Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Diversity in Cohousing

[Elizabeth Magill (pastorlizm]

I must to admit that I hate the arguments "in favor of tribalism". I
dislike the use of the word "tribal".

But more than that, I find that white people (I am white and live in a
white community) are very interested in using this idea of
like-hangs-with-like to speak mostly about race and rarely about other
topics.

Is it a good idea if people with disabilities mostly live with people
with disabilities? Women should only live with women? Queers should
only live with queers? Non-christians only live with other
non-christians?

If that seems absurd, why does it seem "natural" and part of who we
are as humans that we should separate based on color of our skin?
Please note that the idea of race wasn't even invented until the
European "Enlightenment". It has not been natural for humans to use
this classification for most of our existence.

(Yes, sometimes these groups need affinity groups to gather and chat
about the way our culture puts us down.)

I believe that we (in existing communities) feel badly that we have
created mostly white communities. In order to feel better about
ourselves we create a theory that it is natural that we have grouped
in this way. (I am included in the "we" here.)

Another strategy would be to look at what we have created and think
about racial oppression through the lens of  who I am internally (my
inner thoughts), interpersonally (how I react to others), systemically
(my community's formal agreements), and culturally (our unwritten
rules).
How did what we did, and didn't do, get us to this place?
It hurts to do this work. I have to see the ways I have bought into
the white dominant culture even though I don't *want* to do that.

Crystal says "There are members of the BIPOC Council
(www.bipocicc.org) who are middle class, vegan/vegetarian, and Black.
They have gone on community tours and been asked rude questions. They
show up at events and feel isolated or tokenized. They live in
communities and have the police called on their children. Basically
they are subject to microaggressions, and I have always said that is
the number 1 reason there is no diversity in intentional
communities. It's not worth it."

I have to hear Crystals words and think "that's us, that's my
community" and try to *see* it when it happens, and then work to
change it. I call on all of us to hear Crystals words and rather than
defending ourselves, be open up to hearing what she is saying.

I hear so much from white people, white people who want to change
racism, saying "we don't know any black people so we can't do
anything."
Actually we, I, know *lots* of white people, caring white people,
white people who want to end racism. I'd like to get over my fear of
[calling them in] when they fall into the traps of white dominant
culture. I'd like to get so that I *appreciate* when people call me in
to act, think, learn in better ways.

[Calling in is in contrast to "calling out", the idea is to name what
they have said that is wrong, but in such a way that they are invited
into relationship, rather than breaking off the relationship. I'm
pretty sure I got this from Teaching Tolerance magazine about fighting
racism in schools.]

-Liz
(The Rev. Dr.) Elizabeth Mae Magill
Mosaic Commons Cohousing, Berlin, MA
www.elizabethmaemagill.com
508-450-0431


On Tue, Feb 21, 2023 at 11:28 PM Steve Welzer <stevenwelzer [at] gmail.com> 
wrote:
>
> Another dimension of the discussion appreciates a different way of looking
> at things ... re: there can be a positive sense of tribalism:
>
> https://stevenwelzer.medium.com/re-diversity-in-cohousing-a4596d3eac25
>
> Steve Welzer
> Altair EcoVillage project
> _________________________________________________________________
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