The Antiracism Trainings by David Reich Book Preview

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The

AntiracismTrainings

David Reich

BlazeVOX [books]

Buffalo, New York


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The Antiracism Trainings by David ReichCopyright 2010Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproducedwithout the publishers written permission, except for briefquotations in reviews. The Antiracism Trainings is a work offiction. Any resemblance between the characters, incidents,and institutions depicted in it and any real persons, incidents,or institutions is purely coincidental.

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Geoffrey GatzaCover photograph by Molly Lamb

First EditionISBN: 9781935402794Library of Congress Control Number 2009910020

BlazeVOX [books]303 Bedford Ave

Buffalo, NY 14216

[email protected]

\publisher of weird little books

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B X


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For Martha, who keeps me alive and well.


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One sees that most human beings are wretched, and, in one wayor another, become wicked: because they are so wretched. Andone's turning away, then, from what I have called the welcometable is dictated by some mysterious vow one scarcely knows one'stakennever to allow oneself to fall so low. Low, perhaps, muchlower, to the very dregs: but never there.

James Baldwin


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The Six Suggestions of the Church

of Universal Love and Knowledge

As a liberal religious denomination, our Church has no dogma orcommandments, but many members find it useful to follow, or beguided by, the Six Suggestions.

Suggestion I: Because all Human Beings are essentiallyGood, we should start from a place of Generosity in allinterpersonal relations.

Suggestion II: No one can be certain of Ultimate Truth;therefore we should tolerate all sincerely held Belief,however implausible it may appear from our limitedperspectives.

Suggestion III: Ostentation is vulgar and expensive, butSimplicity is next to godliness.

Suggestion IV: Democracy is Sacred. May we live in a spiritof give and take! May we never end debates until everyonepresent has been heard and affirmed!

Suggestion V: The Environment is Sacred. Let us love andpreserve it!

Suggestion VI (adopted in August 2001): Persons of Color,Persons with Disabilities, and Lesbian, Gay, andTransgender Persons have been gifted with a specialWisdom. They are here to teach the rest of us how to live.

Additional copies available upon request from the LiberalReligion Center, 47 Beacon Street, Boston, Massachusetts02108.


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The Disappearances (2000)

Sometimes a co-worker disappeared. (I think of a fifteenth

century map with ships poised to drop off the end of the

earth into a boiling pit of dragons.)

Lets say it was a fellow in his early thirties. An

assistant to Alma Henson Bing, head of accounts receivable.

Youd bump into him every day or two in the echo-filled

stairwell, the drafty, lugubrious reading room, the mens

room with its turn-of-the-century fixtures and its chemical

incense of disinfectant.

Then one day he wasnt around anymore. Weeks

could go by, but sooner or later, youd fall prey to those

gloomy intimations that accompany unexplained departures.

Had person X been fired? Replaced by a piece of high-

powered software? Was he lying in a hospital, lashed to the

bed like Gulliver by a network of wires and plastic tubes,

the victim of a car crash, a rare disease, a random encounter

with an urban shooter?


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Eventually a cryptic notice like a minimalist poem

would arrive by email from the executive director, a woman

named Mary Kay Beauregard Jackson:

William C. Williams, an assistant to Alma Henson

Bing, recently left the Liberal Religion Center.

We wish him well in any future endeavors.

Terse missives like this one, with its suggestion that

there might beno future endeavors, that now that hed left

the LRC, Mr. Williamss life was essentially over, struck me

as unnecessarily callous, especially coming from a highofficial of a churchnot one of these angry neo-Calvinist

outfits that have sprouted up all over like some invasive

southern weed, but a fine old New England denomination

dating back to the Transcendentalists and professing

humane, enlightened views on any topic you could name.Yet despite my own high-mindedness when it came to

Mary Kays emails, inevitably a year, even six months, later,

I had a hard time forming a mental image of the missing

person, the desaparecidaor desaparecido.

Maybe it was cosmic payback for these small acts of

forgetting, but in the fullness of time I, too, disappeared. (A


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month or two after I left, Im sure, an email went forth from

the office of Mary Kay Beauregard Jackson: Mickey

Kronenberg, a writer for our magazine, recently left theLiberal Religion Center. / We wish him well in any future

endeavors.)

