A personal and universal discussion on white supremacy, gender inequality

PC(USA) leaders who are women of color share personal experiences in webinar

by Rich Copley | Presbyterian News Service

Sue Rheem, the Rev. Denise Anderson, and Vilmarie Cintrón-Olivieri participated in a webinar about white supremacy and gender inequality on Thursday. (Photos by Rich Copley)

LEXINGTON, Kentucky — Ruling Elder Vilmarie Cintrón-Olivieri felt a “breath of fresh air” watching last week’s inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I felt like I was able to breathe, particularly when I was seeing the swearing in of Vice President Harris and hearing the beautiful words of Amanda Gorman,” said Cintrón-Olivieri, co-moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s 223^rd General Assembly (2018). “There wasn’t a dry eye in my house.

“Yet I live in that tension, and I cannot help but know my own identity and know where I come from as a daughter of the colony, that while I’m celebrating and I’m happy, and I feel that I can finally breathe here living in the mainland U.S., the reality is that the attitudes and the system and the values that created the ambiance of what happened Jan. 6 is also what permeates and has been oppressing Black and Indigenous people of color and our people in Puerto Rico as well.

“American values for me as a Puerto Rican read differently than they read for other people,” she said, “because occupation of a land can be normalized, but it is still occupation.”

Cintrón-Olivieri was speaking Thursday afternoon during the second episode of the webinar series “Where Do We Go from Here?” presented by the Presbyterian Office of Public Witness/Presbyterian Ministry at the United Nations. This episode of the series looking at the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump featured three leaders in the PC(USA) who are women discussing the intersection of white supremacy and gender inequality: Cintrón-Olivieri; the Rev. Denise Anderson, co-moderator of the 222^nd General Assembly (2016) and coordinator of the PC(USA) Office of Racial and Intercultural Justice, who is Black; and Sue Rheem, Presbyterian Representative to the United Nations, who is Asian American.

Anderson set the table for the discussion with a baking metaphor to show how the events of Jan. 6 shouldn’t be surprising.

“How we got here, it’s sort of like how does a cake get to be sweet?” she said. “It’s baked into who we are, unfortunately. That’s not to say that’s all that we are or all that we could be.

“But one must acknowledge the very beginning of our history and how this project that is the United States of America is predicated on the subjugation of Indigenous people and disabusing Indigenous people of the land. It is predicated on the enslavement of African people. It has its own imperialist history. … None of this should seem foreign. It’s the logical conclusion of how the United States has conducted itself in so many different ways. It’s not that we can’t be something better, but this is who we have been.

“We will continue to find ourselves here again, if like during Reconstruction, if like during Jim Crow, if like after the civil rights movement of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, we still refuse to come to terms with our own history and our own investments in white supremacy and the relative concentration of all forms of capital among a certain group of people over others.”

Rheem observed that part of what is happening is a reaction to the growth of minority populations in the United States. The first year more non-white babies were born than white babies was 2013, and minority groups becoming the majority population is projected to occur within a few decades.

“There’s this shift in demographics that is causing a real fracturing of society, and for those who feel that they’re losing their way of life, which got Trump elected,” Rheem said. “So, making America great is really about making, you know, white great again. Do I think that this will continue? Yeah, I do think it will continue and we have to really figure out a way to …  deconstruct and get at the root causes of it.

“White supremacy is about holding on to power, and it’s about holding on to power over the other. When we talk about white supremacy, we often focus on race, or the superiority of whiteness. However, white supremacy is deeply entrenched in patriarchy. And it is also about the superiority of being a man, cisgender heterosexual man specifically. And as Black indigenous people of color, both cis and transgender women and quite honestly, gender-non-conforming folks as well — anybody who sits at the intersection of being nonwhite and non-male is the exact opposite of what is supposed to be good and what’s supposed to be right.”

The three church leaders talked about race and gender discrimination in personal terms, Anderson and Cintrón-Olivieri citing instances of discrimination they experienced while serving as co-moderators. Cintrón-Olivieri recalled being asked how she could be co-moderator of the PC(USA) if she’s not from the United States and comments like, “Our bishop is not this pretty.” Anderson recalled typical comments like she was so articulate for a Black woman, as well as comments about her clothes and hair — “any cultural affect that reminded the white dominant structure that I was indeed different.”

Rheem noted that even in a global body such as the UN, she is often the only woman of color in male-dominated meetings, and has been subjected to comments like, “You speak English so well” and “Where are you really from?” when she tells people she is from New York. She also noted, in a few instances, the “invisible minority” status Asian Americans often feel they bear, pointing to a news report about the impact of COVID-19 that did not mention Asians — and the reporter was Asian American.

Too often, the panelists said, manifestations of white supremacy show up in the ways people in minority communities relate to each other, because it is so baked into our culture.

Christian Brooks of the Office of Public Witness moderated the panel discussion, “Where do We Go from Here?” (File screenshot)

The work that needs to be done, the panelists and moderator the Rev. Christian Brooks of the Office of Public Witness said, is both individual and collective — and it is going to be hard.

“All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God,” Anderson said. “There is none who is righteous, no, not one. (John) Calvin has so much to say about human nature and the human propensity towards sin. The Dutch Reformed articulation of the faith holds to T.U.L.I.P. Calvinism, the total depravity of it all, which is to say that even the best parts of us are still susceptible to sin.

“And yet, … when we gather together in communal worship every week, part of our liturgy includes a prayer of confession. It includes this acknowledgment that despite our best efforts, we have still stumbled. And I really challenge the church to lean into that spiritual discipline of confession, to divest ourselves from this need to be good and nice and do all the right things and say all the right things. As a woman of color who does anti-racism work in a very white denomination, I find that my white siblings are so often trying to get it right, or be right so that they don’t have to look like they’re not right. But no, we’re going to stumble. How do we stumble together? How can you make a mistake and then come back to the situation with humility and acceptance, that you know, you are in need of God’s grace and go forward and be better?”

Click here to see the webinar in its entirety.

Brooks announced at the end of the hour that the next episode of “Where do we go from Here?” will be at 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Feb. 11 on the Office of Public Witness Facebook page and will focus on white supremacy theology with the Rev. Shanea Leonard, Associate for Racial and Gender Justice in the Racial Equity & Women’s Intercultural Ministries, and the Rev. Lee Catoe, Managing Editor of Unbound: An Interactive Journal of Christian Social Justice.