In Black America; The Rev. Cecil Williams, Part 1

clicking on the pencil. From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is In Black America. And if there is no mutuality, there is no diversity. This is why academia has a very serious problem, it must confront.

You see, because education in America says that there must be a teacher, and there must be students. Well, that sounds good, that should be. But education in many ways says that how you teach children, young people, young adults, how you teach them is, you give them information and make sure that they give you back the same information you gave them, right? You give them information and let them tear it apart, let them tear it apart, and when they tear it apart, accept the fact that they made tear it apart so much so that it may change you.

The Reverend Cecil Williams passed up Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco. Recently, Reverend Williams opened the 1991 Religion Lecture Series at Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas. In April of 1990, Reverend Williams co-chaired the Second National Conference that focused on, quote, the Black family community and crack cocaine, prevention, intervention, treatment and recovery, end of quote. The conference attracted more than 2,000 persons from across this nation. Reverend Williams received national attention when his church served more than 60,000 meals and provided human services to hundreds of persons, left homeless by last year's devastating earthquake in San Francisco. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. This week, the Reverend Cecil Williams passed up Glide United Memorial Methodist Church in Black America. If we make a difference, if those of us who choose to make a difference, then we become original.

We become, you need to be original and you need is to be creative, to never, never settle in, settle down and say, we got it at last. Never. Because once you say, I got it, you just lost it. You see, you've just lost it. There are a lot of arrogant people in the world who say they got it. I just experienced one last Sunday at my church. I embrace people when they come to my church and as they leave at the 9 o'clock and 11 o'clock. And we average at my church on Sunday morning, probably around 2500 people, 9 in 11. 40% of the people who come to my church are white, 40% black, 20% Asian and Hispanic. And I try to get everything else I can.

It's a dangerous proposition, I'll tell you that right now. It's dangerous. Most of the people who come to my church will tell you that the theology that they have, the religious understanding that they have, is varied. I have some of the most conservative to the most extreme. For the past 25 years, the Reverend Cecil Williams has been the Minister of Liberation at Glyb Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco. From that position, he has been on the forefront of change as Minister, TV personality, author, lecturer, community leader, and a spokesperson for the poor and those recovering from drugs and or alcohol abuse. In February of 1990, Reverend Williams began an experiment that may become one of the most significant models in a war, not against drugs, but against addiction. Reverend Cecil Williams is the native San Andral of Texas and is the graduate of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas.

As part of his defense in the war on poverty, teen pregnancy and drugs, Reverend Williams is set up a program at Glyb Memorial that provides services for children, single parents, and the poor and homeless. During Reverend Williams' Open Southwestern's University Religious Lecture Series, Reverend Williams' topic focused on diversity as a revolutionary force in America, now the Reverend Cecil Williams. In the 1990s, as we move into a new century, I am convinced along with a number of people that diversity is not only beginning to have its impact but will even have a greater impact. And we are convinced that if that be the case, that what we must do is bring to the fore, bring to people some interpretation, some realistic information that people can work with and hopefully digest and ultimately respond to in ways that will empower people individually

and collectively, individually and in community. You're going to hear me talk a lot about power because I'm convinced that most people don't know what power is. I'm convinced that most people are afraid of power and most people don't even know that they are afraid of power. One, two, I'm convinced that most people who perhaps understand power or want to understand power, misuse power, three, I'm convinced that most people who have power will never give it up. By the way, I'm come from the African-American experience, so you've got to understand something.

When I get this really speaking, I speak in rhythm, so your head is going to start moving in rhythm, okay? You might as well know that, so I'm preparing you for it now. You're not going to sit up and say, if you start, oh, and I'm going, I'm going, we're ahead of you, all right? So get ready. I don't know what is going to happen because I don't program this stuff, but it will happen again to you. Now, is that phenomena, which in many ways, all of us will get in touch with, will experience, and will either accept or reject it. And we have some funny ways, some focus, focus ways of involving ourselves in the issue of power.

I come here today to talk to you about what makes a difference in the world. And what really makes a difference in the world, as far as I'm concerned, is change is renewal, revival, conversion, liberation, is upheaval, revolution. What really makes a difference in the world is distant. What really makes a difference in the world is a minority report. It really makes a difference in the world are people who will not take life for granted, and therefore become different. What really makes a difference in the world are those who choose to be different. That's what makes a difference.