Today I live a life of subsidized torpor. Most

mornings, I pretend Im still at work, breakfasting early and

then repairing to my office in the turret of our wobblyVictoriandown here in blue collar Quincy, Mass., home

to the bones of old John Adams, defunct granite quarries,

and a World War II shipyard. A town mentioned rarely if

at all in the writings of Transcendentalists. Once seated at

my desk, I will email old friends, fiddle with the houseaccounts, play a bracing round or two of Minesweeper or

solitaire. But in the early afternoon, my lunch hour, when

I venture out for a run on the beach, the neighborhood

streets are nearly empty. All adults are at work, all children

in school. Even the beach itself is empty, except for theseagulls that congregate in strutting, noisy bands around the

storm sewer outfall. A solitary figure, I run the length of the

crumbling seawall as the miniature waves of Quincy Bay lap

against a muddy shore. All in all, I feel as if Im shirking my

duties as a middle-class Euro-American person. Before myLRC days, I eked out a living at the marginscab driver,

part-time writing instructor, freelance reporter for


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advertising supplementsand I fear Im headed back that

way, toward the land of low status and shaky self-identity.

On the brighter side, theres my severance pay,doled out in semimonthly infusions, the same as my former

salary. And lately Ive discovered I can hold back the

thoughts of what comes next by pounding on the keyboard

of our second-hand computer, with its thirteen-inch screen

and thrumming fan, revisiting in my feature writersoverheated prose my seven fat years in the religion business

and the factors leading up to mymy involuntary

separation.

Actually the factor, since there was only onethe

LRCs antiracism program, which started the year before Iarrived, gathered steam while I worked there, and continues

to this day. The job, more than any Id had before, fit my

needs and talents, not to mention my politics, and yet by

the time of my disappearance, I already wanted to be gone.

Oddly for a hardheaded fellow like me, someone who cameto his job at the church with no special feeling for things of

the spirit, I had developed during my seven years what I

cannot help but call a spiritual unease about the place.


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Part 1

Sykes Time (1996-97)


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Chapter 1

The Informal Conversation

I first crossed paths with Donald Sykes on the fifth floor of

the LRC. It was 1996, the month of October, and he was

pacing the hallway outside Don Pulliams office in a wool

hounds tooth jacket and rumpled wool slacks, a flip phone

braced against his ear. As I slipped by the stranger on my

way to the mens room, he made his connection, and I

caught a few words.

Hey, Gretch! Its moi! Hows things goin out

there, lady? he yelled into the tiny instrument, a thin sheen

of sweat breaking out on his face. His accent and his

heartiness reminded me of Rush Limbaughs, though

nobody at the LRC, even casual visitors, partook of

Limbaughs politics. Think you can fax those budget

numbers? Ill look at em tonight on the plane, I swear! How

am I doin? He paused for effect. Spec-tac-u-lar! LRC

folks are salt o the earth! Love em to death, and they love

me right back!

Salt o the earth?For all my fellow staffers virtues,

the description seemed profoundly wrong. I continued

towards the mens room and its rough perfumes.

Five minutes later, I caught another glimpse of him.

He was up on the seventh floor this time, not far from the


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door to my own modest workspace, pacing the hallway near

a desolate nook where the copier and fax machine were

kept.Hi, hare ya! he hollered, a big-boned fellow in his

middle fifties with a smiling red face and a stubbly beard,

his great stomach protruding over his belt.

Pretty good, I said. It was a social reflex, though I

waspretty good most days back then.Great to hear it! he said, nodding and smiling

ferociously as if the perfunctory words we had spoken were

actually coded messages carrying momentous tidings.

I passed on to my office. With his Limbaugh-like

accent and his massive frame and ostentatious friendliness,the person in the hall had left me with the image of a rustic

type, not a farmer exactly but one of those old-time

professional wrestlers who climbed into the ring in bib

overalls, brandishing a rusty pitchfork.

As it happened, I had already guessed who he was.Back in July, Laura Brennan Jepson, also known as LBJ to

those of us who worked for her, had abruptly remarried and

moved to Chicago, leaving me and a co-worker, Ann-Elise

Goldberg, temporarily in charge of the magazine.

Meanwhile, we were told that a person named Don Sykeswould be dropping by occasionally to help Don Pulliam and

Mary Kay clarify their needs and values when it came to the

search for a new LBJ.


