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Lizzo talks diversity, self-confidence and femininity

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MEXICO CITY (AP) - Fresh from winning three Grammys, singer Lizzo visited Mexico City for a private concert, surprising her fans with acoustic versions of her hits and a toast with tequila.

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When I was presented with the opportunity to write about being Black, queer, and proud I was extremely ecstatic, but I knew I had the responsibility to illustrate what it's really like to be Black and queer. This means including the challenges along with the triumphs we face daily.

A common misconception people have about Black queer people is that we must always be Black first. Personally, there is no first, both identities influence me equally. Both identities shaped my life and experiences, one no more than the other. So, I would like to tell Black LGBTQ+ youth that you don't have to decide, this is your life. Live it to the best of your ability and embrace yourself always.

Growing up, I was constantly stuck in this battle with myself, knowing I was gay at a very young age, while going through the constant struggles of being a young Black male in America. It was a challenge trying to find my identity and my place in each of my communities, sometimes feeling like I sat at the outskirts of both. I had no real role models who looked like me and were queer on television, movies, or in music.

Growing up, I went on this journey of discovery alone, a reality I know many Black LGBTQ+ people face; growing up without anyone to talk about the lifestyle, feelings, thoughts, and hardships you know you will face being Black and queer.

The very first person I identified with as I grew older was James Baldwin, a creative, writer, and social justice activist who identified as gay. In a lot of ways, I saw myself in Baldwin. His work primarily explored race, sexuality, and classism in Western society. Unapologetically himself, extremely intelligent, and he rarely filtered his personality for the comfort of others. For that reason, I was drawn to everything he created, said, and took part in.

Today, I live my life free to be myself and represent others like me who were just as lost as I was. So, to me being Black and queer now means strong, compassionate, loving, creative, beautiful, and unapologetic.
Check out below to learn how these 10 GLAAD Campus Ambassadors celebrate their Black and LGBTQ identities. Ose Arheghan Ohio State University How do you identify?
I identify as gender non-binary and queer and as a Nigerian American I represent both the African and the African-American communities.
What about your LGBTQ Black identity makes you proud?
I'm proud of my queer Black identity because of the legacy that queer Black leaders have left behind. When I look at what queer Black people like Audre Lorde and Bayard Rustin and Marsha P. Johnson did, I know that there's precedent for the advocacy and activism I see queer Black folks doing now. I'm proud of all the positive change my people have enacted in the United States and all across the globe. That sense of pride is something I've been able to share in with other queer Black folks and we're able to share in such a beautiful community.
What do people get wrong about your identity and/or communities?
There's this misconception that my Black identity, my African identity, my queer identity, and my trans identity can't exist in one body. There's no inherent conflict within my identities. There's the misconception that the Black community is more homophobic or transphobic that other communities and that's wholeheartedly untrue. There have and always will be queer people in the Black community creating culture and history. I belong in both communities and there is space for me in both communities without me having to compromise any one part of my identity.
Rodney Bethea Lake Forest College How do you identify?
I identify as a gay cis Black male.
What about your LGBTQ Black identity makes you proud?
The one thing about my LGBTQ Black Identity that I love the most is the fact that I have two large backgrounds of history to pull from. In times when I am feeling lost and not sure how to carry myself, I often refer to Black or LGBTQ+ history to reflect on those that came before me. All of the brave activists, artists and role models give me the materials to really walk in my skin with a sense of pride as they did.
What do people get wrong about your identity and/or communities?
Considering there is a lot of stigma that surrounds LGBTQ+ issues within the Black community, the one thing that people miss the mark on is always thinking that sexuality and masculinity are black-and-white. A lot of people think that there is no wiggle room for sexual expression and physical presentation when you are a Black man which can be severely limiting and detrimental to one's self esteem. The fact that I can continuously play around with my sexuality and how I present myself is very freeing and what ultimately led me to come out in the first place. I can define myself as "me."
Dion Copeland University of Louisville How do you identify?
I identify as bisexual.
What about your LGBTQ Black identity makes you proud?
I am proud that I hold two marginalized identities. Being a person of color and belonging to the LGBTQIA+ community allows me to serve as a liaison between the two communities through my work as a campus leader at the University of Louisville.
What do people get wrong about your identity and/or communities?
People assume that I am gay instead of taking the time to genuinely inquire about my sexual orientation. Although I don't approve of asking such an intrusive question, I would rather be asked than have someone assume.
Mei Eyre Cascadia College How do you identify?
I identify as a queer biracial Black woman and I use they/them and she/her pronouns.
What about your LGBTQ Black identity makes you proud?
I'm proud of my identity because I am living proof of the resilience of my ancestors. I will always appreciate the ground that has been laid by those who came before me and I'm proud to bring their hopes and dreams for the future to fruition.
What do people get wrong about your identity and/or communities?
There's a clichéd assumption that Black people's interests are only limited to what's included in Black culture, and that's simply not true. Mainstream media tells a story that does not recognize the diverse interests of Black people. Nerdy fandoms and rock music are among the many interests left out of this narrative.
V Green Georgia State University How do you identify?
I identify as queer and non-binary.
What about your LGBTQ Black identity makes you proud?
I'm proud every day because of the unique experience of my culture I get to experience as a black queer non-binary African American. I love that I'm able to create new spaces with people like me, who know my struggles and my triumphs and see me as I am first and foremost before assuming anything about me. I think that my life would be duller and altogether less worth all the effort I put into living it without the support and friendship of so many Black queer people in my inner circle and those I admire for their creative endeavors.
What do people get wrong about your identity and/or communities?
I think that there's this idea about black people all being so much more homophobic than any other race and that really bothers me. Before anyone accepted me it was cisgender heterosexual black people in my community who understood me and supported me. People even outside of my family who've always pushed me when I felt like I couldn't push myself. I'm not foolish enough to say that people could never pose a danger or threat to me and my queer peers but I know that there's a lot of love in my community and I believe more than enough to accept me and anyone else for all that they are.
Briannah Hill University of Colorado-Boulder How do you identify?
I identify as everyone's favorite friendly, radical, loving, emotional, extra Blaqueer, non-binary femme.
What about your LGBTQ Black identity makes you proud?
Me being queer and nonbinary makes me proud because, even though I have sacrificed my safety I am happy. I'm proud that my identities have given me the confidence to stand up for myself and demand respect.
What do people get wrong about your identity and/or communities?
So many people get it wrong that I and many other Blaqueer/Trans folks can't be both Black and queer/trans at the same time. Also, people get it wrong that Blaqueer/trans people even exist, we exist, and we are here thriving.
Kayla Iman St. John's University How do you identify?
I identify as a queer Black woman; more specifically, bisexual. I choose to say queer before Black because my blackness is visible, my queerness is not, and both are equally important to me.
What about your LGBTQ black identity makes you proud?
What makes me proud about my LGBTQ Black identity is being able to support LGBTQ Black youth. Since being gay is still frowned upon in many Black communities, young Black gay kids are often forced into being closeted, given wrong and toxic information about sexuality or relationships, or are beaten just for stepping outside of the toxic masculinity norm. It makes me proud to be able to combat that and stand up for them. It makes me proud to be able to dispel stereotypes about what it is to be both Black and gay.
What do people get wrong about your identity and/or communities?
Something people get wrong a lot about my identity or my community is they assume I'm bisexual to attract men, or that my being queer makes me less Black. None of those things are true and they are some of the things that make me angriest to hear in 2019.
AJ Lawrence Berklee College of Music How do you identify?
I am non-binary.
What about your LGBTQ Black identity makes you proud?
I love my identity because I can carry myself, personality, and identity like a banner of victory, displaying with pride that this is who I am as a whole.
What do people get wrong about your identity and/or communities?
People misunderstand that queer people and Black people are separate and isolated, they are not. They intersect and I happen to be one of those people who embody both identities.
Dane Scott Vaughn College of Aeronautics How do you identify?
I identify as a gay Afro-Jamaican man.
What about your LGBTQ Black identity makes you proud?
LGBTQ people unfortunately have the disadvantage of being one of the only minority group not raised by their own people. To make things worse our history is rarely taught in schools, so it's left to gay youth to seek out our history. It's common knowledge that the Gay Rights Movement struggled against their oppressors (that alone made me proud to be gay and Black) but as I read more, I discovered LGBTQ icons who worked in the Civil Rights Movement like Bayard Rustin and James Baldwin. Along with inspiring me to do the work, they showed me that when it came to activism, I didn't have to choose "black first" or "gay first."
What do people get wrong about your identity and/or communities?
Due to lack of education, whether purposefully or incidentally, I think people are mistaken about what LGBTQ activist had to go through to get where we are today and what they have to go through today. We, as a community, often get accused of being "sensitive" but if there were places they could get fired, evicted, beaten or murdered for being who you are, I don't think they'd take everything so lightly.
Ryan Wagstaff Washington University How do you identify?
Black American of Afro-Latinx/Afro-Guyanese descent.
What about your LGBTQ Black identity makes you proud?
Being Black Queer makes me proud of where I am from and I know that queer people have existed in African history long before colonization. Black queer people are resilient, we lead, push change, and organize.
What do people get wrong about your identity and/or communities?
Being Black, many in my community believe that my sexuality is a choice when it is how I was born. Being gay, my community of other queer folks who are white do not speak to my racism or believe in colorblindness. Because of this colorblindness from my peers I am also vulnerable not only to homophobia from my Black community but anti-Black racism in my queer community as well. Having this intersectional identity I believe is important for my family of white LGBTQ+ to advocate not only for queer liberation but also Black liberation. Because inherently we all are a part of a larger struggle.
D'antae Johnson is a GLAAD Campus Ambassador and sophomore at Prairie View A&M University studying communications. D'antae is from Dallas, Texas.

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11 students explain what being queer, Black, and proud means to them

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When I was presented with the opportunity to write about being Black, queer, and proud I was extremely ecstatic, but I knew I had the responsibility to illustrate what it's really like to be Black and queer. This means including the challenges along with the triumphs we face daily.

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In recent years, scholars and social movements have brought the issue of mass incarceration into public consciousness in the United States. Many now know that the U.S. has the world's largest prison population, or have heard alarming figures, like an incarceration rate for Black men that is 6 times that for white men. At the same time, although crime is down, disproportionately high rates of violence continue to impact the same communities hit hardest by mass incarceration. Restorative justice brings responsible parties and survivors together to repair the harms caused by crimes, and it may offer a way out of this vicious cycle.

Ayoola Mitchell and Troy Williams came to restorative justice by different paths, but a shared commitment to healing and accountability drives their work with Insight Prison Project, a California-based organization that works with men, women and youth in prisons and jails in California and two other states. Insight Prison Project's approach to restorative justice is unique and effective, and researchers from the UW Center for Human Rights' Rethinking Punishment project are currently exploring the possibilities for implementing its restorative justice curriculum in Washington State. Mitchell and Williams shared their stories during a September 30th panel at UW, at the invitation of Prof. Katherine Beckett, the Law, Societies & Justice Program, and the Law School.

Ayoola Mitchell has lived every mother's worst nightmare-twice. In 2009, her eldest son was shot 17 times. He survived, but just over a year later her step-son, whose life she had been a part of since birth, was shot and killed. Neither of her sons' shooters were ever identified. Despite a family background in law enforcement and a career in the justice system, Mitchell's experiences with the police and medical systems left her unsatisfied. "I knew that something different had to happen," she says. "I made the decision to work harder, and [find something] to get involved with so that another mom doesn't have to bury her son, or another son doesn't pull the trigger."

At a friend's urging, Mitchell became involved in a Survivor Speaker Panel facilitated by the Insight Prison Project in San Quentin prison. As a "victim surrogate," she described how violence impacted her family in a group with incarcerated participants and facilitators. "The more I spoke the more I healed," she says. Mitchell now works as IPP's Community & Survivor Outreach Specialist.

Troy Williams joined Insight Prison Project's Victim Offender Education Group program during the twenty-five years he spent in California prisons for an armed robbery. For six of those years he participated in, and later facilitated, VOEG curriculum. "Before VOEG, I couldn't understand what victims of my crime had gone through. When people said, well you caused them to be in fear of their lives, I thought, well I've feared for my life my whole life."

Hearing from a person who had been harmed by a similar crime led Williams to both understanding and empathy. "I saw how traumatized and paralyzed her life had been as a result of her being a victim of a robbery. That's when I was able to see how my life had been paralyzed by fear." Outside of prison, Williams continues to work with IPP as a Youth Development Specialist and Trainer/Facilitator.

Restorative Justice for Social Change in Washington State

UW researchers Prof. Katherine Beckett and 3 rd-year law student Martina Kartman are studying the impacts of restorative justice practices and working to bring IPP programs to Washington State. The Center for Human Rights supported the research presented in their recent report, Violence, Mass Incarceration and Restorative Justice: Promising Possibilities, which offers a deep dive into the transformative work of the Insight Prison Project. They describe IPP's holistic curriculum, which, uniquely among restorative justice programs, is available to prisoners who are not able to interact directly with those they have harmed, thanks to surrogates like Ayoola Mitchell. IPP also takes on cases involving violent crimes-often excluded from other programs, despite evidence that restorative justice may have the biggest impact in such cases.

Even restorative justice practices that are more limited than IPP's can have a powerful impact. Studies suggest that the overwhelming majority of participants are satisfied with victim offender mediation, a staple of many programs. Researchers have also found significant reductions in both the frequency and seriousness of repeat offenses by participants. Despite these benefits, access to restorative justice remains limited -for example, few prison facilities in Washington State offer such programs.

How can communities and decision-makers in Washington State take action to advance restorative justice practices? "We need to build practical strategies to hold people accountable for harm, secure community safety, and support healing and justice for survivors," says Kartman."At the same time, we must collectively address the historical and structural violence that underpin the interpersonal harms we so quickly condemn."

"Ultimately, we need to create programs in which restorative processes and reparations serve as a substitute for incarceration," adds Professor Beckett. "These diversion programs can, and should, include cases in which violence occurred."

While recognizing the track record of success presented in Prof. Beckett and Kartman's report, Ayoola Mitchell and Troy Williams say that we shouldn't focus only on statistics about restorative justice. What's more important are the stories of lives that have been changed. "I believe in the redemption of people; I believe that nobody should be known by the worst thing that they've ever done," says Mitchell.

For Williams, restorative justice implies not just individual transformation, but social change: "In the same sense that I had to be held accountable for the wrongs that I did... the system has to be held accountable for the wrongs that it's doing."
Watch the full Sept. 30 panel discussion, "Beyond Violence, Crime and Punishment: Toward Transformative Justice" via Talking Stick TV.

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Exploring Restorative Justice Models for Washington State - Center for Human Rights

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In recent years, scholars and social movements have brought the issue of mass incarceration into public consciousness in the United States. Many now know that the U.S. has the world's largest prison population, or have heard alarming figures, like an incarceration rate for Black men that is 6 times that for white men.

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Comedy routine

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Being Black in Canada versus America | Alonzo Bodden

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Definitions

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13 Principles and Definitions for Middle High.pdf

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At Visit Seattle, we share in the pain, sorrow, and anger felt by our Black neighbors, partners, visitors, and colleagues and we stand in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

We have made a conscious effort to share voices and stories from across our diverse community. We recognize, however, that this is not enough. While we do not pretend to have all the answers, Visit Seattle is committed to actively seeking to dismantle and eradicate the systematic and institutionalized racism embedded in our workplace and messaging and we are taking steps to support the community in hopes of change. We pledge to approach this initiative with renewed awareness and open, humble hearts.

We are taking the first step. Below, we have compiled resources and ways to support Black lives in Seattle, now at this critical moment and always.

ZOOM BACKGROUNDS: BLACK LIVES MATTER

Show your support of Black lives in your virtual meetings. Click on either of the images to the left to enlarge and download.

SHAKIAH DANIELSON
Artistic Director & Hip Hop Teacher | Northwest Tap Connection
As a race and social justice-oriented dance studio, Northwest Tap Connection uses dance to enrich the lives of students while also helping them develop self discipline and to instill self confidence.

DAVID RUA AND PRIYA FRANK
Equity Team | Seattle Art Museum
The Equity Team at Seattle Art Museum promotes inclusivity and accessibility in the arts and is a key component of SAM's participation in the city's race and social justice initiative.

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Support for Black Lives in Seattle | Visit Seattle

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We have made a conscious effort to share voices and stories from across our diverse community. We recognize, however, that this is not enough. While we do not pretend to have all the answers, Visit Seattle is committed to actively seeking to dismantle and eradicate the systematic and institutionalized racism embedded in our workplace and messaging and we are taking steps to support the community in hopes of change.

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In honor of Black History Month, the Diverse Elders Coalition is featuring stories relevant to black aging during February. A new story will be shared every Wednesday, with additional posts shared throughout the month. Be sure to visit diverseelders.org regularly during the month of February.
As a tribute to Black History Month and this year's theme, Civil Rights in America, we have pulled together quotes from various prominent African American older adults to motivate you and to help guide your life.

1. Our mistreatment was just not right, and I was tired of it. - Rosa Parks

2. Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

3. If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress. - Barack Obama

4. We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

5. How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these. - George Washington Carver

6. Living in the moment means letting go of the past and not waiting for the future. It means living your life consciously, aware that each moment you breathe is a gift. - Oprah Winfrey

7. The whole world opened to me when I learned to read. - Mary McLeod Bethune

8. Whatever is bringing you down, get rid of it. Because you'll find that when you're free . . . your true self comes out. - Tina Turner

9. Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. - Harriet Tubman

10. Have a vision. Be demanding. - Colin Powell

11. In a world filled with hate, we must still dare to hope. In a world filled with anger, we must still dare to comfort. In a world filled with despair, we must still dare to dream. And in a world filled with distrust, we must still dare to believe. - Michael Jackson

12. If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolute night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

13. Greatness occurs when your children love you, when your critics respect you and when you have peace of mind. - Quincy Jones

14. I really don't think life is about the I-could-have-beens. Life is only about the I-tried-to-do. I don't mind the failure but I can't imagine that I'd forgive myself if I didn't try. - Nikki Giovanni

15. I think education is power. I think that being able to communicate with people is power. One of my main goals on the planet is to encourage people to empower themselves. - Oprah Winfrey

16. It is time for parents to teach young people early on that in diversity there is beauty and there is strength. We all should know that diversity makes for a rich tapestry, and we must understand that all the threads of that tapestry are equal in value no matter their color. - Maya Angelou

17. It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it. - Lena Horne

18. Never be limited by other people's limited imaginations. If you adopt their attitudes, then the possibility won't exist because you'll have already shut it out...You can hear other people's wisdom, but you've got to re-evaluate the world for yourself. - Mae Jemison

19. You're not to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it. - Malcolm X

20. As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars. As long as diseases are rampant and millions of people in this world cannot expect to live more than twenty-eight or thirty years, I can never be totally healthy even if I just got a good checkup at Mayo Clinic. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

21. I have come to believe over and over again that what is most important to me must be spoken, made verbal and shared, even at the risk of having it bruised or misunderstood. - Audre Lorde

22. The outside world told black kids when I was growing up that we weren't worth anything. But our parents said it wasn't so, and our churches and our schoolteachers said it wasn't so. They believed in us, and we, therefore, believed in ourselves. - Marian Wright Edelman

23. It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. - Audre Lorde

24. You're not obligated to win. You're obligated to keep trying to do the best you can every day. - Marian Wright Edelman

25. No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to flee and fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams. - Jesse Jackson

26. Our nation is a rainbow - red, yellow, brown, black, and white - and we're all precious in God's sight. - Jesse Jackson

27. I have learned over the years that when one's mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear. - Rosa Parks

28. Just don't give up what you're trying to do. Where there is love and inspiration, I don't think you can go wrong. - Ella Fitzgerald

29. One of the lessons that I grew up with was to always stay true to yourself and never let what somebody else says distract you from your goals. And so when I hear about negative and false attacks, I really don't invest any energy in them, because I know who I am. - Michelle Obama

30. Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts ... good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don't hurt. They're not painful. That's not just with somebody you want to marry, but it's with the friends that you choose. It's with the people you surround yourselves with. - Michelle Obama

31. I think if we are actually going to accept our generation's responsibility, that's going to mean that we give our children no less retirement security than we inherited from our parents. - Carol Moseley Braun

32. Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated. - Coretta Scott King

33. If you don't like something, change it. If you can't change it, change your attitude. - Maya Angelou

34. Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. - Barack Obama

35. Yes we can! - Barack Obama

Yes We Can - Barack Obama Music Video, song by will.i.am
READ OUR OTHER BLACK HISTORY MONTH STORIES: On the Shoulders of our Black Elders: Powerful Images from our Past (Black History Month: Civil Rights in America) You won't believe what I learned from our black elders (Black History Month) 10 things Black Americans should know about HIV/AIDS (Black History Month)
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35 quotes to help guide your life from famous African American older adults

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In honor of Black History Month, the Diverse Elders Coalition is featuring stories relevant to black aging during February. A new story will be shared every Wednesday, with additional posts shared throughout the month. Be sure to visit diverseelders.org regularly during the month of February.

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Dear white Seattle: Young Black leaders want to talk about racism

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Beyond the Capitol Hill protests, young activists are finding creative ways to engage more people in the fight for change.

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Reflections on Race and Disability

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In 2016, Vilissa Thompson created the hashtag #DisabilitySoWhite to shed light on the ways Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) are consistently marginalized and often silenced in disability justice spaces. Today marks the 29th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA,) and Vilissa's battle cry rings out truer than ever before.

The ADA was a Godsend for most disabled people/ People with Disabilities (PwD). It set in place policies that required employers, schools, and public places to become accessible - Meaning, workplaces, classrooms, parks, and more would need to make accommodations to their structures and operations so as many people who had been figuratively and literally left out of these spaces could be included. The law allowed for millions of disabled people/ PwD to enter the workforce, get an education, attend events, enjoy nature, etc. However, like nearly all social movements that become established without an Anti-racism lens from the start, disparities among disabled people/ PwD along intersecting identity lines began to increase - especially along lines of race, ethnicity, and citizenship.

In a Diverse City LLC Learning Series video on Race and Disability released earlier this week, I briefly shared how my spirituality, race, and disability coalesced into a moment of singularity where my mostly White, South Jersey, public high school called a D.A.R.E. officer to remove me from school and placed me in involuntary institutionalization after a battery of investigation. There were several reasons the school cited as the basis for this reaction: My socialization didn't seem up to par, I wasn't speaking as much in class, I hid out in bathrooms and closets throughout that day, my hygiene and eating habits were not the greatest. All of these instances were likely due to intense bullying, poverty, othering by faculty and staff, and - most of all - I was an autistic kid with no insurance and therefore without support services. Fifteen years later, the moment is still fresh and throbbing in my mind. It felt like the message I got as a disabled BIPOC was: Take them to the juvenile detention center, take them to the hospital, or take them to an institution; But just get them out of here. All my guidance counselor told my mom was that I "crashed and burned."

My story is not rare. In a recent AP News Article, research from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights showed that disabled BIPOC/ PwD are disproportionately disciplined or removed from schools, and that the intersectional discrimination has "plagued education across the United States for decades." The commission went on to say that "zero-tolerance polices and school level factors like a principal's perspective are often behind the disparities," or in my case, a guidance counselor. In the commission's report, they state "Many schools, especially in low-income and urban communities, rely on policies that have students of color with disabilities removed from classrooms for even minor infractions... Students with disabilities are about twice as likely to be suspended as those without disabilities, and Black, Latino and Native American students receive harsher and longer punishments than their White peers for similar offenses."

This sort of racialized ableism - Intersectional discrimination based on racism and ableism - not only traumatizes, but can be a carpool lane on the School-to-Prison pipeline. In 2015, Black and Latinx folks made up 32% of the US population, and 56% of all incarcerated people. It is also important to mention here that the United States makes up around 5% of the world's population, and holds 21% of the world's prisoners. Intersectionally, a report from the Center on American Progress in 2016 found that people in state and federal prisons are nearly three times as likely to report having a disability, and four times as likely to have a cognitive disability like Down Syndrome, Autism, Dementia, Intellectual Disabilities, and Learning Disorders; Those in jails are four times as likely to be disabled, and six times as likely to have a cognitive disability. One in five prison inmate have a serious mental illness. And while these statistics are startling, they don't stop there. A follow-up report by the Prison Policy Initiative shared how the intersection of Race and Disability affects one's involvement with the criminal justice system on the whole. They highlight the story of an Ethiopian Deaf man who was denied an Ethiopian Sign Language interpreter, which led to six weeks of jail time for a crime he didn't commit. They also speak to the intersectional barriers to re-entry once released from prison.

All people who have a documented criminal history face incredible barriers to surviving, let alone thriving, due to legal discrimination in some of the very areas the ADA aims to protect: Access to education, housing, employment, and access to public services and spaces. The additional lenses of racism and ableism can create triple jeopardy when trying to access vocational and release planning programs, (or quadruple or quintuple jeopardy with more marginalized identities onboard like gender, class, citizenship, or sexual orientation.) T he 2018 Annual Disability Statistics Compendium showed that, out more than 3 Million Disabled Black people/ PwD, less than one-third are employed, and the rate of employment for this intersection is decreasing in 28 states. A review of this data by RespectAbility featuring disabled, Black women speak to the multiple layers of marginalization and the importance of antiracism and intersectionality in the Disability Justice and Inclusion movement. Dr. Donna Walton shared, "The impact of the triple jeopardy syndrome cannot be overstated, as an African American with a disability, [one] can never can be quite sure if their race, gender or disability is hurting their chances for advancement. My experiences-being denied employment and facing financial planners who make false assumptions about my income status and earning potential because of my disability, for instance-prompt my suspicions that triple jeopardy is working against many African Americans with disabilities."

So, you may be asking yourself what to do at this point. Whether you are a disabled person or ally, amplify the narratives and experiences of disabled BIPOC/ PwD when you see injustice. This past month, a protest was held at the annual awards luncheon for the National Council for Independent Living to denounce racist and xenophobic comments made by their President, and amplify the narrative of those who expressed their outrage in it's wake, (Content Warning for this encapsulation by Disabled POC Activist Alice Wong.)

Which leads to the next point of what to do: If you are a Non-BIPOC disabled person/ PwD or ally - brush up on antiracism, cultural humility, Disability Critical Race Theories (DisCrit), and self-evaluate your power-over privileges. What made Bruce Darling's comments so painful was the othering and invisibilizing of disabled people/ PwD at the border being detained, becoming increasingly ill, and dying. To hold that level of power-over, to be in top leadership of NCIL and ADAPT, the co-founder of the center for Disability Rights, Inc., and encourage disabled people to lobby lawmakers on the talking point that "Democrats care more about people who are illegally in this country than their own citizens who are disabled," is incredibly cruel, racist, and xenophobic. It is why when his apology fell flat, with people following him calling for his resignation, which eventually came with a unanimous endorsement from the NCIL's Board of Directors.

These actions create both inaccessible and non-inclusive spaces for Disabled BIPOC/ PwD. The way to address some of the structural issues of this leads to my final point of what to do: Put Disabled BIPOC/ PwD in positions of leadership. Fund and support us. Fiercely defend their leadership and dismantle constructs or dismiss people and groups who refuse to respect and uphold the leadership of Disabled BIPOC/ PwD. Reflect on how you regard, communicate, and interact with us. But most importantly, don't speak for us. The latter issue I call being an "Ursula Ally," inspired by the relationship dynamic in The Little Mermaid where Ursula made a devil's bargain with Ariel to seal her voice in a locket to win the heart of her paramour, only for Ursula to use Ariel's voice to take Eric for herself. Do not use the voice of marginalized populations for clout or virtual likes. That doesn't make you woke, it just makes you an inequitable and injust person.

In the blog Tales of the Angry Negro, the anonymous author shares their experience of moderating a panel on the intersections of race and disability at the recent Netroots Nation Conference. In the middle of their panel discussion, they were interrupted by conference staff who told the group that they needed to speed along their programming so they can take the lift from the stage that was being used by one of the panelists. They were told to either end earlier or leave their panelist stranded on stage. When they pushed back, the staff loudly protested. ending their live feed, and began heckling the group until they ended. After reflecting on the situations involving Darling and others, they shared that these instances of racism, xenophobia, antiblackness, and more within the disability community "will rightly note that these events - though shocking to some - are not new thought the attention shone on them is, and that this is indicative of a disability community that marginalizes the voices of people of color and a mainstream community that equally silences disability advocacy. We as a community must come to terms with the fact that while we face discrimination, we do not have the market cornered on righteousness. We have as much as a responsibility to provide the inclusion that we demand from the mainstream community.." They went on to say, "One cannot create an inclusive community while excluding people of color or using tactics that are specifically designed to be divisive....At the same time, one cannot give a pass to leaders who blatantly violate the trust of multiple parts of our community....In this context, they would be noted as one time faux as or slip ups that are not indicative of the greater good and service that they have done or could continue to do for the community. If we do that, however we provide a justification to their actions and not only communicate the loathsome idea that the ends justify the means, but also that certain groups of individuals with disabilities are disposable in order to make justice for others."

When I turned 29, I made it a point to undergo a year of self-reflection, recalibration, and restorative justice. I made the effort to lean into my forthcoming 30th birthday as a major chronological milestone to also incorporate benchmark and goals for emotional, social, and developmental milestones. I reviewed my social narrative identity, spoke to close friends and family members about my impact, underwent a self-audit of who I was and who I wanted to be. Three years later, I still have not completed my praxis - and I never will. I encourage those who support and benefit from the ADA to do the same. I encourage those who have been at the front lines of the disability movement and have not seen Black and Brown faces there with them to do something about it. I encourage those who are sitting at tables of power, privilege and leadership who look around and do not see any Disabled BIPOC/ PwD to speak up and say something. I encourage folks to embrace the social and intersectional models of disability, and incorporate universal design and community integration into everything they do. We have come far, but we have also barely made a dent in what is left to be done so all Disabled people/ PwD can survive and thrive. Where it seems it needs to start is dismantling and deconstructing the stubborn dynamic Vilissa Thompson called out three years ago: Disability Justice and Leadership is too White!

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#DisabilitySoWhite: Reflections on Race and Disability on ADA Day - Epiphanies of Equity LLC

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In 2016, Vilissa Thompson created the hashtag #DisabilitySoWhite to shed light on the ways Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) are consistently marginalized and often silenced in disability justice spaces. Today marks the 29th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA,) and Vilissa's battle cry rings out truer than ever before.

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The Black Lives Matter movement has changed the country and shifted conversations about police, social justice and structural racism.

Nowhere is the impact as great as it is for Black families, especially those with children. NPR spoke with five couples about how their family conversations have changed and how they try to support and inform their children in the face of police violence and racism.

The parents spoke about how painful it is to have these issues rupture the innocence of childhood, and the importance of having these discussion proactively. They say they try to model a measured optimism about the future, teaching their kids "to stand up and speak out", as one mother, Dr. Rhea Roper Nedd puts it.

She says she and her husband's message to their children right now is hopeful, despite their own misgivings about the slow pace of progress. "This is the time for us to move forward," she says. "This is the time to change."
'Exercise your right to say what you think'
When Chris and Eriade Williams decided to take their children to participate in peaceful protests near their home in Silver Spring, Md., their daughter Marley, 9, told them she was scared. Eriade, an attorney and lobbyist, had to explain that violence wouldn't be likely. Chris, who works in pharmaceutical sales, talked to both the kids - their son Hunter is 6 - about managing fear. And he told them: "These are things that we're protesting because they've never been dealt with appropriately in the past."

Marley remained skeptical, telling her parents she was afraid there would be violence or police brutality. Her parents told her, "You still have to exercise your right to say what you think about things and you can't be scared and stay in your house," recalls Eriade.

The protest turned out to be a positive, empowering experience for the children. There was no violence. Marley was interviewed by local TV and even made up a dance to go with a chant. "When they came home they were exuberant," says Eriade.

The Williams say they have a sense of relief that, after George Floyd's brutal killing, the whole nation began discussing police violence and racism. It means, they said, that as parents "we are the ones who can explain all this to our kids and that their friends in school will have a similar baseline of experience now to understand these issues better."

