Pacific Currents - March 2008

ELECTION COMMENTARY - an engaging scintilla of uncertainty…

by Rev. Dr. Mary Susan Gast, Conference Minister, March 17, 2008
Monthly Reflections from The Pacific ~ News and Events of the NCNC United Church of Christ

This is more about the commentary than about the election. As Women’s History Month picks up from Black History Month, and the news media and campaign spokespersons and, yea, at least one of the presidential candidates marvel from time to time at the awesomeness of having the choice of a Black or a woman for the Democratic Party’s nominee I shake my head in discouragement that our national awareness is so stunted.

In 1982 Gloria T. Hull, Patricia Bell-Scott, and Barbara Smith published a text with a title that was revelatory: All the Women are White, All the Blacks are Men, and Some of Us Are Brave. The first two phrases expose our common assumptions and presumptions about race and gender. If we’re talking about “a woman,” she is expected to be white, unless buttressed by a modifying adjective. Similarly, someone who is identified as “Black” is conceived of as male unless an explicitly contradictory noun is introduced into the conversation. In other words, there is a default to the dominant culture. When we speak of gender, “white” is the unconscious given. When we speak of race or ethnicity, “male” prevails.

Words of encouragement and support for those ministering "in the fields."

Somehow, by 2008, I was sort of hoping that we might have grown past this easy collapse into categorization. That, as a society, we might have cultivated a wider stretch of options within our working imaginations. That we might experience an engaging scintilla of uncertainty when we hear about “a Samoan” or a “Puerto Rican” and wait to learn the person’s gender. That we might initially envision “a girl” or “a woman” of any racial heritage. That women of color would no longer be, by implication, deviant from the norms of human description. That more of us would be brave enough to open up and live into the expansive world of incarnate possibilities and manifestations that was so lovingly designed by our Creator.

                                                                                                        ~ Mary Susan