Diversity - Problems with the Numbers Game

A fellow UU said something that has been with me for days. She wondered if we weren't making a mistake by focusing on being more diverse. If it was all about numbers... "we want more people of color in the pews" is that really about diversity? Or is it about making ourselves feel better? If we look into the congregations and see more faces of color does that mean we are done? Have we dismantled racism? Of course not. Of course the numbers are important, but perhaps not in the way they have been talked about.

We need to focus on our congregations, on dismantling the racism there even more than that we need to work on preparing ourselves to challenge the the systems of power and privilege of which so many of us, and in many ways our entire faith, are a part.

What if we changed how we approached this issue? What if it became less about changing our numbers and more about changing ourselves and our approach to the world? What if we have been working with the wrong goal all along?

And then... if we focus on addressing systems of power and privilege, about changing our relationship to those systems, perhaps the change we wanted in the beginning will happen. Perhaps we will become more diverse in more ways than race. And perhaps we won't. But won't we become closer to the faith we hope to become?