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John Rain, one of Pulliams vice presidents and our

temporary boss, had called a meeting to relay this tidbit,

describing Sykes as a publications guru and a layman in oneof the congregations. Ann-Elise asked whether Sykes might

be shooting for the job himself. Not a chance, John Rain

assured us. He chuckled politely at the thought. Sykes was

coming to Boston out of the goodness of his heart, solely to

help his denomination, and at his own expense. Not thatDon Pulliam wouldnt have loved to hire Sykes, with whom

he had bonded during his years as a minister in Baltimore,

but the LRC simply couldnt afford it, not at the

stratospheric pay Sykes had enjoyed in the for-profit sector.

At the moment he was publisher ofSheri Lee LawtonsHome Designs, a magazine just launched out of Kansas City.

Sheri Lee was the downscale Martha Stewart, or so we had

been told.

I sat down in my ergonomic desk chairthe LRC

had bought these for everyone last spring, after KarlaPerkins Fudge in payroll was stricken with chronic lower

back pain and filed for disability. It was a warm mid-

October day, the air dry and woody, and the afternoon light

fell like a golden blessing on the trees down in the common,

some of which were just beginning to turn. My window washalf-open, and I got up to open it all the way. Off to the

east, on the redbrick sidewalk in front of the statehouse, a

few dozen hefty welfare mothers and a handful of middle-


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pains to avoid the encounter, making big, sweeping detours

around the bebop acolyte.

Oy, said Ann-Elise, slowly shaking her head. Isthis how the left presents itself? No wonder we never win

anything.

We stood at the window, mesmerized.

Before long, the picketers packed up and left,trudging downhill and across the common to the Park

Street subway station, accompanied by the thudding drum.

So is Sykes the heir apparent? I said to Ann-Elise then,

leisurely resuming my ergo-seat.

It was something I probably shouldnt have raised.Ann-Elise was applying for the job herself, even after John

Rain had told us both in confidence that Pulliam was

insisting on a Uni, or Yoonie, as adherents of the faith liked

to call themselves. John Rains news had been easy enough

to believe. Pulliam never missed a chance to point out thatthe magazine had turned into a bastion of irreligion. Unlike

Ann-Elise, I had taken the institutional hint, but then

again, I didnt want the job. Or I wanted the title and the

salary but not the internal politics that went along with

themthe constant squabbles with readers, the tension-filled powwows with Pulliam and his many vice presidents,

the periodic run-ins with the Rev. Mal Bond and COPA,


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Mals committee for promoting antiracist thought, a rising

new group at the LRC.

Ann-Elise took a seat on the windowsill and gaveme a pained look. For all her new toughness, the topic

clearly bothered her. The heir apparent? she said. Her

dark eyes swam with emotion, some combination of hurt

and anger. I hopeits not Sykes, if that was Sykes out in the

hall. People that friendly creep me out, man. I always getthe feeling theyre hiding something.

I rarely make predictionssomehow, coming from

my lips, they always end up sounding both cynical and

grandiosebut this time I yielded to temptation. Mark my

words, Ann-Elise. If they dont end up hiring Sykeshimself, theyll get somebody like him. Overweight. Hearty.

Probably male. Another guy in Pulliams image. That, or

someone worse. Maybe someone with a serious mental

disease.

Mickey! Cut it out! she laughed, but the laughhad a shrieky undertone. Was this a reaction to my

tastelessness regarding the unsound-of-mind? To my

harping on the awkward fact that she didnt have a prayer of

getting the job? Either way, you could tell she didnt think I

was being funny.She was right on that, of course. I had nearly two

years seniority over Ann-Elise, and my name appeared

above hers on the masthead, so her efforts to become my


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boss, however long the odds against her, had given our

dealings a new edginess. At the moment, however, I was

just acting boorish. I was rubbing Ann-Elises face insomething unpleasant that wasnt her doing, probably by

way of venting my uncertainties about the workplaceand

my own place in it.

After our first brush with Sykes, we enjoyed amonth or two of calm. John Rain and Ardith Jolly Rodgers,

the personnel director, had placed ads for the editor-in-

chief position in every major daily from here to

Washington, but if anyone submitted a rsum, I hadnt

heard about it. Meanwhile, Ann-Elise and I ran themagazine. We half-forgot about the search for the new

LBJ. (I half-forgot about it anyway. After the initial shock

of LBJs departure, I had grown to like running, or co-

running, the show, the feeling that the training wheels had

come off at last, and a new LBJ was the last thing I wantedto think about. Denial is not a river in Egypt, a text Yoonie

clergy tended to preach on in those heady Clinton Era

days.)

