Rock Springs Massacre of 1885, 28 Chinese miners were killed, and 79 homes burned down. This is just the tip of a very, very large iceberg. Most are familiar with the Japanese Internment during WWII, and the barbaric acts that our military perpetrated against citizens during the Vietnam War.

In 1966, the stereotype, “model minority,” first appeared in a New York Times article. This myth perpetuated the idea that after WWII, despite internment and the wholesale destruction of their homes and businesses, Japanese Americans had quietly accepted their fate, and simply started over, refraining from asking for government aid. Instead, they worked hard, assimilated, and were “model citizens.” It was the “Why can’t you be like them?” attitude obviously directed at other nonwhites — specifically Black people that successfully pitted one group against another. 

In 2020, a new epidemic of anti-Asian harassment and violent acts arose in tandem with the pandemic as the President and conservative media pinned the origin and spread of the virus on China. Over 2,500 incidents of harassment and/or violence were reported in that year alone, and anti-Asian racism continues. A few of the reported pandemic induced anti-Asian racist incidents were initiated by Black men, a stark example of how the “model minority” label has served the dominant culture, sowing mistrust and envy between nonwhite groups. These examples illustrate not just individual or interpersonal racist acts but stem from the direct result of historic institutional and structural anti-Asian racism.

There are more questions to answer and deep reflection is warranted, as we peel back the layers about what constitutes Asian-ess, and as we wonder how to break through the narratives imposed on us by others who want to de-humanize, demonize, and label us as “other” on one hand, and at the same time persuade us that we are somehow more “equal” or “like” the dominant culture in order to gain us as allies.

One antidote to anti-Asian racism is education. There is a long, complicated history of the Asian American experience — a large, diverse, ever-evolving story — that deserves our exploration. Thirty years ago, when Theater Mu was first begun, it was rare in Minnesota to hear Asian American stories told by Asian Americans. Fortunately, much has changed since the 1990’s — we are rich in these stories and in the people who can tell them. It’s time to seek them out.

Note: This is the first in a series exploring Asian American identity and anti-Asian racism. 

For more information on Asian Americans, find these in the Anderson Library: 
America for Americans: A History of Xenophobia in the United States by Erika Lee, 305.8 L
Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong, 305.4 H