Mosaic Platform
Given that individual and societal definitions of racism and related oppressions vary quite a bit, we've defined a "platform" on which to build The Mosaic, naming the core UU values, commitments, theologies, and understandings that guide our work for anti-racist, multicultural change. The Mosaic Platform is dynamic, intentionally built for and open to change as understandings of racism and oppression, anti-racism and anti-oppression emerge and evolve in our congregations and cultures.
The Mosaic Platform was developed by current and former members of the UUA’s Mosaic Team: Dr. Janice Marie Johnson, Nao Bethea, Rev. Michael J. Crumpler, Rev. Marisol Caballero, Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh, Rev. Dr. Sarah Lammert, and Rev. Stevie Carmody, as well as Carey McDonald, UUA Executive Vice President. Edited by Susan Dana Lawrence.
Purpose
The Mosaic project is the Unitarian Universalist Association’s response to a call in the 2020 Widening the Circle of Concern report to create a common framework for approaching anti-racism and anti-oppression. As The Mosaic grows to include newly-created and curated resources, as well as gatherings, trainings, and learning communities, a common platform on which to construct our Mosaic initiatives becomes all the more necessary. As a pluralistic and self-reflective faith, we hold individual and collective responsibility to consider the contexts and contradictions inherent in our many beliefs and convictions. While we each hold the truth of these complexities in our hearts, we also need shared clarity to pursue unity in joint endeavors. That’s what the Mosaic Platform aims to provide.
As a living document, the Mosaic Platform supports us to access, understand, and utilize the wealth of wisdom received, collected, and generated around our anti-racist, anti-oppressive, and multicultural missional priorities. The Mosaic team holds stewardship of the platform and uses it as a constant reference point. The platform may also be useful to orient and support collaborations across UUA staff groups, UU communities, and beyond.
This platform should not be considered a comprehensive understanding of the complexities of racism, but rather a set of selected understandings and definitions that undergird the UUA’s Mosaic project and initiatives. Racism has been a dominant power structure for centuries. Uncovering and working to dismantle it in this information age requires us to keep up with fast-evolving understandings and terminology. As the UUA Mosaic team and partners continue to co-create The Mosaic within Unitarian Universalism, new learnings will be incorporated into the Mosaic Platform.
Please reach out to mosaic@uua.org with any questions, suggestions, or concerns.
Why “Mosaic”?
In 2021, “Mosaic” was chosen as an umbrella project name for the UUA’s outward-facing anti-racism initiatives. The name Mosaic identifies programs and resources created by the UUA, the Mosaic online hub where these are presented along with resources, gatherings, and learning opportunities produced by other entities and recommended by the UUA Mosaic team.
The name carries forward the legacy of the UUA’s Mosaic Makers Conference, a dynamic gathering and learning community for invited congregational teams who were already deeply engaged in building intentional multicultural communities. The new set of Mosaic initiatives expands the impact of this foundational work, making resources and learning communities available to all UU communities and individuals.
The metaphor of a mosaic, with its many colors, textures, and shapes, celebrates diversity and multiculturalism. The metaphor also suggests a specific anti-racist and anti-oppressive lens through which we actively observe systemic patterns of racism and oppression and continually re-create new patterns toward the goals of equity and liberation for all.
Theological Grounding
A mosaic is a thing of beauty, a complex piece of art created by assembling fragments and found objects, broken pieces and recycled parts. So, too, is the assemblage that is our Unitarian Universalist theology: a work of art, always in progress, shaped by many hands.
This mosaic of Unitarian Universalist theology both sparks and forms our commitment to anti-racism, anti-oppression, and multiculturalism, especially around these core values:
We affirm interdependence. Racism and white supremacy are toxic illusions that separate humanity from one another and from the sacred truth of our interdependence. As Unitarian Universalists, our shared values call us to “honor the interdependent web of all existence,” to “celebrate that we are all sacred beings, diverse in culture, experience, and theology,” and to “declare that every person is inherently worthy and has the right to flourish with dignity, love, and compassion.” Systemic colonialism, racism, and white supremacy mean that we were, all of us, born into a world that has made violence, dehumanization, and oppression seem partially “normal.” Our spiritual grounding reminds us, over and over, how “not-normal,” and how toxic, these are.
We recognize our human capacities for goodness, evil, and everything in between. Unitarian tradition reminds us of the inherent possibility of goodness in each of us, and Universalism reminds us that we are never beyond redemption. We are born into systems of oppression and we absorb them simply by existing in our society. Our faith challenges us to unlearn and dismantle those oppressive habits, within ourselves, in our relationships with others, and in our wider society—so that we might create more love, more justice, and more wholeness.