As Black parents, Derek and Barbara Ford knew they would have to have "the talk" about racism at some point with their sons. Chandler, who is nearly 1-year-old, is too young to understand. And for Alexander who turns 5 this month, the Fords hadn't thought of starting at such an early age. But as the Black Lives Matter protests took off in late May, they realized it was time.

Derek, a human resources manager in the oil and gas industry, says they didn't try to tackle the whole topic at once. "We talk about certain aspects that he can comprehend at this point. And then through the years, that conversation morphs" he says. They have started with storytelling and books that portray individuals with brown skin so the children will "feel comfortable in their own skin" and have a positive image of themselves.

In the future, they'll have to tackle harder issues head-on. "I mean you have to have hope, but you also have the reality that he will become a Black man; right now, he sees police officers and cops as superheroes." Derek says. "It's a shame that this frame of mind will likely change over time to where he no longer sees public servants as superheroes, but he sees them as something else."

They try to strike a balance, Barbara says, between exposing their children to the reality of racism while instilling confidence in them as individuals. "We grew up and understood that everything in life wasn't going to be fair; so we want to raise the children with a sense of reality, but we don't want to poison them and we don't want them to be blindsided by anything either."
Preparing children for the future
When Maryam Jernigan-Noesi and Mariano Noesi were expecting their first child, they recall playing a trivia game at their baby shower. They were asked what they feared most about becoming new parents.

They answered without hesitation. "We were both on the same page and it was 'the world,'" says Mariano, a national accounts manager for an environmental firm. "It was the systems created outside of our homes that were not made for him, although he'd be forced to live in them for now."

Along with the joy of having a child, says Maryam, a licensed psychologist specializing in children and adolescents, "there is an intergenerational fear about your ability to protect Black children and help keep them alive because of the pervasiveness and, frankly, the danger of racism."

The family lives in a suburb of Atlanta. Today, when they talk with their son Carter, now 4, about racism, a major goal, Mariano says, is "reducing the amount of trauma that I pass on to him. Reducing it being key because some trauma is inevitable in the life of a Black person in this country."

Their approach, says Maryam, is to start with an understanding of racial differences."We want him to first notice and appreciate human differences, not avoid or condemn what is different," she says.

From there, they are gradually introducing the history of racial injustice and the civil rights movement.

"The key is to be consistent and proactive and to not wait until there is a blatant example that we are trying to explain after the fact," says Maryam. She also gives her son room to express his feelings, like when she first explained the history of segregation to him and "he was visibly upset."

She says these early lessons paid off when he saw some footage of protests on TV and wanted to know what was going on. " And I said, well, remember Martin Luther King? You know, we're still fighting for people to be able to be treated equally."
'It's up to the next generation'
After George Floyd's killing, the Roper Nedd family who live in Silver Spring, Md., a suburb of Washington, D.C. went into "protective mode" toward their two sons, Christopher and Noah, says Dr. Rhea Roper Nedd, associate director of the Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program at the University of Maryland.

"We didn't want them to see this on TV and to internalize this," she recalls. "But then there came a point in time when we knew ... as much as we tried to protect them ... we had to start talking about it."

Husband Wilton Nedd II, an attorney, says it's imperative "for us to instill in our children that they are equal to their white counterparts in every respect but they may not be viewed that way by everyone they encounter."

They want their children to feel proud of who they are. They watch movies with strong Black characters, they enjoy and "move to hip-hop, soca, afro-beats, gospel music and Chelsey Green's violin."

"Conversations about race within the four walls of our home are intentional messages about the beauty of blackness," says Rhea.

She says they have worked to balance realism and hope in their conversations about racial justice. When they went as a family to one of the recent protests, one of their sons questioned why they were bothering when violence against Black people keeps getting repeated.

"It's hard to hear a young child at the age of ten already aware of the history of this country, of how racism has been institutionalized, and to already know that the change that is happening, it's so slow," Rhea says.

But she said they told their kids, "Things are changing. There is something about the movement and we have to be part of it."

During the protests and candlelight vigils the family attended, Wilton told his sons that as they grow up, they have a role to play "in changing narratives and outcomes in society."

"Our generation has made incremental progress but it is up to the next generation to take it even further," he says.

Both Albert and Quinetta Latham remember when their own parents had "the talk" with them years ago. And while some of the nuances have changed, Albert, a regional asset protection director for a national retailer says, the conversations they're having with their own children, Albert III, 18, and Maria, 12, are, unfortunately, familiar.

But Quinetta, a certified life coach and transformational speaker, says the Black Lives Matter movement has given the family a sense of hope. "While our 12 year old daughter might not necessarily be able to wrap her entire mind around systematic racism, both she and our son realize and understand the power and the pain that is attached to the three words Black Lives Matter."

The support for the movement is "very visible for our children to see" she says, whether it's on the news, hashtags, t-shirts, or TikTok. Albert says in the movement today he sees more allies of all races.

"We're not walking alone," Albert says. "And while these occurrences and conversations aren't necessarily new for our household I do realize... George Floyd's untimely and unfortunate death was certainly a tipping point for the nation."

But seeing repeated examples of police brutality weighs on their children, the Latham parents say. And even when they went out to protest recently, the family encountered racism and profanity from people passing by. One man in a truck deliberately blew his exhaust into the crowd. "My children looked at me in disbelief," recalls Quinetta. "We're out here trying to stand up for what's right and here's what we're still having to face."

"So you know, it's hard not to see it, it's hard not to experience it, and it's almost impossible not to fear it," she says. "For us as parents, it's important to just create a safe haven, a safe space for our children to feel they're accepted when the world rejects them. A place where they can come and be lifted when the world knocks them down."

And, when talking to their children, Albert says,"we've got to be very careful to not preach doom and gloom all the time - to not talk about the history of Black folk as starting in slavery or in the Jim Crow south; our history is much, much richer than the misfortunes that we faced."

"And so another way that we try to reduce the stress for us and our children is to make sure that we understand there's still greatness that courses through our veins."
This story was produced by Meredith Rizzo and Ryan Kellman with editing by Carmel Wroth of NPR. Design and development by Alyson Hurt of NPR.

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'Change Can Happen': Black Families On Racism, Hope And Parenting

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The Black Lives Matter movement has changed the country and shifted conversations about police, social justice and structural racism. Nowhere is the impact as great as it is for Black families, especially those with children. NPR spoke with five couples about how their family conversations have changed and how they try to support and inform their children in the face of police violence and racism.

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United Nations Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination (1963)

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United Nations Elimination of all forms of racial discrimination (1963)

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Being around people who are different from us makes us more creative, diligent, and hard-working.

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COLLEEN LONG, MICHAEL BALSAMO and ZEKE MILLER

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Biden nominates Jackson, first Black woman, to Supreme Court

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Friday nominated federal appeals court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, the first Black woman selected to serve on a court that once declared her race unworthy of citizenship and endorsed American segregation.

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Beyoncé and Lamar show what it means to be ‘unapologetically black’ | CNN

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Beyoncé rocked Coachella and Kendrick Lamar grabbed a Pulitzer. But they also gave us a lesson on being “unapologetically black.”

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14. Black Men

We are committed to building a Black men affirming space. We reject the over sexualization, criminalization and mass incarceration of our black boys and men. Furthermore, we are committed to dismantling the school to prison pipeline, adultification of black and brown boys, and the senseless killing of unarmed black and brown men.
https://www.buffaloschools.org/cms/lib/NY01913551/Centricity/Domain/9000/BLM%20at%20School%2014%20Principles.pdf

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Black men deserve their due. That is why we are celebrating the best of who they are at the 2 nd Annual Black Men XCEL Summit from Aug. 29-Sept 2.There is no other national event out there tailored for professional black men that is as dynamic as Black Men XCEL and we'll put money on that!

For the second year in a row, we will be linking up at the PGA National Resort & Spa in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, presented by FedEx. Over the course of four days, we will host engaging sessions and timely conversations on corporate leadership, mental health and wellness, and the state of black men in professional sports.

It goes without saying that we are rooting for every black man who has changed the game from the boardroom to the pulpit and everything in between. Therefore, it's only right that this year's 2018 XCEL Award Honorees are Kenneth Chenault, chairman and managing director at General Catalyst; T.D. Jakes, bishop of Potter's House Ministries and CEO of T.D. Jakes Enterprises L.L.P.; and the incomparable U.S. Olympic gold medalist Tommie Smith. We will also be celebrating our second class of BE Modern Men and all of their greatness.

If you were at the event last year you know that we party just as hard as we work on building our professional skills. Needless to say, Wyclef Jean, rapper, musician, and humanitarian; Chris Spencer; producer of Out Too Much Prods; comedians/entertainers Capone and Jonathan Slocomb; and Grammy Award-winner and producer DJ Nasty are going to bring down the house along with actor, educator, and musician Malik Yoba who will also be joining us. So, get ready for the ultimate turn up and for your stomach to hurt because that's how hard you'll be laughing! And the highly anticipated Mars Vs. Venus Challenge is going to be bigger and better. So ladies, come ready!

That's not all we have in store for the ladies; you know we've got you covered too! We will be highlighting the accomplishments and discussing the million-dollar details of black women in entrepreneurship during the Love and Money session. When we aren't on the links, we'll be painting, sipping, getting suits tailored, working out, relaxing poolside, and so much more.

So, mark your calendars and secure your ticket for a good time!

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It's Time to Celebrate Black Men and their Excellence

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Black men deserve their due. That is why we are celebrating the best of who they are at the 2nd Annual Black Men XCEL Summit from Aug. 29-Sept 2. There is no other national event out there tailored for professional black men that is as dynamic as ours and we'll put money on that!

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https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/02/25/diversity-school-boards-georgia-students-lead-fight

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For Diversity in School Boards: Georgia Students Lead the Fight

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New redistricting maps and proposed legislation appear designed to stifle the voices of a student population that, around Atlanta, is undergoing rapid change.

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https://why-me.org/2020/how-does-race-inequality-play-out-in-restorative-justice/

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I came across a book recently, perspective on Restorative Justice, its potential to do good, and the dangers of perpetuating racial injustice. This collection of essays asks how race inequality plays out in Restorative Justice and explores what can be done to ensure that restorative professionals and organisations challenge rather than replicate the unequal power structures in society. Coming after Fania Davis' inspirational Colorizing Restorative Justice , which challenged my Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice , which explores how race and the US criminal justice system intersect, this new publication provides a beacon of hope and ideas for practitioners and policy-makers who are committed to social change.

As the editors suggest, if Restorative Justice does not address racism in everyday policy and practice, then Restorative Justice could itself enable discriminatory conduct, because that is the default way the justice system and society operate. This book has a distinctly North American perspective, from the role of indigenous people to the language used (the term "people of colour" is used throughout) but many of the insights rang true for me in the UK. One example is the precondition of admittance of guilt for a restorative intervention to take place, which can be a barrier to many young people from black and minority ethnic (BAME) backgrounds.

During the last few months, the murder of George Floyd and subsequent protests have led to calls for a new approach to addressing racial injustice in the criminal justice system. Alongside this, we have seen calls for alternative approaches, including restorative approaches, to provide a place for people to talk about their needs and to be listened to, and find ways to move forward, indeed, Why me? held a race hate listening forum for BAME people along these lines.

However, as Desirée Anderson states, we often reach for restorative interventions to address disciplinary or criminal issues, instead of a holistic approach. She argues that our understanding of harm, who is harmed and how to repair the harm is flawed, and that we are in danger of reinforcing structural inequality and re-traumatising individuals, whether harmed or harmer. This point is grippingly illustrated in the podcast ' Nice White Parents ' about racial inequality in US schools. 's 2018 training of Why me? offered practical and supportive ways of challenging personal and organisational prejudice by introducing reflective practice between co-facilitators and within the service.

This 20-author collection of essays offers many perspectives including intensely practical solutions, such as Sheryl Wilson's 'Calling out Whiteness', in which she sets out a series of group discussions and workshops for organisations and individuals, including questions and prompts; or Sharon Goens-Bradleys' race-conscious road map which reads like an outdoor orienteering activity and offers a clear set of steps to enrich understanding.

We have a duty to ensure, as Fania Davis comments in the preface, that Restorative justice remains relevant and that as Restorative Justice professionals and advocates, we become more skillful at identifying, navigating, and transforming racial harm. With increased demand for restorative interventions, we have a duty as organisations and practitioners to address inequality and inter-racial needs in all we do.

T his includes the recruitment of Restorative Justice facilitators from diverse backgrounds, as well as leadership commitment to equality and reflective practice throughout the organisation. To that end the team at Why me? are currently working on a broad reaching organisational strategy which we hope will address some of these issues from the 'inside out'. In 2021 we will be continuing to deliver restorative justice for marginalised groups and advocating for change for all across the criminal justice system to improve access to Restorative Justice for everyone.

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How does race inequality play out in Restorative Justice? - Why Me?

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A blog by Why me? Director Lucy Jaffé I came across a book recently, Colorizing Restorative Justice, which challenged my perspective on Restorative Justice, its potential to do good, and the dangers of perpetuating racial injustice. This collection of essays asks how race inequality plays out in Restorative Justice and explores what can be done to [...]

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https://www.transhub.org.au/101/gender-affirmation

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Gender affirmation is an umbrella term for the range of actions and possibilities involved in living, surviving, and thriving as our authentic gendered selves.

What gender affirmation looks like for every individual trans person is unique and based on what is personally affirming, what feels safe to do, and what is accessible and available.

The 'Gender Affirming' model of healthcare is about recognising and acknowledging that trans people tell the truth about who we are. Unfortunately, this approach to care is sometimes wilfully misconstrued as meaning an immediate race to hormones and surgery for all trans people, particularly young people. The reality is very different though with many trans people reporting significant barriers to accessing this medically necessary healthcare.

For trans young people, gender affirmation means being able to socially affirm their gender (with name, pronouns and expression), medical intervention for pre-pubertal trans young people does not occur in Australia, ever.

How do trans people affirm their gender?

There's a common myth that gender affirmation (or transition) is a linear experience from A to B, when in reality we affirm our genders in many different ways. There is no right or wrong way to affirm your gender.

TransHub also uses the term gender affirmation instead of transition or gender transition, to reflect the breadth of actions and possibilities that can be involved in living and thriving as our gendered selves.

While transition is used both linearly and non-linearly by trans people, our use of affirmation is intentional - many people, trans and cis, observe the trans experience through a lens of medical intervention. For more information about this, go to our language page.

On TransHub, we've divided this up into the sections Social, Medical and Legal affirmation.

Social affirmation describes how we introduce our authentic selves to the world around us, whether the world notices or not. This might mean forms of affirmation you can do without involving anyone else, and which you can change your mind about later, including: starting to use your chosen name and pronouns, coming out, wearing new clothing, or modifying the shape of your body, cutting or shaving your hair, playing around with how you use your voice, and more. Social affirmation also includes playing sport, going to work, and participating in life as our true selves. This can be really liberating and also scary for trans people, and we need allies around us, particularly when we start coming out

Medical affirmation describes forms of affirmation we might do with the help of doctors or health professionals, including: taking some form of hormones such as estrogen, testosterone, or progesterone, or puberty blockers or having affirmative surgeries, such as chest surgery, genital surgery, facial surgeries, or more.

Legal affirmation describes affirming your gender when working with legal and legislative systems, including: updating your name or gender marker at work, school, or on forms of ID, your rights in various settings, and being affirmed while working within systems like the police, prison, and immigration.

Trans people also affirm our gender in many other ways throughout our lives, such as when interacting with health services, people we don't know out in the world, or just for ourselves.

Do only trans people affirm their gender?

While we describe many things as ways that trans people can affirm their gender, for many people they are simply being their gender.

While 'gender affirmation' as a term is usually only used by trans and gender diverse people, cisgender people are constantly doing things that make them feel better, comfortable, or supported in their gender too.

This might be buying clothes or makeup that make them feel good, going to the gym, getting plastic surgery or beauty treatments, accessorising living and work spaces, and more. These aren't traditionally seen as a form of 'gender affirmation' because unlike trans people, cis people aren't required to affirm their gender for it to be seen as real or valid.

Access to free and timely health care that respects self-determination, autonomy, and the medical necessity of gender affirmation for those who seek it, is a life saving and affirming right for all trans people.

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Gender affirmation is an umbrella term for the range of actions and possibilities involved in living, surviving, and thriving as our authentic gendered selves. What gender affirmation looks like for every individual trans person is unique and based on what is personally affirming, what feels safe to do, and what is accessible and available.

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Racial Justice, Restorative Justice and Social Transformation

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"To be male, poor, and either African-American or Native-American is to confront, on a daily basis, a deeply held racism that exists in every social institution," writes  our Brookings colleague Camille Busette . "No other demographic group has fared as badly, so persistently and for so long." To meet this "appalling crisis," Camille calls for nothing less than " a New Deal for Black men. "

Creating this New Deal is one of the core priorities of the Race, Prosperity and Inclusion Initiative , directed by Camille, but also of the new Boys and Men Project launched today out of the Center on Children and Families. The elements of this New Deal will likely consist of intentional policymaking in the fields of education and training, the labor market, family policy (especially for fathers), criminal justice reform, and tackling concentrated poverty.

This is one area where it is reasonable to hope for some bipartisan action. Witness the creation in 2019 of a new Commission on the Social Status of Black Men and Boys , charged with recommend ing policies to " improve upon, or augment, current government programs. " Th is bipartisan Commission, consisting of 19 members, will " investigate potential civil rights violations affecting black males and study the disparities they experience in education, criminal justice, health, employment, fatherhood, mentorship and violence. " The Commission is required by law to report annually and " make recommendations to improve the social conditions and provide vital guidance for Congress on effective strategies to reduce the racial disparities in education, criminal justice, health and employment. "

The legislation to create the Commission was introduced in the House by Representative Frederica Wilson (D-FL) and s ponsored in the Senate by Marco Rubio (R-FL), Kamala Harris (D-CA), and Cory Booker (D-NJ ). This is a welcome and positive development. It will be important for the Commission to fully understand the challenges facing Black men specifically, in order to target policy appropriately. Black boys and Black men, in particular, run the gauntlet of a specific brand of racism, at the sharp intersection of race and gender .

1. Education

28% of Black men ages 25-29 had a bachelor's degree or higher, compared to 30% of Black women, over 40% of white men, and nearly half of white women ccording to the National Center of Education Statistics The gap is greater still at higher education levels: only half as many Black men have a Master's degree (4%) as Black women (9%), white men (8%) and white women (13%):

2. Upward mobility

Black women and white women raised by low-income parents (those in the bottom 20% of the income distribution) have similar rates of upward intergenerational mobility, measured in terms of their individual income as adults . Black men, by contrast, are much less likely than white men to rise up the income ladder , according to Raj Chetty and his team at Opportunity Insights who have crunched the numbers on 20 million Americans in the 1978-1983 birth cohorts . A third of white men raised by low-income parents end up in the top 40% of the income distribution as adults, compared to only 19% of Black boys.

3. Earnings

4. Labor force participation

5. Unemployment during the COVID-19 pandemic

Black men have the highest unemployment rate of civilian non-institutionalized Black and white men and women over age 20 , a ccording to the Bureau of Labor Statistics . There was a large race gap in unemployment (independent of gender ) even before COVID-19 swept the U.S.

6. Life expectancy

7. COVID-19 death

8. Criminal justice

The case for action

These are hard facts but ones that have to be faced in order to respond to the once-in-a-generation moment of racial reckoning taking place in the U.S. right now. Policymakers should consider Black men's experience -and these select facts- through the lens of "intersectionality," a framework pioneered by Kimberlé Crenshaw for examining how identities can combine to create specific nodes of disadvantage. Intersectionality points to the need to see individuals in the context of a wide range of identities, rather than in simple binary terms, such as male or female, Black or white or gay or straight. This can highlight the position of "multiply-burdened" groups, as Crenshaw puts it .

Given the weight of evidence on the specific , and unique plight of Black men,  general p olicy recommendations  will not suffice. Breaking the cycle of intergenerational disadvantage for Black boys and men requires first a deeper understanding the gender ing of their rac e-and the racialization of their gender-and second, a battery of specifically tailored policy interventions: a New Deal for Black Men, no less.

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Richard V. Reeves, Sarah Nzau, and Ember Smith

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The challenges facing Black men - and the case for action

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"To be male, poor, and either African-American or Native-American is to confront, on a daily basis, a deeply held racism that exists in every social institution," writes  our Brookings colleague Camille Busette . "No other demographic group has fared as badly, so persistently and for so long."

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https://diversity-inclusion.uncg.edu/the-training-commons/anti-racist-and-anti-racist-bias/

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Anti-bias education is an approach designed to increase understanding of differences and their value to a respectful and civil society and to actively challenge bias, stereotypes, and all forms of discrimination.

What is anti-racist and anti-bias training?

Anti-racist training provides education about systemic racism and empowers us to identify the sources and tactics of resistance to dismantle racism and to discuss the stages and characteristics of anti-racist organizational development. A framework for understanding racism: Implicit Bias and Structural Racialization - National Equity Project.

Implicit Bias and Structural Racialization:
(click on image to view larger version)

Citation: Osta, K., & Vasquez, H. (n.d.). Implicit bias and structural racialization. Retrieved from https://www.nationalequityproject.org/frameworks/implicit-bias-structural-racialization
An anti-bias approach fosters positive relationships and an inclusive environment for all members of the community.
Anti- bias education involves creating a community that supports all dimensions of human differences, including culture, race, language, ability, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender, age, socioeconomic differences, and other areas of social differences.

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Anti-bias education is an approach designed to increase understanding of differences and their value to a respectful and civil society and to actively challenge bias, stereotypes, and all forms of discrimination. Anti-racist training provides education about systemic racism and empowers us to identify the sources and tactics of resistance to dismantle racism and to discuss the stages and characteristics of anti-racist organizational development.

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https://www.theroot.com/how-to-be-unapologetically-black-1822522165

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On Tuesday, I was at Google's New York City office for a panel titled " Breaking Through The Noise: Making Our Voices Visible, Scalable And Impactful." For roughly 90 minutes, (founder of The Grio), (Senior VP, Chief Diversity Officer at Omnicom Group/Founder & President, ADCOLOR®), (Black Voices Editor at Huffington Post) and I spoke to the audience about our respective challenges and successes, and our thoughts about the state and direction of Black media. We each (obviously) had different backgrounds and stories, and even disagreed with certain subtopics, but we were all fully committed to and in possession of a grade of unapologetic Blackness that informs, inspires, centers, and directs the work we do.

Afterwards, I got the opportunity to finally meet , , , and in person and hang out. We toured Google's LEGOLand wing ( Yes. The New York Google office has an approximately 2000 square foot LEGOLand.), had an exceptionally Black moment in a hotel elevator involving a nice White couple who assumed I was a doorman, and ate burgers and nachos. It was a beautifully Black-ass night.

During the panel, one theme repeated throughout the night is the reality that unapologetic Blackness isn't easy. Perhaps its a bit more trendy now than it has been, historically. But we exist in a place where much of what we've been taught and most of what we encounter aims to prevent us from feeling that way, and getting to a place where you're both unscared to be your Black-ass self and embracing of that Black-ass self can be an arduous journey. A journey towards freedom and rapture, but a painful journey nonetheless.

So, how exactly does someone get there? I don't have a textbook to pull from to provide a universal answer, but I do know what has seemed to work for me.
1. Give Blackness a positive association
This is the first and most important part. In order to be unapologetically Black, you have to be proud of and unembarrassed by Blackness. And this doesn't just mean embracing yourself. It means removing negative connotations possessed with entities associated with Blackness. You can not be unapologetically Black if you still assume that if something happens to be "Black" - whether its a public university or a publication or a person - its inherently less than. Perhaps you never gave Blackness the benefit of the doubt before. Well, now you need to start.
2. Surround yourself with people connected to and in favor of unapologetic Blackness
Fortunately, I was lucky enough to have parents who instilled this in me pretty early. But I recognize that many of us just haven't been around enough Black people who believe unapologetic Blackness is a thing to be desired. And, if you're attempting to get there yourself, it's vital to seek out people who are either already there or down to make the journey with you. Basically, remove all people named Taye and Stacey and from your crew.
3. Give negative infinity fucks about what White people think
Now, this doesn't mean you stop caring about what the White people you personally know and like/love think. Nor does it mean to release all basic human kindness and dignity. If you see a White person about to get hit by a truck, don't say " Man, fuck what that White dude who doesn't know he's about to get hit by a truck thinks." Say, " Hey man who happens to be White, there's a truck coming and it might hit you if you don't move."

Instead, stop crafting your thoughts and actions around what White People (collectively) might think if you thought or acted a certain way. Step outside of the White Gaze, and stay there.
4. Embrace Blackness...even Blackness that happens to be unlike your Blackness
Your Blackness can not truly be unapologetic if it cherry-picks; deciding to withhold love from other unapologetically Black people.

From " I'm In Love With Black People Who Love Being Black People. And Love Black People." Because everything said below could also be applied to the unapologetically Black journey.

Your love for Black people doesn't mean shit if it doesn't include Black women. Or Black men. Or Black homosexuals. Or Black atheists. Or Black Christians. Or Black...you get my point. If your love subjugates and discriminates, it's not love. It's vanity. Naturally, you can not love every single Black person. But while you can - and probably should - put conditions on that love based on what that particular Black person happens to do if it directly damages other people (sexual assault, murder, putting kale in the potato salad, etc) you cannot put conditions on that love based on who that particular Black person was born to be. And still claim to love us.

Of course, there are Black people who believe that making Blackness inclusive is inherently anti-Black because it "weakens" us. Whatever and whoever doesn't fit their ideal of what makes a stronger Black community - whether its feminism or atheism or being Christian or being queer - are cancers that need to be eradicated. But what they don't get is that this journey includes all of us. If it doesn't, there's no journey. No community. No love. No point.

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On Tuesday, I was at Google's New York City office for a panel titled "Breaking Through The Noise: Making Our Voices Visible, Scalable And Impactful." For roughly 90 minutes, David Wilson (founder of The Grio), Tiffany Warren (Senior VP, Chief Diversity Officer at Omnicom Group/Founder & President, ADCOLOR®), Lilly...

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Leading with empathy and to teach with Anti-Bias 

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Leading with empathy and to teach with Anti-Bias 

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To meet the challenge of navigating the current environment in which inequity and injustice are prevalent, educators need to lead with empathy and create an anti-bias environment.

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Intergenerational Activism with Autumn Gupta & Bryanna Wallace 

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Intergenerational Activism with Autumn Gupta & Bryanna Wallace 

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By Helen Nguyen (USC Emeriti Center Student Worker)

George Floyd's death was the tipping point for the Black community and the many activists involved in the Black Lives Matter movement. The horrid footage of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin suffocating George Floyd with his knee on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds enraged the entire country. Yet again, another Black man was taken due to police brutality, but with footage of this surfacing virtually everywhere, there would no longer be silence.

In wanting to help combat the racial injustice and systemic oppression evident in our country, Autumn Gupta, a USC Dornsife graduate, and Bryanna Wallace, a USC Marshall School graduate, decided to put their own knowledge and experiences into action, creating "Justice in June", a comprehensive website with steps to become active allies to the Black community, links to multiple anti-racism resources, and even a schedule that accommodates each user on how much they want to learn in a day. As stated on their website, "This resource was compiled for the purpose of providing a starting place for individuals striving to become better and more active allies. The journey does not stop [after] just a month. We need everyone to do their part to amplify the conversation and help us take this moment to a movement." ( Photo on left: Autumn Gupta)

This website may sound very familiar to many of our readers in the retiree community as it was spotlighted in our Emeriti Center Intergenerational Zoom
Discussions: Black Lives Matter session. As it has been almost three months since that conversation, I want to continue to raise awareness about the situation and continue to spark conversations within the retiree community at USC Emeriti Center. I sat down (in a zoom call) with Autumn and Bryanna to ask them more about how to be an ally in the Black Lives Matter Movement and intergenerational activism. ( Photo on right: Bryanna Wallace).

In looking at activism and trying to take effective action against anti-racism, it is important that we each find our own lanes. Bryanna said, "Recognize that everyone's social activism and how they're contributing to the [movement] doesn't and shouldn't honestly look the same."

While some can go out to the streets and protests, signing petitions, donating, or even just educating yourself and others, all create change that is larger than we perceive it to be. Both the younger and older generation must find their own area of service that provides personal rejuvenation while supporting justice and equality in our local communities. This can extend further than just the Black Lives Matter Movement. As Autumn put it, "allyship is advocating for others in any capacity and in any situation." All of our actions have an effect, no matter how small we think it is, but at the end of the day, as long as we try to empathize with others and see humans as human beings, we can make a difference. Bryanna furthers the analogy by saying, "We're all going towards the same destination and the same goal of achieving and conquering racial injustice and systemic oppression ... Everyone's lane is just as valid as the next person's." It can be as simple as having a conversation.

However, in almost every movement throughout history, there has and will always be someone or some institution who disagrees with your ideals and activism; people who refuse to hear what you say and leave you praying for the best. Personally, I have often hit this brick wall, and exhausted nearly all of my energy trying to get through to them. In talking to Autumn and Bryanna, I realized that this by itself cannot be the goal. We have to admit to ourselves that we cannot win the hearts and minds of every single person with prejudiced beliefs and rather than trying to change their personal beliefs - some of which they have lived with all their lives. Autumn suggests we try to plant a seed in each of our conversations.

She said, "Some of those people are like they have the most fertile soil. It's already raining, they're ready to grow and the conversation becomes a flower, but other people might not be able to grow that flower." Rather than trying to do the impossible in just a conversation, we should listen and be a resource for them to learn more when they get to that point in their lives. In light of that, all you can do is hope that the seed you planted grows.

While the movement currently seems to be spearheaded by the younger generation, Autumn, Bryanna, and I all agree that this movement is intergenerational. "If anything, we need their voices. Just like right now, the black community cannot do this by themselves. Everyone else has to take it on. At the same time, this generation cannot do it by ourselves." The complexity of our society lies upon the beautiful concept of intersectionality, and at the end of the day, we are all bonded together by the fact that we are human and must be in this together. By sitting back and not doing anything, we contribute to the survival of the systemic racism and oppression the Black community face daily. In final parting words of these two amazing women and fellow trojans, they ask the older generation and in sense the entire Trojan community to step outside of what is comfortable, learn about what is happening in our communities, and "be willing to be challenge and to be criticized, so that together collectively, we can all move forward."

To read more about these two inspirational women, the creation of their website, and their journey, please visit this article on USC Dornsife News or this article on the Washington Post.

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The Black Lives Matter Movement and Intergenerational Activism with "Justice in June" creators and USC alum, Autumn Gupta & Bryanna Wallace

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By Helen Nguyen (USC Emeriti Center Student Worker) George Floyd's death was the tipping point for the Black community and the many activists involved in the Black Lives Matter movement. The horrid footage of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin suffocating George Floyd with his knee on Floyd's neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds enraged the entire country.

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I found this article very helpful in understanding exactly what transgender affirming is. When I watched the video at the top I found the line "I am transgender enough" very empowering and inspiring. I can associate that line with the article because you are excepting what gender someone is instead of judging. Its important to recognize how others feel and to respect how they want to be identified.

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Author: Black Lives Matter

Restorative Justice is the commitment to build a beloved and loving community that is sustainable and growing.

" We know that if you knock down someone's block building, you have to help them rebuild it, you can't just say, "Sorry," and walk away. Another way to say that is restorative justice, and it's the idea that we have to help people when something happens to them, even if it was by accident."

We work vigorously for freedom and justice for Black people and, by extension, all people.

We intentionally build and nurture a beloved community that is bonded together through a beautiful struggle that is restorative, not depleting.

Empathy is one's ability to connect with others by building relationships built on mutual trust and understanding.

"It's so important to think about how other people feel because different people have different feelings. Sometimes it helps to think about how you would feel if the same thing that happened to your friend happened to you. Another way to say that is empathy."

We practice empathy. We engage comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with their contexts.

Loving Engagement is the commitment to practice justice, liberation and peace.

"It's so important to make sure that we are always trying to be fair and peaceful. We have to keep practicing this so that we can get better and better at it. Another way to say that is loving engagement."

We embody and practice justice, liberation, and peace in our engagements with one another.

