See, Truly See, and Seek to Understand

By Ruben Soliz

Growing up, I knew a little about Mormonism. I had several Mormon friends and a few of them even tried to convert me, or at least get me to attend their church. I wasn’t open to religion back then, especially a religion with so many restrictions. I liked coffee and booze and cigarettes way too much. So, I continued down my path and they continued down theirs and we coexisted, as neighbors, harmoniously. 

I know that the Mormon community faces many of the challenges and divisions that affect other faiths. As a child, I never delved deep enough into it to know that but it became clear when I went away to college. There was a woman I worked with – a Mormon woman, a racist woman – who deflated my generalization of the Mormon faith as entirely wholesome. She opened my eyes to the fact that we’re not all neighbors peacefully coexisting like we did when I was a kid.

This woman was the quintessential mom-type. She wore neatly starched khakis and bright, fresh smelling clothes. Her hair and makeup was always on-point, almost natural-looking. And she had this wholesome way of engaging in larger crowds, always careful to not curse or to not project too much emotion. She often appeared calm, consoling, cool. 

In the breakroom, she would speak of her faith – it’s centrality to her life, the witness that she bore to the church, her certainty in the Prophet Joseph Smith and all of the prophets since him. When there was no one else around but a white person or two and when she didn’t notice that I was in the breakroom, she’d more comfortably speak about race. Sometimes her comments were intended to be humorous. She’d tell a racist joke or use a derogatory term or a stereotype and then cheerfully punctuate the generalization by chuckling and saying, “Just kidding!” I had a lot of white, middle-class college friends who did the same. They’d make a racist or sexist comment and then laugh. It was for the shock factor. They didn’t really mean it, they’d say. They assured me that I could check their voting record or observe their activism to know how they truly felt. They were just harmless jokes. That’s how I initially interpreted that woman’s passively racist remarks. Then one day in the breakroom – I’m sure she didn’t know I was there – I heard her speaking with an older lady, a woman who likely grew up at a time when racism was not only acceptable but expected. The Mormon woman said something about how the Blacks are starting to sneak into her neighborhood and she felt threatened, alert, on-edge all the time. She kept pointing out that they were Black and that she was unsafe. A year later, that woman had a baby. She brought him to work shortly after giving birth. Myself and a Native American guy were the first ones to see her as she walked in to the store and we commented on how cute the baby was. She pulled away. She held that baby as though she was protecting it from some terrorist threat – her eyes fierce and defensive, her lips pressed tightly together as though a racial slur was about to slip out. She completely ignored us. We didn’t exist. Four or five of our white coworkers came up to her, praising the baby – it’s so cute, those lovely blue eyes. She loosened up, she smiled, she passed the baby around to our white co-workers. My Native friend and I spoke about it later that night, over beers at a local dive bar. “Of course, it’s ‘cuz we’re brown,” he said. “Fuck her.”

11 years later, I was in my last semester of grad school – recovering from a broken heart and frantically trying to figure out my next steps. One afternoon, I sat in my favorite café, writing my thesis and working on job applications. After several hours of that, I started to felt a deep sense of despair. My head spun. My breath became heavier. I paused and took a step back from myself. Right then I did an online search for “Maintaining an everyday relationship with God.” Before I saw the results, something told me to look up. I looked through the window. There they were: two young men in black pants and short-sleeved white shirts. They wore colorful ties and shiny black name-tags. Mormon missionaries. I rushed over. I rushed over to them and I said, “Hey there, I need to talk to you. When you’re done, can you come inside and visit with me?” They must have thought I was crazy. I mean, who does that? Most people probably avoid eye contact, probably go out of their way to escape. Not many people build up the energy that I put forth in that moment. 

That kicked-off many months of studying Mormonism. After all, the missionaries were a product of my online search, right? A message from God? And Mormonism was a way to console me, to soothe my broken heart, to overcome the angst of not knowing. Right?

My interest in Mormonism came to a halt when I discovered the legacy of institutional racism within the church, a meticulously documented fact recorded in the speeches of prophets, including the revered Brigham Young, and woven into the dogmatic contention that Blacks were not worthy of the priesthood and not welcomed into the highest levels of celestial existence. Systematic racial exclusion halted in the 1970s when the church began the long process of racial reconciliation and Blacks were, for the first time in history, admitted to the priesthood. Although individual members may harbor prejudice, which is the case in all religious communities, the institution of the church now welcomes individuals from a variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. These gestures toward integration, coupled with my observations of race within seemingly progressivecongregations, helped me to appreciate the universal aspects of the faith – loving God above all else, loving thy neighbor, striving to be the best version of one’s self – and to overcome the generalization of Mormons as racist. 