Then in early December John Rain called another

meeting. Sykes was applying for the job, after all. In fact, hewas here in the building today, interviewing with Mary Kay

and Pulliam.


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This news, though not quite shocking, annoyed me

beyond reason. I said, What about the money? Didnt you

say the LRC could never pay enough to get this guy?It took John Rain a few beats to formulate an

answer. A well-groomed Euro-American person with wavy

hair, bright eyes, picturesque crows feet, a silver mustache.

It turns out we may have found a way around that

obstacle, he said. He spoke in a burnished, mellifluousvoice like the voice of a classical music announcer. We are

asking for your patience with this constantly evolving

process. His smile lines deployed, and dimples appeared in

his close-shaven cheeks, but he looked more tense than self-

assured.Ann-Elise must have been furious. She said, You

promised me and Mickey we would have quote-unquote

substantial input into who gets hired.

You willhave some input. Sykes is coming in

tomorrow expressly for the purpose of speaking with you.In other words were going to interview him?

Because I think its pretty awkward for me to be part of the

interview, since Im also a candidate for the job.

I wouldnt call it an interview. Id call it an

informal conversation.An informal conversation concerning what?

Concerning the position of editor-in-chief. Look,

Ann-Elise, when we on exec staff make a decision, we make


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it in the interests of the institution as we see them. That is

our mandate from the board. John Rain had stopped

smiling.Ann-Elise looked unhappy, but she let it drop, and

the meeting ended. On our way out John Rain handed us

copies of the Sykes rsum, which went on for many pages

and appeared to have been written on a beat-up old manual

typewriter, with some characters falling above the line andothers below it, giving the text the zany, psychedelic look of

a hippie manifesto. I followed Ann-Elise out and along the

fifth floor hallway, where she tore up her copy into small

pieces and tossed them in a purple recycling bin.

Next day, we met with Sykes for the informal

conversation. When I left home that morning, Patty walked

me to the door. We had a moment of affection. Then she

looked me in the eye and said, Be nice to Sykes, K. Hes

probably your new boss, so why not make a goodimpression?

Im nice to everyone, I saidmy usual comeback

when Patty told me to be nice.

She stepped backwards a foot and glared at me.

This is the best job youve had! Dont blow it!Glaring back, I moved in on her till the two of us

were nose to nose.


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Patty was the first to crack a smile. Apparently she

understood that, as much as I adored her and respected her

judgment, there wasnt a chance I would heed her advice.Shed told me to be nice to Sykes at least a dozen times in

the last twelve hours, but I didnt much feel like being nice.

I had a powerful suspicion that, like many of the workings

of the LRC, this informal conversation wouldnt withstand

close scrutiny.I walked off toward the subway. Towering maples

lined the block, a few dry leaves clinging to the long,

arching branches. High in one tree a fat, shiny crow let

loose a series of percussive clicks, then flew off and perched

on a neighbors rooftop. I breathed a deep lungful of goodQuincy air, cool with a hint of ocean to it. It was the kind of

bright early winter day that I normally enjoyed.

At eleven we gathered in Lauras old office, now

empty save for some orphaned possessionsmanuscripts,books, and office supplies strewn atop the desk, the file

cabinet, the windowsills, the faded rug, the steam radiator

with its hissing release valve. The place had returned to a

state of nature, with a half-inch of dust over every

horizontal surface.Amid these ruins Ann-Elise and I and Sheila Rae

Krass, our junior editor cum file clerk, occupied Lauras

miscellaneous chairs, which Sheila Rae had dusted off with


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dampened paper towels. In his hounds tooth coat and dark

wool slacks, Sykes had lowered himself into a leather wing

chair, the offices most imposing seat. Hands folded overthe top of his stomach, the place where it turned nearly

horizontal, he smiled and did his best to propitiate us while

at the same time evading questions as if he had already sewn

up the job. Which, of course, he had.

While Sykes held forth, we fidgeted, crossing ourlegs and uncrossing them. Once, when an answer grew

over-long, I caught myself tracing my initials in the dust on

the shaky corner table, a nervous habit left over from

adolescence. (MLK, I wrote, MLK MLK. Yes, my middle

name is Leonard, and thus I share Dr. Kings initialsameaningless coincidence.)

