21 Day Equity Challenge

“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 graphic below illustrates all the domains in which racism operates.

SOURCE: Emanuel Gospel Center - 5 MIND-BLOWING REALITIES ABOUT RACE (THAT WHITE PEOPLE MAY NOT KNOW)

TODAY’S CHALLENGE: Do one or more of the following…

READ:

READ: Historical Foundations of Race

WATCH:

WATCH: Systemic Racism Explained 

LISTEN:

LISTEN: How Race Was Made

READ:

READ: Race and Racial Identity are Social Constructs