DMU Timestamp: January 25, 2018 19:54

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Restorative Justice, Empathy, Loving Engagement - NowComment.com

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Restorative Justice is the commitment to build a beloved and loving community that is sustainable and growing. " We know that if you knock down someone's block building, you have to help them rebuild it, you can't just say, "Sorry," and walk away.

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https://unveiledstories.com/intergenerational-trauma-privilege-and-racism-understanding-blm-and-shifting-our-beliefs-around-how-the-world-works/

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Written on Gumbaynggirr country in Garlambila. As a non-indigenous woman I acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land and pay my respect to Elders past, present and future and extend that respect to all First Nations people.

Have you travelled overseas and had a sudden deeply felt realisation you could live in that country forever and never really understand the people and the culture? That feeling is familiar to many folks living in Australia, including the traditional custodians of this land our First Nations people.

To fully appreciate how that might affect someone's wellbeing, we need to understand white privilege, intergenerational trauma and racism.

Privilege isn't just about wealth and opportunity, it's also about whose way of doing things we value the most.

We live in an Anglo-dominated country and to some extent an Anglo-dominated world. Many of us struggle to imagine existing in a world where almost nothing is in alignment with what we believe is important, is innate to us, or what our family and community value.

Our leaders, schools, screens and lifestyles reflect a hierarchy of who Anglo culture cares about the most. The more 'successful' by these standards you are, the more respected you are. We even judge others in accordance with these values, looking at each other through narrow lenses decided by those who want to control us.

We accept as 'fact' that 'success' is about money, work ethic, power and individual acclaim. We consume, compete and crave more and more and more.

This model of success is not correct. It's just a construct.

Couple this mismatch of values with the impacts of intergenerational trauma. "If people don't have the opportunity to heal from trauma, they may unknowingly pass it on to others... Indigenous people in Australia have experienced trauma as a result of colonisation, including the associated violence and loss of culture and land, as well as subsequent policies such as the forced removal of children." (from The Healing Foundation)

Intergenerational Trauma Cycle via Mark Rettig on Medium

I'm sure a lot of folks I work with can relate to struggles from impacts of intergenerational trauma. But consider this:

How can people heal from past trauma if they continue to be subjected to new trauma on a daily basis?

From 432 (and counting) blak deaths in custody to institutionalised racism to micro-aggressions in the local supermarket to being trolled on social media (as happened to musician Emily Wurramara just this week when she was passed the mic from Amanda Palmer on Instagram) to walking past statues on every corner revering 'settlers' who murdered, incarcerated, raped, policed, invisibilised, silenced, separated, stole land and stole children from, and tried to wipe out Indigenous life adds to the constant traumatising of a people who remain incredibly strong, but deserve all of our support to address the injustice.

Let us begin to acknowledge the ways in which privilege leads to racism and work to minimise suffering.

We are used to understanding racism as a simple concept because the dominant culture gives us permission to see it this way: you aren't 'racist' if you don't [insert atrocity]'. But racism is endemic in our culture. It enables all of us, including police, to see Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander (TSI) people as 'other' or 'less 'than'.

When you don't understand the impacts of trauma or what it's like to live in a land where your voice is silenced and your values are dismissed. When you don't listen and learn from teachers who are not of the dominant culture, it's easy to go on pretending you are not racist and the problem lies within the communities being affected by an unjust and inequitable society.

But when lions write history we only get their side of the story.

Tyson Yunkaporta, a member of the Apalech clan, examines numerous 'truths' we take for granted from a decolonised perspective in his book 'Sand Talk'. From how time works to the 'invention' of the teenager to the Neanderthal to myths around violence and who is permitted to perform it.

Perhaps though one of the most illuminating concepts is in his simple answer to the age-old question Why Are We Here? Yunkaporta answers it very simply: the role of the human is to be a custodian of the earth we live on.

Imagine, now, that your entire worldview is founded on this belief: You are here to take care of the earth. How might that shape your every day life? Your relationships? Your choices?

Who would be considered leaders if this was our worldview? What would become less important or even worthless?

Some things spring to my mind: money, power-over, violence used to control, bosses, work, buildings, growth, greed, and even the notion of 'the individual' all fade into the background. Taking care of the earth requires co-operation, understanding, listening (to creatures, land and waterways as well as other humans) wisdom and love.

If your top priority is not your own survival and success but instead the survival and success of the planet, what do you think might be different?

The continual messaging that some lives are worth less than others is appalling but it is not peculiar to a society with the values of this dominant culture.

What, then, can we do?

We must deconstruct our entire way of understanding our position in the world if we really want change.

It starts with educating ourselves. This doesn't have to be painful although certainly at times it should be uncomfortable.

On the hilarious NITV art quiz show Faboriginal hosted by Steven Oliver we discover just how much we don't know about our history. The stories, language, culture and knowledge that could be available to us if we were only willing to explore, and consider what is really important. Robbie Hood on SBS is a heartwarming comedy series created by Dylan River which tosses some accepted myths out the window about kids in Alice Springs... like who is really helping who in the foster care system?

The new podcast Always Our Stories created by Kamilaroi/Dunghutti woman Marlee Silva (of tiddas4tiddas on instagram. FYI: tidda is the Koori word for sister. I live on Gumbaynggirr country where the word for sister is jinda. Side note: the Gumbaynggirr word for eight is janya which is short for octopus, how cool is that?) is a collection of thought-provoking and warm interviews with a wide variety of Aboriginal and TSI folks. Did you know Aboriginal people were the first scientists? Or that in defiance of elitism there have been Aboriginal debutante balls since the 1950's?
Update 25th Aug 2020: There has been issue raised by Aboriginal women with the Silva sisters regarding tiddas4tiddas. It is not my place to have a say in that space, but I would be remiss to be silent here as the tiddas4tiddas instagram has suggested there will be legal repercussions for First Nations folks who asked for accountability. I hate piling onto callout culture, but whatever the issue, legal threats with no public engagement on the topics are very concerning in that kind of space. In a blog post about BLM and the dangers of enforcing colonising practices in a racist world, it would be at the very least problematic not to offer alternative voices. If you wish to understand the politics, and dismantle a whole lotta myths about First Nations folks, expand a sense of what beauty is, catch a little comedy, find some products, and also connect with amazing people to support, you can follow women such as: amymcquire_, 8983aj, ithinkceleste and soju_gang to name a few.
We may find this engagement exciting if we think about not only dismantling our own privileges, but opening our minds to other possibilities. Other ways of living that might be more in alignment with how we want to be in this world.

Justice-doing can be good for your mental health if you step out of isolation and into community. If you say 'these are the values I want to live by, I will stand up for, and I want to find others who are doing the same'. It doesn't mean it's not hard or scary or sad or infuriating or risk-free. But it does mean you are not alone, and loneliness is the biggest pandemic.

Loneliness is a pandemic that our leaders quietly condone because when you are alone and afraid you are easier to control. You comply to the norms of a capitalist industrialised atomising society.

The Black Lives Matter revolution is an opportunity to not only insist on justice for murdered black and blak folks at the hands of those in power; to stand up against racism and be a true ally in whatever way is available to you; but to reconsider the value systems that have encouraged these violences in the first place.

We can't allow people in positions of power to do anything they want in the name of 'protecting' us or 'providing for' us.

We need to stop policing each other in accordance with the values and rules of the dominant culture.

Please friends, stop dobbing on each other!

It's very probable that these value systems don't serve me, you or most others if we want to be (mostly) happy and content. There's a whole world of healing, connection, love and possibility in our futures if we're brave and humble enough to welcome radical change.

Reading, watching, listening to and then Showing Up For is a small part of the healing process but for real change in society, we need to value not just the lives of First Nations people (although that's a damn good start), but their ways of doing things that differ from what is currently valued in this society.

It is my belief that our collective heart space will improve if we do so.
Check out Magbala Books for more Indigenous Australian publications. Visit Path to Equality for a comprehensive directory of options to support Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders including petitions to sign, articles to read, artists to buy from and donations you can make. Join the global Black Lives Matter movement and get more involved here.
Black Lives Matter main image via ABC News Jack Fisher

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Intergenerational Trauma, Privilege And Racism: Understanding BLM And Shifting Our Beliefs Around How The World Works - Unveiled Stories

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Written on Gumbaynggirr country in Garlambila. As a non-indigenous woman I acknowledge the traditional custodians of this land and pay my respect to Elders past, present and future and extend that respect to all First Nations people. Have you travelled overseas and had a sudden deeply felt realisation you could live in that country forever...

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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/08/unapologetically-black-the-vision-of-toni-morrison?scrlybrkr=8eac91a5

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ost bios begin, "Toni Morrison was an American writer", and indeed the nation should thank her for a body of writing that held a mirror to its soul and social order. The nation should also thank her for being unapologetically black. Without anger, apology or explanation, she moved black life from the margins of American history to the center of stories that excavated American truths. In the process, she reshaped a literature, making it more reflective of the nation that generated it.

We should be grateful to Morrison for undoing storytelling that placed whiteness and maleness at the center of American letters. Instead, she recognized that narratives formerly relegated to silenced fringes can be revelatory. In her first novel, The Bluest Eye (1970), an 11-year-old black girl convinced by an American world of Shirley Temple movies, Mary Jane candies and Dick and Jane primers that she needs blue eyes to be loved anchors a heartbreaking portrait of the devastation caused by personal, familial and societal rejection.

In her Pulitzer prizewinner Beloved (1987), black mothers weary of having their babies taken from them and sold - one mother willing to commit filicide rather than see her child enslaved - demand that we confront slavery's legacies at the human level and feel their full meanings.

A Mercy (2008) is an epic that through the voice of a black female slave reconstitutes the narratives of a multiracial prenational community to counter the mythohistory that whitewashed America. Rather than being exclusionary, Morrison's writing from a black place makes space for many American stories. We should thank her for an example of inclusivity that shows rooting narratives in one experience need not mean the exclusion of others.

In an interview with Paul Gilroy, Morrison once spoke of her desire to "develop a way of writing that was irrevocably black", not because of an author's race or because of its themes, but because of "something intrinsic, indigenous, something in the way it was put together - the sentences, the structure, texture and tone". She envisioned a strategy of writing stemming from the cultural traditions of a race. Across her novels she realizes this aim with nods to jazz, blues, folklore and the folk. These forms and entities made American culture American, and made her fiction incredibly expansive.

Morrison was an avid reader, and one of the things she read best was the United States. The astuteness and eloquence of her nonfiction made her one of America's keenest cultural critics. Her dissection of the ways whiteness as an ideology was ill-suited to a nation that was multiracial from the start points to how supremacist thinking only deepens cultural stratification. Her criticism reminds us that when fear becomes the state of the union, when we are encouraged to be afraid of the very diversity that makes us strong, democracy and social justice become endangered species. Playing in the Dark (1992), The Origin of Others (2017), and The Source of Self-Regard (2019) are now must-reads in a cultural moment trying to comprehend the current incarnations of supremacist ideology.

In the opening of Playing in the Dark, Morrison writes: "I want to draw a map, so to speak, of a critical geography and use that map to open as much space for discovery, intellectual adventure, and close exploration as did the original charting of the New World - without the mandate for conquest." Morrison's New World is the one that might have been, one where difference wasn't viewed as a negative but as a source of wonder. As a nation the United States may need that map now more than ever.

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Unapologetically black: the vision of Toni Morrison | Valerie Babb

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ost bios begin, "Toni Morrison was an American writer", and indeed the nation should thank her for a body of writing that held a mirror to its soul and social order. The nation should also thank her for being unapologetically black.

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I found this article very inspiring and heart warming. Each student who shared their opinion seemed proud and open about who they are. They made their community very welcoming to everyone. So why aren't some people welcoming and proud of them? Why are people so judgmental of someone who is different than you? I hope society can improve their norms on how people should act in this world.

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Amanda Gorman Captures the Moment, in Verse (Published 2021)

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The youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history read “The Hill We Climb,” which she finished after the riot at the Capitol. “I’m not going to in any way gloss over what we’ve seen,” she says.

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https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/black-history-month-what-is-it-and-why-do-we-need-it/

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Black History Month: What is it and why do we need it?

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The US celebrates Black History Month in February. Here's what to know about the event's origins and purpose, and how to celebrate this year and the 2022 theme.

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https://www.hrc.org/news/books-not-bans-hrc-foundations-lgbtq-affirming-booklist-for-middle-school-and-high-school

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Books Not Bans: HRC Foundation’s LGBTQ+ Affirming Booklist for Middle School and High School

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As book bans spread across the country, it is more important than ever to cultivate an LGBTQ+ inclusive and affirming booklist.

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When Reverend Christopher Rush laid the cornerstone of the First African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in 1853, he placed in it a time capsule, a box that contained a bible, a hymn book, and copies of two New York papers, The Tribune and The Sun. These were mementos for future New Yorkers.

Rush, who escaped slavery and became the second ordained bishop of the AME Zion Church, also delivered the church's first sermon. He read in part from the First Epistle of Peter, an address to the oppressed and persecuted, assuring the congregation that "although now for a little while you may have to suffer through various trials," salvation would reward those who kept the faith.

But even as he counseled hope, the church was doomed. What Rush didn't know was that the land where the Church would stand, part of a thriving African American community, had been condemned two weeks before as part of the plan to create New York's Central Park.

The community, called Seneca Village, began in 1825 and eventually spanned from 82nd Street to 89th Street along what is now the western edge of Central Park. By the time it was finally razed in 1857, it had become a refuge for African Americans. Though most were nominally free (the last slave wasn't emancipated until 1827) life was far from pleasant. The population of African Americans living in New York City tripled between abolition and complete emancipation and the migrants were derided in the press. Mordecai Noah, founder of The New York Enquirer, was especially well-known for his attacks on African Americans, fuming at one point that "the free negroes of this city are a nuisance incomparably greater than a million slaves."

Most landowners at the time refused to sell to African Americans. A white couple who lived in what was then a distant northern outpost of Manhattan was an exception, subdividing and selling off their land first to Epiphany Davis and Andrew Williams, two prominent members of the The New York African Society for Mutual Relief, and then to the AME Zion Church. More members of the African Society, whose purpose was in part to build black communities, followed suit and purchased land too. Slowly, houses were built. Some of them were rather grand, two-story affairs, with barns and stables, and some were modest shacks. The area was eventually anchored by three churches and a school.

Seneca Village ran along the west side of what would become Central Park between 82nd and 89th streets. (NY Historical Society)

Owning land in Seneca Village meant more than finding a refuge from the slums and violence of Manhattan proper. Buying property meant voting rights (at least for men), as laws in New York at the time required that all voters own at least $250 worth of real estate. Seneca Village probably had a more radical purpose, too, as a stop on the Underground Railroad. Prominent abolitionists such as Albro Lyons, later recognized as a conductor on the railroad, owned land and lived there. In fact, the African Society so instrumental in founding the village was reputed to have a hidden basement for hiding runaway slaves. And the name of the village itself may have come from a philosophy tract called Seneca's Morals, a book that was popular with abolitionist activists.

As Seneca Village was building up, however, support for Central Park grew, driven by some of the same pressures that created the African American enclave. The tip of the island of Manhattan was overflowing with people. The slums were spilling over as more and more immigrants arrived, especially after the Irish potato famine started in 1845. None of these conditions appealed to well-off New Yorkers, who had already started migrating further uptown, or out of town, by the 1840s. Already, the Lennox family and other wealthy New York names owned swaths of land in the vicinity of the proposed park. Real estate developers easily foresaw the demand for an exclusive neighborhood bordering parklands.

More than three-fourths of the children who lived in Seneca Village attended Colored School №3 in the church basement. Half of the African Americans who lived there owned their own property, a rate five times higher than the city average. And while the village remained mostly black, immigrant whites had started to live in the area as well. They shared resources ranging from a church (All Angels Episcopal), to a midwife (an Irish immigrant who served the entire town).

But in 1857, it was all torn down.

Even as the church was being built on 86th street, then painstakingly painted white, the original settlers fought for their lands in court. Andrew Williams was paid nearly what his land was worth, after filing an affidavit with the state Supreme Court. Epiphany Davis was not as fortunate, losing hundred of dollars.

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An entire Manhattan village owned by black people was destroyed to build Central Park

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When Reverend Christopher Rush laid the cornerstone of the First African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church in 1853, he placed in it a time capsule, a box that contained a bible, a hymn book, and copies of two New York papers, The Tribune and The Sun. These were mementos for future New Yorkers.

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An interview with the founders of Black Lives Matter | Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi

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https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/op-ed/bs-ed-op-0125-restorative-justice-20180124-story.html

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Amid reports about gun violence, broken water mains and busted boilers in the public schools, two recent articles in The Baltimore Sun stood out like rays of sunshine. One story described an unlikely friendship between a former Baltimore City police officer and John Earl Williams, the man who shot him and killed another officer nearly 42 years ago. The other chronicled former City Councilwoman Rikki Spector's efforts to turn around the lives of two teenagers who had assaulted her.

Both stories illustrate the success of "restorative justice" - an approach that aims to repair the harm caused by a crime instead of simply punishing the perpetrator. Emphasizing accountability by offenders and healing for victims, the concept's central restorative practice is a meeting between the two parties.

This contact typically occurs only at the victim's request and with extensive preparation led by a trained facilitator. Restorative-justice practices may not substitute for incarceration for violent crimes but are part of a multifaceted response. Studies show restorative practices not only promote healing but also reduce offender recidivism, which saves the state $8 for every $1 spent, according to Lawrence Sherman, a distinguished professor at the University of Maryland.

The improbable friendship between a former Baltimore police officer and the man who shot up his squad in the 1976 "Good Friday Shooting."

Restorative justice programs prove particularly effective for juvenile offenders. Also, victims and their families are more satisfied with these programs than they are with traditional approaches to juvenile justice. And, like adults, juvenile offenders who face their victims are less likely to engage in future criminal activity.

Imagine if someone like Rikki Spector had intervened when John Earl Williams was young, helping him understand that his actions have an impact and that adults can be loving.

Around the world, restorative justice is part of the criminal justice process, usually at the parole stage for violent offenders. In Wyoming and Minnesota, state parole boards or departments of correction facilitate "victim-offender dialogues," which makes face-to-face conversation - and real healing - possible.

In Maryland, the only contact between victim and offender occurs at sentencing, when the victim describes to a judge, not to the offender, the impact of the crime. The offender can express remorse only with his or her back to the victim and only in the context of seeking a favorable sentence.

When a Baltimore city councilwoman was attacked by two teenagers in a carjacking two years ago, the crime caused a stir. But what most people didn't know is what happened next: The councilwoman became her attackers' greatest advocate.

The sole state-sponsored contact between offender and victim (or the victim's family) may occur at parole hearings, where the victim or victim's family can oppose parole. The inmate is seated so he or she cannot see the victim or victim's family. Victims don't have the opportunity to tell offenders about the damage they caused. Nor do they have the chance to hear offenders talk about their remorse. Nor are they given the chance to experience the healing power of forgiveness. Attempts by criminal justice experts to change this situation have been rejected by Maryland officials.

As Gov. Larry Hogan and Democratic leaders unveil their criminal justice agenda for this legislative session, they are understandably focused on violent crime, particularly the skyrocketing homicide rate in Baltimore. The General Assembly made a promising start two years ago by passing the Maryland Justice Reinvestment Act, designed to reduce Maryland's prison population and fund programming to reduce recidivism. Many hoped the legislation signaled a move toward smart, fair and effective criminal justice policy. But with the ink barely dry on the law, leaders in both parties now are focusing on enhanced penalties, "truth in sentencing" and delayed parole - all policies that failed in the 1980s and '90s.

This approach will not reduce crime or help victims. Restorative justice practices, on the other hand, have been shown in other states to do both. If Maryland's leaders truly care about effectively responding to crime, a move to integrate restorative practices into our criminal justice system would be a good place to start.

Jane C. Murphy is the Laurence M. Katz Professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and the director of its Juvenile Justice Project. Email: jmurphy@ubalt.edu; Twitter:@familylawprof.

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Restorative justice: healing victims and reducing crime

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Amid reports about gun violence, broken water mains and busted boilers in the public schools, two recent articles in the Baltimore Sun stood out like rays of sunshine. Both stories illustrate the success of "restorative justice" - an approach that aims to repair the harm caused by a crime.

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https://www.theroot.com/how-to-be-unapologetically-black-1822522165

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On Tuesday, I was at Google's New York City office for a panel titled " Breaking Through The Noise: Making Our Voices Visible, Scalable And Impactful." For roughly 90 minutes, (founder of The Grio), (Senior VP, Chief Diversity Officer at Omnicom Group/Founder & President, ADCOLOR®), (Black Voices Editor at Huffington Post) and I spoke to the audience about our respective challenges and successes, and our thoughts about the state and direction of Black media. We each (obviously) had different backgrounds and stories, and even disagreed with certain subtopics, but we were all fully committed to and in possession of a grade of unapologetic Blackness that informs, inspires, centers, and directs the work we do.

Afterwards, I got the opportunity to finally meet , , , and in person and hang out. We toured Google's LEGOLand wing ( Yes. The New York Google office has an approximately 2000 square foot LEGOLand.), had an exceptionally Black moment in a hotel elevator involving a nice White couple who assumed I was a doorman, and ate burgers and nachos. It was a beautifully Black-ass night.

During the panel, one theme repeated throughout the night is the reality that unapologetic Blackness isn't easy. Perhaps its a bit more trendy now than it has been, historically. But we exist in a place where much of what we've been taught and most of what we encounter aims to prevent us from feeling that way, and getting to a place where you're both unscared to be your Black-ass self and embracing of that Black-ass self can be an arduous journey. A journey towards freedom and rapture, but a painful journey nonetheless.

So, how exactly does someone get there? I don't have a textbook to pull from to provide a universal answer, but I do know what has seemed to work for me.
1. Give Blackness a positive association
This is the first and most important part. In order to be unapologetically Black, you have to be proud of and unembarrassed by Blackness. And this doesn't just mean embracing yourself. It means removing negative connotations possessed with entities associated with Blackness. You can not be unapologetically Black if you still assume that if something happens to be "Black" - whether its a public university or a publication or a person - its inherently less than. Perhaps you never gave Blackness the benefit of the doubt before. Well, now you need to start.
2. Surround yourself with people connected to and in favor of unapologetic Blackness
Fortunately, I was lucky enough to have parents who instilled this in me pretty early. But I recognize that many of us just haven't been around enough Black people who believe unapologetic Blackness is a thing to be desired. And, if you're attempting to get there yourself, it's vital to seek out people who are either already there or down to make the journey with you. Basically, remove all people named Taye and Stacey and from your crew.
3. Give negative infinity fucks about what White people think
Now, this doesn't mean you stop caring about what the White people you personally know and like/love think. Nor does it mean to release all basic human kindness and dignity. If you see a White person about to get hit by a truck, don't say " Man, fuck what that White dude who doesn't know he's about to get hit by a truck thinks." Say, " Hey man who happens to be White, there's a truck coming and it might hit you if you don't move."

Instead, stop crafting your thoughts and actions around what White People (collectively) might think if you thought or acted a certain way. Step outside of the White Gaze, and stay there.
4. Embrace Blackness...even Blackness that happens to be unlike your Blackness
Your Blackness can not truly be unapologetic if it cherry-picks; deciding to withhold love from other unapologetically Black people.

From " I'm In Love With Black People Who Love Being Black People. And Love Black People." Because everything said below could also be applied to the unapologetically Black journey.

Your love for Black people doesn't mean shit if it doesn't include Black women. Or Black men. Or Black homosexuals. Or Black atheists. Or Black Christians. Or Black...you get my point. If your love subjugates and discriminates, it's not love. It's vanity. Naturally, you can not love every single Black person. But while you can - and probably should - put conditions on that love based on what that particular Black person happens to do if it directly damages other people (sexual assault, murder, putting kale in the potato salad, etc) you cannot put conditions on that love based on who that particular Black person was born to be. And still claim to love us.

Of course, there are Black people who believe that making Blackness inclusive is inherently anti-Black because it "weakens" us. Whatever and whoever doesn't fit their ideal of what makes a stronger Black community - whether its feminism or atheism or being Christian or being queer - are cancers that need to be eradicated. But what they don't get is that this journey includes all of us. If it doesn't, there's no journey. No community. No love. No point.

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On Tuesday, I was at Google's New York City office for a panel titled "Breaking Through The Noise: Making Our Voices Visible, Scalable And Impactful." For roughly 90 minutes, David Wilson (founder of The Grio), Tiffany Warren (Senior VP, Chief Diversity Officer at Omnicom Group/Founder & President, ADCOLOR®), Lilly...

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"I'm not a racist."

That's what Amy Cooper, a white woman, said when she publicly apologized for calling the police on a black man bird-watching in Central Park.

The words rang especially hollow coming from Cooper. After all, the previous day she had used her position as a white woman to summon police - and the potential for police violence - against editor and birder Christian Cooper after he asked her to put her dog on a leash. "I'm going to tell them there's an African American man threatening my life," she says in a video that quickly went viral.

Not everyone acquires the overnight infamy of Amy Cooper. But her claim of non-racism was a familiar one. If asked, most people would probably say they are not racist. And they're especially likely to say it after they've already done something racist. As Ibram X. Kendi, director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University, notes in his book How to Be an Antiracist, "When racist ideas resound, denials that those ideas are racist typically follow."

But as Kendi also notes, it's not enough to simply be "not racist." "The opposite of 'racist' isn't 'not racist,'" he writes. "It is 'antiracist.'"

The idea of anti-racism has been getting a lot of attention in recent days as Americans around the country rise up against police violence. But the idea is far from new, with roots in decades of civil rights work by black Americans, said Malini Ranganathan, a faculty team lead at the Antiracist Research and Policy Center.

In recent years, thanks to the work of Kendi and others, the term itself has come to be used to describe what it means to actively fight against racism rather than passively claim to be non-racist. Anti-racism involves "taking stock of and eradicating policies that are racist, that have racist outcomes," Ranganathan said, "and making sure that ultimately, we're working towards a much more egalitarian, emancipatory society."

Part of that work is acknowledging our own positions in a white supremacist system. So I should acknowledge that I am a white woman, and as such, I can't talk about what it feels like to experience racism, or to fight against it as a person of color. But it's also not the responsibility of people of color to fix racism, or explain to white people how not to be racist. As Dena Simmons, a scholar and practitioner of social-emotional learning and equity and author of the upcoming book White Rules for Black People, put it, "Don't ask the wounded to do the work."

So I spoke to experts on the topic to help people - including myself - better understand what anti-racism means and what it looks like in practice. "White folks always want to know how they can do better," Simmons said. "I say, start by doing something."

The history and meaning of anti-racism

The concept of anti-racism has its roots in abolition, Ranganathan said - not just the end of slavery but also the call for structural changes in a post-emancipation society, like the eradication of prisons. The idea has "been around throughout the 20th-century civil rights movements" as well, Ranganathan said. More recently, Kendi and other scholars and activists have used the term "anti-racist" specifically to make the point that "it's not sufficient merely to be non-racist," Ranganathan said.

"One endorses either the idea of a racial hierarchy as a racist, or racial equality as an antiracist," Kendi writes in How to Be an Antiracist, published in 2019. " One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist. One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist."

"There is no in-between safe space of 'not racist,'" Kendi continues. "The claim of 'not racist' neutrality is a mask for racism."

"The opposite of 'racist' isn't 'not racist.' It is 'antiracist.'"

To be an anti-racist, Kendi and others say, requires an understanding of history - an understanding that racial disparities in America have their roots, not in some failing by people of color but in policies that serve to prop up white supremacy. The coronavirus pandemic, during which black and Latinx people in many communities have been disproportionately likely to become ill and die, is just one example. As Kendi writes at the Atlantic, "Why are black (and Latino) people during this pandemic less likely to be working from home; less likely to be insured; more likely to live in trauma-care deserts, lacking access to advanced emergency care; and more likely to live in polluted neighborhoods?"

The answer, he writes, is simple: racism.

Specifically, redlining and other forms of housing discrimination have made black Americans more likely to live in neighborhoods affected by environmental contamination that federal and state officials have been slow to respond to, which increases the rates of chronic illness. Those high rates of chronic illness, in turn, make people more vulnerable to Covid-19. In Flint, Michigan, for example, where much of the majority-black population has been affected by lead-contaminated drinking water, the pandemic is "a crisis on top of a crisis with a side of crisis," Mayor Sheldon Neeley told Vox's Khushbu Shah.

Anti-racism is understanding how years of federal, state, and local policies have placed communities of color in the crises they face today, and calling those policies out for what they are: racist.

It also requires an understanding of one's own position in a racist society, many say, an acknowledgment that you can't simply opt out of living in white supremacy by saying you're "not a racist" - you have to actively fight against it. "Anti-racism is an acknowledgment of privilege in a way that, I think, simply disavowing racism is not," Ranganathan said. "It takes seriously that we all are situated into different matrices of power and privilege, and the first step is to take stock of that and not to disavow it or invisibilize it."

Asked to define anti-racism, writer and middle-school teacher Christina Torres cited Beverly Daniel Tatum's conception of racism as a moving walkway. "We're all on the moving walkway," Torres said. "If you're not racist, you're kind of just standing still on the moving walkway, but you're still complicit in societal racism because you're part of society."

"The only way to be anti-racist is to walk in the other direction," Torres said.

The practice of anti-racism

As for how to actually walk against the tide of racism, experts say one key step is educating yourself. White people "need [to] listen to the things that people of color have been telling them for years," Cornelius Minor, an educator and author of the book We Got This.: Equity, Access, and the Quest to Be Who Our Students Need Us to Be, told Vox. "O ne of white folks' favorite things to do is to claim that they didn't know."

But it's not the job of people of color to educate white people about racism or anti-racism. "I'm the victim of racism, and now you want me to try to solve the problem," Simmons says she recently told colleagues. "The problem does not lie within me, it lies within the system that you benefit from."

Instead, people can seek out the many resources already available on anti-racism. In recent days, many publications, including the Guardian, USA Today, and Time, have posted anti-racist reading lists. Many people have also shared resources on social media.

Resources for those wanting to educate themselves and our children about anti-racism. Please take some time so we can improve this world we're currently living in. I will continue to add resources as I find them. #BlackLivesMatter Anti-Racism Resources https://t.co/TAQZBXjqEl
- Augusta Baker Endowed Chair at the U of SC (@BakerChair) May 30, 2020

Once you've educated yourself, the next step is "to actually take action that benefits the members of your community," Minor said.

On Tuesday, many people posted black squares on Instagram as part of the "Blackout Tuesday" campaign. But some noted that the idea could actually harm the movement for racial justice by clogging the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter, which activists use to share actual information, with blank posts. Moreover, as Recode's Rebecca Heilweil reports, some say that "just posting a black square and then logging off gives both brands and nonblack people a way of signaling support on social media without providing any real help."

Beyond just posting something, real action could include talking to friends and relatives about their own racism.

"White folks get really brave on social media, but then really scared when they're around their grandparents," Minor said. "Take that same energy that you got for Twitter, and go sit down with your uncle."

As with other aspects of anti-racism, there are many resources available for talking to white family members about racism - here's one from Teaching Tolerance, and another by Jamilah King at Mother Jones.

For white parents, it's also crucial to teach kids about race and anti-racism. That can be as simple as "pointing out who's in the cartoon and who's not present," Minor said. "Why do we think those people are not here?"

But it also requires thinking about who is in your child's world. "White folks have to actively choose not to live around white folks," Simmons said. For many white people in their daily lives, "You can see folks of color but they're serving your food, they're cleaning your houses," she continued, and so white parents need to put their kids in situations where they can interact with people of color in a meaningful way.

"Let them see the world outside themselves," Simmons said, but "be careful not to be voyeurs."

As with other aspects of anti-racism, there are many resources available for parents. Torres recommends Teaching Tolerance, a website with resources designed for the classroom that could be adapted at home, and the work of anti-bias educator Liz Kleinrock. The New York Times has also compiled a list of books to help parents explain racism and protest to kids.

And beyond educating those in your family and community, anti-racism is also about identifying and fighting racist practices and policies when you see them, Ranganathan said. Policing is an obvious one in this moment, but others include standardized testing that favors white students and air-pollution standards that leave black and Latinx people living in toxic neighborhoods. "To be anti-racist would be to be bold enough to call out these policies as racist," Ranganathan said.