We value the power of education and critical thinking. Throughout our traditions, our faith has valued both intentional education and the “encounters” we learn from in our lives as avenues to learning, growing, and creating change. We invite learning, ready to let it transform our worldviews, help us counter the oppression we’ve internalized, and bring us closer to living out the love and justice of the Beloved Community.
We respond to a call to liberation from our many theologies. Though Unitarian Universalism follows no single creed, the faith we share aspires to live into the fullness of a collective, interdependent humanity. As religious people, we understand that our freedom is bound up with one another’s freedom. We learn from Liberation Theology the transformative power of Love that arises when people facing oppression build solidarity and power together. Also, our faith draws from a Unitarian tradition that sought to use positional power ethically to reform society and a Universalist tradition that teaches us that power shared is power multiplied with the capacity to transform our world. In the interplay of these orientations to power, we live out a call for liberation.
Calling ourselves in. Universalism teaches us that no one is ever beyond the circle of God’s love. Yet sometimes, the way we’ve internalized a “works-righteousness” theology makes us feel shame and deep unworthiness when we mess up, or when we cause harm. Our covenantal theology calls us to own both our capacity to cause harmand our capacity to make repair. So much of our getting stuck in systems of oppression is rooted in our own internalization of shame. It leads us to act defensively and leads us to shame others. We are called to do the sacred and vulnerable work of accountability, repair, and learning, with compassion for ourselves and other people.
As spiritually and ethically grounded people, living out our Unitarian Universalist faith, we are called to shape our communities and shape the world in accordance with a vision of the sacredness and the interconnection of all. We are inspired by intersectional visions of liberation, and led forward by our own most deeply held beliefs.
Common Understandings and Analysis
Race is a social construct, but its systemic effects are real and life-threatening. Humanity is extraordinarily rich in its cultural, ethnic, and physical diversity. Every continent has had an abundance of ethnic groups living on it since the beginning of humankind. However, the idea of “race” as it exists in the U.S. today was constructed by people with European heritage in order to justify the exploitation and subjugation of people, land, and resources. Racialized thinking has infused our identities and shaped our institutions to continue harming those not categorized as “white.”
While racism is not unique to any particular geographic location, Mosaic’s focus is on racism in the United States. In the U.S., understanding the history of European settler-colonialism and enslavement of Africans and Indigenous Americans, as well as the parallel history of anti-racist, anti-colonialist struggle, is essential for confronting the dynamics of racism. It’s also essential to learn about and engage with specific, local realities and forge anti-racist partnerships where we are.
Impact is as important to acknowledge as intent. We must be willing, personally and collectively, to acknowledge when our words or actions have caused harm. Because we have unintentionally absorbed white supremacy since birth, and because we live in a society based in structural and cultural racism, we can cause harm without intending or even knowing it. Owning our impact on others is the first move toward meaningful apologies and the hope of repairing relationships.
Everyone is harmed by racism, but white people also benefit from it. Everyone has a role to play in our community’s anti-racist work. We all have a vested interest in creating a more racially just world and healing the wounds we carry. While the impacts are different, racism and white supremacy culture injure all of us. In breaking down systems of oppression, white people can play an instrumental role in examining and dismantling the systems of power and socialization that repeatedly privilege white people, to the detriment of people of color.
As we have all been socialized into white supremacy culture, it requires intentional effort to prioritize BIPOC people’s thriving. The inertia of “business as usual” perpetually marginalizes BIPOC people’s experiences and concerns. It’s essential to not only correct for an imbalance in systemic power, but also to center active healing and celebration of cultural lifeways. We must intentionally center BIPOC communities in our anti-racist, multicultural transformation.
Systems of oppression are, by nature, interlocking and compounding. Systems of oppression can have profound and compounded effects on people who hold multiple marginalized identities (for example, a Black woman; a Queer Indigenous disabled person; a poor, fat, transmasculine Asian American). Because the dominant society seeks to suppress the full expression of any of these identities on their own, pressures seep even into marginalized groups to suppress the full expression or inclusion of any other marginalized identity. This strengthens systems of oppression to further reinforce a dominant white, cisgender, heterosexual, ableist, Christian normativity in the U.S. Understanding intersectionality helps us recognize how these systems have adverse effects on individuals. We can also dismantle the impact of these oppressive systems on our culture as a whole by refusing to hold a narrow focus on one oppressive system over others. Anti-racism also needs to include anti-ableism, anti-transphobia, anti-elitism, etc., so that in widening inclusion and protection of one group, we can also widen access and expression of intersecting identities and other groups, having a multiplying effect for liberation.
