Pax Christi rejects racism in the peace and justice movement

Social justice news
June 2001

Amnesty International sees globalization as new human rights foe
Bush offers a "back to the future" energy plan
Pax Christi rejects racism in the peace and justice movment
President picks conservatve drug czar, calls for liberal policies
Will Catholics party on with Republicans?

Pax Christi rejects racism in the peace and justice movement
In 1992 Pax Christi USA turned 20. Back then the group celebrated its history and looked back at its many accomplishments in the Catholic peace and justice movement. But it also took a moment to consider its future.

In continuing the organization's mission to promote peace and nonviolence, were there new issues it should tackle? Had Pax Christi neglected any areas of concern? A national membership survey returned an emphatic yes. The anti-violence group needed to look at racism, its members said.

Almost ten years later, the group is feeling the effects of that initial wake-up call and its impact is proving to be dramatic. This August a 23-member team will present its recommendations for a new program and a new vision for the organization at the Pax Christi national assembly. It's called Brothers and Sisters All, and it lays out a 20-year national effort to transform the peace movement by making it anti-racist and multicultural.

"This is the most prophetic issue we've ever dealt with," says David Robinson, Pax Christi program director and a member of the anti-racism team. "The peace and justice movement is never going to move this society much beyond where it is now until we deal with the race question."

The first step, Robinson says, is defining racism. "It's not just racial prejudice, but the misuse of institutional power," he says. Racism maintains privileges for white people by denying them to people of color, Robinson explains.

According to Robinson, the institutional power of racism has a profound impact on the issues Pax Christi has traditionally examined, such as human rights, disarmament, and economic sanctions. That's why a focus on racism is necessary, Pax Christi National Coordinator Nancy Small says.

"We want to look at these issues through a lens of anti-racism," Small says. "It's a shift in how we do the work we do, not what we do."

But before it can change the world, Pax Christi, which Robinson describes as "97 point something percent white," found it must turn a critical eye on itself.

"We're primarily a white organization," Small says. "That's not something we're particularly proud of, but that's how Pax Christi developed. We need to look at why."

In the short-term, the focus of Pax Christi's anti-racism initiative will be internal. The anti-racism team has developed a set of objectives and goals for the next two and five years, plus a 20-year vision for the organization.

One of the most crucial objectives on its agenda is the diversification of the national organization. "We've realized we can't [just] work on behalf of people of color," Small says. "We have to have them around the table."

Such dramatic changes are bound to worry some, but reaction from members has been enthusiastic, Robinson says. He admits some Pax Christi members have been concerned the group might abandon its historical causes in favor of race issues in the United States. "They're just saying, 'We need to know more about this,'" he says.

They'll get that chance after the Pax Christi national council affirms the group's plans and the anti-racism team officially introduces Brothers and Sisters All in August. Then Pax Christi will set to work. Perhaps at its 50th birthday it will celebrate the difference an anti-racism perspective made in the peace and justice movement.—Anne Graber

More info:
Pax Christi USA
Brothers and Sisters All

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