It's also about identifying the teachers, politicians, and thought leaders who are working against these policies. "To be anti-racist would be to give support to these actors, and to throw your weight behind these organizations and these types of conversations," Ranganathan explained.

The work of anti-racism can't stop next month, next year, or when the news cycle moves on. Right now, a lot of white people are paying attention to racism and police violence "because they have no choice," Simmons said. They're stuck at home because of the pandemic, and the protests are all over the media.

But anti-racism can't be something people think about only while it's convenient, Simmons said. "It has to be a commitment that you make."

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It's not enough to be "not racist," experts and educators say.

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A few years after the Civil War ended, promoters determined to establish an all-black town on the Kansas frontier took out an ad in a Kentucky bulletin promising membership in "The Largest Colored Colony in America" for a small down payment: "All Colored People that want to go to Kansas, on September 5th, 1877, Can do so for $5.00."

The bulletin explained those wanting to join this new colony, which would be called Nicodemus, "can do so by paying the sum of one dollar ($1.00), and this money is to be paid by the first of September, 1877, in installments of twenty-five cents at a time, or otherwise as may be desired."

Hundreds of black people from Kentucky took up the call and set off for the new colony in Kansas, traveling with the promise of a new and better life. One of the settlers, Willianna Hickman, joined 300 people leaving Kentucky for Nicodemus in 1878. She and her family traveled for two days on a train before reaching Ellis, Kan. It was a difficult and treacherous journey.

Along the way, Hickman told the Topeka Capital newspaper in 1937, a measles epidemic spread, killing several children. They traveled by wagon over what seemed like a "barren and treeless landscape." As they got closer to what was Nicodemus, someone began shouting. When she looked, the settlement did not look like a town at all.

"My husband pointed out various smokes coming out of the ground and said, that is Nicodemus," Hickman recalled. "The families lived in dugouts . . . and I began to cry."

Life for black settlers was hard in Nicodemus, which, according to the Nicodemus National Historic Site, is one of the oldest black settlements west of the Mississippi River.

Six black men and one white man created the Nicodemus Town Company in 1877, according to the site. They were W.H. Smith, president; Ben Carr, vice president; W.R. Hill, treasurer; S.P. Roundtree, secretary; Jerry Allsap; William Edmunds; and Jeff Lenze.

Hill, the only white member, was a land speculator who had traveled to the South to promote Nicodemus and recruit black people for the new colony.

"Hill met some success in the little Baptist church at Georgetown, a few miles north of Lexington," Norman L. Crockett writes in his book "The Black Towns."

"His audience was soon captivated by stories of a western paradise filled with abundant game, wild horse, and soil so fertile that a minimum of labor yielded bountiful harvests."

Although life was hard on the Kansas plains - they fought hunger, snakes and prairie fires - the population of Nicodemus reached as many as 700 people by 1880.

"The black-town idea reached its peak in the fifty years after the Civil War," Crockett writes.

"The dearth of extant records prohibits an exact enumeration of them, but at least sixty black communities were settled between 1865 and 1915. With more than twenty, Oklahoma led all other states. Unfortunately, little is known about many of the black towns."

Crockett writes that not much was documented about the daily lives, aspirations and fears of people living in such towns as " Blackdom, New Mexico; Hobson City, Alabama; Allensworth, California; and Rentiesville, Oklahoma because residents failed to record their experiences and whites were not interested in preserving and collecting material on the black towns."

Oklahoma's all-black towns included Clearview, Boley and Langston, which was founded around 1890, according to the Black Towns Project.

Mound Bayou, Miss., was founded in 1887 by freedmen led by Isaiah Montgomery. The town, according to blackpast.org, was designed for the residents to have very little contact with whites, had a post office, churches, banks, schools and stores and was often cited by Booker T. Washington as a model of self-sufficiency.

Eatonville, Fla., where Zora Neale Hurston grew up, was incorporated in 1887. That's where she went to collect black folklore. Hurston wrote in "Of Mules and Men" that she could think of no better place to do so.

"First place I aimed to stop to collect material was Eatonville, Florida," Hurston wrote in the introduction. "And now, I'm going to tell you why I decided to go to my native village first. I didn't go back there so that the home folks could make admiration over me because I had been up North to college and come back with a diploma and a Chevrolet. I knew they were not going to pay either one of these items too much mind. I was just Lucy Hurston's daughter, Zora."

"I hurried back to Eatonville because I knew that the town was full of material and that I could get it without hurt, harm or danger. As early as I could remember it was the habit of the men folks particularly to gather on the store porch of evenings and swap stories. "

So, Hurston wrote, she sped "down the straight stretch into Eatonville, the city of five lakes, three croquet courts, three hundred brown skins, three hundred good swimmers, plenty guavas, two schools and no jail house."

Greenwood, a division near North Tulsa, was founded in 1906. According to records, it was created by O.W. Gurley, a wealthy black man who owned land in Arkansas. According to the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum. In 1889, Gurley traveled to Oklahoma to participate in the "Oklahoma Land Run." Gurley purchased 40 acres, which were designated "only to be sold to colored," according to records. The town, which gained fame as "Black Wall Street,"was destroyed in 1921, after it was burned by angry white mobs.

Blackdom, a town in New Mexico, was founded in 1911 by black settlers, later forced out by a drought, according to New Mexico Geneology archives.

Boley, Creek Nation, Indian Territory, was incorporated in 1905, becoming one of the wealthiest black towns in the country, according to the African-American Registry.

Researchers say it is almost impossible to find a complete list of all-black towns and communities. Many less famous black towns and communities survived until the Depression, when black families left out of the necessity to find jobs.

In the Washington area, several communities still exist. Their populations have declined-but in many descendants still live.

The town of North Brentwood was the first incorporated black municipality in the Washington area, according to the Maryland Heritage Area Authority.

North Brentwood was established in the 1890s after Wallace A. Bartlett, a white Civil War veteran who had commanded black troops, sold property to a local realty company, according to North Brentwood Historical Society.

The northern tract was designated for blacks to develop. "North Brentwood's first residents were former slaves of local planters and Civil War veterans," according to documents by the Maryland Heritage Area Authority. "The first lot was sold to an African American by the name of Henry Randall in 1891." Randall's house stood on Holladay Avenue, which became Rhode Island Avenue.

Other black towns and communities in Prince George's include Glenarden, Lincoln, Chapel Hill, Rossville and Ridgely.

"Fairmount Heights was founded at the turn of the Century and Glenarden in the 1920s," said Susan Pearl, a historian at the Prince George's Historical Society. "Of the communities listed, North Brentwood, Fairmount Heights and Glenarden were incorporated."

Many were not incorporated. They include Ridgely, which was established on what is now Central Avenue in about 1870 by a black farmer. "It was a very vibrant community," said Pearl , who wrote "African-American Heritage Survey, 1996."

"There is little left of it. The church and school are still there."

Rossville was named after Augustus Ross, who was born a slave in 1855. He was freed in 1864 and went on to work for the Muirkirk Iron Furnace. Twenty years later he and 10 other freedmen, many of whom worked at the furnace, bought land in a new subdivision that would eventually be named after Ross, according to the Prince George's County African-American Heritage Survey in 1996.

Lincoln was established in 1908 as a retreat community for successful blacks who lived in the District and could afford to spend time out of the city. "They were movers and shakers in Washington," Pearl said. "The biggest mover and shaker in Lincoln was the brother of the man who handed out the Rosenwald awards."

But the community did not prosper. "It was never incorporated," Pearl said. "It didn't grow even as a black community. There is hardly anything left of Lincoln."

Other black communities were established within towns, Pearl said. "What we know as Old Bowie had a large black population after 1870 because of the people who worked on the railroad."

Heritage Montgomery, an initiative created to promote the county's heritage, collected the stories of some African American communities in its publication "Community Cornerstones," which lists dozens of African American settlements created by freed people after the Civil War.

"A symbol of hope and faith, the church was typically the first institution established in a new black community, usually followed by a school and a charity hall," according to the brochure. "Fortunately, many of Montgomery County's historic landmark churches still proudly stand as cornerstones of their communities."

Those sites include Scotland A.M.E. Zion Church, built in Scotland, which, according to the Montgomery County Historic Preservation Commission in Potomac, was created in 1880 by William Dove - a freedman who bought 36 acres for $210. The community was originally called Snakes Den.

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All-black towns across America: Life was hard but full of promise

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A few years after the Civil War ended, promoters determined to establish an all-black town on the Kansas frontier took out an ad in a Kentucky bulletin promising membership in "The Largest Colored Colony in America" for a small down payment: "All Colored People that want to go to Kansas, on September 5th, 1877, Can do so for $5.00."

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Community Action Partnership of Lancaster County

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How to talk to young children about the Black Lives Matter Guiding Principles

By Laleña Garcia

As we think about discussing big ideas with little people, we consider age-appropriate language so that our students or children can grasp the concepts we're introducing and incorporate these ideas and language into their own thinking and conversation.

While adults can obviously talk about any of the principles (and many of us already do) without mentioning the Black Lives Matter movement, we can also mention the movement as a group of people who want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly, regardless of the color of their skin. We can say something along the lines of, "The Civil Rights Movement, with people we know about, like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks, worked to change laws that were unfair.

The Black Lives Matter movement is made up of people who want to make sure that everyone is treated fairly, because, even though many of those laws were changed many years ago, some people are still not being treated fairly." The idea of police violence is frightening to young children, and the same way we don't discuss the violence which met Civil Rights activists, I would not discuss this kind of violence with our youngest children.

After each principle, I've suggested some language you might want to use when talking to young children. Whenever possible, make connections to children's lived experience, in your classroom, your home, or out in the world.

Restorative Justice is the commitment to build a beloved and loving community that is sustainable and growing. "We know that if you knock down someone's block building, you have to help them rebuild it, you can't just say, "Sorry," and walk away. Another way to say that is restorative justice, and it's the idea that we have to help people when something happens to them, even if it was by accident."

Empathy is one's ability to connect with others by building relationships built on mutual trust and understanding. "It's so important to think about how other people feel, because different people have different feelings. Sometimes it helps to think about how you would feel if the same thing that happened to your friend happened to you. Another way to say that is empathy."

Loving Engagement is the commitment to practice justice, liberation and peace. "It's so important to make sure that we are always trying to be fair and peaceful. We have to keep practicing this so that we can get better and better at it. Another way to say that is loving engagement."

Diversity is the celebration and acknowledgment of differences and commonalities across cultures. "Different people do different things and have different feelings. It's so important that we have lots of different kinds of people in our community and that everyone feels safe. Another way to say that is diversity."

Globalism is our ability to see how we are impacted or privileged within the Black global family that exists across the world in different regions. "Globalism means that we are thinking about all the different people all over the world, and thinking about the ways to keep things fair everywhere."

Transgender Affirming is the commitment to continue to make space for our trans siblings by encouraging leadership and recognizing transantagonistic violence, while doing the work required to dismantle cisgender privilege and uplift Black trans folk. "Everybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind. Everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both or neither or something else, and no one else gets to choose for them."

Queer Affirming is working towards a queer-affirming network where heteronormative thinking no longer exists. "Everybody has the right to choose who they love and the kind of family they want by listening to their own heart and mind."

Collective Value means that all Black lives, regardless of actual or perceived sexual identity, gender identity, gender expression, economic status, ability, disability, religious beliefs or disbeliefs, immigration status or location, matter. "Everybody is important, and has the right to be safe and happy. Another way to say that is collective value."

Intergenerational is a space free from ageism where we can learn from each other. "It's important that we have spaces where people of different ages can come together and learn from each other. Another way to say that is intergenerational."

Black Families creates a space that is family friendly and free from patriarchal practices. "There are lots of different kinds of families; what makes a family is that it's people who take care of each other. It's important to make sure that all families feel welcome."

Black Villages is the disruption of Western nuclear family dynamics and a return to the "collective village" that takes care of each other. "There are lots of different kinds of families; what makes a family is that it's people who take care of each other; those people might be related, or maybe they choose to be family together and to take care of each other. Sometimes, when it's lots of families together, it can be called a village."

Black Women is the building of women-centered spaces free from sexism, misogyny, and male-centeredness. "There are some people who think that women are less important than men. We know that all people are important and have the right to be safe and talk about their own feelings."

Unapologetically Black is the affirmation that Black Lives Matter and that our love, and desire for justice and freedom are prerequisites for wanting that for others. These principles are the blueprint for healing and do not include nor do they support ignoring or sanitizing the ugliness and discomfort that comes with dealing with race and anti-race issues. "There are lots of different kinds of people and one way that we're different is the color of our skin. It's important to make sure that all people are treated fairly, and that's why we, and lots of other people all over the country and the world are part of the Black Lives Matter movement."

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How to Talk to Young Children about the Black Lives Matter Guiding Principles - Community Action Partnership of Lancaster County

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How to talk to young children about the Black Lives Matter Guiding Principles By Laleña Garcia As we think about discussing big ideas with little people, we consider age-appropriate language so that our students or children can grasp the concepts we're introducing and incorporate these ideas and language into their own thinking and conversation.

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Choose your favorite diversity paintings from 1,366 available designs. All diversity paintings ship within 48 hours and include a 30-day money-back guarantee.

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In 2001, UNESCO declared 21 May as UN World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development. So what does that mean? Put simply, it's a chance to celebrate the cultural diversity of people around us, and find out more about what we have in common, rather than what separates us. Here are a few modest and simple ways to mark the occasion. We hope you have fun trying them out.
1. Visit an exhibition or a museum dedicated to other cultures
A casual visit to a local museum or exhibition may inspire you to create something yourself, and heighten your desire to learn about a new topic or culture. Even if you cannot make the trip to a museum, there are several virtual exhibitions you can tour. For example, you can see the British Museum's collection online, and the National Gallery has a virtual tour of 18 rooms that lets you get up close to the paintings.
2. Learn about another religion
The Dalai Lama wrote that 'finding common ground among faiths can help us bridge needless divides, at a time when unified action is more crucial than ever.' Finding out more about another religion may help you understand the multiple beliefs, cultures, traditions and histories of people in your country, and learn how these have shaped the society you live in. If you have friends of a different religion, why not ask them to tell you a little about it? And if you have children, why not teach them about world religions?

3. Plan an international movie night
You know Hollywood, and you may have heard of Bollywood - the world's biggest film industry, based in Mumbai - but have you heard of Lollywood, the thriving Pakistani film industry based in Lahore, or Nollywood in Nigeria? Many of the films coming out of these countries are gaining prominence on the international film scene. Cultures and traditions can be so vividly portrayed through cinema, and watching a film from another country provides a window on distant and faraway places. Depending on where you live, you can also easily buy or rent foreign films to stream online.
4. Listen to music from a different culture
There is perhaps no better way to experience another culture than listening to music. It is remarkable that something so subtle can provoke such deep emotional reactions. Music has a way of cutting across languages, so even if you don't understand the words, you can still hear the influence of other cultures. The internet has created a forum where music can be shared around the world, with sites such as Last.fm that allow you to discover music from every corner of the globe. Or you could listen to the British Council's Selector radio programme featuring a variety of UK music, often with strong international influences.
5. Play a game or take up a sport from a different culture (karate, cricket, pétanque...)
Playing a game or two is a great way to spread some joy around, while exercising both your brain and the rest of your body. I recently took up carrom which is a popular board game in South Asia. It's easy to grab a board, get some friends and family, and get started! Or perhaps you could take up capoeira, a Brazilian martial art that combines dance, acrobatics and music. You can often find a local group online, through social meeting sites like meetup.com. There is something very fulfilling about learning a completely new game, and it's a great way to make friends.
6. Invite a friend and cook traditional food
Tired of the same old boring meals? Why not get creative and try making a dish from another country? You can very easily discover exciting new corners of the world without leaving the kitchen. There is a wealth of global recipes online. You could try YouTube walkthroughs of Japanese or Indian recipes to get you started. Or you could ask a friend from a different cultural background to share their favourite family recipes.
7. Learn about traditional stories from other cultures
Reading and learning about stories from another culture is a great way to expand your knowledge of the world. Many traditional folk tales have universal themes, but at the same time, shine a light on particular aspects of another culture. So now might be a great time to delve into the storybooks and read this folk tale about a young Korean boy who never shared the stories he heard. On his wedding day, the stories wanted revenge! It will surely motivate you to learn and share a new tale.
8. Volunteer with an organisation working for diversity and inclusion
Volunteering can have a meaningful and positive impact on your community and is a fantastic way to meet people, make connections and be happier. You can never tell who you will meet or what new information you may learn, or the influence this could have on your life.
9. Learn another language
Language and culture are inseparable. Even a basic understanding of a few 'stock' phrases can show people that you care enough to communicate with them in their own language. It is relatively easy to have a go at trying a new language through the many smartphone apps such as the British Council Learn English app or through an online language exchange. You can also search online for language exchange meetings taking place all over the world.

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In 2001, UNESCO declared 21 May as UN World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development. So what does that mean? Put simply, it's a chance to celebrate the cultural diversity of people around us, and find out more about what we have in common, rather than what separates us.

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Created by the 2019-2020 Peer Inclusive Educator (PIE) Team

In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist. - Angela Davis

As racial issues continue to dominate national attention in the United States, we must all continue to actively work to dismantle racism. Whether you realize it or not, racism affects everyone and manifests in your everyday life. Below are some tips we've compiled to help you to practice anti-racism.

1. Hold your friends and family accountable. Challenge yourself to engage in respectful conversation with people close to you when they make problematic comments by actively listening and utilizing the E.A.R.S strategies (credit: Dr. Kathy Obear).

Explore, inquire and ask questions(s)

Acknowledge their feelings

Restate what they said to check for accuracy

Exploring Solutions together

2. Attend workshops, events, conferences, and protests that focus on race-related issues. Actively seek race-related events on campus through Happening @ Umich ( https://events.umich.edu/). Conduct research on local non-profit organizations to locate resources and opportunities to engage. Many of these events are free and open to the public! Additionally, MESA's PIE team holds Anti-Racism Teach-Ins that focus on identifying how racism shows up in everyday life and offers strategies to dismantle racism. You can sign up here.

3. Diversify your knowledge and check your information bias. Subscribe to newsletters from nonprofits focused on racial equality and diversify your news outlets to include different viewpoints, ideologies, etc. Utilize different resources (i.e. educational videos, news articles) with more nuanced analysis through a lens of race/ethnicity, including updates and action steps.

4. Engage in race and ethnicity courses through different departments. Take race and ethnicity focused courses outside what is required for your major or area of study. Engaging in classes you wouldn't otherwise take allows you to gain more-in-depth perspectives and knowledge of current racial disparities through history exploration, contemporary issues, and theory. Some departments that offer classes related to race may include Asian Studies, The Program on Intergroup Relations (IGR), African American Studies, Islamic Studies, Latino/a Studies, CASC, American Culture, and Arab American Studies.

5. Have intentional conversations with peers, friends, co-workers, etc. with respect to each other's boundaries. Step out of your comfort zone to engage in conversations that challenge the way you see the world by exchanging stories and sharing different perspectives. Learning about other people's lived experiences can broaden your preconceived notion of racial issues.

6. Learn with humility. Try to practice active listening by listening to understand rather than listening to respond. When you choose to engage, do not assume you know or understand the experiences of marginalized communities, especially those you do not identify with. If people share their experiences with you, be sure to affirm and validate their experiences while being cautious of the space you are occupying.

7. Support the work, art, and businesses of people of color. Institutional and systemic barriers have led to a lack of representation and support for many marginalized communities in mainstream media, politics, and organizations. It is important to champion their work in movies, art shows, books, and music by promoting it on social media, purchasing their materials, and recognizing their contributions to their respective industries.

8. Become involved in organizations that support racial justice issues. Locate organizations that are working within communities to enhance the lives of those disproportionately affected by racism. Support them by donating money (if possible), volunteering time, or spreading awareness of their mission.

9. Avoid usage of stereotypical and normalized, micro-aggressive comments. Examples include:

"Where are you really from?"

"What are you?"

"You sound white" or "You're really well-spoken."

"I don't really see you as Indian."

"You have really big eyes for an Asian person."

10. During a national crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, do not scapegoat certain racial and/or ethnic groups for the crisis. Blaming entire communities for crises can lead to increased violence and overt discrimination towards the targeted group(s). Remember that the U.S. consists of a diverse group of people and one's race/ethnicity and/or skin color does not determine one's claim to being American. Recognizing the racism behind certain comments or actions will allow you to become a better ally to the targeted group(s).

Access the document

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Created by the 2019-2020 Peer Inclusive Educator (PIE) Team In a racist society it is not enough to be non-racist, we must be anti-racist. - Angela Davis As racial issues continue to dominate national attention in the United States, we must all continue to actively work to dismantle racism.

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By Cara Murez HealthDay Reporter

TUESDAY, June 15, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- More teens in the United States are reporting their sexual identity as gay, lesbian or bisexual, nationwide surveys show.

Between 2015 and 2019, the percentage of 15- to 17-year-olds who said they identified as "non-heterosexual" rose from 8.3% to 11.7%, according to nationwide surveys by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Although our analyses demonstrated that there has been a significant increase in the proportion of girls and boys that self-identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual, we cannot be certain if this represents a true increase of this magnitude, or if it reflects at least in part, greater comfort by teens with acknowledging a non-heterosexual identity on an anonymous questionnaire," said Dr. Andrew Adesman, who led an analysis of the findings.

Adesman is chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Cohen Children's Medical Center in New York City.

Since 2015, the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey has included questions about respondents' sexual identity and the sex of their intimate contacts. Before 2015, those questions were included only on some regional versions of the survey. Analysis of regional survey data between 2005 and 2015 had shown a rise in non-heterosexual sexual identity for both boys and girls.

The new, nationwide survey included 20,440 boys and 21,106 girls (average age 16 years).

In addition to the overall increase, the percentage of boys who identified as non-heterosexual rose from 4.5% to 5.7%. For girls, the increase was greater - from 12.2% to 17.8%, the findings showed.

Dr. Amy Green is vice president of research for The Trevor Project, a nationwide group that provides crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to non-heterosexual youth.

Green noted that young people today have greater access to information and language that can help them understand their identity.

"Gen Z youth also have the most positive attitudes towards the LGBTQ community, which can reduce the stigma associated with identifying in this way," she said.

Green noted that The Trevor Project's own surveys consistently find that young people understand and want to express the nuances of their sexual orientation.

"[This] is why we advocate for the collection of this information in both research and clinical settings, to better inform policies, programs and practices aimed at supporting the well-being of LGBTQ youth," Green said.

Joseph Kosciw is research director of GLSEN in New York City, which has worked for 30 years to help schools become safer and more affirming for LGBTQ students. He hopes this study is reflective of that work and that schools are more welcoming places where students can be themselves.

"I think the climate [in schools] is better and youth are more comfortable," he said. "And I also think that, in general, youth of the current generation are more open to just being who they are."

When LGBTQ students are in supportive school environments, the teen years can be positive for them, he said. For others, school can feel unsafe and not affirming, Kosciw said. Even in such circumstances there can be spaces of hope and comfort, including Gender and Sexuality Alliance clubs, he added.

Supportive school environments include those where students see themselves reflected in protective policies, with the same access to the school and activities as everyone else. That includes locker rooms and bathrooms that align with their gender identity or being allowed to bring a same-sex date to the prom, Kosciw said.

"To the extent students can be a part of school life, they do better in school and they thrive, and so I think it can be an exciting time for many LGBTQ students," he said. "And it really is the responsibility as a school to ensure that, by having their schools be safe and affirming spaces for them."

The increase in teens who identified as non-heterosexual was not matched by a corresponding increase in same-sex intimate contact. Though the survey showed modest increases, they were not large enough to be statistically significant.

Adesman said the likely explanation for the higher proportion of girls who identified as gay or bisexual and corresponding increase in same-sex activity is because the stigma for boys remains far greater than that for girls.

"High school can be a very difficult time for teens in so many ways, and it is especially challenging for teens who identify as gay or bisexual," Adesman noted.

"Knowing that gay and bisexual youth are at greater risk for social isolation and victimization, as well as emotional problems, school personnel and health care professionals need to be more vigilant regarding these concerns for what appears to be an increased proportion of high school students in the U.S.," he added.

The findings were published online June 14 in JAMA Pediatrics.

SOURCES: Andrew Adesman, MD, chief, developmental and behavioral pediatrics, Cohen Children's Medical Center, New York City; Amy Green, PhD, vice president, research, The Trevor Project, West Hollywood, Calif.; Joseph Kosciw, PhD, director, GLSEN Research Institute, GLSEN, New York City; JAMA Pediatrics, June 14, 2021, online

Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

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Big Rise in U.S. Teens Identifying As Gay, Bisexual

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By Cara Murez HealthDay Reporter TUESDAY, June 15, 2021 (HealthDay News) -- More teens in the United States are reporting their sexual identity as gay, lesbian or bisexual, nationwide surveys show. Between 2015 and 2019, the percentage of 15- to 17-year-olds who said they identified as "non-heterosexual" rose from 8.3% to 11.7%, according to nationwide surveys by the U.S.

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jackson huntington

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Will we as educators blaze a new trail or continue on the paths of injustice? An open letter to my colleagues.
Dear Fellow Educators,

I don't have to tell you, the demands on us are great. We juggle planning and grading; we strive for our students to show academic growth; and perhaps, most importantly, we push ourselves to create inclusive classrooms where our students can do more than become just founts of knowledge -- spaces where they can grow in empathy and compassion towards one another. At times, these lofty aspirations can feel daunting. But I wholeheartedly believe that if we truly want to see a better, more just world, the work begins now -- and with the children that we teach each and every day in our classrooms. After all, they'll eventually be the citizens, artists, innovators, and policy makers of tomorrow. So we must ask: will we be complacent and let them continue down the current paths of injustice we see within our country or will we empower them to blaze new trails of growth, healing and justice?

How do we start on a new path?
Such a goal, or even moral responsibility begs many questions, mainly: How can it be done?

The reality is that the work of promoting empathy and tolerance begins the moment we, ourselves, are ready to face it and tackle it with as much passion as we put towards improving their scholarship. It starts when we as educators are willing to lean into the difficulty and discomfort of social teaching and embrace the complexities that surround topics like race, equity and social justice in 2020. Children need far more than academic prowess to succeed in the world. It's our job to help them navigate social situations and to dismantle the systems that make it difficult for students to understand and show love and respect towards one another.

Accept implicit bias to create change
First and foremost, before we can confront intolerance with children, we must confront it within ourselves. For me, being a member of the LGBTQIA community and in an interracial marriage, I believed that I completely understood the challenges of being a member of a marginalized group and that I wasn't capable of subscribing to painful stereotypes. This thinking stayed the same until I began participating in training with my colleagues where I listened to the experiences of other educators, and even shared my own. It's imperative that we learn from one another, collaborate on solutions, and most importantly, take the time to engage in necessary conversations around racism and the inequities that exist in America's education system. I now accept and better understand implicit bias because, whether we like it or not, we live in a world that feeds us harmful and often dehumanizing ideas and generalizations about specific groups. So we must recognize and dismantle our own unconscious biases because they affect our perceptions of our students. Dismantling these falsehoods (or at least noticing that they exist and working towards undoing them) gives us the ability to break down the cycles and systems that discriminate against and oppress many of our students.

Normalize diversity to thrive in a multicultural world
After beginning the work within myself and accessing valuable resources, I spent much of this past school year with the notion that we cannot simply celebrate diversity, but we must also normalize it. Normalization for children helps them grow into adults who accept and thrive in a vibrant, multicultural world rather than fear it or resist it. We can hope that children who are taught how to be open-minded, collaborative, and accepting become adults who possess these same characteristics. When multiculturalism is recognized and prioritized in our classrooms during children's most formative educational years, naturally the ability for them to empathize and practice anti-racism is done sooner than later in their lives. It's unacceptable for college or the workplace to be the first space where a person faces, learns about and works alongside someone of a different race, sexuality or belief system.

Change thinking and remove ingrained systems
Making the commitment towards equity and anti-racism at school involves a shift in thinking, changes in practice and removing policies and systems that create barriers. Our journey is one of continual growth, learning and improvement. As a first step, we can actively diversify our storybooks, read-aloud texts, and canons of literature to reveal the lives of Asian, Black, Indigenous, LGBTQ, Jewish, Latinx and Muslim characters. We can acknowledge annual holidays outside of the Christian tradition. And we can evolve our teaching practice to include digging into (rather than avoiding) open conversations when we witness bullying and microaggressions; validating the opinions and emotions of students when they experience both the joys and trials of their individuality; participating in different alliances and student unions for the students that don't feel represented within the school community at large; talking to our students and families about their school experiences; communicating with school administrators about improving school policies around equity and providing teachers opportunities for continued professional growth and learning.

Expand diversity learning throughout the year
The best part of this work is that it's not "seasonal," but rather all-encompassing. Specifically, the teaching of Black history must not start and end in the month of February and should not be limited to the topics of slavery and the Civil Rights Movement, just as Asian, Latinx, or LGBTQ history is not linked to an isolated month of the year or to one notable individual within that specific culture. Further, the best education around these cultures highlights the historical obstacles, but more importantly, the joys and triumphs too. Similarly, it doesn't have to exist apart from your academics as a separate entity -- it can be intentionally woven into your academic lessons to both supplement and enrich them. Always consider and offer your students alternatives to the prevailing, dominant narrative because this is often the white narrative which sometimes carries incorrect notions of supremacy that are tied to systemic racism.

To achieve equitable systems in the world, start in the classroom
With all of this in mind, I accept and do this work the best that I can and with as much energy and fidelity as I can bring given the highs and lows of a typical school year. Even with the challenges, I would argue that if we want equitable systems in the world, we must create equitable systems and conditions in our classrooms first. Intentionally becoming a better model, initiating more anti-racist interaction, and creating room for all of your students to bring something personal and valuable to the table are easy ways to get the changes started. We must accept that we as teachers are agents of change in the minds of students, parents, colleagues and the community. I've seen how even a small shift in our practices can make a monumental difference. We as teachers must own our impact, embrace this work and break away from the systems that diminish the diverse students we serve. With that power, I invite you to join me so that we can know better, be better and do better by all of our students together.

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prioritizing empathy and anti-racism in schools

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Prioritizing Empathy and Anti-Racism in Schools | PBS Education

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Will we as educators blaze a new trail or continue on the paths of injustice? An open letter to my colleagues. Dear Fellow Educators, I don't have to tell you, the demands on us are great.

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I was bullied in high school. The bullying took the form of humiliation, physical assault, and mental torment. At the time, it was simply thought of as "kids being kids." Not a single administrator or teacher did anything to check in, help me, or stop the bullying. Many of my teachers laughed it off when they witnessed it.

This had an impact on my self esteem and my beliefs about people's intent - at work and in other aspects of my life. At the same time, I have always had the ability to see the many sides of conflict. Since elementary school, I have been the go-to mediator with peers, co-workers, and beyond. I have been building my empathy muscle my whole life.

My professional path brought me to community mediation at a nonprofit and it was in this role that I first learned about restorative justice. Since then, I've dedicated my work to building restorative justice programs at the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center and in school districts such as Berkeley Unified and Oakland Unified School Districts.

What is Restorative Justice?

Restorative justice views "harm" as a fracturing of relationships, rather than something that demands punishment. A restorative justice process is a way to uncover true needs and heal relationships via meaningful accountability.

How might restorative justice apply to a conflict? Restorative justice allows the impacted parties to talk about what happened, how they are feeling about it now, the impact it had on everyone, and ultimately what can be done to make it as right as possible. Restorative approach can help school communities avoid the need for exclusionary discipline and reduce repeated offenses. People who have been harmed often have questions that only the person that harmed them can answer. Often time these questions are simple like "why me?" or "what led you to do this to me?" The process allows for these and other questions to be answered and to begin the healing process.

Restorative justice originates from an indigenous paradigm - it is community based, relational, and inclusive. The process creates equity by giving everyone a space to talk and be heard and by addressing the root cause of harm. We often say harmed people harm people, so it is important to uncover and address the original harm too. The restorative talking circle process is often implemented to start this conversation.