There is no, once you hear this, there is no demand for usual people. It's not. There's no demand for usual people. There's just no demand for usual people. But there is, I think, a challenge and a cry in the 1990s, in the year 2000, a challenge and a demand for people who will, in fact, be different in the world in which they find themselves. Now, let me warn you, I'm not talking about just going around acting like you're different. I'm different, Joe. Like Richard Price says, I'm bad, Joe, I'm bad, you know. I'm not talking about, you don't say you're bad when you're bad. Did you just hear what I said? You don't say you're different when you're different. You don't say that you're renewed when you're renewed, you don't say, I got a revolution

going on when you got a revolution going on. In fact, you don't want folks to know about your revolution, they eat some of them. People can tell, it's not so much what you say, it's what people see, experience, engage, encounter, confront. It's what people test and taste and get with. That lets people know that something is occurring, that is not ordinary. You see, the thing I am about, the thing I want you to know something about is that if we make a difference, if those of us who choose to make a difference, then we become original, we become, you need to be original and you need is to be creative, to never, never settle in, settle down and say, we got it at last.

Never, because once you say, I got it, you just lost it, you see, you've just lost it. And there are a lot of arrogant people in the world who say they got it. I just experienced one last Sunday at my church. I embrace people when they come to my church and as they leave at the 9 o'clock and 11 o'clock, and we average at my church on Sunday morning, probably around 2500 people, 9 in 11, 40% of the people who come to my church are white, 40% black, 20% Asian and Hispanic. And I try to get everything else I can. It's a dangerous proposition, I'll tell you that right now, it's dangerous. Most of the people who come to my church will tell you that the theology that they have,

the religious understanding that they have, is varied. I have some of the most conservative to the most extreme. Woman came to me just the other day and said, I still haven't forgotten my man that I was going to talk about. I'll talk about him. He came to me a little day and she said, I won't you know I'm an atheist, but I'm joining your church. Like, I'm going to be shocked at that, you know, so what, you know, like, you're not the first one. I mean, here you are, you know, so what? I love atheists, it's dangerous, it's dangerous, let's go back to the man, okay? The man comes down the stairs. I'm embracing folks and I have people who work with me because at my place, you've got to understand anything can happen, you know, any day, anything, I'll give what it will, this past, let's talk about the child, I'll be back to the man and a man, remember,

and forgotten the man. There's a child, you know, this Sunday I'm preaching at the 9 o'clock and I'm going, really going. And I said, you know, there's some passionless people in the world and every one to the world, we are yell and scream and shout, we're, if something happens, we ought to let it be known that we have passion and all of a sudden a two-year-old kid says, yeah! Now, you know, I don't pay people to do those things either. I don't set up props, right? There are no props. I wish I could, but it would never work. And like that, the man, who's coming down the stairs, right? And I mean, he's dressed, at my place, I haven't gotten the man yet, at my place, you dress in whatever, you dress, just make sure you put on some kind of clothes, okay? But you see, we get caught up too much in what we wear.

You know, we got to have all, we got to look a certain way, and coming from the black experience, the African-American experience, we have felt a long time that the way to be accepted and acceptable is to look good, you know, where are, and then we go into middle class barriers so much, you know, where we get a fur coat, Cadillac car, as well as all the African-Americans know, I didn't come here to not tell the truth, I'm going to lay it out, I don't hold back, oh, nothing, okay? And in a lot of churches, you go to those churches and you will see, you will see. People sitting up there with fur coats on and all that other stuff, because they think that is what makes them acceptable, and I challenge any clothes that makes me acceptable. Going back to the land who's coming down the stairs, thought I'd forgotten it, didn't

you? Comes down the stairs and we embrace. And as soon as we embrace, he turns to me and he says to me, why don't you say, when you talk about the human condition, why didn't you put Jesus in the human condition? All you got to say is Jesus Christ, and I would have been okay, and I said you will never be okay, because I'm going to say it your way, see, I got my own stuff, my problem was I let you tell me too long, spoon-fed religion, and I will not accept spoon-fed religion or spoon-fed anything else anymore. If I can't engage it, if I can't come upon it, if I can't confront it, if I can't participate in it, then don't be telling me what I got to say. See a lot of people get hooked on religion and think that because they're hooked on,

we always tell them, oh, how religious they are, that's a religious woman, why? Because she quotes the Bible? Because he been in the church for 40 years, and he's superintendent of the school, the Sunday school or whatever it is, yeah, he's religious because he's never missed a Sunday of church, yeah, he's religious, that's stuff! Now if you don't know what stuff is, let me tell you. Stuff is the guts of life, stuff means substance, stuff means power, stuff means coming into your own, stuff means working from the bottom up, always from the stuff means the ground in which you're stuck, stuff means earth, stuff means soil, stuff means that which is really real, stuff is stuff, stuff is stuff, they're not like stuff.

What am I trying to say, I'm trying to say to you this morning, my brothers and my sisters, simply that if we are to look at diversity with all of its ramifications, first and for most, we must understand that diversity means that every member of that diverse group must have individual and collective power, community power. There must be under power a new duality, and if there is no mutuality, there is no diversity. Do you hear what I just said? This is why academia has a very serious problem, it must confront.

