By John Duffy, Commission Member
Last weekend I attended the 40th anniversary conference of the Catholic Association for Racial Justice (CARJ). After welcome and introductions by Yogi Sutton (Chair of CARJ) and Bishop John Arnold, Alison Lowe gave a keynote speech, describing her own journey and background, and describing aspects of her work as West Yorkshire’s Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime. She has worked to overcome police resistance to the recommendations of the McPherson Report, and to accepting the concept of institutional racism.
She has introduced a Race Action Plan to examine and challenge police internal culture, to involve police and different communities in conversation and engagement – one of the benefits of this was the
successful de-escalation of the Harehills riot, where damage was limited, and the police personnel withdrew from their visible presence to allow community leaders to restore calm and reassurance. She said that it is significant that no July unrest occurred in West Yorkshire, because of the police force’s relationships with communities, and a greater confidence from people in communities coming together to demand justice and fairness.
Fr Phil Sumner (who is the parish priest at Our Lady & St Patrick in Oldham – where the conference was held) quoted Pope Francis on combatting racism: progress is not as real or as definite as we think. For example, state and church have both responded to the July riots by stressing immigration, rather than leading on dealing with inequalities and scapegoating.
He led us through an Agenda for Change, with the mnemonic
BIAS: Belonging/Information/Accompaniment/Strategy
Belonging: In Fratelli Tutti para 53, Pope Francis has written We forget that “there is no worse form of alienation than to feel uprooted, belonging to no one. A land will be fruitful, and its people bear fruit and give birth to the future, only to the extent that it can foster a sense of belonging among its members, create bonds of integration between generations and different communities, and avoid all that makes us insensitive to others and leads to further alienation”.
In The Ungrateful Refugee, Dina Nayeri says that Allowing newcomers to affect you on your native soil, to change you is an enriching experience and he has worked to ensure that welcoming people into parish life must not only involve them in welcoming, reading and other ministries, but changes the fabric of the building, so that when they come in, they see something of themselves. He has installed new stained glass windows with African and Filipino imagery. Our welcome must go beyond theme nights, must stop seeing incomers as exotic, but welcome the changes they bring to liturgy and parish life.
Information: We must educate ourselves about such things as institutional racism, structural racism, critical race theory, stereotypes, racist trolls, claims to be “colour blind’, stereotyping, and the unconscious power of established groups. Accuracy is important, and we must be clear what we say and what we mean – a claim to uphold “British values” – vague and undefined – makes others into the problem.
Accompaniment: Simply, we must stand alongside the different communities in the Church and beyond in our struggle for equality.
Strategy: Too often we focus on the white experience as the place that holds solutions to racism, rather than listening to and learning from our sisters and brothers who face this daily. Each Diocese should adopt a Racial Justice Strategy which must include a process of consultation, an audit, a plan of action and a timetable. White Catholics must be prepared to do something uncomfortable by allowing people to be themselves, and move from hand-wringing about racism to hand-holding, standing up and alongside in solidarity.
CARJ is facing a loss of funding and may launch a crowd-funding appeal: a message from Yogi Sutton to me says: We are working on ‘survival’. Funds are low. Keep us in your prayers.