Restorative Talking Circles and SEL

One restorative practice that is supporting SEL in classrooms is the use of restorative talking circles. Circles are an effective way of building a community where people feel connected and develop communal ownership of the classroom. This kind of connectedness creates an environment where authentic engagement and deep learning can happen. Students may bring their cultural values into the space, creating a shared ownership of the classroom.

Circles typically start with an opening practice, for example a few minutes of mindfulness, to create an intentional space. The opening is followed by a "check-in" with each of the members of the circle. When first establishing the circle, the group may co-create shared guidelines and discuss personal and shared values. This lays the foundation for a rich and meaningful dialogue followed by a check out and closing.

If the circle is a response to harm or conflict, we may discuss what happened and the impact. We eventually discuss how to make things as right as possible and come up with a plan to repair the relationships and re-weave the fabric of the community. The ability to make something right - or as right as possible - is a gift that all people impacted by harm deserve.

Simply by sitting in a restorative circle in the classroom, students learn valuable social and emotional skills such as patience, empathy, active listening, and impulse control. These skills fall into the five SEL competencies that the Collaborative for Academic and Social Emotional Learning (CASEL) supports schools in teaching and practicing: self awareness, self management, social awareness, responsible decision making, and relationship skills.

Not only does a restorative circle allow people to practice these skills, it can also be used to explicitly teach them. For example, one could do a circle on what it means to be an ally, what respect looks, sounds and feels like in our classroom, or to make a consensual decision about something that affects the community?

Restorative justice is a values based practice. In a circle, shared guidelines and values are always created as a group before the main discussion. We generally use the same core guidelines across the school district and then invite additional ideas for the discussion. We adapted a version of guidelines set forth by Kay Pranis and Carolyn Boyes-Watson in their book "Circle Forward, Building a Restorative School Community", Living Justice Press 2014. They are:

Respect the talking piece - A meaningful object is passed around the circle. The person holding it is the only one that speaks. Everyone else actively listens.

Speak and listen from the heart - Speak your truth and listen with an open mind.

Speak and listen with respect - Pay attention to your triggers and how you express yourself.

Remain in circle - Be present.

Honor privacy - Keep the conversation private. Participants may discuss the level of confidentiality they feel they need.

It is important to build a foundation in shared values so that all participants, especially students, can bring what is important to them (family, culture) into the space. This allows for a classroom to be a shared space rather than the teacher's room. Teachers do not need to be experts in their students lives, and they cannot control what a young person may experience outside of the classroom, at the same time they can provide opportunities to create a learning environment that resonates with a student based on what the student has indicated in circle is important to them.

Student Leadership: The Circle Keepers

A major tenet of restorative justice is working with people rather than doing to them. To support this, every year in Oakland hundreds of youth are trained as circle keepers to support circles in the school community. This supports students as leaders and encourages them to engage in their own education. In their training, youth are not being manipulated to do things adults should do; rather students are empowered to participate in and lead restorative justice because it resonates with them. We must ask ourselves who are we doing this for, students or adults? Do adults want students to learn self management so they can be quiet, orderly and compliant, or do we want them to practice that competency so they may create and maintain positive relationships during and after their education?

By sharing the circle keeper role, adults working in restorative schools are practicing and learning SEL skills alongside students. As teachers learn alongside students, they become more aware of their own biases and triggers. Often adults become more aware of how their behavior can impact children in a positive way - especially youth of color, and students who express their gender in non-heteronormative ways, who feel adult bias the most.

How to Get Started

There is no plug and play model for implementing restorative justice practices at a school. Restorative justice implementation is profoundly related to the eco-system of each school or district. Schools must first assess the environment for readiness. Administrators, teachers, students and parents can identify what factors conducive to restorative justice are already in place and what they can do better. All staff should be trained and receive coaching and feedback throughout the year.

The OUSD Restorative Justice Implementation Guide is a navigational tool we developed in Oakland in partnership with Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY) to help members of the school community identify indicators such as: What's working in our school? What could we do better? What positive things are happening that RJ can support? What do we need to rethink?

It is difficult to implement restorative justice on a piecemeal basis. Restorative justice is a school wide phenomenon and more effective to implement if most, if not all, of the teachers are trained in circles and receive coaching support as they learn the art of circle-keeping. Student leadership can expand to include restorative practices for community building and responding to harm and conflict.

Restorative Justice and Creating Safe Spaces

Today's students want to engage with school curriculum, but in a culturally relevant way. They want to soak up what the teachers are trying to give them, but many of them need a space that creates safety first. Students may need to break free from the cycle of harm and aggression that experiencing trauma can set in motion. According to a 2017 report from the National Survey on Children's Health, 46% of all children in the US have experienced at least one adverse childhood experience (ACE). Bringing restorative justice practices into schools and districts can help to provide an environment where they can heal and break the cycle.

Each day when I go to work at Oakland Unified School District I ask myself how I will transform this system rather than become it. It takes a relentless intentionality and a deep commitment to self reflection. Restorative justice practices help me and others in our school community practice and build our social and emotional skill set so that we can be in right relationship with each other and create a place and space where robust and engaging learning can happen. We need to radically shift the way we have been educating our students for the last 150 years to something that works for all of our young people now.
David Yusem coordinates the Restorative Justice program at Oakland Unified School District (OUSD). This year, the district was able to maintain full time Restorative Justice staff at over 26 school sites to support the implementation of Restorative Justice programming district-wide. The RJ program at OUSD is considered a National model for the implementation of restorative practices in schools. Prior to working at OUSD, David managed the community mediation program at SEEDS Community Resolution Center, and founded their restorative justice program. David has also initiated Restorative Justice pilot programs at the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Center and Berkeley Unified School District.

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Restorative Justice in Schools: SEL in Action

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https://youtu.be/oc23H6RxWRo I was bullied in high school. The bullying took the form of humiliation, physical assault, and mental torment. At the time, it was simply thought of as "kids being kids." Not a single administrator or teacher did anything to check in, help me, or stop the bullying.

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Restorative justice and racial justice, it's creating something; there's nothing to restore when we've always been oppressed. This is the story of the kids in our schools-they've always been oppressed.

For the past three years, the Center for Court Innovation has run restorative justice programs in five Brooklyn high schools. All five schools are overwhelmingly Black, and all five had some of the highest suspension rates in New York City.

The programs' staff are embedded full-time in the schools. Their small offices have become outposts-where students drop in unannounced to talk about their problems. When the staff walk the halls between classes, it can feel like they're exchanging greetings with everyone they pass, stopping to check in with teachers, as much as students.

The approach has paid off. As will soon be documented by Center for Court Innovation researchers, over the project's three years, the number of incidents reported by the schools plummeted, as did suspensions. Along with improving the overall culture of a school, that goes a long way toward interrupting what is often called the school-to-prison pipeline-the relationship between suspensions and later justice-involvement.

But the project had even bigger ambitions. Restorative justice is about accountability and repairing harm. What about accountability for the system that has produced these underserved and essentially segregated schools, and then punishes the kids for reacting to that neglect?

The work was also motivated by a feeling that, with all of the buzz over restorative justice, the challenge of its insistence on everyone's humanity risks being lost-much as the radical King is often forgotten on Martin Luther King Day. For Black Americans, and for the students at these five high schools, what is there to be restored to?

To talk about why there is no restorative justice without racial justice, eight of the members of a very close-knit team sat down with host Matt Watkins for what became a very special episode of New Thinking.
The following is a transcript of the podcast:
Kellsie SAYERS: Our five schools would be classified as underserved schools, so a really high-needs population. A lot of our schools had a lot of students with high levels of IEP, so students who need additional support in order to academically thrive in a standard school.

Our schools were filled with high levels of immigrant populations, so the communities that we worked in were communities that were largely Caribbean-American communities, so a lot of first generation kids from the Caribbean, and with that, we found that our students often were living with people who weren't their birth parents.

They may have been sent to this country, and they're living with the aunt, or cousin, or friend, so not your traditional family environment. Our students often lack the kind of support that you would see in a standard family home, just because of the transient nature in which they were sent into this country.

In addition to that, these are schools who don't have the appropriate number of students to properly run a school, so most of our schools didn't have a social worker. We didn't have many guidance counselors. There weren't a lot of additional services that would be needed for the population that I just described.

Matt WATKINS: And you've got some of these schools are at a poverty level approaching 90 percent.

Kellsie SAYERS: We have schools where, overwhelmingly, our kids qualify for free school lunch. In addition to that is, because they're these underserved schools and underfunded schools, we also had issues in terms of staffing. These are schools with high teacher turnover, so you come to school one year, and 50 percent of the teachers that were here your first year of high school are gone your second year.

And with that said, because you have high turnover and you're underfunded, you have a lot of burnout for teachers. Then you have older teachers who are just on their way out, and they've been educators for 25 years, and they're exhausted from this experience, and they're exhausted from working in underserved schools, and they don't really have much to offer.

There was a lack of adults in the building who I think had the capacity to provide the kind of support this particular population needs.

WATKINS: And then there's also a problem with how "misbehavior" is responded to. These were all schools that had elevated suspension rates.

Kellsie SAYERS: One of the reasons why these five schools were identified for our intervention was that they were amongst some of the highest suspending schools in New York City. In working in the schools, we understand where that suspension came from.

You're underserved, you're understaffed, you're under-resourced. When a child is acting out and you don't have the capacity, the training, or the time to deal with it, then your result is that they have to leave the school community because I can't deal with them. I don't know how to deal with them. I don't have the resources to deal with them, so the best thing to do is to give them time away.

WATKINS: Which can though, in the same way that jail as a response to an offense can make the prior behavior worse, suspension can have the same effect.

Kellsie SAYERS: Exactly, because you're not dealing with the core concerns for why this young person is acting out. Because you feel like even if you ask why-one, you think you know why, because I think some of our schools felt some of our kids were just inherently bad, and they didn't have anything else to offer but this sort of misbehavior. Or, if you ask the question, there's nothing I can actually do about it, so there's no reason for me to ask a question that I can't actually solve.

WATKINS: You guys have now been in these schools for close to three years. Can we talk about how you went about trying to, I guess, change the culture a little bit, if that's the word?

I was struck, when I visited you guys, by how much it just was so apparent that you were all very embedded in the schools in which you were operating in. When I walked the halls with you guys, it's talking to all the students, them coming up to you, the teachers coming up to you, the principal coming up to you and saying, "Hey, I want to flag this for you."

Was that a kind of initial strategy of really showing, "Hey, we're here, we're here to stay," and getting embedded?

Kellsie SAYERS: The approach was a threefold approach for our project. It was community-building, intervention, and investment.

When I say community-building, we use the restorative process of circles to build community in the schools. At each of our schools, there was an advisory program that was developed, which was a class in which it was nonacademic where kids could sit in circle and build community with each other. And build community by talking about their lived experiences, sharing their stories, and a place to really just be themselves without the pressure of a standard academic environment.

In addition to the circles that took place in advisory, we created a bunch of voluntary spaces, which were clubs that included Girls Group, and Men in Color, and the Gender and Sexuality Alliance, and a variety of just different voluntary spaces where young people could be themselves and build community with each other.

Then in addition to building community with young people, we also thought it was important for the adults to build community with each other. Sometimes that was in professional development, sometimes that was a happy hour that we organized, sometimes that was an event that we invited them to on the weekends, just so that they could build community with each other.

In terms of intervention, when that harm actually occurred in the community or when somebody was in need, then we wanted to provide the support to focus on healing and give the individuals who were experiencing this harm or this trouble the ability to process that in what was often a restorative process. Sometimes it was just a conversation. Sometimes it was a mediation using a variety of different skills.

Then the third focus of the project was just investment. We came in with capital, something that the school didn't have. With that capital, we were able to host carnivals, and pep rallies, and take the kids on trips, and provide them with food and parties and all of these things that were unavailable to them because they went to underserved schools.

WATKINS: The day I was there, one word I heard more than once was "grace." How is that a concept that we're trying to introduce into, I guess, the stories that people are telling themselves about themselves?

Xavier CORNEJO: I'll speak on that. I think grace plays a huge role in how we offer forgiveness to students, in ways that systems have just not given them, time and time again.

Grace, to me, is taking into account everything that you've lived and are living through and how that factors into the decisions you make-recognize that you're valid to make mistakes. It's okay for you to make mistakes when, let's say, you threw a pencil at a kid, or you said something out of turn, your anger took over you.

We all do that. We understand you as a human being, as a teenager. When we offer students that grace, it's a way of just recognizing your human capacity to learn.

Maxine GETZ: I think another part of it is that when the teachers are allowed to just feel isolated and feel shame, they then act harmfully towards the kids. Teachers mess up all the time, and if they're just told that it's okay and worked with through whatever they messed up on and given that grace, I think it's so much easier for them to be like, "I'm human. I can apologize to this kid. I can apologize to my co-teacher, whatever. I can apologize to myself for falling short in that moment."

You see that sometimes with specific teachers or students, who for whatever reason have learned how to treat themselves more kindly, are way more able to treat each other with that.

Yesterday, I encountered two kids who were just talking so openly about mental health struggles and therapy and all that and giving themselves the grace to be like, "I've experienced depression"-and publicly, with a whole big group of 15 kids or something-and they're like, "I've experienced depression. This is how I deal with it. This is what I've been taught to deal with it."

In a way that they were letting themselves be broken. I think that to be able to do that, someone had to have really taught them how to do that, and we don't teach them how to do that ever, and I think that that's an important part of the grace element of it is how they can model that for themselves and each other and how, without that, they don't know how to be kind to each other at all or themselves.

Mischaël CETOUTE: I think that a lot of people who go into this work have this idea that the power holder is the people with the titles-the principal, assistant principal-and the first thing that I realized was the people who the children talk to and respect were the people who are most disrespected by the established hierarchy in the school.

School safety agents, the paras, the people who serve them food, the custodians, those were the people who were able to do things and move things and tell you what's going on with X kid, because they were the closest to the kids. But those were the people who the grantees completely neglected in identifying as stakeholders.

When you come into these communities and you try to learn, as opposed to saying, "You're doing this wrong, and here's how you should be doing it," I think it opens you up and opens up the people that you're working with to actually be receptive to what you have to say.

I think our approach on day one, or at least I can say, speak for myself, my approach on day one was literally asking, "What do you need? How can I help?" And for the first year-and-a-half, that was literally just picking up trash in the cafeteria, something that none of the teachers wanted to do, something that none of the students wanted to do, but somebody needed to pick up trash in the cafeteria.

And that action of doing the thing that nobody else wants to do, doing the thing that needs to be done, I think is at the heart of what we're doing, which is paying attention to the actual human beings in front of us and what they need in that moment and long-term.

WATKINS: Well, it's a demonstration of commitment, too, right? It's communicating that message that we're here. We're going to do the shit work that nobody else wants to do if that's what needs to be done.

Mischaël CETOUTE: I think that, and I also think that it's a demonstration of humility in a really important way. When we started this project, Kellsie said something over and over that really grained into my head, which was, "We're guests in this house. This is not our house. This is not our school. We cannot just walk into these people's offices and say, 'You have to do this this way, and you're racist, and you're bad, and you're suspending too many kids.'"

Because in reality, you don't know what's going on in the house. You just got there, you are a guest. And I think that that philosophy and that orientation to focus on the needs of the real people on the ground was really helpful in us getting started in building the community and ingraining ourselves into the preexisting structure.

Quaila HUGH: I think also on that point, you asked about how we went about changing culture. Often, we forget these schools aren't all bad. It's not all terrible. There are lots of people who are working very hard to build culture.

I think something we often talk about on the team is: what is that tipping point of the teachers, or this staff in general, that are working to build a positive culture, but it's just one person here or two people here.

What we did, much like Misch was saying, is just look for where we can help and support so that there is enough energy behind it, so that other people-who maybe started with that energy and don't have it anymore-tap back in to do all the good stuff for this school.

WATKINS: Can we talk a little bit-just so that people have a concrete sense of what some aspect of the work looks like, because the work you're doing is not just about conflict resolution, for example; it's not just about finding an alternative to suspensions-but could we talk a bit about maybe a hypothetical or anonymized scenario, which, in the past, might have been responded to with a suspension, with all the attendant harms that we know about, and then what this alternative, more restorative response actually looks like in practice?

Erica WRIGHT: Specifically, in the second year of the program, my office essentially became a therapeutic office for a lot of kids. It got to a point to where, when kids were on the verge of, if they had reached their peak-maybe they got into an altercation with the teacher or something happened at home and they brought it to school with them, or they got into something with one of their friends-a lot of times our offices were the first places that they would go to, to say, "Let me tell you," you know, the kids they say, "Let me put you on," where they let you know everything what's happening with them.

Because a lot of the times what you see is that these kids don't really want to fight. They just want to be heard. They want to feel like someone is there for them. They want to feel like, "Okay, this thing happened to me, and I need to tell somebody," but when they don't have people there to listen, then it comes out in a violent or an aggressive manner, so our offices became kind of a safe space for them to come to say, "These are all of the things that happened to me."

And then we'll say, "Okay, do you want to talk to that person?" "Yeah, I'll talk to him." And so we were able to sit with them, I'll be like, "Okay, I'm going to put you in another office. Let me go pull this other student, have a conversation with this other student to get what their side of the story is," and then we could bring them together.

And this is pre-them having a fight, or even having a big altercation in the hallway, or anywhere in the school, or even outside of the school. So, a lot of the times we were able to get these situations before anything could even happen, but that was because we had built a sense of community and a sense of trust with the kids.

They knew that we were there for them, and that what happened in our office, as long as it's not anything harmful, it wasn't going to leave there, and in a lot of spaces in their life, that was not a real situation. Even at home, a lot of the kids, a lot of my students in particular, did not feel like they could talk to their parents or whoever the guardian was that they lived with.

We become like these pseudo-parents and older siblings and these guardians, essentially, for these kids. That was kind of a space that we provided them, outside of doing mediations or harm circles, anything of that sort.

Mischaël CETOUTE: And to add to that, I think another way that we did that-that was on an individual level-but at the community scale, we just amplified the efforts, like Quaila was saying earlier, we amplified the efforts that teachers were making to build positive community already.

In the second year we had a group of teachers who were veterans who wanted to do something fun for the students on the day before break. And they called it Sports Fest, and it was dividing the school into ninth and 12th versus 10th and 11th, and playing basketball and having it be a competition. And we were like, "yes, let's do it! What do you need?"

And it turns out that what they needed was a tug-of war rope, and hacky sacks, and potato sacks for their kids to do potato sack races. And Sports Fest has become a major part of the school culture. Kids look forward to it. It's a recurring thing and they've increased the times that they do it.

And it's also boosted attendance. And it's the kind of thing that, if you're only looking at suspension numbers, you're never going to think about how Sports Fest will prevent fights, Sports Fest will encourage kids to come to school, and you don't have to have it wait until someone does something.

Erika SASSON: Just to highlight that point. What we're talking about, obviously you can hear it in here, is harm reduction in a big, comprehensive, holistic way. And I want to just talk about some of the numbers that show that.

So, in one of our schools the year before we got there, there were 166 incidents and 115 suspensions. And into our third year in that same school, there are 14 incidents and the same amount of suspensions, more or less.

And it's not just about the response, again, to harm. It's about deviating a huge amount of that harm and helping these students build a muscle. A lot of the students will say to Maxine, for example, "If I don't talk to you right now, I'm going to punch somebody."

And that's, for me, gold on this project, because it means that they have built that muscle to verbalize their feeling about it without actually taking the action. And once you have that happening, someone on this team is going to talk them out of it in some way, and talk to them about something else, and help them move forward from it.

But we really want-that's the social-emotional learning that doesn't really seem to happen in these environments. And that's how you get the huge reduction in incidents and suspensions.

Omar CYRILLE: One of the more exciting things that we will see is-and this actually happened a couple of times, where we'll walk into a room and you'll see kids in a circle and they're just doing their own circle process. And we're like, "okay, we'll just step out, we'll see how they get it done."

There are times we allow students to, it goes back to having students have equity in the process, just as much as we do. And sometimes we'll not only have conversations in the office, we'll have conversations in the hallway.

We reposition ourselves to become smaller and allow the students to become bigger. Therefore, we get more information, they become more comfortable, and they feel like they can really come to us and share a number of details.

And they have their pride as well, just like anybody else. But when you don't really have enough money to purchase a bacon, egg, and cheese, you don't have enough to be able to go to the school store, and you're going to go through a nine-hour day and sit through eight to seven classes where you're being lectured at. It's not easy.

You could ask anybody on the team if they didn't have their breakfast or their coffee, how they would react to certain stressful situations. There would probably be tons of suspensions, but, in this case, firings!

So, it is coming with that understanding and realizing: I was 15 at one point, and this is exactly, I'd do the same thing that they would. But now that I do know certain things now that I am older, I can be able to give some game and be able to drop some gems for them.

WATKINS: So to pick up on the holistic aspect of restorative justice that Erica was talking about, I doubt there was a moment for any of you in this room where you were in one of the schools and suddenly realized, "Hey, what we're doing in here is actually racial justice!"

But I'm wondering in what ways doing this work in the schools made the link between restorative justice and racial justice-and the link between what students are bringing in from the outside world and into the school-started to make those links, stronger or more pertinent for you.

Kellsie SAYERS: I think that when we think about these young people and the things that they face inside of school and outside of school, it's directly linked to the history of racism in this country. So, to say that we're going to come into these schools and we're going to support these young people and we're going to invest in them, to me is inherently racial justice work.

These are Black and brown kids who are suffering the consequences of a history of racism within this country and within the larger world. Because we do have kids, a lot of our kids, their roots aren't in America, but the racism experienced by people of color in America is not any different than what they experienced back home in their countries.

So I think for me in thinking about doing racial justice work, I think it is providing these young people with the space to heal with traumas that are beyond them, that are in their bloodlines, that are things that were beyond their lived experience here.

And I think particularly in our schools, in addition to wanting to promote positive school culture and wanting to reduce discipline, I found myself doing this work as wanting to give kids the skills to be better, and to be better beyond the academic environment, but to be better for themselves, and their families, and the families they haven't had already.

Being able to build these social, emotional skills with these young people, I think is inherently racial justice work for these Black and brown kids in which investments like this aren't usually made in their communities.

Erica WRIGHT: Something that, probably a year and a half into doing this work, I was really disgruntled with this idea of restorative justice. I really didn't quite understand still what it was. And for me, I didn't understand it because in this country, the history of Black people in this country, has always been tied to oppression.

So my thing was: if Black people in this country, the history of it-slavery, and you go from slavery to the Reconstruction era, and Black Codes, and Jim Crow, all of these different things-what are we restoring to?

WATKINS: America has never been America to me, right?

Erica WRIGHT: I mean, essentially. So, thinking of this idea of restorative justice and racial justice for me, I feel like restorative justice to me is essentially getting back to humanity. And like Kellsie talked about, Erika talked about, the social-emotional learning that a lot of our kids, they don't get in schools.

And a lot of times they don't actually get in homes in their communities. So I feel like for them to sit in circle and, there's no phones in the schools and you have to talk and have conversations, it's been one of those things to where it's-you see them actually be able to come alive and be able to see their own personalities and create the people that they want to be.

So, I think for me, restorative justice and racial justice, it's creating something; there's nothing to restore here when we've always been oppressed-and this is the story of the kids in our schools, they've always been oppressed.

I had a class, and this was actually a class with students. It was a self-contained class. So, all of the students in my class all had IEPs. So, they had an educational plan. Favorite class.

And these kids literally talked about everything under the sun. And I mean, first sexual experiences, everything. And they would tell some things that me and the teacher would be like, "Uh, I don't really, like..."

But they were so comfortable with doing that with each other. And the kids would laugh. When they left that classroom, they knew that that it wasn't leaving the classroom with them and we can come back and have... We literally talked about everything.

So, the fact that these kids were so comfortable, and the teacher said that, prior to us doing circles in her classroom, she had some kids in her class who never- she'd had them for four years-they never said a word in class!

For them to go from that, to be able to share all of these things about themselves with each other. So, like I said, I think for me, it is just a matter of creating the type of community, the type of space that you want, even when everything around you is contrary to that.

Mischaël CETOUTE: I actually remember that Kellsie asked me that question of: how do I see racial justice as a part of, or in relation to, restorative justice during the interview.

And I remember telling her in that moment that I didn't think that you could extract the two from each other. I don't think you can possibly be doing restorative justice work in the world, or even America, and not be doing racial healing work, because the entire premise, as I understand it, of restorative justice is about connecting humanity, it's about this shared kinship, and the entire premise of racism is the opposite.

If you are trying to build community, then you have to address the divisions within that community. And it made me think a lot when we started this project, just about how racism was this distortion of community, and what we were seeing in the schools was the impact of that distortion.

When you tell people that they're not good enough, when you tell people that they're disconnected, when you tell them it's all "me, mine, and whatever you got going on is your problem," the result is an environment where everybody has their knives out, ready for the next person. Because if we're all in it on our own, then I got to get you before you get me.

And I think that that piece of it-what the product of racism is, is violence-I think is often lost on people because they have these insular lives in these privileged bubbles, where they get to discuss these issues from an arm's length.

In their mind, restorative justice is a fancy centerpiece, and it's a specific sequence of questions, and it's a specific sequence of seating, and it's not about the fact that there are no Black people in this room because no Black people feel welcome at Columbia University. Or no Black people feel welcome in this particular space.

For them, they're doing restorative justice because they're doing all the steps. And I feel for me, it's really important that we push back against this sort of corporatization and the mainstreaming of Indigenous practices that were originally for and by communities that were discarded.

This idea that you can be doing restorative justice work with all White people, or with all people who live in middle-class backgrounds, or with all people who went to college, and everybody there makes a certain amount of money... That's not restorative justice in my opinion, that is: we want to feel good about ourselves, so we're talking. That's not the same thing.

WATKINS: So, in terms of doing something more than just feeling good because we're talking, it occurs to me, accountability is a big concept that you hear associated with restorative justice.

But you guys don't just want this program to be about accountability for the young Black and brown students that you're working with, who are really the most powerless actors in the system.

You're trying to expand the notion of accountability-expand it into the staff, expand it into the administration, expand it into the Department of Education, which again, I mean, we're talking about deep seated problems in America. So, daunting to say the least. But how do we go about expanding this notion of accountability?

Erika SASSON: I just want to put one piece on that is that we don't really want to expand it to the staff and expand it to the administration. We want to start with the staff and start with the adults in the room. And it should be modeled then for the kids. Like that's all backwards, that we basically start and end with the kids, and we never get to the systems, and we never get to the power brokers.

If it's not there first, then the rest of it is kind of meaningless. So, I've come to this point where I've started to say: I don't want to hear about individual accountability anymore. I want to hear first about system accountability. I want to hear first about adults, adults in the room who are doing their share, and it's going to come from the kids as soon as the adults do it.

But to start with the reverse and expand up is in a way a recipe for a tweaking.

WATKINS: For the same thing happening?

Erika SASSON: For the same thing, I think so.

WATKINS: Well, so, how do you build a perch in order to change the power relations?

You have a little foothold in these Restorative Justice in Schools' classrooms you have in these high schools, these safe spaces. How do you build the perch to be able to do that?

Kellsie SAYERS: I think that that's been a huge challenge of this project. I think that we have tried in lots of ways to bring in the adults in the building to be accountable for their actions. And we've had some amounts of success with that, but I think it's incredibly difficult.

I think it's for the adults in our schools who were excited for RJ work, they were excited that kids would finally take accountability for the things that they were doing. And I think that we've struggled with holding the adults accountable. And I think that we've been able to do it on an individual level. Maybe we'll convince a teacher to apologize about something or to acknowledge a harm that they caused.

But I think we've not figured out how do you hold an entire system accountable. And I think part of it was partly the design of our project is, this was a randomized study. So, the five schools that we launched our project in, did not decide to be there. So, leadership in the school didn't decide that they believed in the principles of restorative justice and in the principles of holding everyone accountable.

So, I think that in an environment where a school is saying, "I want to sign up for RJ," maybe we would have more success with adults taking that kind of accountability. With that said, I think we had some success on accountability in the fact that we acknowledged to the young people, that it's not just you, this isn't just your fault.

And I think for a lot of our young people, that's the first time that they heard, "yeah, and they shouldn't have responded to you that way. You shouldn't cuss at your teacher, but also that was incredibly disrespectful, what happened to you in the classroom, and I want to acknowledge that."

And I think even if we weren't able to hold each of those teachers accountable, those young people being able to hear that what they're feeling and what they're experiencing is real, and it's wrong, is a powerful form of accountability that they haven't had before.

Erica WRIGHT: I also think it's a situation to where, when you think about school districts in general and you go to the headquarters, there are no children in these buildings. They're a bunch of adults. A lot of them who are much older, which is perfectly fine.

But in that sense, they never act, a lot of times they actually don't get to go to the schools. And if they do, it's to do a walkthrough, when you do a walkthrough all of the principals are going to make sure that everything is laid out so nice so that you can think that we're doing this awesome job.

In a lot of the schools that are doing really good jobs. But when you do that, you don't actually get to see what's happening. And they are going to put their best students to go and talk to the superintendent or talk to the chancellor. And of course, they're going to be like, "Oh my God, everything is like rainbows and sunshine. And like our little pots of gold," and that's not real.

So, when you have a system, or when you have a group of people, who run a system that's supposed to be for the betterment of children, but they don't actually interact with children, they don't actually work with these kids. You don't really know what they need.

And so, I think it's very difficult to change those systems because they hear about RJ, or they hear about like a particular behavior plan or something, and it's, "Oh yeah, we're going to give these to the schools! You guys are going to do that!"

But it's like, you don't actually know what these schools need. You've not actually spent time with these kids to see, this is what they need. And then, with that, you're not actually giving them the resources to be able to implement these systems into the school.

And so, in order for us to do this, and to have people in the DOE really understand, they're literally going to have to come and sit in these circles with these kids. They're going to have to actually sit in circles with each other so that they know that, "wow, okay, this is what this is. This is what this is about."

It's theoretical. It's a paper that they read, or a study that they saw or heard about, and now we're going to do it. But, it's like ... This is something that you have to do yourself. And, if you're not doing it, then how do you know that it's being done effectively, that it's being done right, that it's actually being done? And, like I said, until that happens, who knows?

Omar CYRILLE: We've looked at how to create certain processes, because we do have individuals in these buildings that are really, really great. We can use them to be able to help us as well. And, they tend to sometimes leave. And then all that work we've done just leaves with them.

And so, we've tried to create something to where, whenever we get somebody new, they can slide right in seamlessly. Therefore, we can create that culture, but not have it leave with all the people we created it with.

There are some schools that really want RJ, but they look at it as another way to restore order amongst students and not have accountability within themselves. For example, sometimes we'll get teachers come into the room about a student, but it's more-so a "can you fix this student? Can you talk to this student? And then, we'll write them a pass, and then you'll send them back."

But, I'm like, "You could probably talk to him and figure out there's something you did." Because when we talk to our students ... "This teacher yelled at me when I wasn't doing anything. This teacher cursed when I was just asking another student for a pencil."

It's just little simple things like that, that teachers are not understanding and not taking the time to ... Now, whether it's capacity, whether it's having 30 kids in your class at 8:00 a.m., and you're not able to really get any type of time, or you're not able to have anybody help out, and sometimes maybe something boils over.

Regardless, that needs to come out with that actual student, because not only have you embarrassed him in front of his or her friends, but now we don't know that you've said sorry. We don't know that this student also wants to be able to fix a relationship that they had prior to you. And, when they send him to us, we're just like, "Okay, we'll talk to the student." But, now you go back to class. What is actually fixed? Is it going to happen over and over?

Mischaël CETOUTE: I think that, if we want to get to a place of system-accountability, we have to start at the top. It cannot be a situation where the kid who throws a fit because their needs aren't being met is being punished, and the people who are systemically denying his parents a living wage, systematically denying his community of the resources that all the other communities get, they get to go home and say, "Well, we gave them a restorative justice program, so if they don't make it work, that's because they're just inherently deficient."

And it completely misses the point that there's no possible way that you can begin to heal the harm that's going on in the schools without acknowledging the harm that's happening to the principals and to the teachers who work in the schools.

