Pages tagged "Race"

The first time I was confronted with my identity as a “Brown Woman” was my first trip to North Pacific Yearly Meeting (NPYM). I had never experienced such a direct external approach to my skin color before. My family celebrated my adoption day as a family holiday. We went back to India to see my heritage history, and I was raised with some Indian cultural education, but my racial background wasn’t ever the first characteristic that came to mind when examining my personal identity. The welcome I received because of my brown skin from the Quakers was both amazingly compassionate and entirely unsettling. At that time, I had only just begun to explore this part of my identity. As an extension of this experience, I began to pay more attention to race relations within the Quaker community, and the struggles of different races around the U.S.

When I was in high school, some friends and I snuck into a neighborhood swimming pool that was closed after dark. We tried to keep quiet, but we were having too much fun, and a neighbor called the cops. An officer showed up and calmly asked us to please leave, which we did. Those friends and I are white. This summer, several young black girls were physically assaulted in McKinney, Texas, by police officers ordering them to leave a pool party in the middle of the day. To my knowledge, those girls were breaking no rules, yet their black skin condemned them to violent treatment by the police.

I was in my last semester of grad school, sitting in a café, repressing a broken heart, and working on my thesis. After several hours of non-stop reading and writing, I started to feel 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, “Look up.” Right out the window, I saw two young men in black pants and short-sleeved white shirts: Mormon missionaries. I rushed outside and said to them, “Hey there, I need to talk to you!”

Dear Editor: It was great to read about Burton and Mary Jo Housman’s recent visit to Casa de los Amigos in Mexico City in the Jan/Feb issue. Pacific Yearly Meeting has made progress in building and maintaining ties to Friends in Mexico over the last few years. Visitation between Mexico City Friends and the rest of PYM has increased, and the participation of Mexico Friends on several major committees and programs is most welcome.

An interview with Yasmine Taeb

Dear Editor: Like farm grade baling twine the theme of walls is woven tightly, cogently, through the latest Western Friend, "On Superiority." A critical and compelling point is taken. The foundations of physical walls are first laid in the thoughts between our ears. Architectural barriers could not exist if the footers were not poured early in the classroom, nurtured by mainstream media and codified into law and policy.

“There’s nothing wrong with dating a black guy,” blonde-haired, blue-eyed Julie Boyle said to her friends in our seventh-grade classroom. “My cousin is dating one, there’s nothing wrong with that.”