White privilege exists across class advantage. Class-based oppression is very real. At the same time, experiencing class-based oppression (or any other form of oppression) does not negate the privilege a person experiences from being identified as white in our society.
Challenging systemic oppression is at the heart of being a Unitarian Universalist. As the 8th Principle adopted by hundreds of our UUA member congregations states, building “a diverse multicultural Beloved Community” and acting “to dismantle racism and other oppressions” is an important component of enacting our values in the world. Our Unitarian Universalist shared values, adopted in 2024, affirm the centrality of anti-oppression to our movement and faith.
Anti-racism is a lifelong pursuit. Racism has a long history of taking on different societal norms and policies based on the issues and conditions of a time or place. Anti-racism requires lifelong learning and action from everyone, white people and BIPOC alike. The work of white people includes vigilance and action, to witness and defy racism as it shows up again and again in so many different ways and places. The work of BIPOC includes unlearning internalized white supremacy and colonization. The pursuit of anti-racism will most likely not be complete in our lifetimes, yet we all must commit ourselves to confront racism at each turn.
Definitions and Common Vocabulary
Accountability: Accountability is about owning the impact of our actions, our lack of action, and/or our institutional structures, even when the impact was not intended. Of course, intentions matter: If you’re trying to harm me rather than accidentally harming me, that is important. But it doesn’t mean I’m not harmed, and you still have accountability. You’re not absolved of responsibility to engage in reflection and repair. In the video series, “Building Accountable Communities,” the Barnard Center for Women describes taking accountability for harm as “self-reflecting, apologizing, making amends, and changing your behavior so the harm you caused doesn’t happen again.”
Anti-racism: Anti-racism is a process of actively identifying and opposing racism. The goals of anti-racism are to challenge racism and to change policies, behaviors, and beliefs that perpetuate racist ideas and actions. Anti-racism is rooted in action. It is about working to eliminate racism at the individual, institutional, and structural levels. Anti-racism is not a new concept, but the Black Lives Matter movement has helped increase the focus on its importance.
Anti-Blackness: Anti-Blackness is a name for attitudes, behaviors, and structures that strip Blackness of value, which dehumanizes and systematically marginalizes Black people. Expressions of anti-Blackness can range from interpersonal bias to systemic disregard for Black institutions and policies. Black people can internalize anti-Blackness. White people and people of color, including Black people, can enact it. Because of the way anti-Blackness is embedded in North American culture, everyone has a responsibility to resist it.
Anti-oppression: Anti-oppression describes actions that bring equitable approaches and practices to mitigate the effects of oppression. This term is often used in Unitarian Universalist settings to express a commitment to counter other forms of oppression as well as racism. It is usually built on an awareness of how oppressive paradigms often reinforce each other and pit groups of people who hold diverse marginalized identities against each other. To act anti-oppressively, it is important to recognize the traits of dominant social constructs. In UU shorthand, anti-oppression is often abbreviated as “AO” and is listed along with anti-racism and multiculturalism as AR/AO/MC.
Beloved Community: Beloved Community is a realization of justice, love, and spiritual transformation among people, as described by Martin Luther King, Jr. and other religious leaders for civil rights. The UU movement for an 8th Principle describes it this way: “Beloved Community happens when people of diverse racial, ethnic, educational, class, gender, abilities, sexual orientation backgrounds/identities come together in an interdependent relationship of love, mutual respect, and care that seeks to realize justice within the community and in the broader world.”
Bigotry: Bigotry is a state of possessing unreasonable and intolerant beliefs and attitudes that demean groups or individuals for their characteristics, beliefs, and identities.
BIPOC or IBPOC: BIPOC and IBPOC are acronyms for Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color. BIPOC is an expansion of the previously used “POC” to recognize the heinous historical and current oppression of Black and Indigenous peoples on this continent and worldwide.
Centering Marginalized Identities: Centering marginalized identities involves intentionally shifting a group’s focus from the “default” perspectives of dominant, privileged identities to normalize and bring into nuanced focus the perspectives and experiences of people with oppressed and marginalized identities. To center BIPOC in our work for anti-racism means to ground our approach in the experiences of BIPOC in our UU congregations and organizations. The 2020 report Widening the Circle of Concern is an example of centering BIPOC in our conversations about who we are as a faith and where we need to change in order to truly live our values.
