With several high-profile courtroom trials in the news this month, we will explore what’s at stake, how the system works to maintain itself, what could be instead, and what we can do about it.
Reverend Edith A. Love is a community minister in Memphis, Tennessee. She believes all people are her people, the streets are her parish, and everywhere we are, we stand on holy ground.
Summary:
In this sermon, Reverend Edith A. Love examines the systemic inequities of the American legal system through the lens of three high-profile trials involving racial violence. She contrasts the accountability found in the Arbery and Charlottesville cases with the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, arguing that the latter demonstrates how the protection of whiteness functions in society. Love challenges her audience to move beyond passive agreement with Unitarian Universalist principles and instead take active responsibility for dismantling racial hierarchies. By proposing that whiteness itself be put on trial, she calls for a national reckoning with unearned privilege and the historical legacy of oppression. The sermon concludes with a plea for white allies to pursue self-education and support reparations to build a more just and multicultural community.