Q. If you were to become our new editor-in-chief,

what features of the magazine would you change?

A. I should start out by saying you three people

have given us a damn fine publication, and I need to

thank you for it on behalf of my religion. I know

you dont belong to it, Brother Pulliam already told

me that, and Laura Brennan Jepson, whom I hopeto have the privilege of meeting and thanking in

person one dayI know Laura didnt belong to it

either. And let me tell you, thats OK by me. Only


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makes your accomplishment that much more

dazzling andand worthwhile! Thanks to you

people, I can proudly hold up our magazine to anyreligious magazine in the land. Plenty mass

circulation magazines, too! I dont know about the

other churches, but everyone at mine reads every

darn issue cover to.

Q. Its nice of you to say all that, but I wonder if

youd want to changeanything?

A. There I go, ramblin. Bad habit of mine, so

thanks a lot for stopping me. Probably bored you todeath if you hadnt! Look, I wouldnt come here

with a change agenda. Im not that kind of guy. All

the great things you guys have done here, I would

come with the sole thought of learning from you.

Take me a year-plus just to get up to speed!

Q. So theres nothing you would change about the

magazine?

A. Oh, maybe several years from now I might wantto change something around the edges. Dont want

to close the door completely. Someday the cover

might need a little tweaking, say. Table of contents.


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Something like that. But not at the start. Its not

something Id even have in my mind. And if I did

have it in mind, were talkin something real minor.Kind of thing youd barely notice.

Q. Could we move to another area? According to

your rsum you worked at the Timesand some

other big papers, which of course says terrific thingsabout you. But you never stayed anywhere more

than two years. Why did you leave all these jobs so

soon, and how long would you stay if you came to

work here?

A. Look, Im just a simple guy. The kind you might

meet at the pancake house, the backyard barbecue.

Checkout line at the supermarket. But theres one

thing about me thats a little different from the

other simple guys. And that one thing is my deepbelief in the Yoonie church and Yoonie values.

Know what my screen saver is at work? Back in

Kansas City? The Five Suggestions, in 28-point

type! Thats how much of a Yoonie I am nowadays.

So knowing that about me, you got to know thatcoming to the LRC and getting to work with your

fine team here, itd be like I died and went to

heaven. You give me this job, only way Ill leave is a


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pine box, I swear! Thats what I told the wife last

night when I called her on the phone.

Q. And what about the other jobs? The New York

Timesand all those?

A. Thats a fair question. Absolutely. Be negligent

of you not to push me on it. Its all right with you,Id like to answer with something else I said on the

phone: My whole life I been working for somebody

else, so my outside and my inside dont agree with

each other. Thats the metafur I used. The inside

represents my dreams and values; outside representsthe law of the jungle. Survival of the fittest. In other

words, raw economic need: putting food on the

table, college tuition for the kids, keepin up the

mortgage payments. If you want to put it baldlyI

dont have the hair to put it any other way!Imnothing but a glorified hired hand. Thats what I

was at TheNew York Times, thats what I was at the

Baltimore Sun, thats what I was at the Chicago Trib,

and thats what I was atChicago Sun Timesand all

the others. And thats what I am in my currentposition, out in Kansas City with Sheri Lee. Sheri

Lee is cool, but that aint where I live. Thats why

Id kill for the kind of job you guys got here. If I


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had a job like that, I could finally say I was earning

my bread without doin violence to my beliefs. That

my outside and inside agree with each other. Thattheyre functioning in harmony. Isnt that the point

of every religion when you really think about it?

Sykess last remark stopped me. Was attaining

personal harmony the point of all religions or merely one ofmany points, and far from the most important one? The

room fell silent as I rolled the thought around my

consciousness.

John Rain rapped out a light warning knock, jarring

me out of my deliberations. Opening the door, he waved atme and Ann-Elise in an oddly distant way, as if he were

trying to signal us from across a lake. Sorry to barge in, but

its lunchtime, Don. Don Pulliam and Mary Kay await.

Hands were shaken all around. Sykess handshake,

hearty and optimistic, went along with his overallpresentation.

As we exited the office, two things crossed my

mind.

#1. That of all the questions asked of Sykes every

one had been asked by me. (My co-workers had quitesensibly held their peace.)

#2. That my outside disagreed with my inside.

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