Robette has been Executive Co-Director and a Core Organizer/Trainer since 2002. Prior to that she was an antiracism program coordinator for the Unitarian Universalist Association’s (UUA) Faith In Action Department, providing training, technical support and advocacy for the Journey Toward Wholeness antiracism initiative. As a Karuk Indian, Robette brings a specifically indigenous perspective to antiracism organizing. She is a founding member and past president of Diverse & Revolutionary UU Multicultural Ministries (DRUUMM), the continental support and advocacy organization for UUA People of Color. She is currently Board President of Oyate, a Native American resource and advocacy organization.
Readers who have recently attended a Crossroads “Analysis Workshop” may recognize the title of this post as a riff on the name of that workshop. If people know anything about Crossroads its usually that we do workshops that teach people about racism. And it’s true, we pride ourselves on our ability to break down racism with razor sharp, laser directed and sometimes mind-blowing presentations AND we do so much more than that! The challenge of living in a world that invites a power analysis of racism at every turn is that you can’t just switch it off! Because we encounter racial injustice and racial disparities around every corner, we are highly motivated to apply that analysis and work with “institutional perpetrators” to find solutions that will lead to social transformation. Well, that was a pretty heady mouthful! What does that mean?
Who IS the real Crossroads then?
The Crossroads of today has to be understood in the context of our origins. We are still that Crossroads of 1986 AND we are also an evolving, complex, and transforming Crossroads. Launching the Crossroads blog on the week in which we remember the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is quite intentional. It is a nod of gratitude to the Crossroads founders who participated in the Civil Rights Movement and who wanted to make sure the Movement was kept alive in religious communities. We continue to be inspired by the life-long commitments to racial justice of our founders and the early builders of Crossroads Ministry: Joe Barndt, Susan Birkelo, Susan and Chuck Ruehle, Victor Rodriguez, and Melvin Hoover. They are the foundation of Crossroads and they opened the space from which the Crossroads of today emerges.
Sometimes that space has been contested space, make no mistake. It wasn’t easy transitioning from an organization with a strong Civil Rights identity and orientation to an organization focused on racial justice more broadly. We are clear that People of Color continue to struggle for civil rights and equal access and control of the public institutions in the United States, but we are also clear that racial justice includes the sovereignty movements of Indigenous Peoples, and the anti-colonial movements of People of Color under direct and neo-colonial domination by the US. We know that racial justice has to be tied to revolutionizing our economic system because the exploitation of People of Color and poor White People is what fuels U.S. capitalism.
It also wasn’t easy transitioning from our Protestant Christian origins. Christianity, the way our founders understand it, is the path to restoring a human family deeply divided by racism and other systems of oppression. The diversity of spiritual and humanist traditions that exist in Crossroads today share a similar ethos, and may express it in radically different ways. It is not just a divide in the human family needing restoration, but the alienation from creation as the source of all life (which some may refer to as the Sacred or Spirit) that needs to be healed.
The guiding principle transforming Crossroads today is accountability to People of Color. It manifests in our current leadership: five Women of Color and one White Woman comprise the salaried and contract staff of Crossroads, our board is 75% People of Color, 40% of our 23 contract organizer/trainers are People of Color. More than a numbers game (as some of our trainers remind us, the plantation was a diverse workplace too), accountability to People of Color has led us to articulate a radically inclusive power analysis of racism and to invest in what we call Regional Organizing. That is, institutional organizing grounded in geographically identified communities in order to be in direct relationship with the Communities of Color for whom racism is a life and death reality.
But you don’t have to take my word for it. Creating this blog is a commitment to transparency and nurturing the Crossroads learning community. It’s an invitation to Analyzing & Understanding racism today and exploring Antiracist Interventions. Clear, deep analysis of the power dynamics of white supremacy has always been key to successful, effective resistance. Analyzing & Understanding racism today is as important as ever. There are more ways to criminalize and exploit People of Color now that at any other time in our country’s history.
- More Men of Color are incarcerated now than were ever enslaved by the institution of Chattel Slavery and under Jim Crow. There are more Black and Brown men in prison than in college, and with the expansion of the criminal industrial complex and privatization of prisons, a large and profitable sector of the US economy thrives while Communities of Color are decimated.
- The US economy is sustained by the labor of undocumented workers. The deportation of those workers, which is higher than ever, is tearing apart families and lives.
- American Indian families opposing the adoption of their children by non-Indians have been arrested for obstruction of justice, contempt of court, even kidnapping. Indian families are expected to stand by and watch as state troopers remove their children from their homes. Meanwhile, non-Indian men who rape Indian women go unpunished and walk free to perpetrate their crimes with impunity due to issues of convoluted legal jurisdictions.
- Past racial justice accomplishments are being gutted: everything from voting rights to affirmative action.
- Even the growing wealth divide is highly racialized and highly gendered. At the prime age of income potential, Women of Color continue to have negative wealth while their White sisters median is $42,000.
- Racialized health disparities continue to manifest while study after study confirm racism is bad for the health of People of Color.
Yes, the work of antiracism, the work of Crossroads is needed now more than ever! So…I invite you. Read the blog; get to know us more deeply, get to know about racism and antiracism in all its complexity. Apply the Analysis and let us hear from you!
Applying the Analysis 
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