Activist advocates for racial awareness

Mead Chapel was sparsely populated at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Jan. 18. The meager audience, however, was treated to a striking address by the Reverend William G. Sinkford. Sinkford, the keynote speaker for this week’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebration, was the seventh president — and first African American leader — of the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations. In 1968, he graduated cum laude from Harvard University and went on to earn his M.Div. from the Starr King School for the Ministry in 1995. In 2001, Sinkford was awarded an honorary doctorate from Tufts University.

Sinkford’s oration proved the furthest thing from fire and brimstone — his tone was gentle, his voice rhythmic. And his words were powerful, underscoring the continued need for improved race relations in American society.

Sinkford began the address with an invocation to think and pray for those presently suffering in Haiti. He then quoted Dr. King’s little known and presently out-of-print text,

“Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community.” We must, explained Sinkford, take a closer look at America’s changing face in order to redefine the American ideal and retell a fuller, more complex national history. America, he pointed out, will soon no longer be a predominately white, Christian nation. Nor has it ever been truly homogenous — since the nation’s founding, there have been enormously varied lived experiences of race, ethnicity, religion and sexual orientation. In an age of unprecedented diversity, we must re-imagine the typical American to encompass our country’s sheer variety of people. We must also part with the image of a white, straight, Christian America — a challenge, noted Sinkford, that many white Americans find threatening. And we must further work to rid ourselves of “a selective historical memory” that enables us to “claim our triumphs” and ignore a history riddled with racism, prejudice and unjust treatment of minority groups.

Reginald L. Cook Professor of American Literature and Chair of English and American Literature Brett Millier commented on the difficulty and importance of Sinkford’s task. “The Reverend Sinkford has lived the story he’s telling — he greatly changed the Unitarian Universalist Association in the direction of outreach and diversity,” she said. “It’s impossible to listen to him and not know how hard this is.”

Daniel Watson Jones, ’09.5, agreed.

“It was a really poignant discussion of realistic race problems,” he said. “He didn’t talk around them; he was really candid.”

Sinkford is undeniably witty, with well-placed word play alluding to race and ethnicity punctuating his speech — America has a “changing complexion”; race, in Obama’s America, is possessed of “interesting shadings.” Perhaps his puns are indicative of one of his points: that we are in need of new language to describe America’s ever-expanding racial and cultural diversity. According to Sinkford, diversity’s present lingua franca is insufficient: the phrase ‘melting pot’ belies a scenario in which new Americans are made to learn English and assimilate into the dominant culture, often at the expense of their original traditions and identities. It’s a “metaphor with real power,” Sinkford noted, that showcases “the homogenization of the American ideal.”

While Sinkford is a self-described religious scholar, purportedly interested in the spiritual aspects of race-relations, he ventured unabashedly into the political.

He brazenly decried the Republican attempt to brand Senator Harry Reid as racist as (and here, another witticism) “the pot calling the kettle black.”’

Sinkford’s intelligent writing and calm, powerful tone held the audience captive for the better part of an hour. The address really struck home, however, during the question-and-answer session, when Dane Verret ’12 inquired as to what sorts of skills are needed to inspire diversity and how we might acquire at skills at Middlebury. Sinkford, ever polite, noted that while he knows little about Middlebury’s attitudes toward race, he imagines it faces similar challenges as other predominately white institutions seeking diversity. These institutions, Sinkford noted, need to make sure students of color feel at home. The challenges are manifold — “How will students find a mentor? What about those students for whom this is an uncomfortable place?” — but the need for diversity is pressing. After all, pointed out Sinkford, the only way to assume leadership in a multicultural world is to have a multicultural education. Institutional intention to bring diversity, he notes, is paramount.

His message to Middlebury was perhaps best summed up by Dilanthi Ranaweera ’09.5.

“I particularly liked how he answered the last question,”she said.

“You can’t just talk about diversity without having an environment that welcomes diversity. Middlebury has come a long way in making that environment but there’s a lot to be done.”