Colonialism and Settler-Colonialism (North American Context): Colonialism and settler-colonialism are names for the ongoing ideological and systemic dominance of Indigenous peoples and lands by European cultural powers. White people and non-Indigenous People of Color continue to participate in the development, mineral extraction, and settlement of Indigenous people’s rightful nations and sacred sites. Early settler-colonialism in the United States was intricately entwined with the enslavement of African people and the assault on Indigenous people and theft of their homelands. Some of our Puritan, Unitarian, and Universalist forbears were actively engaged in settler-colonialism and enslavement in the Americas. Additionally, the U.S. holds several colonial territories where the citizens have no rights of statehood (e.g., Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands). The U.S. also has a history of acting as a colonial power in other countries/regions (e.g., Philippines, Iraq).
Decolonization: Decolonization is the process of freeing people and institutions from the cultural, psychological, and economic effects of colonialism. According to Edgar Villanueva, this includes stopping the cycles of abuse, healing from the trauma of colonization, and connecting to each other to imagine and enact new relationships and possibilities.
Discrimination: Discrimination refers to treating people inequitably based on their identities or social standing. Often fueled by stereotypes and prejudices, discrimination can be perpetrated by individuals, groups, organizations, communities, or entire systems.
Equality vs. Equity: Equality means everyone gets the same resources and opportunities. Equity means resources and opportunities are distributed in a way that each person can experience the same outcome. For example, if three people of different heights are trying to look over a tall fence and they each have a one-foot-tall stool to stand on, that’s equality, but it doesn’t mean they can all see over the fence. Equity means that each person gets the stool they need in order to see over the fence.
Ethnicity: Ethnicity differs from “race.” An ethnicity is often a more specific expression of a person’s and a people’s cultural, linguistic, and national heritage. People can be multiethnic while not being multiracial, such as someone who has Celtic, Ukrainian, and Italian ancestry, or someone who has Somali and Zulu parents.
Internalized racism/oppression: Internalized racism and internalized oppression occur when people who are BIPOC or hold a historically marginalized identity begin to incorporate dominant cultural stereotypes and other oppressive ideas into their sense of themselves or their cultural group. This can manifest as negative self-image, self-critical thought patterns, or actively speaking against their cultural group.
Intersectionality: Intersectionality is a term created by Dr. Kimberlé Crenshaw to acknowledge the intersection of various systems of inequality and oppression in people’s lives. People do not simply experience separate, categorizable effects of racism, classism, sexism, transphobia, heterosexism, ableism, ageism, anti-blackness, or any other “-ism.” They experience all of it in relationship to their own identity, power, and privilege with each. Further, intersectionality wisely notes that trying to analyze and address one form of oppression without paying attention to other forms will likely be unsuccessful, as these systems of inequality are mutually reinforcing.
Liberation: Liberation and “collective liberation” are terms Unitarian Universalists often use when we speak of working toward a vision of freedom from oppression with compassionate justice and dignity for all people.
Multiculturalism: Multiculturalism is practiced in the Mosaic by honoring a multiplicity of cultural perspectives, experiences, and identities within and beyond Unitarian Universalist contexts. Engaging multiculturalism requires the self-awareness to understand one’s own culture(s) and the relational skills to interact kindly and respectfully with people of cultures different from one’s own. However, multiculturalism itself can also be weaponized if it refuses to acknowledge the historical power differentials among many cultures. Practicing a just, equitable multiculturalism is intimately tied to the work of anti-racism.
Oppression: Oppression expresses itself in patterns of control, unjust treatment, disenfranchisement, and dehumanization of groups based on their attributes and identities. Oppression can be enacted through economic, social, religious, and political systems as well as by bigotry and violence. These oppressive actions and conditions are often overlapping (even if uncoordinated), making equitable treatment nearly impossible. People who succeed in overcoming oppression are often perceived as exceptional, seemingly “rising above” their group identity to embrace a dominant cultural ethic. These dynamics, paired with internalized oppression, often reinforce oppressive patterns in society.
Power: Power, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. preached, is “the ability to achieve purpose.” Power is multifaceted. Our personal and institutional sense of power is influenced not just by our core identities that are marginalized or privileged in particular contexts, it is also influenced by our roles, our social relationships, our moral authority, our subject expertise, and our proximity to those who have the ability to reward or punish. Power dynamics are present in all of our relationships. Therefore we are called to be aware of our own power and to use it ethically and mindfully, in service of collective liberation.
Prejudice: Prejudice is a culturally-conditioned predisposition (usually negative) to people or groups of people based on their externally perceived group identity. Prejudice is often built on cultural stereotypes rather than interactions and experiences that involve actual individuals.