When I came in, I came in as a teacher, so I was really sensitive to teacher-bashing, because that's the number one go-to for the last 20 years. And so, my approach was: I'm not going to criminalize and demonize the adults who actually show up every day, because, guess what? They're showing up every day. Yeah, they're problematic. Yeah, sometimes they say things that make me irk and think, "oh, my God, I can't believe someone said that."

But, at the end of the day, they are showing up every day, and they're not awful to every kid all the time. They're awful to some kids some of the time. And, sometimes I'm awful. I don't know what to tell you. Everybody's kind of awful sometimes.

If you start from this place of, "okay, well, what are you good at, and how do we make you better at what you're good at," then it's much easier to help the culture shift than coming from this place of, "well, here's all the places where you're deficient."

Erika SASSON: I was just going to add something, going back to the question of racial justice on this point. We're at the Center for Court Innovation. We do a lot of work in the criminal justice system and the civil justice system. That is the backdrop from which we entered into this work.

So, there's a lot of questions about interrupting the school-to-prison pipeline. But, for me, personally, I'm an attorney, and I was a prosecutor right out of the gate out of law school. I just thought it was interesting that when I was practicing law, and I was prosecuting a lot of drug and gun and gang types of crimes... And, this is in our native Canada, Matt.

WATKINS: You're outing me!

Erika SASSON: This one's for you and me. We don't get to blame America on this one!

But, literally, when you're a prosecutor, most of your time you're making deals with the defense counsel, so it's not a lot about litigating in court, it's a lot about coming up with a deal. So, mostly there were a lot of Black defendants. But, every time there was a White defendant, and almost without fail, the defense lawyer would say to me, "But, if you proceed with this, this is going to ruin my client's life."

And, I was like, "Well, I met with you this morning about a different case, and you didn't say that at all. You basically never say that to me when there's a Black defendant, so what's going on here?"

I felt that when it came to Black defendants, there was just this expectation that the defense said if I gave a good deal-because I was some kind of soft prosecutor-so, if I gave you a good deal, that's as good as you're going to get, and you should really take it.

That was the kind of advice that I would see given to Black defendants all the time: "Oh, take this. This is a really good deal." But, if it's a White defendant, there is all kinds of outrage about the harm of the system, and the harm of the prosecution, and all of that.

And you cut to a decade later, and I'm walking around these public schools. Meanwhile, my child's also in public school, but in a public school that looks really different than the public schools that we're working in. And, this public school that we're working in is filled almost entirely with Black children.

It just felt to me that there's this really similar expectation, that this is as good as you're going to get, even if that's an overwhelming mediocrity, even if it's baseline neglect. It's just something that I think connects to what we see in our justice systems.

Maxine GETZ: Part of how that plays out, and connecting to the racial justice side of it, is the immediacy of, kind of like, anticipatory punishment for the kids. The act of them being in school every day and the fact of it is that they're just constantly being anticipatorily punished.

So that when they have the opportunity for a couch for the lunchroom, or a speaker, or improving the water fountains because there's so much lead in the water-the kids have the idea already that they don't deserve it because they'll mess it up, because they've been told so many times that they're the ones who are going to mess it up, when that's just a complete issue of racism.

They are children. They deserve water. They deserve a couch in the lunchroom. They deserve literally everything that the kids at the school that I went to on the Upper West Side, and the school that your kids go to, Erica...it's just assumed that they'll get.

I mean, to your point, we've talked about this: How do you restore anything that they've never had a clean water fountain in their schools? But, that's also to Omar's point that they just want to maintain order in the schools, and they just want the kids to be well-behaved because they put restorative justice programs in predominantly Black schools because they want the kids to be really well behaved, better behaved in those schools. They want them to be easier to manage.

They're not acknowledging all of the things that they have done that have made it impossible to manage yourself in that daytime because you do not have access to water. You do not have access to a bathroom during the times that you want to go to the bathroom. There's nowhere for you to just congregate and sit. There's nowhere for the teachers to congregate and sit.

Everyone's telling you that the way that you communicate with your family is not how you're allowed to communicate in school. Everyone's telling you that the things that you want to talk about or the music you want to listen to is not okay to be talking about. The way that you're keeping your hair safe in school is not okay to be doing. It just brings all that into really harsh relief when a kid is like, "We can't have a couch in the lunchroom because we'll destroy it."

When I went to visit my high school, that they just built a new building for a few years ago, and it was literally the nicest place I've ever been to. They gave tons of couches to those kids, and they give them this insane theater because they love doing their productions of The Tempest with an actual pool!

That's a public school in New York City. They did The Tempest when I was in high school, and they broke through and flooded the entire basement, I think, because of the pool.

And, they just give it again, because they're like, "Oh, you're kids, you're going to mess up," instead of being like, "You get $2,000 one time for one couch. If you fuck this up, you never get that again because we expect you to fuck it up," and without them having to say, "because you're Black kids." That's just how they assume that.

Quaila HUGH: Potentially a tangent, but thinking about restorative justice as truth-telling and storytelling, and thinking about these DOE higher-ups needing to sit in the schools and listen to the kids...

They gave them all water bottles. Every child in the DOE school system was given the Swell-fancy water bottles. And there aren't water fountains in these schools with clean water. And that's my tangent.

WATKINS: Not a tangent!

Qualia HUGH: I just think restorative justice is we need to tell the truth and hear the stories of the kids being like, "We need water, not water bottles. We want to save the environment, but we need water first before we can fill these water bottles."

Maxine GETZ: Can I just say in some schools, you only got it if you had good behavior. So, you only got the water bottle for good behavior that you couldn't use to fill up anywhere.

Mischaël CETOUTE: I'd also like to add to that most African Americans are not lactose tolerant. It is generally understood that if you are Black-

Matt WATKINS: That was my next question, actually. I can just cross that one off...

Mischaël CETOUTE: Yeah, you probably should not be drinking cow's milk. What is the only thing that they offer at lunchtime to this school where 99 percent of the children are Black? Chocolate milk and, I guess, vanilla milk?

Omar CYRILLE: Regular.

Mischaël CETOUTE: Is it regular milk?

Omar CYRILLE: I guess so.

Mischaël CETOUTE: And then, what is the only thing that actually kind of tastes good? Pizza, which is cheese. And so, when you think about just this basic level: who is the school designed for? Who decided that all these Black kids need milk at every meal, you know what I mean?

Matt WATKINS: So, you guys are nearing the end of this three-year project now, and you've just taken this trip together as a team down to Montgomery, Alabama. You visited the work of the Equal Justice Initiative, The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration.

I don't imagine that it was news what you guys learned down there, but I'm wondering what the impact was of having this experience together near the end of this restorative justice project in the schools that you've been doing.

Xavier CORNEJO: Going into this work, I had the intention of learning about how to heal intergenerational trauma in communities, because it's something that I was informed about just from my lived experience in my hometown. Just recognizing how my family's history in this country is limited-it only goes back a generation or two, starting with my grandmother who came here from El Salvador.

It gave me a bit more perspective and understanding around what that intergenerational trauma looks like, but also recognizing that my struggle is connected to theirs. My community struggle is connected to the schools that I work with.

And again, I think speaking to the point that my colleagues had mentioned: restorative justice is about unification. It is about connecting to a humanness that is about a shared struggle and a shared liberation.

Quaila HUGH: For me, the trip... It made me reflect on how, obviously, we've moved from slavery to mass incarceration, and slavery is very clear-cut: you are enslaved because you are Black.

And I think the way that they are choosing to capitalize on our bodies now is far more insidious because it's like "you are being locked up because you are bad." And you clearly have a choice over being bad in ways that you don't have a choice over being Black. I think it just breaks up our community in far different ways.

And so, for me, the trip cemented that restorative justice is the only way that we're ever going to achieve any racial justice in this country because we need to continue to build our communities and keep our community strong and keep our faith strong. And I think that's going to be through restorative justice.

Mischaël CETOUTE: I think two things that were really powerful to me is, one, I had this moment where I went to Chick-fil-A right before I left, and it was the most integrated Chick-fil-A that I've ever seen. There were Black people working there, White people working there, Black people eating there, White people eating there.

And this is in Montgomery, Alabama, which, prior to, I don't know if I will be safe there. And my mom was like, "don't get in any cars with any strange White men." And I'm like, "mom, when have I ever done that?" But it was just this thing of: you won't be safe in the South. And I actually found it to be the opposite.

In my experience, I think New York city is one of the most racist cities I've ever lived in. And I think that not because people will scream n****r at you on the street, but because there's this sort of insidious liberal racism where you're constantly being told, "you should just be happy to be here. Aren't we great? Oh my God, we are doing so well."

And so, you're constantly being told how you should be appreciative of how liberal and advanced this place is, but then internally, whoa, this feels bad. I know in my soul that that is not how I feel about this interaction, and the power that you have over me is immense.

Whereas in the South, at least specifically in Montgomery, which is a majority Black city with a Black mayor and doing a lot of really progressive things about documenting the history of racism there, there was an honesty about where they had been, and an honesty about where they were trying to go, that I don't feel in New York, I didn't feel in Miami, I didn't feel that, really, in any other city that I've been to. So, I think that Montgomery, and the South in general, they've got something to say.

I'm really grateful that we took that trip together as a team, because I think that this team, for me, has been a really nice support mat where I feel I can fall into my feelings and somebody will catch me. And I think that that might not have been the case if I had gone with a different group of people or if I had gone by myself. I don't know that I would have been able to feel reenergized by it in the way that I did, as opposed to maybe demoralized.

Kellsie SAYERS: I think the trip, for me, brought up a lot of things. I think it made me think about where, as a Black community, I see us today. And I think it often feels, for me, that our generation thinks we're going to be liberated through our individual talents and gifts in a way that there isn't this larger community effort, and there isn't this investment that in order for people of color to be liberated in this country, it's going to take us working together. And it's going to take us believing in something beyond our personal gifts and talents.

And what does it mean to use restorative justice to build that kind of community again? What does it mean to use restorative justice to tell the stories of how our ancestors overcame, and that them overcoming had to do with community, and had to do with faith, and it had to do in believing that it was going to be something beyond you, and that you won't be saved solely by your gifts and talents.

And it just made me think a lot about our ability to have these conversations with young people, and to model for young people that you can invest in other people, even if they don't have the capacity to give you a lot back. So, I think a lot of the work we did in schools was just investing and we didn't expect anything back. And if people disappointed us, it was okay.

Erica WRIGHT: I've got a lot of feels. I don't even know. So, I am from St. Louis, Missouri, and I was there when the protests happened for the death of Michael Brown, and I participated in a lot of them. I took a lot of photos and was just there. That was the first time since I was a child that I saw communities come together within the city, and it was so much love.

People-the news and media-just showed, "oh, protesters are looting and all of these different things," and that was totally inaccurate. People came together and you could go down there in the morning time and never leave because they set up porta-potties, they had food-people donated food, drinks, water, Gatorade. Anything that you needed was there for you to be a part of this moment.

And so, I know that for our generation, we struggle, like what Kellsie talked about, with having that faith, because we hear the stories about what they went through during the Civil Rights Movement, and we see that we do have certain rights and we have certain freedoms.

But it's like Quaila said, and even Misch said, as far as the ways in which racism shows itself now, it's so insidious because it's like, "Imma smack the shit out of you and I'm going to hide my hand like you don't know it."

As opposed to back in the day where it was like, they served you racism on a platter. You saw it, you know what it was, you know that it smelled like shit, it tasted like shit, but you could see it and now you can't see it. I don't know what it's like to have to be walking in the street and move off of the sidewalk because a White person is coming.

But at the same time, like Misch said, I know what it feels like to be in a space where I'm not wanted. I know what it feels like to be in a space where I have to explain that I'm not here because of affirmative action. I'm here because I'm actually fucking smart and probably I know more than you do.

And so it's like, while so many things have changed, so many things are still the same. And in Ferguson, I saw the people come together for something that was so much bigger than us, but we were missing that spiritual piece so that when that dissipates, when that protest has gone there anymore, people are not necessarily still coming together because "we believe in this thing that is so bigger than us" in the ways in which, in the Civil Rights Movement, they had that.

And to know that they actually lived in a community and the ways in which now we may live, Black people, with each other, simply because segregation is still alive and real, but we're not actually living in real communities where we are taking care of each other. And essentially what we're trying to do in these schools is take care of each other in the ways in which when these kids leave their communities...

And that's not to say that none of these communities are not looking out for each other because that would be false, because they are in a lot of ways. But it's not in the way in which, like when I was a kid, if I was out in the middle of the street, my neighbors telling me to "get your ass out the street." And if you said something to them, if you got smart or you did anything, they were going to tell you, "I'm going to tell your grandmother." "Oh no, don't do that." We don't have that anymore.

And so to be there, in that space, for me it's like, I can visualize a time where Black people, actually, we lived in community with each other, and we loved each other, and we took care of each other in a way in which now we have bought into this very White American ideal that individualism... when it's like, we are a very communal people.

And I need us to get back to that. I want us to get back to that. And I feel like restorative justice is a way for us to get back to that. But we're so limited, because we're in the schools is really limited, and what does this look like for us to do this in whole communities, to bring us together?

And so, I guess, for me, Alabama brought up this idea for me that I've always been very much so about kinship. And I feel like those of us who actually really do want that, we don't actually live in the communities that raised us because we don't feel it. So, I guess I just feel like RJ is a way in which we can get back to that.

WATKINS: So, final question to put the cherry on this amazing conversation: As I said, you guys are near the end of this three years of work. Obviously, somebody can't replicate the work that you guys have been doing, and so much is based on the quality of the people in this room.

But is there advice that you would have, lessons you've learned, that you would share with people who want to try to set up something, at least, sharing in the spirit of what you guys have been trying to do in these schools?

Xavier CORNEJO: Something I would say to someone entering this work is: pay your dues. Coming into communities like the ones that we have, similar to what many of us have been saying now, Kellsie said that we are guests in these houses. And so, don't move in there expecting to be the landlord. Don't believe that you have it all figured out for people because you see it from the outside, looking in.

You have to be in community with people. You have to ask everyone, from the disempowered to the empowered, to understand what the lay of the land is.

Omar CYRILLE: One thing I would say is: don't come into the work to feel sorry for people-just get the job done.

Maxine GETZ: I think my biggest takeaway from this whole thing, agreeing with all of you, is just the importance of listening. I mean, as a White person doing this, the importance of listening and just, I don't know sh... stuff.

The way that they put restorative justice programs in predominantly schools with students of color, you've got to be thinking about how you can grapple with your own stuff so that you can show up for kids in a way that honors and celebrates daily their identities, so that I can be a White person who can talk to kids about what it's like to be Black.

Kellsie SAYERS: I'd say to do this work, you got to do it from a place of love. And I think that that requires a lot of grace. And Erica mentioned this: know when to tap out.

You've got to acknowledge your limitations and step back and say: "that's all I can give right now." And acknowledge you might've tried your best, but this just may not be for you.

Mischaël CETOUTE: First thing I would say to someone who is interested in doing RJ is to find the log in your own eye. That's obviously a reference to what Jesus says about finding the log in your eye before taking out the speck in your neighbors, but I think it works on multiple levels in that, as long as you are in community with other people, there's going to be things that you do wrong, that you have to own.

And if you can't do that piece, then no one's going to want to sit in your circle. They're going to sit in that circle and be like, "ah, last week he did this, and now he's talking all this fancy stuff about being in community and being in love-la la la, I'm not buying it."

The second thing I would say is that healing doesn't take place in isolation. And the wounds that you are trying to heal from can only really begin to breathe when you allow others to see them. And I think we live in a society that often tells us to hide our damage and to hide our wounds, and obviously it's not safe to do that with everyone. But if you find the people who you can show your wounds to, that is a huge piece in actually healing.

And the last thing I have is specifically for my White brothers and sisters: I have always recognized that I have White blood in me. I look in the mirror and I'm a Black man and I'm treated like a Black man, but I do not look like someone who is West African, from the continent.

There is a lightness to my skin, there's a lack of kink to my hair, that I can only attribute to a French slave master at some point. For me, knowing that at some point in my family's history, somebody sold their own kid is really, really paramount to understanding what slavery was about.

And so, the question that I would have for White people who are interested in doing this work is: how many slaves did your family own? If you can't look into that, then it's going to be very hard to look into the eyes of a kid who's suffering, because all you're going to see is your own guilt and your own lack of self-reflection.

Maybe your family's new to the country, you came here in the 1900s, or you've never had slaves. How have you all benefited from the White power structure that exists? That's a question that everyone should be asking themselves, but I think it's a question specifically that if you look in the mirror and you think that you're White and you feel that you are White, you really got to ask yourself a lot: How have I benefited? How have my ancestors benefited?

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New Thinking | Restorative Justice is Racial Justice

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Restorative justice is about repairing harm. But for Black Americans, what is there to be restored to? This special episode of New Thinking features a roundtable with eight members of our Restorative Justice in Schools team.

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To meet the challenge of navigating the current environment in which inequity and injustice are prevalent, educators need to lead with empathy and create an anti-bias environment.

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First, they stare. They are sitting, face-to-face, in a cinder block box of a room designed for attorney visits. It stinks of sweat and fear.
The prisoner - a young man who as a teen took part in a Salinas robbery that ended with rape and murder - waits nervously.
The middle-aged woman who faces him survived the ordeal, and she wonders why she's here. Before she entered these prison walls, she had almost turned back. But she said she heard God's voice telling her this was meant to be.

Urged on by a trained mediator, she begins to tell the story of the hurt this young man brought upon her and her loved ones. He, too, speaks - in his case, of regret, guilt and shame.
And before it ends, everyone is in tears.
***

This dialogue - described to a reporter by the victim who participated roughly a decade ago - had a lasting impact on her, one of thousands of similar conversations across the country each year. They are the backbone of restorative justice, an alternative to the traditional U.S. model of justice that's centered on punishment and retribution. The restorative justice movement has grown steadily since the 1970s, with the goal of lessening the harm caused by crimes, while considering the needs of all those impacted - victims, communities and offenders.

Restorative justice is now a standard offering across the U.S., increasingly relied upon by schools and law enforcement to divert low-level juvenile offenders away from the criminal justice system. The Department of Justice's Office for Victims of Crime has even published a how-to manual for both adult and juvenile cases.

A 2019 analysis in the Utah Law Review found that 45 states have enacted laws supporting the use of restorative justice or similar models, in a variety of settings. Thirty-five states "have codified the use of restorative justice in juvenile justice and criminal justice processes." California has more than 40 statutes, laws and provisions supporting the practice.

"Restorative justice has emerged as a new legal norm," writes law review author Thalia González.

There's plenty of anecdotal evidence that techniques like victim-offender dialogues and community circles can and do produce profound feelings among participants - from relief to validation and a sense of catharsis.

But critics and proponents of restorative justice agree the methods have clear limitations, including this central shortcoming: the techniques only work when a perpetrator admits guilt, and wants to participate, which is not always guaranteed to even the most willing of crime victims. As a method for school discipline, it has also increasingly come under scrutiny for consuming teachers' time and energy or being unfairly applied, according to Mikhail Lyubansky, who teaches the psychology of race and ethnicity at the University of Illinois.

In Canada, where restorative justice has been widely practiced since the early 2000s, critics note that many victims don't want to take part.

"'Restorative action in its various forms rarely springs from the wishes of the victims themselves or victim support organizations," writes Arlène Gaudreault, of the School of Criminology at Université de Montréal. "Most of the time, the action centers on the offender. It is often set in motion by services that work with offenders - minor and adult alike - in the context of probation, alternatives to incarceration or parole."

Oakland attorney Sia Henry

Still other critics say its reach is simply too limited. Aside from low-level misdemeanor cases, restorative justice doesn't reduce or replace a significant number of prison and jail sentences, and it doesn't reverse the country's historic trend of mass incarceration and the poverty and racism that drive criminality among young people. They say the method has become nothing more than a feel-good patch slapped on top of a broken justice system.

Even those working to deploy restorative justice see its limitations.

"I am always struck by how some system actors are only interested in establishing these programs for a limited number of harms and a limited number of people, intent on maintaining control over the ways communities respond to harm," Oakland attorney Sia Henry told The Imprint. As a result, she added, the program's potential can be stifled. "This feels similar to how companies and government agencies, in a knee-jerk reaction to the racial uprising last summer, were quick to issue statements, rename streets, create police reform commissions, etc. in hopes we could all just move past the 'moment.'"
"People who are victims don't just get over it"
Still, coastal Santa Cruz County - a historically progressive region in the southern reaches of the greater Bay Area - has embraced restorative justice wholeheartedly. Reforms to its juvenile system, launched in 1999 as one of the earliest projects funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, have been praised nationwide.

Over the past decade, the county's juvenile hall bookings have dropped from 576 per year in 2011 to 157 in 2020, according to local records. Last year, there was an average daily population of 13 youth between the ages of 12 to 18, down from a high of 52 in 1998.

In Santa Cruz County, where 200-plus juvenile misdemeanor crimes are charged each year, the nonprofit Conflict Resolution Center runs two publicly funded youth diversion programs for minors charged with misdemeanor crimes such as shoplifting and minor burglaries.

Last year, nine teens took part in the center's victim-offender dialogue program, mostly held over Zoom. A total of 55 youth were referred to parent-teen mediation. In addition, 54 youth participated in victim awareness education classes.

Alaya Vautier, who directs restorative justice programs for the Conflict Resolution Center in Santa Cruz County.

Alaya Vautier, who directs restorative justice programs for the center, said young people, parents and victims of crimes have all expressed support. Although the cases are kept confidential, Vautier shared some of the written feedback her agency has received:

"I learned the importance of empathy in a more detailed way that I had never thought of, and how people who are victim(s) don't just get over it," wrote one youth participant.

A break-in victim told the offender they were reluctant to participate at first, but in the end concluded: "There is value in getting this off my chest to see you and talk to you."

The results of these efforts are limited but noteworthy: Following 34 face-to-face juvenile victim-offender dialogues between 2016 and 2018, only two of the youth involved committed new crimes within six months,the center reports.

In surveys after the victim awareness classes, 75 percent of the teens reported feeling "understood and accepted responsibility for their past actions," Vautier said, and 85 percent said they developed "deeper empathy towards the victims of crimes."

Another county program, Caminos Hacia el Éxito, is run by the police department in nearby Watsonville. More than 428 youth have completed its diversion programs over the past eight years, with just 40 committing new offenses within six months of completing the program. The police department touts this as a 91 percent success rate.
Decades of promising data
Successful results from restorative justice have long been reported across the country, going back to a 1993 study of victim-offender dialogue programs in four states.

Later, a 2005 meta-analysis reviewing cases of nearly 12,000 youth showed a positive "intervention effect" resulting from victim-offender dialogue that was twice that of traditional court cases.

In 2016, another study found that of 551 Texas youth, those who went through traditional juvenile courts committed new crimes in nearly 50 percent of cases, while those in a "minimal restorative justice educational program" had a 31 percent recidivism rate.

As recently as December 2020, a report looking at recidivism rates and victim satisfaction across a number of studies found that "results are promising for both, regardless of whether the program targets juvenile or adult offenders, or low-level or serious (even violent) crimes."

***

It's tough for a journalist to observe a restorative justice circle or dialogue because they are kept confidential. For this piece, The Imprint revisited a rare observation a reporter was able to document. It took place in 2012 at Hartnell Community College in Salinas, across the bay from Santa Cruz.
Tracy, a young woman, faces her mother as they sit in a circle of supporters, advocates and a trained mediator.
Tracy has heard of this type of "restorative circle" for offenders and victims, but she never thought it would apply to her. As a rehabilitated drug offender now going to college, she reasoned that her long list of crimes never hurt anyone except herself, the kind of drug-use offenses justice reform advocates call nonviolent and "victimless."
As a reporter looks on, several women in the circle talk about the good work Tracy has done since coming home from a women's prison in the Central Valley. Then her mother speaks. She is shaking.
"With everything I've done to try to turn my life around, I never knew that I needed to make amends," she says, still unsure how all this will apply to her.
As she continues, Tracy is stunned to hear, to really feel, the depth of suffering she inflicted on From restorative to transformative justice her mother. She understands now that even drug crimes can have victims. Everyone is crying as she and her mother talk about Tracy's teen years, each acknowledging the ways they - often unknowingly - hurt each other.
"It's not easy when you have a child that's incarcerated or into trouble," the woman says. "You live every day waiting for the phone call or the knock on the door, and you say, 'What now?'"

Despite the research findings, and the powerful emotions of sessions like the one Tracy participated in, some youth justice advocates express surprising levels of dissatisfaction with the restorative justice approach.

Henry, a senior program specialist with Oakland-based Impact Justice's Restorative Justice Project, argues that for it to be effective, America must create its own version of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission - one that addresses historic and ongoing systemic harms. "If this country is serious about realizing a more racially just society, it first has to stop trying to placate those most harmed by its racism and, instead, commit to doing the long, hard work real transformation demands," Henry said.

Her preferred approach is what many call " transformative justice," which aims to correct the broader, systemic roots of crime and injustice - not merely hold individual offenders to account.

"It is critical Black and Indigenous people lead these efforts, as members and beneficiaries of the oppressive class are in no position to tell the oppressed how to heal from their oppression,"Henry said. Only then can restorative justice work to combat and heal the impacts of crime, she argues.

Indeed, except in minor juvenile cases, restorative programs in the U.S. do little if anything to reduce mass incarceration. They rarely replace a prison or jail sentence. In Santa Cruz County, for example, Vautier said that for some juveniles charged with serious crimes, "the judge might ask the person to have a dialogue with the victim." But the intervention doesn't usually keep the offender from being locked up.
This story is being co-published with The Imprint, a national news outlet covering child welfare and juvenile justice issues.
Still, ever the juvenile justice reform pioneer, the county may again soon lead the way for the nation. Vautier said "there's a will" among local officials to apply more restorative justice practices as a preventive measure, before youth even end up in detention.

"Juvenile probation here is pretty progressive and very interested in keeping them out ofjuvenile hall as much as possible, to do things differently," she said. "If we could reach the youth before they go through court, we might have better outcomes."

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The Promise and Limits of Restorative Justice for Youth

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First, they stare. They are sitting, face-to-face, in a cinder block box of a room designed for attorney visits. It stinks of sweat and fear. The prisoner - a young man who as a teen took part in a Salinas robbery that ended with rape and murder - waits nervously.

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Meet four Black women leaders who are writing history right now

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Oxfam partners and community leaders share stories from their organizing work in the Deep South

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Morgan Phelps has something to prove.

After years of climbing the ladder in public relations, she was gearing up for a career shift to talent recruiting when she found herself unexpectedly sidelined. But it wouldn't be the first time.

"I've gotten used to the brush-off," said Phelps, who was working for a global communications firm at the time. "I was being held back, and I knew I wasn't able to be me or grow. I got fed up with the gaslighting, the microagressions and the lip service that contributed to the status quo."

The status quo? Like many other BIPOC professionals, Phelps said she was overlooked for a role she, and fellow colleagues at the company, felt she was more than ready or qualified for. After months of hedging from leadership, she didn't get the job - an opportunity to bolster DEI hiring at the agency, in an all-white talent recruiting office.

The irony was not lost on Phelps. The diversity team needed more diversity. She ultimately left the company.

'We can't find diverse talent'

In blue collar jobs, Black workers are overrepresented in the market. But as Black professionals climb the ladder, the rungs are spaced further and further apart. Across the senior manager, VP and SVP levels, Black representation stagnates to just roughly 5% of the white collar workforce.

For Phelps, frustrations had long been mounting. Just months before she thought she was a shoe-in for the DEI recruiting role, she had been attending a conference that featured a discussion panel deliberating the challenges of diversity recruiting. She was taken aback by the panelists' consensus:
"We can't find diverse talent."
Having worked in the DEI space, Phelps knew plenty of POC searching for opportunities to grow their careers. At the same time, companies wanted to hire diverse talent, but didn't seem to know where to look. There was a major disconnect, Phelps said.

"It came down to fundamental communication problems [around] supply and demand," she added. "I was seeing people on both sides of the conversations, so I started digging and exploring to find out where the problems were and to create change."

Over the next year and a half, Phelps threw herself into DEI research and met with talent acquisition, HR and DEI leaders to get a better understanding of how she could bridge the relationships between companies and diverse job seekers. Along the way, she saw an opportunity for combining her background in communications and DEI, and launching a diverse recruiting agency of her own.

In 2019, she enrolled in the gBeta accelerator program and made the business official.

The business of diversity

Today, Phelps is founder and CEO of Colorful Connections, a diverse recruiting and retention firm. The startup provides talent placement services, DEI strategic consulting, workplace assessments, and workshops and trainings to improve diversity hiring at companies throughout the region and beyond.

Phelps first launched Colorful Connections to connect BIPOC candidates to jobs in the creative industry based on her background, but has since broadened the firm's approach to embrace roles across industries including in fields such as HR, legal and financial services.

She's also committed to "going beyond diversity" as many companies currently apply it.

"We don't just focus on helping leaders find talent, but we also help create inclusive workplaces where people are supporting [DEI] initiatives so you're not just 'checking a box,'" Phelps said. "From a business perspective, we have to go beyond BIPOC [professionals] because we're focusing on the wrong thing. We need to think about diversity differently. You have to grow in an equitable way. From a leader and hiring manager perspective, you're missing the value that a person can bring with their diversity - and the value of their work."

Having a diverse workforce isn't just good for creating a sense of belonging or morale among employees, it's also good for the bottom line: Diverse teams make better business decisions nearly 90% of the time.

"It's 100% a smart strategic move for business leaders to be cognizant of their [DEI progress] and not let it be an afterthought," Phelps said. "Having diverse teams significantly impact the bottom line because of everything that it touches ... from recruiting to turnover and other business interruptions. When people are able to bring more of themselves to work, they produce better thinking and better results."

And consider this: Research has found that racially and ethnically diverse companies are 36% more likely to outperform their competitors. Nearly two years after the onset of the pandemic and the resurgence of the civil rights movement, roughly 70% of job seekers say a diverse workforce is an important factor when evaluating companies and job offers - a necessary examination for employers facing widespread labor shortages and looking to sway the pendulum of hiring back in their favor.

Proving the naysayers wrong

Still, the barriers to diverse hiring are numerous - an attitude of indifference, a prevailing belief the workforce is sufficiently diverse, perceived DEI program costs - all of these hurdles can prevent companies from moving to embrace diverse hiring practices.

"Companies don't always realize there is a lot of work and planning that goes into this. It's not a flip of the switch," Phelps said. "When budget is an issue, sometimes it's an indicator that they aren't ready or right for us. It's truly an investment as your team grows. [Diversity hiring] should be treated with as much seriousness as your other strategic business goals."

In the future, Phelps hopes to expand Colorful Connections' mission nationally and develop a mobile app that will make diversity recruiting and workplace culture building a seamless process for progressive companies.

"Our vision is to create workplaces that reflect the thinking, the look, and the values of our evolving society," Phelps said. "It's something for years people were saying is impossible - 'diverse talent doesn't exist.' To have an idea and wondering that if I build it, they will come, and facing naysayers along the way ... maybe it's the Capricorn in me, but I like to prove people wrong."
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'We need to think about diversity differently': Morgan Phelps on talent recruiting - Technical.ly

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Morgan Phelps has something to prove. After years of climbing the ladder in public relations, she was gearing up for a career shift to talent recruiting when she found herself unexpectedly sidelined. But it wouldn't be the first time. "I've gotten used to the brush-off," said Phelps, who was working for a global communications firm at the time.

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Start your day with LAist

Sign up for the Morning Brief, delivered weekdays.

This Sunday, the All Black Lives Matter march will be held in West Hollywood. The event has a dual purpose: to honor the lives of Black queer people who have been killed by the police; and to drum up support for Black Lives Matter's demands to defund the police and prosecute more officers.

But the road to making the march happen had its own tensions.

The organization, Christopher Street West, produces the annual L.A. Pride festival. On June 3 it was announced that L.A. Pride, which had been postponed due to COVID-19, would become a march in solidarity with the Black community. The organization got plenty of kudos for its supposedly progressive stance, but it soon became clear that organizers had failed to do something crucial - consult any Black leaders outside of Christopher Street West about the event.

