Title: Racial Unity: An Imperative for Social Progress
Author: Richard W. Thomas
Publisher: Association for Bahá'í Studies, Ottawa, 1993. rev. ed., 224 pages
Review by: Graham Hassall
In 1990 the Association for Bahá'í Studies published Richard
Thomas’ work Racial Unity: An Imperative For Social
Progress. This work was evidently well received, as the
Association published this revised edition in 1993. Although race
prejudice has afflicted most societies in some form, and across
the generations, its perpetuation in the United States throughout
the twentieth century has become a major source of community and
institutional concern. In addition to causing twangs of regret
within American religious and political communities at their
roles in the enculturation of slavery during the years of the
continent’s settlement, the problem of race now threatens
the fabric of American society. Legal, political, religious and
philosophic justifications for the separate existence of black
and white communities have all been attempted, and discarded. It
now remains for American society to embrace diversity, or
experience prolonged insurgency and the virtual disintegration of
any notion of ‘civil society’.
The problem of racism has been addressed in Bahá'í
literature throughout the twentieth century. Firstly, Bahá'í
Writings are in a sense premised on the theme of ‘oneness of
humanity and hence on the elimination of discrimination and
prejudice on grounds of race. The universal Writings of
Bahá'u'lláh on this theme are examined and contextualised in
those of Abdu'l-Bahá and Shoghi Effendi, both of whom spoke and
wrote at length of America’s specific challenges. These
warnings, whether in Abdu'l-Bahá’s discourses in North
America, or in Shoghi Effendi’s 1938 essay Advent of
Divine Justice, are fully reviewed in Racial Unity.
But Thomas’ analysis performs a far greater service than
rehearsing Bahá'í viewpoints. His thesis is that racial unity
is an ‘imperative for social progress in the modern
world’. To persuade the reader that this is so, he explores
the foundations of race relations at the time of America’s
founding, and the evidence suggesting extensive inter-racial
cooperation in the ancient world. A steady decline in relations
between black and white through the articulation of
philosophically and religiously-suspect, self-serving,
Eurocentric worldviews, has cost civilization dearly, through
overt conflict, and through missed opportunities to benefit from
the development of human capacities.
Thomas’ argument is that, despite the damage inflicted on
American society by the white supremacist views of such founding
fathers as Thomas Jefferson, there has existed throughout
American history an ‘other tradition’ in race
relations, one which persistently advocated multiracialism, and
one which is presently being articulated with considerable effect
and event greater potential, by the Bahá'í Community.
Race Unity contributes to the Bahá'í literature on
race from a number of standpoints. Building on the approach taken
by Gail Morrison in her biography of Louis Gregory, Thomas
explores the struggles experienced within the Bahá'í Community,
as its diverse membership sought to align their beliefs and
actions with the Divine principle of racial equality. Early
essays by Louis Gregory had reported on inter-racial amity
activities undertaken by the North American Bahá'í Community in
the 1920s and 1930s, but other essays on race from this time
settled for more general expressions of ideals rather than with
identification of actual progress, and challenges.
Nathan Rustein gains wide support for describing the
‘spiritual disease’ of racism in North America.
An earlier essay by Thomas combined elements of personal
experience with a desire to present the problem of racism -
whether inside the Bahá'í Community or beyond it - in
historical perspective, and Race Unity similarly includes
passages that acknowledge the author’s personal involvement
in the events being described. The period commencing in the 1960s
in which young Black activist Bahá'ís were ultimately able to
control their anger and to channel their energies into the
progress of the Bahá'í community appears to have been critical
to the Community’s capacity in the 1990s to implement a
social program called ‘Models of Racial Unity’ (as no
more than an aside: this reviewer awaits with enthusiasm a study
of Alain Locke’s relationship with the Bahá'í Community,
particularly with his status as an early black philosopher
increasing rapidly).
In 1992 the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the
United States published a statement on "The Vision of Race
Unity: America's Most Challenging Issue", and in the years
since race unity activities undertaken by the North American
Bahá'í Community have attracted considerable media attention.
Scholarship on Bahá'í responses to issues of race has expanded.
Although Race Unity focuses on North America, the
existence of similar problems in such other countries as South
Africa is acknowledged (although events there, particularly the
dismantling of the apartheid legal regime, have
considerably overtaken the text). Racism is a global problem, not
exclusively a North American one, and Bahá'í Institutions in
other countries have conducted education campaigns of their own
aimed at mitigating its influence. When Bahá'í Communities
elsewhere decide to examine their own responses to this vital
issue of race unity, they will of necessity turn to Thomas’
scholarship for inspiration and example.