WELCOME TO THE 21 DAY EQUITY CHALLENGE DAY 2!

THE EFFECTS OF RACISM

“Americans believe in the reality of ‘race’ as a defined, indubitable feature of the natural world. Racism—the need to ascribe bone-deep features to people and then humiliate, reduce, and destroy them—inevitably follows from this inalterable condition. In this way, racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature, and one is left to deplore the Middle Passage or Trail of Tears the way one deplores an earthquake, a tornado, or any other phenomenon that can be cast as beyond the handiwork of men. But race is the child of racism, not the father.” 

Ta-Nehisi Coates 

 

As you look around our community, are you seeing and addressing how racism operates at different levels? Dr. Camara Jones, Senior Fellow at the Morehouse School of Medicine, says that in order to address racism effectively, we have to understand how it operates at multiple levels. Often what people think of first and foremost is interpersonal racism. Only seeing this level means that we fail to see the full picture that keeps the system of racism in place. The article below illustrates all the domains in which racism operates. 

5 MIND-BLOWING REALITIES ABOUT RACE (THAT WHITE PEOPLE MAY NOT KNOW) 

 

 

Today’s Challenge: Do one or more of the following

Watch

Systemic racism is evident in every area of life in the U.S., with disparities in family wealth, incarceration rates, political representation, education, and other areas. Trying to solve these problems requires changes in major parts of our system. Here's a closer look at what systemic racism is, and how we can solve it.

Read

From the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The term “race,” used infrequently before the 1500s, was used to identify groups of people with a kinship or group connection. The modern-day use of the term “race” is a human invention.

Listen

Check out Season 2, Episode 2 How Race Was Made of the Seeing White podcast. Radio host and producer John Biewen, along with an array of leading scholars, takes a deep dive into the questions: Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

Capture what you learned by journaling your thoughts and feelings about today’s content. Download the free journal page for today. 

DAY 2 JOURNAL

TOMORROW'S TOPIC

UNDERSTANDING BIAS