Privilege: Privilege by race or skin color gives an individual a position in society and their communities where they are not a target or they are less of a target of systemic racism. It is often difficult to notice one’s own privilege, as privilege is conditionally normalized (“like the water a fish always swims in”) for those who have it. Racial privilege doesn’t necessarily mean advantage, though it often does. Sometimes privilege just means being considered “normal” in a system that marginalizes and oppresses other people. Access to privilege doesn’t determine one’s life outcomes, but does make it more likely that whatever talent, ability, and aspirations a person has will result in something positive for them.
Race: We lift up the way race is defined in the book, Mistakes and Miracles by Nancy Palmer Jones and Karin Lin:
Race is a social construct. Biologically, there is only one race, the human race. Many people object to the use of the word race as a descriptor because racial categories have no scientific basis. The term is particularly problematic when applied to Latinx or Indigenous people. As Rev. Lilia Cuervo says, being Latinx is a matter of culture, not of race.
On the other hand, in a racialized society like that of the United States, everyone is assigned a race, or a ‘racialized identity,’ and that identity has real effects, for good or ill, on individuals’ and groups’ life experiences, opportunities, access to power, and more.
We use the word race... to draw attention to the way white supremacy culture is structured around hierarchies based on skin color, country of origin, culture, and many other attributes.
Racism: Racism is discrimination against a person or group based on their skin color and/or ethnicity. Racism is expressed and experienced through the historical and current actions of individuals, families, organizations, communities, governments, societies, media, and more. Racism is magnified when committed by people and institutions that have power to make decisions and control access to resources, to the detriment of a discriminated-against individual or group. Racism has been built into our Unitarian Universalist institutions just as it has been built into nearly all long-standing institutions in the U.S. Confronting and undoing racism is part of our deep calling as Unitarian Universalists.
Reparations: Reparations are a means of repairing harm. This term is often used as a shorthand for monetary or land remuneration for descendants of Indigenous or formerly enslaved people. These are important efforts, and the concept of reparations can extend further to include changes in governmental or organizational policies to reverse the harmful effects of centuries of racial disenfranchisement. With willing participants, a reparations initiative can also include joint efforts to acknowledge, grieve, and commemorate a harmful past and commit to an anti-racist future.
Stereotype: Stereotypes are oversimplified generalizations about an entire group of people. Stereotypes are based on incomplete and often inaccurate information and ignore individual differences within that group.
Whiteness: Whiteness refers to a state of being “white” and having a white racial identity. Whiteness is a social construct, used since the first colonial times in the U.S. to affirm the power, privilege, and inherent superiority of people of Anglo-Saxon or Western European descent over people of Indigenous American and African descent. As time has gone on, additional groups not initially considered “white” have been welcomed into the U.S. version of whiteness, such as European Jewish people and the many peoples of the Mediterranean coasts. Persian, Arab, and other West Asian peoples have been formally enfolded into whiteness on forms like the U.S. Census, but may or may not identify with whiteness.
Whiteness as an identity has subsumed and replaced many genuine ethnic and cultural identities. Whiteness is often a state of being out-of-touch with one’s own ethnic heritage in favor of being “normal,” “assimilated,” and privileged in America.
White Supremacy: White supremacy in American culture is well described by this Brittanica.com definition: “beliefs and ideas purporting natural superiority of the lighter-skinned, or ‘white,’ human races over other racial groups.” Unitarian Universalists who follow the leadership of BIPOC and white anti-racist educators have expanded this definition: We affirm that white supremacy is not just about beliefs and ideas. It’s also about impact. Systems and structures based in racism have the impact of replicating white supremacy, whether or not any person “believes” in it (see White Supremacy Culture, below). Additionally, child development research shows us that infants and toddlers of all skin colors growing up in the U.S. absorb and internalize white supremacy through everyday interactions with people and the media. One does not have to consciously avow white supremacy in order to internalize it or perpetuate it. Liberating ourselves from internalized white supremacy, as well as structural white supremacy, is sacred work.
White Supremacy Culture: White supremacy culture describes the dominant cultural practices that establish middle- to upper-class white cultural norms as the default way of being in workplaces, congregations, institutions, and pop culture. The combined effect of these cultural assumptions and norms is the advancement of white privilege and power, as well as the oppression of people who do not conform. BIPOC living in white supremacy culture at times embrace and enforce these norms, just as women at times embrace and enforce the cultural patriarchy that ultimately harms them. Once we can identify white supremacy culture, we are called to embody its antidotes in the ways we relate to one another interpersonally and institutionally. To explore characteristics of white supremacy culture and antidotes to it, see Tema Okun's website, (Divorcing) White Supremacy Culture, conceived and designed with the support of colleagues and friends, including the late Kenneth Jones.