Soon after my brief study of Mormonism, I came back to active participation in the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). I’ve been connected to community with varying degrees of engagement for 16 years. The first time that I attended a Quaker Meeting for Worship, in 2003, I felt calm, at peace. I was a freshman in college, acclimating to life away from my family, and navigating an ocean of uncertainty. I studied Quakerism over the next several years, reading Quaker journals and Pendle Hill pamphlets, but it was another 6 years before I attended my next Quaker Meeting. The Meeting was in Zambia, hosted by an English woman who immigrated to Zambia in the 1960s, shortly before independence. She married a Black Zambian, a gesture that was particularly controversial in racially-divided Africa. Some of the White Zambians resented her for this, especially the Whites who lost their land and fled violent uprisings. They considered her a sell-out, a race-traitor. Still, she was in love. Her Quaker practice was deep and invaluable in maintaining the inner tranquility needed to overcome post-colonial stigmatization.  

I came back to America in 2011, eager to become a part of the Quaker community. The first Meeting that I attended wasn’t the one that I’m presently a member of but it was in a nearby city. Sitting there, among Friends, in silent worship and communally connected to the Light, I felt a deep sense of belonging. That feeling disintegrated during the social fellowship which followed. I stood there, on the sidelines, looking around the room, too shy to approach anyone and desperately hoping that someone would come up to me. No one did. They didn’t greet me, they didn’t ask where I was from or what brought me to Meeting. I was isolated and alone. As someone who often felt a deep sense of marginalization in American society, I suspected that people were not talking to me because I wasn’t White like them and because they thought that we couldn’t possibly have any cultural similarities, much less something to talk about. Despite these thoughts, I gave them another chance and attended one more time. The same thing happened. No one talked to me. I felt alone. Such is the impact of lived experience and historical trauma. It was years before I went back to that Meeting House. 

I recently shared this story with a group of Quaker Friends at a discussion group. One person in the group said, “Well there are plenty of White people who are ignored after Meeting.” And suddenly my perception of racism, my experience, was dismissed. It was undermined, shrugged off. As we engaged in a broader discussion of race within our Quaker Meetings, the people in the group seemed genuinely interested in including people of color. They wanted to know how we can do that, how we can conduct outreach, how we can keep people of color engaged. Perhaps we could do it through cultural sensitivity training or by participating in interfaith alliances. Lightheartedly joking about the fact that we didn’t have many people of color in the Meeting, one person told me “Ruben, you’re our token person of color!” It stung. So that’s what I am? Not a person, not a seeker, not a Quaker? But a token person of color! Although it was said lightheartedly, I saw it as one of the subtle ways in which racial division prevails within our society: through humor. It brought me back to that Mormon woman I worked with in college, the woman who made passively racist remarks, which were followed by the phrase “Just kidding!”

Quakers spend a good amount of time apologizing, reflecting on their privilege, their subtle forms of bias. I get so tired of hearing about it. During one gathering of Arizona Quakers, we engaged in such a discussion. One person, a White man, said “I’ve always taught my children that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. And I believe that. We don’t have to react the way that we do to discrimination, it really gets down to how we allow others to make us feel.” Oh, I was pissed. Racism, sexism, homophobia dismissed in a few sentences uttered at a Quaker gathering. I left. I told them I didn’t feel safe in that space and I walked out. I spent the rest of the gathering pissed off. I kept coming back to that experience at the Quaker Meeting where I felt like was ignored because I’m not White. And then it hit me. I’d been attending semi-annual Quaker gatherings for 8 years and still most people acted like we were meeting for the first time. They asked me my name, where I was from, how long I’d been involved. Even after 8 damn years. Was it because I’m not white? Oh, it pissed me off. I caused a bit of a scene at the gathering, received surface-level support from people who didn’t know my name after 8 years, and I decided to skip out on the next few statewide gatherings.

I sometimes feel like White Quakers will never truly understand. It’s a lose-lose situation for them. I’m going to be annoyed by them processing their bias and privilege during worship sharing. I’m going to be annoyed by them taking active roles in the civil rights movement. Well maybe there is one thing that White Quakers can do: see people of color within their Meetings, see people who are attending for the first time or those who have been there all along. Rather than focusing only on the racism that exists within our broader society and the unconscious bias that they carry with them in the outside world, White Quakers can recognize the bias that exists within their Meetings, the bias which leaves people of color – this person of color – feeling ignored, pissed off that White Quakers still don’t know his name after 8 years, pissed off that White Quakers keep bringing the narrative back around to them and their privilege, pissed off that he’s seen as a “token” within his Meeting and that his experience is shrugged off, as White Quakers contend that everyone feels ignored and that feeling ignored isn’t a key feature of the non-White experience. 

So, what can White Quakers do to be more inclusive? Start by opening your eyes, my dear Friends – seeing, truly seeing – and seeking to understand.