Sharing Your Experience, Skills, and Abilities

"You will say Christ says this, and the New York Times says this, and National Public Radio says that, but what can you say?"

I was at the celebration of new book, Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship, and one of the most striking insights shared at that celebration about the relationship between Quakers and African Americans or other people of color was, "many Quakers have been willing to have people of color be around them, but they have not been willing to change anything about themselves or their ways of doing things in order to make people of color welcome."

Quakers are struggling with ways of ensuring that people younger than age 40, people of color, and in general people who are somehow outside of the Quaker norm will participate in Quaker communities. (As compared to the population as a whole, Quakers in the USA are much more likely to be Caucasian, come from a family with far above average income, and be much older than the general population.)

Willingness (or lack thereof) to change and respond in order to fully welcome people who are different into our communities will play a big part in changing this.

Another factor in this challenge Quakers face is one that might not be intuitive at first. We as Quakers need to ask ourselves not only, "what can I do to accomodate and welcome people who are different into our community", but "what can they do for us?"

Part of what young people, people of color, and all of our other visitors are looking for is a community where the things they can contribute are not only treated with respect, but treated as something truly needed and wanted by the community. It's okay to tell us that some of our contributions to the community are not helpful, but that needs to be balanced with help and encouragement in making contributions that are helpful.