Ashlee Marie Preston, a Black trans multimedia star who served on the L.A. Pride Board in 2017, says she found out about the march when friends started calling and texting her for details.

"Black leadership knows exactly what it needs in order to thrive so please don't conflate saviorism with solidarity," Preston said in a Twitter video. She was also troubled that L.A. Pride had used the name "Black Lives Matter" without getting consent from the organization.

Protests aren't solely about bringing in bodies. They're about bringing a message. If there's no clear message, there's no clear path toward victory. Always make sure you can identify the messenger. This mitigates the possibility of infiltration and derailment of a movement. #BLM pic.twitter.com/RHgrawd0Rc
- Ashlee Marie Preston (@AshleeMPreston) June 4, 2020

As more people spoke out about the lack of involvement of Black queer voices in the city, the criticism grew, especially after Fran Tirado, one of the hosts of the queer podcast Food 4 Thot, shared a screenshot of the event permit application, which praised L.A. Pride's "strong and unified partnership with law enforcement."

"When cops are putting knees on people's necks, they chose to court the police," Preston tells LAist. To activist and journalist Jasmyne Cannick, the episode was infuriating but unsurprising, the perfect illustration of how White LGBT leaders have long ignored Black voices, even as they pat themselves on the back for their inclusivity. From the removal of the hip-hop stage at last year's L.A. Pride to discrimination against Black patrons in clubs and bars to the disheartening statistic that Black people make up 27.9% of West Hollywood's homeless population to wealthy White men, like Ed Buck, who have been accused of preying on Black men, Cannick believes anti-Blackness pulses through L.A.'s queer community.

"The bottom line is that Christopher Street West and L.A. Gay Pride have a lot to apologize for," Cannick says. "They have a lot to atone for when it comes to decades of mistreatment towards the Black LGBTQ community and they're not going to get a pass on that."

Radical Roots

When Los Angeles held its first Pride parade, on June 28, 1970, organizers wanted to commemorate the one-year anniversary of the anti-police riots at New York City's Stonewall Inn.

Approximately 1,000 people turned out to march along Hollywood Boulevard. There weren't any spangled floats sponsored by multinational liquor brands or beefcake dancers twirling under rainbow balloon arches.

Instead, members of various queer organizations such as the Gay Liberation Front and United States Mission marched alongside a float sponsored by gay magazine the Advocate. It was steered by a mix of swimsuit-clad men and members of more conservative gay groups, who wore business attire.

Organizers fought to obtain a permit for the march and were initially charged more than $1.5 million for it. (The ACLU sued the LAPD and a court ruling eventually reduced the amount to $1,500.) In the end, participants walked the mile-and-a-half from Highland to Vine and back again with the protection of the police.

By 1979, the parade had moved to West Hollywood, which had a growing gay - mostly White - population.

During the 1980s and early '90s, as more than 430,000 people died of HIV/AIDS, activists staged "die-ins" at Pride, splayed themselves in the streets and demanded the government allocate more resources to fight the epidemic.

But by the mid-2000s, Pride had shed most of its radical, anti-police roots to become the " gay Coachella" - a transformation that not everyone was happy about.

Last year, L.A. Pride drew approximately 250,000 revelers. As at most such festivals around the country, law enforcement officers were a high-profile presence.

Debate has raged within L.A.'s queer communities about how Pride, once a free event to celebrate a civil rights uprising, has become geographically and financially inaccessible to many Angelenos.

In 2019, a one-day ticket to the festival cost $30, which organizers of the #NotOurPride campaign said was a barrier for many LGBTQ people. Critics also complain that the extravaganza doesn't represent people of color, specifically queer and trans Black people, which is especially galling since activists such as Marsha P. Johnson, Sylvia Rivera and Miss Major Griffin-Gracy played a crucial role in the Stonewall Riots.

So when Christopher Street West announced its "Black solidarity march," it was, for many Black queer people, like pouring salt in a long-festering wound.

WeHo's Whiteness Problem

As the criticism mounted, Christopher Street West organized a sit-down with 39 queer Black leaders. From that meeting, an advisory board of Black LGBTQ+ leaders came together and convinced the nonprofit to back away from the event. Then, they refocused and renamed the event.

On Sunday, June 14, the All Black Lives Matter march will honor the life of Tony McDade, a Black trans man killed by a Tallahassee officer on May 27. At 11 a.m., the march, which takes place at Hollywood and Highland, will start with two trans speakers. They'll be followed by a moment of quiet meditation for Black people who have been killed by police or other forms of institutional violence.

The event's 10-person advisory board includes Princess Murray, who, in 2019, founded Compton's first Pride festival; Gerald Garth, one of L..A Pride's only Black board members; Sammie Haynes, pastor of Vision Church of LA; and chairman Brandon Anthony, founder of Black LGBT nightlife company B.A.S.H.

"We want everyone to be involved, to create a solid board that represents every part of L.A., every gender, every level in terms of politics, nonprofit, entertainment and nightlife. We want to make sure to reach the masses," Anthony says.

Los Angeles isn't the only city that has refocused its annual Pride shindig. Sweeping nationwide protests against police brutality, prompted by the killing of George Floyd, have inspired - some might say forced - Pride festivals to rethink their approach.

In New York City, Reclaim Pride organized a Queer Liberation March to mourn Black lives and fight police brutality. Cities from South Orange, New Jersey to Austin, Texas have thrown together marches in support of Black Lives Matter. In Boston, Porch Pride organized a socially distant way for people to celebrate Pride while raising money to benefit the Black Trans Advocacy Coalition and Homeless Black Trans Women Fund.

It's a start, but there's more work to be done.

On June 10, Cannick convened a remote panel discussion about anti-Blackness at L.A. Pride and in the larger West Hollywood community. It featured seven Black queer trailblazers including Jewel Thais-Williams, founder of Jewel's Catch One, and ended with a call for more education focusing on queer Black history.

It also included a demand that L.A. Pride apologize to queer Black leaders for devaluing their voices at past and current events. Former L.A. Pride board member Marquita Thomas cited an experience where the president of Christopher Street West had her and another Black participant removed from Pride one year. When she complained to the board, she was told it was a personal issue that had nothing to do with the overpolicing of Black people.

"For 50 years they have been turning their back on the Black community. They need to sit down with the community and have a face to face meeting. They need to hear the criticism the community has for them," Cannick told LAist.

Everyone involved with All Black Lives Matter wants the momentum from the march to extend beyond a single day.

"We're going to take the initiative to challenge West Hollywood and examine misrepresentations of our community, not just with L.A. Pride but beyond," Anthony told LAist.

Preston believes the moment is ripe to refocus Pride and honor the work of Black trans pioneers. She wants Christopher Street West and similar groups to be held accountable for their mistakes, but she also wants more than that. Preston thinks its crucial that queer organizations and companies involve Black people from the get-go and trust their leadership.

"There's always been an opportunity to unpack intersectionality in the LGBT community," Preston says. "When it comes to 'Pride Inc.,' it tends to focus on experience and entertainment value but there's an opportunity here to go back to what Pride is really about - a protest."

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How 'All Black Lives Matter' Emerged From The Ashes Of A Failed Solidarity March

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Sign up for the Morning Brief, delivered weekdays. This Sunday, the All Black Lives Matter march will be held in West Hollywood. The event has a dual purpose: to honor the lives of Black queer people who have been killed by the police; and to drum up support for Black Lives Matter's demands to defund the police and prosecute more officers.

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International Journal of Child Care and Education Policy

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Abstract

Ample research data indicate that young children recognize racial characteristics and subsequently exhibit both positive and negative racial attitudes toward their own and other racial groups. In the early childhood field, educators commonly adopt an anti-bias/multicultural curriculum to address such issues with young children and-with rare exceptions-such methods are subject to ongoing endorsement in the scholarly literature. This article, however, offers a more comprehensive critique of the anti-bias curriculum, including an analysis of the conceptual frameworks underpinning several of the associated teaching strategies. In addition, the present article illustrates how the anti-bias curriculum, though presented as congruent with the empirical evidence with respect to the education of young children and race, departs considerably from these data. Furthermore, the curricula under scrutiny fail to engage young children in critical discussions and classroom practices centering on: (i) power relations; (ii) racism; (iii) whiteness; and (iv) white privilege. This critique concludes with a preliminary conceptualization of anti-racism in early childhood education.

Anti-bias education: history and overview

Derman-Sparks and the A.B.C. Task Force ( 1989) have been widely cited as the pioneers of the anti-bias curriculum. For the purposes of this paper, anti-bias education is delineated as "an active/activist approach to challenging prejudice, stereotyping, bias, and the isms" (p. 3). Congruent with this precept, anti-bias education accents a philosophy that foregrounds children's rights-specifically in the areas of supporting positive identity-affording equal opportunity to actualize their full potential, and providing opportunities for personal empowerment (Derman-Sparks and Edwards 2010; Derman-Sparks et al. 2015). More specifically, the goals of anti-bias education include the following tenets:

1. 1.
Each child will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.

2. 2.
Each child will express comfort and joy with human diversity; accurate language for human differences; and deep, caring human connections.

3. 3.
Each child will increasingly recognize unfairness, have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts.

4. 4.
Each child will demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discriminatory actions (Derman-Sparks and Edwards 2010, p. xiv).

These tenets form the crux of the anti-bias curriculum and guide both teacher-led as well as child-directed learning activities. More specifically, "children's questions, comments, and behaviors are a vital source of anti-bias curriculum" (p. 8). Conversely, educators create lessons specific to the anti-bias program, while also ensuring the classroom environment reflects anti-bias principles (Derman-Sparks and Edwards 2010). Given that the anti-bias curriculum is designed for the early years classroom, the document contains practical pedagogical advice on how to implement all four goals with children between the ages of two and five, though it is important to note that all learning activities are tailored to the child's "cognitive, social, and emotional developmental capacities" (p. 8).

For instance, one guideline for teaching goal three is to "assess children's misconceptions and stereotypes", which can be done by holding "planned conversations to draw out their ideas"; and using a picture, a question, or a book to spark their insights" (p. 5). The authors also suggested that teachers "plan activities that help children learn how to contrast inaccurate, untrue images or ideas with accurate ones" (p. 5). As I have argued elsewhere (Escayg 2018), such are commendable, but viewed from a more critical anti-racist perspective, can be classified as preliminary strategies to guide children in challenging and refuting stereotypical images; the foundational weakness, therefore, lies in the fact that the approach to teaching children about stereotypes largely centers on questioning the "accuracy of the message." This in of itself is not an issue, as children are encouraged to think critically; but rather, such an approach may in effect, jettison the role of racialized power in constructing and maintaining racialized imageries; in other words, failing to address the power dynamic results in a limited view on racism-and bias. In the ensuing sections, I address how educators can teach children aged four-five, and eight, about stereotypes using a critical race and anti-racist perspective.

Over the years, there have been extensions to such work (for instance, a recent contribution includes anti-bias/multicultural education for white children and families, see Derman-Sparks and Ramsey 2006; and a guidebook for administrators, titled Leading Anti- Bias Early Childhood Programs, by Derman-Sparks et al. 2015). However, the core precepts of anti-bias education remain the same, and have been routinely incorporated into the scholarly discussions on effective practices aimed at cultivating anti-bias behaviors in young children. Given its increasing popularity-and the dearth of extant critiques-in the early childhood field, it is safe to argue that the anti-bias curriculum retains a measure of pedagogical value worthy of further exploration; next, this assessment will proceed to unpack the potential strengths of the curriculum in greater detail.

One of the main advantages of the anti-bias curriculum is that it acknowledges children's ability to construct and engage in racialized discourse. Such a prospectus also recognizes the prevalence and reality of racism in American society. Indeed, foundational literature on the anti-bias curriculum makes an explicit case for anti-bias practices by highlighting empirical data that reveal children's awareness of racial differences and attitudes. In addition, this program fosters the development of positive racial identity of racialized children and connects such processes to outcomes beyond academic achievement, thereby accounting for children's social and emotional well-being. Of equal significance, the anti-bias curriculum engages not only with methods of teaching and learning, but also serves to emphasize the importance of "broad systemic changes" in contexts such as those of "program policies, structures, procedures, and processes" (Derman-Sparks et al. 2015, p. 11).

While the strengths of anti-bias education outlined above may signify a social justice approach to early learning, the limitations of this work reveal several oversights that-in the interest of scholarly and pedagogical integrity-must be addressed. Most notably, the gaps in the current discourse highlight a perceptible absence of meaningful critical discussions on the centrality of racism (not bias). Even so, bias pertains to "any attitude, belief, or feeling that results in, and helps to justify, unfair treatment of an individual because of his or her identity" (Derman-Sparks and the A.B.C. Task Force 1989, p. 3). By contrast, in this paper, similar to the conceptualizations of other scholars (e.g., Bonilla-Silva 2010; Feagin 2006), I advance the thesis that racism is not solely the adoption and enactment of racialized beliefs and attitudes, but rather, an integrated and institutionalized system of oppression- one which utilizes socially constructed categories of race, ideologies inhered in such categories, and various social structures, to maintain the privileged status of the dominant group.

With the preceding definition in mind, the fundamental flaw of anti-bias curriculum arises in that limited attention is paid to the mechanisms of white supremacy which also create, disseminate, and reinforce pathological imageries of racialized groups. Simply put, an anti-bias curriculum leaves educators-and perhaps many children as well, though I do acknowledge this as speculation on my part-with a question about the social and cultural forces that shape perceptions of other groups, namely, 'what are the origins of such influences?' 'What purpose do these serve?'

The anti-bias curriculum also lacks pedagogical strategies to obtain the recognition of constitutive elements of power and privilege in the construction of racial difference, including that of whiteness. Anti-bias falls short in providing strategies that encourage children to understand how such structures comply with an unjust social order. A closer examination, however, reveals that such central flaws may derive from the conceptual framework (Escayg 2018) in which they are located. Accordingly, this article begins with an examination of conceptual tenets that frame anti-bias education, subsequently illustrating how central elements of the anti-bias framework pay minimal attention to power, privilege, and whiteness. The analysis of anti-racism that follows further problematizes the significance of such, while also explicating the dangers that such absences effect (predominantly the advancement of learning strategies steeped in the liberal rhetoric of tolerance while overlooking more empowering policies that facilitate discussions about racial issues, such as challenging racism). The final analysis concludes with a discussion on the principles of anti-racism in early childhood education.

Conceptual framework of anti-bias education: liberalism-pluralism

The anti-bias curriculum expounds upon key tenets of liberal-pluralism. Indeed, as Robinson and Jones Diaz ( 2006) have noted, such a framework shapes much of the approaches inherent in anti-bias and multicultural education. More importantly, the way in which these knowledges intersect necessitates a critical understanding of race, racism, and oppression in U.S. society. A recent definition of liberal-pluralism contextualizes such an account: the term liberalism engages with themes such as equality and individual rights (Castagno 2009, p. 756), whereas pluralism generally refers to "equality for all cultural traditions" (Leicester 1992, 2013, p. 221). In keeping with a more systemic critique, however, Daniel ( 2008) argued that pluralism, while recognizing such differences, namely, class, race, and gender, elides the role of structural/institutional practices in maintaining sharp and inequitable distinctions along racial, gender, and class lines.

Consistent with these omissions are curricular approaches that emphasize "intercultural understanding and prejudice reduction" (Leicester 1992, 2013, p. 220), at the expense of a systematic analysis of racism, including its historical origins and social permutations to date. Thus, the focus on addressing diversity grows increasingly evident in the anti-bias approach. For instance, throughout the primary and secondary goals of the pedagogical system under scrutiny, scholars identify the persistent topic or "theme" of appreciation of difference. Even linguistically, this curriculum's secondary pedagogics serve to further the main tenets of pluralism (that of finding "comfort and joy" with diversity). While I acknowledge teaching children to respect and appreciate human diversity as a commendable goal, the anti-bias curriculum instead poses a danger reminiscent of that associated with "tolerance" rhetoric, which fails to disrupt the meanings attached to racialized "others" and whites. To advance a critical consciousness in the early years, I propose that best practices facilitate critiques of the relationship between white power, privilege, and the construction of the meanings associated with whiteness and anti-blackness discourse.

In addition, an account of empirical data shows that white and minority children conceptualize whiteness in positive ways. At what point does the anti-bias curriculum provide opportunities for young children to deconstruct the meaning of whiteness? Or assist minority children in recognizing the role of power differentials in constructing representations of racialized groups? Although the more recent text, What if all the kids are white? Anti- bias multicultural education with young children and families (Derman-Sparks and Ramsey 2006), makes an admirable attempt, the scope of the guide falls remarkably short in this regard (for a complete review, see Amos 2011). There are however, other conceptual similarities that illustrate the liberal-pluralism underpinnings of anti-bias education.

Apart from the preceding list, a third pedagogical goal attempts to instantiate a means of advocacy via the rhetoric of "unfairness." Such ambiguous terminology purports to account for the systemic underpinnings of racial oppression. By way of contrast, how can educators articulate equitable goals without situating these in a discussion of the historical processes-and contemporary ideological and material practices- that sustain privilege and power for the white dominant group? As Dei ( 2008) cautioned, in avoiding "the discussion of white identities and white privilege, we reproduce the dominance of whiteness" (p. 20). This poignant warning highlights one of the main limitations of the anti-bias curriculum.

This is not to say, however, that the anti-bias curriculum is bereft of pedagogical or scholarly merit. By challenging such simplistic, reductionist approaches as they center on prejudice and individual attitudes, the dialectical relationship between unequal power relations and the myriad social, economic, political, and cultural advantages afforded to the dominant group, foregrounds more in-depth analyses. In other words, anti-bias education does not link the individual with the systemic/institutional, a glaring and even harmful omission (the accumulation of data consistently reveals how white children tap into their privilege to construct their own identities and represent the "other" through dominant narratives of race). Given that the meanings superimposed on racialized bodies derive from a long-standing legacy of white privilege, and that white children clearly benefit from the "wages of whiteness," (Du Bois, 1935), the following line of interrogation befits the present critique: why are pedagogical strategies for addressing power and privilege absent in the anti-bias education curriculum? Alternatively, can we attribute such woeful critical neglect to an enduring commitment to developmentally appropriate practice?

Conceptual framework: developmentally appropriate practice

One of the most influential concepts in the early childhood field is developmentally appropriate practice, which argues for teaching practices consistent with children's age-related competencies. According to the National Association for the Education of Young Children position statement ( 2009), such a model refers to "practice that promotes young children's optimal learning and development" (p. 16), and is grounded in "what we know from theory and literature about how children develop and learn" (p. 10). In short, the terms acknowledge that multiple systems, such as cultural and social influences, stand to affect children's development. However, as a primary consideration or tenet reveals-along with the 12 revelatory principles of DAP-this framework puts a significant emphasis on developmental perspectives, which, in turn, further supports superficial conversations on race (based on individual attitudes, prejudice, discrimination, etc.).

Further exegesis reveals that the anti-bias curriculum is heavily influenced by developmentally appropriate practice. Thus, any interpretations of the theoretical and practical deficiencies found in the anti-bias curriculum stand to yield-as the extant scholarly literature shows-negligible opposition. In fact, it may be perceived that abstract concepts such as power and white privilege present conceptual challenges to the understanding of young children. Interestingly, the perception of such discussions as beyond the comprehension of the preoperational minds of 4- and 5-year-olds furthers a critical exclusion of the contexts in which racial inequities operate (and their historical origins).

Such determinants may partially explain how the anti-bias curriculum yields strategies for addressing stereotypes with young children, while also failing to provide resources on how to teach them to recognize that such representations not only point to historical and economical origins, but also stem from white power and privilege. Moreover, an explicit example of evasiveness in terms of naming issues such as racism derives from the language itself (read "bias"). The preceding terminology implies subjective, individual attitudes, devoid of connection to larger societal structures; equally telling is that many apposite learning approaches are consistent with such a perspective. Of equal concern is the notion that children exhibit "pre-prejudice" and not "racism." In addition, both terms effect developmental interpretations of children's racial attitudes, for the predominant theories claim that until the age of seven or eight, young children do not express "true racial attitudes" (MacNaughton and Davis 2009).

In my opinion, such view is a theoretical myopia. For, it minimizes children's potential to internalize racialized discourse and to behave in a manner consistent with racist beliefs, thereby unduly emphasizing age-related cognition as a central determinant in children's understandings and expressions of race and racism. Furthermore, given that racism is endemic to American and Canadian society, and many other forms of oppression-for example, class and gender oppressions-are lived and experienced through race, educators may be held to account for the marginalizing of anti-racism discourses in early childhood education. More pointedly, in the context of early childhood education, when developmentally appropriate positions are used to classify children as "prejudiced" but not "racist", some of these interpretations function as obscuring opportunities for transformative teaching practice even further (Vandenbroeck 2007).

Yet, it is important to point out that while developmentally appropriate practice may function in such a manner with regards to teaching children about racism, the overall concept, that is, of recognizing how cognition-along with other social, cultural, and contextual factors shape children's development-is an important one to consider. Therefore, with a view towards elucidating both the strengths and limitations of developmentally appropriate practice, and in particular, analyzing this body of work from a critical race perspective, the scholarly and practical import is to problematize how developmental discourses have served as a dominant lens from which to create anti-bias teaching strategies-and how such an exclusionary focus may give rise to teaching practices that superficially address issues of race and racism with young children.

Indeed, to create research-derived teaching practices requires a multilayered, interdisciplinary lens: one which ascribes much salience to the empirical literature that shows how young white children recognize and utilize their understandings of the social privilege attached to their racial group, highlights the limitations of developmental interpretations of children and race in so far as racial discourse is concerned, incorporates post-modern perspectives (such as critical race and anti-racism), and ultimately, centers the child as an active, social agent. Drawing on all of these, in the last section (an anti-racism approach), I propose specific strategies for deconstructing whiteness with young children. To contextualize and differentiate these suggestions, however, I begin with a brief review of the anti-bias curriculum guidelines.

"Learning about racial differences": toward an analysis of power and privilege

As applicable studies demonstrate, white privilege and power impinge upon the construction of racialized imageries and knowledges used to legitimate a racist social order. In a similar vein, anti-racism discourse affirms that power operates on both individual and institutional levels, and extends such analyses by linking the process of racialization as well as political, economic, and social white power to historical antecedents such as slavery and colonization (Adjei 2008). Anti-racism also recognizes that power relations shape social interactions between and among both dominant and racialized groups. Specifically, while anti-racism acknowledges the agency of the oppressed, or the ability to enact individual power, it also addresses the limitations of such practice, and attributes the latter to the hegemonic power of the dominant group (Dei 1996). To wit, the term "white privilege" generally refers to unearned advantages, but it is also important to note that white supremacy and white privilege are intimately linked; indeed, the former gives rise to the latter (Leonardo 2009).

Chiefly, the interplay between power and privilege-in particular, how such dominance relates to the social construction of difference-merits consideration chiefly, because this interchange will further illustrate a key limitation of the anti-bias curriculum. The anti-bias curriculum frames difference in remarkably similar terms to those of the grounding conceptual framework of liberal-pluralism. In fact, an additional tenet advocates for the "learning about racial difference" and the teaching of strategies aimed at demonstrating to children "the positivity of difference." To be sure, while an auspicious goal, anti-bias falls short in explicating how and why positive meanings are imputed to the racial physical characteristics of the dominant group. To further clarify, this analysis presents a list of rhetorically aligned goals:

1. 1.
To encourage children to ask about their own and others' physical characteristics.

2. 2.
To provide children with accurate, developmentally appropriate information.

3. 3.
To enable children to feel pride, but not superiority, about their racial identity.

4. 4.
To enable children to develop ease with and respect for physical differences.

5. 5.
To help children become aware of our shared physical characteristics-what makes us all human beings. (Derman-Sparks and the A.B.C. Task Force 1989, p. 31).

Tracing an overarching theme throughout the five goals-namely, the acceptance of physical characteristics that differ in accordance with racial group membership-lays bare a clear ode to the liberal rhetoric of sameness (as evinced in goal number five). The visible emphasis on learning about these differences, particularly in concrete terms, characterizes the entire philosophy. For instance, the textbook's authors offered the following strategies:

In an all-White class, help children see differences in skin shades, including freckles, and emphasize that skin color differences are desirable. In classes of children of color, emphasize the beauty of all the different skin tones and hair textures to counter the influence of racism, which makes physical characteristics closer to "white" more desirable. In a diverse interracial/interethnic class, emphasize the theme, "Beautiful children come in all colors," and that the classroom is a wonderful mixture of differences. (p. 36)

The foregoing excerpts shed light on several concerns. First, as a whole, similar guiding educational principles rely heavily on positive affirmation which, taken alone, is not problematic; however, when accounting for the realities of racism-and the evaluations children impute to racialized bodies-this issue calls for strategies that recognize how race and racism shape racialized and white children's lives (grossly overlooked in the anti-bias curriculum). Simply stated, informing children of diversity in racial features without the concomitant aim of countering the negative images of racialized bodies precludes any hope for an equal emphasis on the processes, both historical and social, which allow for certain racial characteristics to be valued more than others. Clearly, dialogue and associated pedagogical practices must serve to contextualize "racial difference" by examining how meanings encompassed by difference are created through unequal power relations and white privilege.

As the scholarship indicates (see for example, Dei 2000; Harris 1993), white privilege and power enable the dominant group to construct meanings of whiteness and Blackness. Dei ( 1996) presciently indicated that "it is simply not enough for an educator to teach, and for students to learn, about other cultures and not engage in a project that unravels the power relations embedded in the construction of knowledge" (p. 37). Therefore, neglecting such central relationship factors in any discussion on difference stands to reinforce the same power differentials attendant upon the process of "othering," an outcome that seems to depart, both practically and theoretically, from the explicitly stated goals of anti-bias education.

A focal point of analysis in the anti-bias curriculum, and one that reveals its fundamental flaws, most notably exposes the way in which whiteness and white identities-in relation to dominance and privilege-are absent from the proposed teaching strategies and suggestions. In fact, the supreme power of whiteness continues to refine the narratives of such models. However, to situate the discussion, this article provides a brief characterization of whiteness, and from there, it proceeds to illustrate how the learning activities found in the anti-bias curriculum and likeminded monographs, such as What if all the kids are White?, offer an inadequate exposition of the whiteness issue by failing to interrogate whiteness as privilege/property (and how this issue plays out in various social spheres, thereby creating an integrated system of racial privilege for the dominant group). Furthermore, I will illustrate how such procedures align with normative assumptions of race and racism and-even more insidiously-limits the implementation of critical anti-racism education with young children.

Deconstructing whiteness with young children

Prior to the advent of what is referred to in the scholarly literature as "Critical Whiteness Studies," African American scholars, thinkers and writers conceptualized the various meanings of whiteness (see Roediger 1998, for review). Building upon the significance of such writings, contemporary scholars describe whiteness as obtaining privilege (Dei 2000; Frankenberg 1993; Lipsitz 2006); property (Harris 1993); identity (Charbeneau 2015), and as a practice of power (Levine-Rasky 2013). Evidently, literary consensus indicates that whiteness obtains a system of power, albeit one not readily acknowledged by those who partake of the advantages it bestows (Applebaum 2010). These benefits vary in accordance with a range of positionalities (Lipsitz 2006), as Dei ( 2000) plainly stated: "Whiteness is not the universal experience of all whites" (p. 29). In keeping with such assertions, we consider how gender, class, ability, and other markers of difference may procure varied forms of white privilege. The effects of positionalities, however, while producing alternate experiences, do not negate the fact that whiteness provides a range of benefits for the dominant group (Dei 2000). Undeniably, the anti-bias curriculum fails to address this salient reality. Here, educators may further develop the critique by illustrating how the anti-bias curriculum reproduces the invisibility of whiteness. Such discussions inform the analysis of teaching suggestions found in What if all the kids are White?, and are further contextualized within the academic literature on whiteness and education.

At first glance, the authors offer a compelling apologia for whiteness, privilege, and institutional racism. Indeed, the text contains chapters entitled, "A short history of white racism in the United States," and "A short history of white resistance to racism in the United States". The inclusion of these chapters may lead readers to anticipate, in addition to a set of pedagogical tools, a contextualization of the teaching approaches/strategies in question. On the contrary, readers are left with a dearth of theory-practice connections. While the volume deploys a few sound anti-bias concepts, it fails to proffer appropriate teaching strategies that would allow for young children to name and challenge whiteness. For the purposes of this analysis, it is important to provide a comprehensive overview of the suggestions offered in the chapter entitled, "Fostering Children's Identities."

Three objectives undergird the suggestions provided by Derman-Sparks and Ramsey ( 2006). One, in particular, works toward supplanting children's internalization of white superiority via discussions and activities that focus on developing the self, an identity "based on personal abilities and interests, family history, and culture, rather than on white superiority" (p. 51). The authors go on to characterize a secondary objective as pertaining to a child's ability to "Know, respect, and value the range of the diversity of physical and social attributes among white people" (p. 52). A third point of reference echoes a similar spirit to that of its predecessors: "Build the capacity for caring, cooperative, and equitable interactions with others" (p. 52). Notably, the preceding objectives revolve around a central practice of emphasizing "sameness" and difference, along with opportunities for white children to acquire an "awareness of themselves as contributing and caring members of their family and their class" (p. 65). The standards for teaching and learning align with such aims, along with the conceptual underpinnings, in the promotion of a silencing of whiteness which, when juxtaposed with the authors' recognition that white children do indeed internalize white superiority, raises several questions concerning the validity of the anti-bias education framework as a useful pedagogical tool for challenging racism and the dominant narratives that inform much of the early childhood field.

Here, contradictions between the goals of the curriculum and the implementation techniques of its teaching strategies arise, most notably when white children are provided with learning activities that fail to name white as a racial category. In a troubling invocation of white privilege, and a further normalization of whiteness, white children continue to see themselves as "individuals" and others as "raced"; therewith, we begin to gesture toward the crux of the critical issue at hand. However, the authors opt to justify their collective position by claiming that social-emotional skills such as empathy "are germane to white children in a way not usually mentioned, because they potentially help them to "unlearn" the unconscious assumptions of racial superiority and economic entitlement that have been woven into their earliest social perceptions" (p. 48). In other words, the assumption is such that if children are taught to "care," then prejudice and bias will yield to compassion and concern for others. By contrast, evidence shows that when some whites are confronted with the harm that racism causes to racialized persons, they may openly dismiss or deny such experiences. With a mind to unpacking pertinent generalizations, can we interpret such data as pointing to a lack of compassion or empathy in white individuals? In response, the present analysis takes a more critical anti-racist stance. The ability to distance oneself from the reality of racism and to ignore the rewards it bestows on whites at the expense of racialized persons is an advantage rooted in the structure of white supremacy, a system that insulates white power through various contexts such as education (often by precluding the naming of "white" as an identity and failing to address how the construction of such an identity converges with systems of power). Thus, I would argue that the anti-bias education framework can be characterized as more of a panglossian lens than an approach consistent with critical pedagogy and anti-racist praxis.

As a close reading demonstrates, the authors categorically ignore the vocational call to deconstruct whiteness through discussions, dialogue, and classroom practice. They offer several suggestions for each learning objective, but the following are the most relevant to the present analysis:

Ensure that all of your children's families and daily lives are equally visible throughout the environment and classroom activities. (p. 56)

Ensure that children from different income levels experience equal visibility and respect from staff and other children. (p. 59)

Engage children in investigating the physical similarities and differences among children in your classroom or center. (p. 61)

Encourage children to learn about how they have similarities and differences in preferences and interests. (p. 61)

Encourage children to expand their friendships to include the range of diversity within your group. (p. 63).

Emphasize the ways in which each person expresses caring for others and contributes to the group. (p. 63).

Common to these suggestions is an emphasis on teaching children about an individual identity far removed from any racial affiliation; for instance, class and family structure (as opposed to race); in addition, such approaches acknowledge key areas of children's social-emotional competence, as expressed by the suggestions focused on acknowledging intergroup similarities, differences, and social skills (such as empathy).

