David Pettee and his spouse, Mindy Scharlin, during their visit to Ghana to explore Pettee's ancestral connections to slave trading.
Exploring the Roots of Oppression
May 14, 2008
The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) continues to advance exploration of the roots of oppression in the United States and around the world.
Rev. David Pettee, the UUA’s Director of Ministerial Credentialing, has researched his ancestors’ involvement in the slave trade, and, as a result, has established a relationship with an African American family who are descendants of slaves owned by those ancestors. His story has been published on UUA.org in two parts:
“Claiming Our History, Warts and All” (May 2007) and “The Ties That Bind: A Deeper Exploration of My Family’s History With the Slave Trade” (November 2007). Pettee’s story also connects to the UUA-owned Beacon Press book by Thomas DeWolf, “Inheriting the Trade.”
Pettee will be a guest on the nationally syndicated NPR news/talk program, “On Point,” on Friday, May 16. He will appear during the second hour of the program, which airs 10:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon in the Boston area (check local listings) and repeats from 7:00 p.m. - 9:00 p.m. locally.
In a UUWorld.org article, James Loewen, whose “Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension of American Racism” is published by Beacon Press, writes about the racist phenomenon of towns where people of color had to leave at sundown. And in 2007, the UUA’s General Assembly voted a Responsive Resolution, “Truth, Repair, and Reconciliation” which asked General Assembly delegates to being the process of repair and reconciliation by “by encouraging their congregations and the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) to research their own and the Association's history: to uncover our links and complicity with the genocide of native peoples; with slavery and the slave-based economy; and with all types of racial, ethnic, and cultural oppression, past and present, toward the goal of accountability through acknowledgment, apology, repair, and reconciliation.” Work on this resolution will be reported on at the 2008 General Assembly in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida (June 25-29).
Last updated on Thursday, May 15, 2008.