You see, because education in America says that there must be a teacher and there must be students. Well, that sounds good, that should be, but education in many ways says that what you, how you teach children, young people, young adults, how you teach them is, you give them information and make sure that they give you back the same information you gave them. Education, I'd say, you give them information and let them tear it apart. Let them tear it apart, and when they tear it apart, accept the fact that they made care and apart so much so that it may change you.

I didn't mean to say that, I really didn't, but I'm going to catch a plane out of you as quick as possible today, so I ain't going to give you time to catch me, right? It means that educating people not only involves thinking, the process of thinking, but education also involves, I'm sorry, oh, I'm back up. So, you can see me in the balcony. Education also involves a mutuality in being educated. It means that there is power shared by those who come together in academia. That to me is diversity, power is, mutuality. All right, let me push this a little more. In my congregation, some 3,200, their blacks, whites, browns, and yellows, a whole lot

of women, some lesbian, I have gay men, I have straight men, straight women. I have bisexual, bisexual, asexual, no sexual, any sexual, I don't care. I don't get caught up in sexuality, you see. To me, if we get caught up in trying to determine how I can make you, like me, whatever that is, then I am caught up in impowing myself and not you. And I choose for both of us to be empowered. And I don't know what I can do that much about your empowerment, to be honest with you,

but I sure can't do some about mine. I think I can with a lot of folks who feel powerless. Now, that's one thing, secondly, it seems to me that what I can do also is assure you that there is nothing that we will not confront. We take a risk on any issue, on any level at any given time. We don't have a thing set up by which issues are not confronted. If you want to take it on, we'll even have to organize, just to take it on. This is not to beat our breasts, say, oh, great, we are, because I'm going to tell you all. There's a continuum that I have to constantly deal with.

It is that continuum where I grew up as a black kid, a black child, being nobody and having to understand what segregation and racism would do to me. And I began to say, part of what I've got to be over here as I walk that continuum is that I've got to be that which gives me motivation and self-esteem and self-work and I ain't going to let nobody, this is even in high school, I'm not going to let nobody determine for me that I cannot be myself, I'm going to be black, no matter what anybody says, I'm going to be black, that's just it. And it was awful, I had to break down, I was telling them about it last night. But that's all we have to talk about that right now, because break down is a breakdown. But anyway, that continuum that says can go right on and then on the other side of the continuum that which says, I'm really something, y'all, by the way I do it, by the way I enact

it, I'm really, I'm powerful, I got this going for me, I got an ego, Lord at last I got an ego, so you got that over here, this over here where you're nobody. And the church, the church I know, thank you for helping me last night weld it, the church I know standing in the middle saying, the humble, Lord, have mercy, Roy, look, see, the church in the middle saying, be humble, never you are not, you're not tuned, you're not old yet. Oh Lord, if I could just, I want to, I want to market that stuff, but I found out that I can't market it, okay, you're not that great, just be yourself. See, in diversity, and this is where I'm going to really get a lot of folks, in diversity,

the issue of power involves authenticity. So therefore, it means that I don't have to change to be like nobody else. It means that I came from Africa. Three years ago, I've been to Africa on numerous occasions, different parts of Africa, but one of my other brothers and Dick Blum, who is the woman who's running for governor, state of California, Diane, I'm talking about you, anyway, Diane Feinstein's, I mean, her husband and three of us, four of us all together, went to Africa. This is one of the experiences.

We went to Alex Haley's home village, but we went other places, but we went to Senegal, Decau Senegal, and out from Decau Senegal, is an island, Gory Island, and what you do every 30 minutes, you catch a boat in Decau Senegal, and go to Gory Island, because that's where over 6 million blacks, 6 million Africans were taken to the island and filtered through, so they could become slaves in America as well as other countries. You go there. At the time we went, and I'll tell you about another time later on, but at the time we went, when we got off the boat, some of the kids ran off and said, hey, I'm from America, come go with us, let us take you. And we didn't go with the regular tour guides, we let the kids take us. The Reverend Cecil Williams, pastor of Glyb Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco,

speaking at Southwestern University's religious lecture series in Georgetown, Texas. I would like to thank Lemurio Smith for her assistance in the production of this program. Remember, views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessarily those of this station or the University of Texas at Austin, until we have the opportunity again for in black America's technical producer, Dana Whitehair. I'm John A. O. Hanson, Jr. Please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America cassettes, Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building V, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712, that's in black America cassettes, Longhorn Radio Network, Communication Building V, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712.

From the Center for Telecommunication Services, the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John A. O. Hanson, Jr. Join me this week on in black America. The Revincesa Williams this week on in black America.