Reconciling with the AEU’s Connections to White Supremacy and Systemic Racism

Reaffirming Resolutions against Racism and for Civil Rights

Moving Forward within an Anti-Racist Framework

Reconciling with our past
Systemic racism has been, and continues to be, a core characteristic of the power structure and culture of the United States. Hundreds of years of brutality and oppression have created and sustained a deeply inequitable society that has been and continues to be profoundly detrimental to Black communities, Indigenous communities, and other communities of color.

The Ethical Culture movement has participated in, benefited from, and enabled systemic racism. Ethical Societies must come to terms with our own support of and/or collusion with white supremacist ideas, policies, and practices, and with our lack of resolve to redress the damage to so many lives.

The AEU’s commitment to the equal dignity and worth of each person speaks to our desire to end racism; however, the impact of systemic racism within our movement cannot be denied. Systemic racism, white supremacist ideas, and their intersecting impacts can be felt and seen in a myriad of ways. We note with regret the following:

• The membership of the Ethical Humanist movement is overwhelmingly white.
• Black people who have experience with Ethical Humanism express that Ethical Societies have seemed unwelcoming and unwilling to make changes materially that would make them more welcoming to Black individuals.
• Many Ethical Humanists have given voice to the wish that more Black individuals would join and enjoy Ethical Societies yet have not made efforts to connect with Black individuals in spaces where they are comfortable or inquire after how the individuals they do manage to connect with would appreciate having their needs met.
• While calling attention to Ethical Humanists helping to found social justice organizations such as NAACP the Ethical movement has provided scant material support for their efforts.
• Ethical Societies and their members have benefited from racist structures and systems. This has included:
  • Participation in racial segregation by moving Ethical Society buildings outside of neighborhoods that have predominantly Black residents.
  • Ethical Society members living in predominantly white neighborhoods with predominantly white schools.
  • Supporting zoning regulations that prevent the development of affordable housing in their neighborhoods.
  • Allowing law enforcement to deter or eliminate the presence of Black people from white neighborhoods.
  • Passing wealth along to white people through inheritance and investments.

These truths are hard to hear and provoke defensiveness; they reveal a tension between our expressed values and our institutional culture and behaviors. But now is not the time to center white comfort over the dismantling of racist systems; now is the time for our majority white organization to grapple with its past and present associations with white supremacist ideas. Putting “Deed Before Creed” requires deliberate reconciliation with our past and deliberate actions for a more just present and future.

Reaffirming Resolutions

The Ethical Culture movement has made efforts towards understanding systemic racism and its impacts. Representatives of the Ethical movement helped found civil rights organizations which have fought for the dignity of Black people, have supported efforts to ensure equal rights and protections, and have joined with others to call for substantive reforms in the areas of law enforcement, voting rights, housing, and equal opportunities for employment and education.

In the past nine years, each national Assembly’s main theme has addressed some aspect of systemic racism and explored them with educational programs and ethical actions. Additionally, in the past five years, the AEU has passed resolutions aimed at encouraging its members to personally assist in undoing racism and promoting equity (full text of each resolution is linked):

2015 – Criminal Justice
2016 – Systemic Racism in the United States
2017 – Toward Repairing the Harm of Racism
2018 – Climate Action
2019 – Defending the Right to Vote

In the wake of the countless murders of Black people and the continued disregard of Indigenous people’s sovereignty, Ethical Society members and Society spokespersons have made speeches, written articles, developed educational workshops, joined protests, and partnered in coalitions against racism.

But those educational programs, calls for ethical action, and resolutions have not taken hold within our own community with the urgency and commitment we have called for. As an organization and as a wider Ethical Humanist community, we are falling short of our own ideals and must do better.

Moving Forward

The Ethical movement affirms that none of us are free until we are all free, so none of us are free until all Black people are free: Black lives matter. Black trans lives matter. Black children matter. Black love matters. Black mental health matters. Black art matters. Black dreams matter. Black futures matter.

There is much work to be done. It is time for the AEU and its member Societies to get to work.

Let us now commit ourselves to work together as Ethical Humanists to dismantle racism: within ourselves, within our Societies, within our movement, and within our communities. Let us look at action items in our five Resolutions as a starting point, educate ourselves more thoroughly about the issues they address, and take clear and effective actions to bring about the changes they call for. These actions include working to change our own internal culture as well as the wider culture.

It is vital that we do the work needed to understand the causes of racism and its effects. It is vital that we listen to, engage with, and follow the lead of organizers who represent the most adversely affected among us as they choose avenues for repair and organize us toward effective action. It is vital that we join with others – individuals and organizations – in advocating for change. It is vital that we energize and re-energize ourselves, not let go of our resolve to undo racism, and join in efforts to dismantle white supremacy.

Therefore, the AEU in its 105th Annual Assembly calls on AEU leadership, member Societies, and individual members to:

1. Reconcile with our movement’s past and continued association with systemic racism and white supremacist ideas;
2. Reaffirm the five above-listed Resolutions, and the specific calls for actions contained therein;
3. Follow the leadership and organizing principles of Black people, Indigenous people, People of Color in this work;
4. Support change at all governmental and societal levels to dismantle systemic biases and racial inequities, noting that Societies would be well positioned to focus on intersectional areas in which they already participate in coalition and organizing work, such as:
   1. policing reform and abolition;
   2. mass incarceration;
   3. school-to-prison pipeline;
   4. medical and health care access;
   5. current public health crisis;
   6. reproductive justice;
   7. living wages;
   8. equitable housing;
   9. environmental racism;
   10. preserving and expanding access to voting; and
   11. equitable and just funding for public schools;
5. Renew and sustain anti-racist efforts and support equal rights, equitable opportunity, inclusion, and justice for all.