Nonetheless, an implicit assumption persists-namely, that by removing race from the discussion and highlighting children's personal characteristics, along with providing opportunities to discuss intergroup class differences-white children will then somehow organically develop an anti-racist white identity. Perhaps, even more problematic and thus, necessary to address, is that such omissions, in effect, re-inscribe whiteness as a position of power by leaving white racial identity unmarked, unchallenged, and unexamined. Yet, to destabilize whiteness at its locus of invisibility, it first must be exposed. As Dyer ( 1997) so aptly noted, "White people need to learn to see themselves as white, to see their particularity" (p. 10). Such awareness is critical to dislodging whiteness from the twin archetypes of universality and normality, guises that legitimize racial dominance by ascribing difference and racialized meanings to non-white groups.

Frankly, I argue that it hinges on naïve optimism at best, and at worst, an oversight perhaps due to the authors' developmental perspective of children and race- if we are to assume that educators and parents can lead white children to divest their understandings of white privilege and power by avoiding substantive discussions on race and racism. More pointedly, can a colorblind approach challenge, and subsequently transform, white's children internalization of the prevailing ideological narrative-that is, whiteness as "good" and "innocent"-in support of a racist social structure? Similar thought-provoking questions inform the discussion largely, because the research findings and the socio-political exegeses of such data cast a more realistic and contradictory gaze on the practices/theoretical assumptions undergirding the anti-bias curriculum. Indeed, as evinced by the pertinent scholarship, white and non-white children exhibit an awareness of the currency associated with white identity (see, for example, Skattebol 2005; Van Ausdale and Feagin 2001).

Considerable research literature reveals white and minority children's positive evaluation of and identification with whiteness in American, Canadian, and international contexts. In a study examining how discourses of whiteness affect children's constructions of race, Davis et al. ( 2009) found that one participant attached a specific value to white skin. When asked by the researcher to select a doll that resembled her friend, the child chose a white doll. The researcher followed up by asking the child, "And what about Franca looks like your friend?" (p. 52); to which the child responded, "Ahh... Because, 'cause I think she's the prettiest" (p. 52). The child further elaborates her understanding of the associations between whiteness and beauty as follows: "Ahh, because she has white socks and I like white and she has blue jeans and I like blue and she has a green top and I like green. And she has, and she has white skin and I like white skin. And I like her hair" (p. 52). Germane interpretations of the data point to the influence of whiteness in shaping children's values regarding racial characteristics such as skin color. As the authors cogently noted, "For Spot white skin is something likeable. She locates herself within a discourse of whiteness as desirable" (p. 52).

Clearly, the topic of children's constructions of whiteness persists as a common thread throughout the research literature. In a study on the relationship between European and American mothers' colorblind racial socialization parenting, and their preschool-aged children's racial attitudes, findings revealed a pro-white bias, with a corresponding negative bias toward African Americans (Pahlke et al. 2012). These data derive from a racial attitude measure which charted positive traits (nice, pretty, honest, generous, and happy) and five negative traits (cruel, bad, dumb, awful, and selfish). Employing a similar methodology, but with a sample of light-skinned and dark-skinned African American children aged seven-to-nine, data from Williams and Davidson ( 2009) interracial task activity showed that participants assigned more positive traits to photos representing European-Americans. Likewise, results from the intraracial task in which children were asked to assign positive and negative traits to stimuli depicting African Americans of light and darker skin tones revealed a similar bias for lighter skin tones. Indeed, these findings dovetail with previous studies that show the stark contrast in white and minority children's in- and out-group evaluations. Simply stated, children recognize the sociocultural currency of whiteness, and white children, as the research suggests, are not only aware of their privileged position, but ascribe a measure of saliency to it as well. Considering the empirical data, it is, therefore, essential to critically examine how the anti-bias curriculum-via pointed teaching and learning activities-addresses such beliefs regarding whiteness in young children.

As previously stated, children raised in Euro-Canadian and Euro-American familial contexts recognize that whiteness obtains cultural and social significance. Working with this central notion, an effective deconstruction of white children's understandings of their identity and how the latter affords a position of privilege, calls for a concerted anti-racism approach. Similarly, for some racialized children, an anti-racism education in the early years may also assist in dismantling the myth of white superiority by not only providing counter-images but also counter-narratives; such critical discussions will allow children to understand how white power and privilege work to racialize "others," while simultaneously upholding whiteness as the standard of human worth.

Anti-racism education in the early years: an introduction

In developing a definition of anti-racism early childhood education, I draw on and extend Dei's ( 1996, 2011) and Kailin's ( 2002) anti-racism/racist theories, while considering some of Husband's ( 2012) elements of early childhood anti-racist pedagogy, and offering some of my own theoretical components. Although these contributions influence how I conceptualize an anti-racist approach to early childhood education specifically, I also build on such work by addressing not only the domains of teaching and learning, but also parental relationships, institutional practices (such as the lack of a national anti-racist early childhood policy, see Escayg 2018), play-based learning (Escayg et al. 2017), as well as the knowledge base of early childhood education (Escayg 2019a). For space purposes, however, this section explores practical ways to teach children (4-5-year-olds and 8-year-olds) about white privilege, racial ideologies (racial ideas/messages), as well as provide counter-narratives so as to equip students with the tools to identify and to reject the discourse of white superiority.

While challenging children's perceptions of race is a central goal, anti-racism early learning activities should also enable children to recognize how racial ideologies contribute to systemic inequities between dominant and non-dominant groups. Indeed, anti-racism foregrounds an intersectional analysis of oppression and the institutional nature of racism, in the interest of moving beyond the focus on "individual prejudice and biases" most commonly found in the canon of anti-bias curricula. Taking the institutional analysis a bit further by locating such within the discipline of early childhood education, anti-racism examines and critiques the influence of Eurocentric knowledges on the governing epistemologies of early childhood education (Escayg 2019a). Concomitantly, early childhood education with an anti-racism underpinning "focuses on institutional and individual mechanisms that reify whiteness, limit critical discussions on race and racism, and silence diverse knowledges and experiences" (Escayg, 2019a, p. 11). An anti-racism approach in early childhood education-particularly with an emphasis on the four-five age group (as much scholarship on children and race indicates that this age group represents the onset of racialized thinking)-moves from emphasizing the individual attitudes and prejudices to opening new analytical pathways that will highlight the systemic nature of racism, link these to discussions of power and privilege and racial ideologies, and ultimately, demonstrate the interconnected relations among of all these components.

In short, anti-racism early years practice assists young children with understanding the range of experiences that white privilege produces for whites. As well, anti-racism early childhood education provides children with the knowledge and skills to critique white supremacy. From an educational standpoint, anti-racism pedagogy demands that we guide young children to recognize racism as a systemic and salient reality; it compels us to be truth seekers, tracing the origins of racial ideologies and exposing how such narratives (working in tandem with white power) are germane to racial inequities that continue to persist across a wide range of institutional contexts. Anti-racism recognizes that racism inflicts injuries to the intellect and the spirit; so, it actively supports the decolonization of children's minds. For, as Amos ( 2011) duly noted, "The attempt to educate White children about privilege and power from an early age has thus far been neglected" (p. 554). In order to do so, however, it is first important to translate these terms, such as white privilege and power, into teaching activities that while critical, are also within the reach of children's comprehension/ability levels.

Anti-racism: teaching and learning about white privilege and power

This is not to suggest that deconstructing whiteness should be approached from solely a developmental point of view, but rather, to consider how to retain central components by way of utilizing concrete yet substantive strategies. For instance, one central character of whiteness is white privilege. As scholars have noted, white privilege is both economic and psychological (e.g., Jackson 2011; Lipsitz 2006). For young children, learning activities that draw attention to the economic aspects of white privilege as well as a positive representation of whiteness (Escayg 2018) can offer tangible examples of the concept, thereby providing a richer understanding of race and class interconnections. One strategy, as I have stated elsewhere (Escayg 2019a), and which is congruent with Husband's ( 2012) activity of assessing children's prior knowledge about race, is for teachers to have discussions with children that tease out the connections between and among racial identity, privilege, and power.

For instance, one way to elicit if whether or not children recognize how white identity affords certain privileges, is to ask a question in a whole group discussion, such as, What does it mean to be white? For older children, such as 8-year-olds, questions such as, What is life like for a child who is white? What is life like for a child who is Black? can also provide additional information about children's racial awareness (Escayg 2019b). Based on the responses, the teacher can also explain to the children the concept of privilege by creating a unit that focuses on not only the representation of whites and other racial groups in positions of power and authority, but also questioning the reasons for the power imbalances that allow for the underrepresentation (and misrepresentation) of racialized groups. The goal for this unit would be for children to recognize how white privilege and power work in tandem to construct racial ideologies (Escayg 2018), and how such representations, in turn, secure socio-economic opportunities for the dominant group (Escayg 2019a). Using a visual chart that depicts different racial groups along with visual representations of specific occupations, the teacher can ask the following preliminary questions:

1. 1.
Who can be a ________?

2. 2.
Why_________?

3. 3.
Who can never be a __________?

4. 4.
Why?

Drawing on the students' responses, the educator will then have to explicitly draw the connections among racial ideologies, and power and privilege. In order to do so, I suggest the educator use the analogy between a truth and a lie. The "lie" in this instance, would be the specific racial ideologies (i.e., white superiority). Then, the teacher would explain to students that this "lie" was created to ensure that one group of people maintained their power in society. To explain the term "power" to children, the teacher should use the term "control." The teacher can make this concept even more concrete by demonstrating to children how one group "controls" all the different areas of society (again, props representing different institutions would be useful). Similar to the anti-bias approach, the teacher can then ask students to consider if this system is fair to everyone. To challenge the stereotype further, the educator should use examples of individuals, for instance, Black or other minority professionals, who do not fit with the child's/children's stereotypical perceptions of the specific racial group. In doing so, the myth of white superiority is also undermined as counter examples show that positive attributes are not exclusive to the dominant group only.

However, the pedagogical practice of deconstructing whiteness, as it relates to the elements of power and privilege-including how and why such elements are normalized (and their benefits for the dominant group)-should not be confined to the participation of white children only. As the canon of anti-racist literature attests, African American thinkers and writers have also variously defined the meaning of whiteness. In sum, by extending such narratives to include the perceptions and lived realities of young African American and minority children, educators stand to strengthen the empirical literature, and to yield empowering opportunities for children of color to discover and critique the structural influences that give rise to and support negative representations of non-white persons (as well as the role of power and privilege in structuring divergent lived realities for racialized groups, ranging from the economical to the social).

Efforts to address diversity and afford young children with the opportunity to thrive in early childhood contexts have been well documented in the scholarly literature. These works, however, with few exceptions, offer teaching strategies aimed at educating young children about difference in ways that impute little analyses of race and institutional/systemic racism. Prominent in such regard is the widely cited anti-bias early childhood curriculum. Since developmentally appropriate practice and tenets of liberalism undergird the anti-bias approach, this may partially explain the content of its suggestions and learning activities.

Given the global hegemony inscribed unto white identity, and the ongoing racism confronting people of color, it would indeed serve as a form of gross negligence to the social development and well-being of children should current (and future) early childhood educators dismiss the significance of anti-racism education, and fail to engage in sustained self-reflection of their own understandings concerning race and racism. Contrary to the banter of the so-called colorblind ideologues, "race is real," to the extent that it imparts a range of privileges for the dominant group while constructing a separate and remarkably different reality for racialized persons. It is, therefore, both prudent and just to ensure that while we advocate for developmentally appropriate practice, we also assume our responsibility for guiding children in the adoption of ways of thinking, acting, and seeing their social worlds, such that, hopefully, we may preserve the collective pursuit of a more equitable, anti-racist society.

Availability of data and materials

References

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Department of Teacher Education, College of Education, University of Nebraska-Omaha, 6005 University Drive North, Omaha, NE, 68182-0163, USA

Kerry-Ann Escayg

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"Who's got the power?": A critical examination of the anti-bias curriculum

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Ample research data indicate that young children recognize racial characteristics and subsequently exhibit both positive and negative racial attitudes toward their own and other racial groups. In the early childhood field, educators commonly adopt an anti-bias/multicultural curriculum to address such issues with young children and-with rare exceptions-such methods are subject to ongoing endorsement in the scholarly literature.

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BEIJING - Erin Jackson has never viewed herself as some sort of trailblazer. She just likes to skate really, really fast, whether it's on wheels or blades.

Yet the 29-year-old from balmy Ocala, Florida knew this moment was special, her chance to really make an impact on the generations that follow.

She'll forever be known as the first Black woman to win a speedskating medal at the Winter Olympics - and a gold one, at that.

"Hopefully, this has an effect," Jackson said. "Hopefully, we'll see more minorities, especially in the USA, getting out and trying these winter sports."

Jackson won the 500 meters Sunday with a time of 37.04 seconds, giving the American speedskating program its first medal of the Beijing Games and first individual medal since 2010.

But this was much more than a needed boost to a sport that has produced more medals than any other for the U.S. in the history of the Winter Games.

The 29-year-old Jackson, a former inline skater who switched to the ice shortly before the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics, joined fellow American Shani Davis as the only Black athletes to win long-track speedskating medals at the Olympics.

Now, she wants others to follow their path into a sport that draws scant attention in the United States.

"I just hope it will do something for the sport," she said. "I always try to be a good example."

The silver went to Miho Takagi of Japan, while Angelina Golikova of the Russian team took the bronze.

Jackson's gold came after she slipped at the U.S. trials and shockingly finished third, putting her spot on the Olympic team in jeopardy.

But teammate Brittany Bowe, another Ocala skater who finished first at the trials, gave up her spot in the 500 to ensure Jackson would get to compete in Beijing.

"She made a really big sacrifice for me," Jackson said. "I'll be grateful to her forever."

As it turned out, the Americans received a third slot in the 500 when the final allocations were made, so Bowe got to skate as well. She finished 16th.

The two close friends embraced after Jackson clinched the gold.

"She hugged me and we cried," the winner said. "She said she's really proud of me and I said a lot of thank yous."

Jackson skated in the next-to-last of 15 pairs with Takagi's time of 37.12 - set about a half-hour earlier in the fourth pairing - in her sights.

She didn't think at all about that slip at the U.S. trials.

"It's not something to really focus on," Jackson said. "That was a fluke."

Jackson bolted off the line and was under Takagi's time as she veered powerfully into the first turn. She kept up her speed through the crossing straight and into the final turn, swinging both arms furiously as she came to the finish of speedskating's shortest race.

As soon as her skates crossed the line, Jackson's head turned toward the scoreboard.

She broke into a big smile when she saw the "1" beside her name. Her coach, Ryan Shimabukuro, pumped his arms and slapped hands with her as she glided by.

There was still one pairing left, but Jackson knew she could do no worse than bronze.

A few minutes later, the gold was hers.

"You're an Olympic champion," Shimabukuro told her.

Jackson sat on the padding along the infield, shedding a few tears with her head bowed.

She was no doubt reflecting, too, on her remarkable journey.

The inline and roller derby skater knew she would have to trade her wheels for blades if she wanted to go for Olympic glory.

Making the switch just months before the Pyeongchang Games, she was such a fast study that she earned a spot on the U.S. team. She finished 24th in the 500, but it was clear that she had barely tapped into her potential.

During the current World Cup season, Jackson suddenly emerged as one of the world's best sprinters. She won four of eight 500 races - the first Black woman to earn one of those titles, as well - and came to the Olympics as one of the favorites.

"When I won the first World Cup, I was like, 'OK that's strange. Let's see where it goes,'" Jackson recalled. "Then I won another and I was like, 'Well, maybe I can do this.'"

She lived up to the billing in Beijing, becoming the first American woman to win an individual Olympic medal since 2002.

"Words cannot explain how proud I am of her," Bowe said. "I knew she had the chance to do something really special, and she just showed the world why she deserved to be here."

Jackson grabbed an American flag and did a victory lap around the Ice Ribbon oval, the stars and stripes fluttering above her head.

"It's been a wild ride," she said, "but that makes it even sweeter."

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Erin Jackson of US 1st Black woman to win speedskating gold

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Erin Jackson has never viewed herself as some sort of trailblazer. She just likes to skate really, really fast, whether it's on wheels or blades. Yet the 29-year-old from balmy Ocala, Florida knew this moment was special, her chance to really make an impact on the generations that follow.

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An alliance of prominent civil rights lawyers from around the world on Wednesday announced it will file an appeal to the United Nations on behalf of Black refugees facing discrimination while trying to flee Ukraine.

The group includes Ben Crump, the civil rights attorney for the families of George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery; attorney Jasmine Rand, who represented the families of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown; Peter Herbert, one of Britain's few nonwhite judges; Jamaican Member of Parliament G. Anthony Hylton; British solicitor Jacqueline McKenzie; and Carlos Moore, president of the National Bar Association in the U.S. They plan to file the appeal to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights as well as the U.N.'s Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.

Earlier this week Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, and Dmytro Kuleba, Ukraine's minister of foreign affairs, acknowledged that some Africans looking to escape the Russian invasion of Ukraine had experienced discriminatory practices at the country's borders.

"Such blatant racism cannot be tolerated," Zita Holbourne, the chairwoman of the Black Activists Rising Against the Cuts U.K. told The Independent. "Human rights of Black and brown people, predominantly students situated in Ukraine, must be honored and safe exit facilitated for all, free of discriminatory selection processes at borders. The targeting of Black and brown people in this way is a racist human rights abuse on top of a human rights crisis impacting all people forced to flee Ukraine."

Robert A. Sanders, a retired U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps captain and a legal and national security educator at the University of New Haven, hailed the lawyers' announcement.

"It's totally appropriate," Sanders told NBC News. Filippo Grandi, the U.N. high commissioner for refugees, "issued statements to Russia about its human rights activities during its attack on Ukraine. And so, it is completely appropriate for that same body to examine what Ukraine is doing, which, while sad, is not surprising because we live in a world that has structures and systemic pieces built up over centuries that make Black and brown people less than."

Dammy Raji, a Nigerian medical student in Ukraine, had planned to stay in Lviv, until the Russian invasion became "too intense." So she packed up to leave.

She said she had heard about racism at the borders, where Black people had been routinely denied entry into safe countries. When Raji and friends attempted to flee to Poland this week, she said they endured what other Africans had shared around the world via social media.

They were not allowed to board two trains in Lviv, as "Ukrainians want their people to go first," she said.

Raji said the reports of the trouble at the borders for Black people have been beneficial in her attempts to leave. Even though she had trouble getting across, she eventually made it to Poland.

"We took the train because we heard that was easier at the border," she said. "But it was really hard to get onto the train as Blacks. They prioritized their people, especially women and children. ... The Ukrainians that want their people to go first."

Sanders said it was disingenuous for non-Black people to dismiss the early reports of racism at the borders.

"One of those things that struck me was the immediate failure of white people all over the place," he said. "To be in disbelief that racism was happening at the borders ... 'Oh, well, there must be some other reason why they're holding them back. They're letting women and children out.'

"I hear that and I say, 'You're giving me an invalid excuse because you can't fess up and come to grips with the reality of the world that you live in and, in part, some of you helped create."

Safely in Poland, Raji said a nongovernmental organization helped her and her friends get settled. She said the Polish people were not the problem at the borders.

They are "very accommodating," she said. "They are really nice, and there are many places organized by NGOs for foreigners because of what they are hearing online. So I think the awareness is what has helped us."

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Global group of Black attorneys file U.N. complaint for African refugees

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An alliance of prominent civil rights lawyers from around the world on Wednesday announced it will file an appeal to the United Nations on behalf of Black refugees facing discrimination while trying to flee Ukraine.

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https://www.courtinnovation.org/publications/restorative-racial-justice

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Restorative justice and racial justice, it's creating something; there's nothing to restore when we've always been oppressed. This is the story of the kids in our schools-they've always been oppressed.

For the past three years, the Center for Court Innovation has run restorative justice programs in five Brooklyn high schools. All five schools are overwhelmingly Black, and all five had some of the highest suspension rates in New York City.

The programs' staff are embedded full-time in the schools. Their small offices have become outposts-where students drop in unannounced to talk about their problems. When the staff walk the halls between classes, it can feel like they're exchanging greetings with everyone they pass, stopping to check in with teachers, as much as students.

The approach has paid off. As will soon be documented by Center for Court Innovation researchers, over the project's three years, the number of incidents reported by the schools plummeted, as did suspensions. Along with improving the overall culture of a school, that goes a long way toward interrupting what is often called the school-to-prison pipeline-the relationship between suspensions and later justice-involvement.

But the project had even bigger ambitions. Restorative justice is about accountability and repairing harm. What about accountability for the system that has produced these underserved and essentially segregated schools, and then punishes the kids for reacting to that neglect?

The work was also motivated by a feeling that, with all of the buzz over restorative justice, the challenge of its insistence on everyone's humanity risks being lost-much as the radical King is often forgotten on Martin Luther King Day. For Black Americans, and for the students at these five high schools, what is there to be restored to?

To talk about why there is no restorative justice without racial justice, eight of the members of a very close-knit team sat down with host Matt Watkins for what became a very special episode of New Thinking.
The following is a transcript of the podcast:
Kellsie SAYERS: Our five schools would be classified as underserved schools, so a really high-needs population. A lot of our schools had a lot of students with high levels of IEP, so students who need additional support in order to academically thrive in a standard school.

Our schools were filled with high levels of immigrant populations, so the communities that we worked in were communities that were largely Caribbean-American communities, so a lot of first generation kids from the Caribbean, and with that, we found that our students often were living with people who weren't their birth parents.

They may have been sent to this country, and they're living with the aunt, or cousin, or friend, so not your traditional family environment. Our students often lack the kind of support that you would see in a standard family home, just because of the transient nature in which they were sent into this country.

In addition to that, these are schools who don't have the appropriate number of students to properly run a school, so most of our schools didn't have a social worker. We didn't have many guidance counselors. There weren't a lot of additional services that would be needed for the population that I just described.

Matt WATKINS: And you've got some of these schools are at a poverty level approaching 90 percent.

Kellsie SAYERS: We have schools where, overwhelmingly, our kids qualify for free school lunch. In addition to that is, because they're these underserved schools and underfunded schools, we also had issues in terms of staffing. These are schools with high teacher turnover, so you come to school one year, and 50 percent of the teachers that were here your first year of high school are gone your second year.

And with that said, because you have high turnover and you're underfunded, you have a lot of burnout for teachers. Then you have older teachers who are just on their way out, and they've been educators for 25 years, and they're exhausted from this experience, and they're exhausted from working in underserved schools, and they don't really have much to offer.

There was a lack of adults in the building who I think had the capacity to provide the kind of support this particular population needs.

WATKINS: And then there's also a problem with how "misbehavior" is responded to. These were all schools that had elevated suspension rates.

Kellsie SAYERS: One of the reasons why these five schools were identified for our intervention was that they were amongst some of the highest suspending schools in New York City. In working in the schools, we understand where that suspension came from.

You're underserved, you're understaffed, you're under-resourced. When a child is acting out and you don't have the capacity, the training, or the time to deal with it, then your result is that they have to leave the school community because I can't deal with them. I don't know how to deal with them. I don't have the resources to deal with them, so the best thing to do is to give them time away.

WATKINS: Which can though, in the same way that jail as a response to an offense can make the prior behavior worse, suspension can have the same effect.

Kellsie SAYERS: Exactly, because you're not dealing with the core concerns for why this young person is acting out. Because you feel like even if you ask why-one, you think you know why, because I think some of our schools felt some of our kids were just inherently bad, and they didn't have anything else to offer but this sort of misbehavior. Or, if you ask the question, there's nothing I can actually do about it, so there's no reason for me to ask a question that I can't actually solve.

WATKINS: You guys have now been in these schools for close to three years. Can we talk about how you went about trying to, I guess, change the culture a little bit, if that's the word?

I was struck, when I visited you guys, by how much it just was so apparent that you were all very embedded in the schools in which you were operating in. When I walked the halls with you guys, it's talking to all the students, them coming up to you, the teachers coming up to you, the principal coming up to you and saying, "Hey, I want to flag this for you."

Was that a kind of initial strategy of really showing, "Hey, we're here, we're here to stay," and getting embedded?

Kellsie SAYERS: The approach was a threefold approach for our project. It was community-building, intervention, and investment.

When I say community-building, we use the restorative process of circles to build community in the schools. At each of our schools, there was an advisory program that was developed, which was a class in which it was nonacademic where kids could sit in circle and build community with each other. And build community by talking about their lived experiences, sharing their stories, and a place to really just be themselves without the pressure of a standard academic environment.

In addition to the circles that took place in advisory, we created a bunch of voluntary spaces, which were clubs that included Girls Group, and Men in Color, and the Gender and Sexuality Alliance, and a variety of just different voluntary spaces where young people could be themselves and build community with each other.

Then in addition to building community with young people, we also thought it was important for the adults to build community with each other. Sometimes that was in professional development, sometimes that was a happy hour that we organized, sometimes that was an event that we invited them to on the weekends, just so that they could build community with each other.

In terms of intervention, when that harm actually occurred in the community or when somebody was in need, then we wanted to provide the support to focus on healing and give the individuals who were experiencing this harm or this trouble the ability to process that in what was often a restorative process. Sometimes it was just a conversation. Sometimes it was a mediation using a variety of different skills.

Then the third focus of the project was just investment. We came in with capital, something that the school didn't have. With that capital, we were able to host carnivals, and pep rallies, and take the kids on trips, and provide them with food and parties and all of these things that were unavailable to them because they went to underserved schools.

WATKINS: The day I was there, one word I heard more than once was "grace." How is that a concept that we're trying to introduce into, I guess, the stories that people are telling themselves about themselves?

Xavier CORNEJO: I'll speak on that. I think grace plays a huge role in how we offer forgiveness to students, in ways that systems have just not given them, time and time again.

Grace, to me, is taking into account everything that you've lived and are living through and how that factors into the decisions you make-recognize that you're valid to make mistakes. It's okay for you to make mistakes when, let's say, you threw a pencil at a kid, or you said something out of turn, your anger took over you.

We all do that. We understand you as a human being, as a teenager. When we offer students that grace, it's a way of just recognizing your human capacity to learn.

Maxine GETZ: I think another part of it is that when the teachers are allowed to just feel isolated and feel shame, they then act harmfully towards the kids. Teachers mess up all the time, and if they're just told that it's okay and worked with through whatever they messed up on and given that grace, I think it's so much easier for them to be like, "I'm human. I can apologize to this kid. I can apologize to my co-teacher, whatever. I can apologize to myself for falling short in that moment."

You see that sometimes with specific teachers or students, who for whatever reason have learned how to treat themselves more kindly, are way more able to treat each other with that.

Yesterday, I encountered two kids who were just talking so openly about mental health struggles and therapy and all that and giving themselves the grace to be like, "I've experienced depression"-and publicly, with a whole big group of 15 kids or something-and they're like, "I've experienced depression. This is how I deal with it. This is what I've been taught to deal with it."

In a way that they were letting themselves be broken. I think that to be able to do that, someone had to have really taught them how to do that, and we don't teach them how to do that ever, and I think that that's an important part of the grace element of it is how they can model that for themselves and each other and how, without that, they don't know how to be kind to each other at all or themselves.

Mischaël CETOUTE: I think that a lot of people who go into this work have this idea that the power holder is the people with the titles-the principal, assistant principal-and the first thing that I realized was the people who the children talk to and respect were the people who are most disrespected by the established hierarchy in the school.

School safety agents, the paras, the people who serve them food, the custodians, those were the people who were able to do things and move things and tell you what's going on with X kid, because they were the closest to the kids. But those were the people who the grantees completely neglected in identifying as stakeholders.

When you come into these communities and you try to learn, as opposed to saying, "You're doing this wrong, and here's how you should be doing it," I think it opens you up and opens up the people that you're working with to actually be receptive to what you have to say.

I think our approach on day one, or at least I can say, speak for myself, my approach on day one was literally asking, "What do you need? How can I help?" And for the first year-and-a-half, that was literally just picking up trash in the cafeteria, something that none of the teachers wanted to do, something that none of the students wanted to do, but somebody needed to pick up trash in the cafeteria.

And that action of doing the thing that nobody else wants to do, doing the thing that needs to be done, I think is at the heart of what we're doing, which is paying attention to the actual human beings in front of us and what they need in that moment and long-term.

WATKINS: Well, it's a demonstration of commitment, too, right? It's communicating that message that we're here. We're going to do the shit work that nobody else wants to do if that's what needs to be done.

Mischaël CETOUTE: I think that, and I also think that it's a demonstration of humility in a really important way. When we started this project, Kellsie said something over and over that really grained into my head, which was, "We're guests in this house. This is not our house. This is not our school. We cannot just walk into these people's offices and say, 'You have to do this this way, and you're racist, and you're bad, and you're suspending too many kids.'"

Because in reality, you don't know what's going on in the house. You just got there, you are a guest. And I think that that philosophy and that orientation to focus on the needs of the real people on the ground was really helpful in us getting started in building the community and ingraining ourselves into the preexisting structure.

Quaila HUGH: I think also on that point, you asked about how we went about changing culture. Often, we forget these schools aren't all bad. It's not all terrible. There are lots of people who are working very hard to build culture.

I think something we often talk about on the team is: what is that tipping point of the teachers, or this staff in general, that are working to build a positive culture, but it's just one person here or two people here.

What we did, much like Misch was saying, is just look for where we can help and support so that there is enough energy behind it, so that other people-who maybe started with that energy and don't have it anymore-tap back in to do all the good stuff for this school.

WATKINS: Can we talk a little bit-just so that people have a concrete sense of what some aspect of the work looks like, because the work you're doing is not just about conflict resolution, for example; it's not just about finding an alternative to suspensions-but could we talk a bit about maybe a hypothetical or anonymized scenario, which, in the past, might have been responded to with a suspension, with all the attendant harms that we know about, and then what this alternative, more restorative response actually looks like in practice?

Erica WRIGHT: Specifically, in the second year of the program, my office essentially became a therapeutic office for a lot of kids. It got to a point to where, when kids were on the verge of, if they had reached their peak-maybe they got into an altercation with the teacher or something happened at home and they brought it to school with them, or they got into something with one of their friends-a lot of times our offices were the first places that they would go to, to say, "Let me tell you," you know, the kids they say, "Let me put you on," where they let you know everything what's happening with them.

Because a lot of the times what you see is that these kids don't really want to fight. They just want to be heard. They want to feel like someone is there for them. They want to feel like, "Okay, this thing happened to me, and I need to tell somebody," but when they don't have people there to listen, then it comes out in a violent or an aggressive manner, so our offices became kind of a safe space for them to come to say, "These are all of the things that happened to me."

And then we'll say, "Okay, do you want to talk to that person?" "Yeah, I'll talk to him." And so we were able to sit with them, I'll be like, "Okay, I'm going to put you in another office. Let me go pull this other student, have a conversation with this other student to get what their side of the story is," and then we could bring them together.

And this is pre-them having a fight, or even having a big altercation in the hallway, or anywhere in the school, or even outside of the school. So, a lot of the times we were able to get these situations before anything could even happen, but that was because we had built a sense of community and a sense of trust with the kids.

They knew that we were there for them, and that what happened in our office, as long as it's not anything harmful, it wasn't going to leave there, and in a lot of spaces in their life, that was not a real situation. Even at home, a lot of the kids, a lot of my students in particular, did not feel like they could talk to their parents or whoever the guardian was that they lived with.

We become like these pseudo-parents and older siblings and these guardians, essentially, for these kids. That was kind of a space that we provided them, outside of doing mediations or harm circles, anything of that sort.

Mischaël CETOUTE: And to add to that, I think another way that we did that-that was on an individual level-but at the community scale, we just amplified the efforts, like Quaila was saying earlier, we amplified the efforts that teachers were making to build positive community already.

In the second year we had a group of teachers who were veterans who wanted to do something fun for the students on the day before break. And they called it Sports Fest, and it was dividing the school into ninth and 12th versus 10th and 11th, and playing basketball and having it be a competition. And we were like, "yes, let's do it! What do you need?"

And it turns out that what they needed was a tug-of war rope, and hacky sacks, and potato sacks for their kids to do potato sack races. And Sports Fest has become a major part of the school culture. Kids look forward to it. It's a recurring thing and they've increased the times that they do it.

And it's also boosted attendance. And it's the kind of thing that, if you're only looking at suspension numbers, you're never going to think about how Sports Fest will prevent fights, Sports Fest will encourage kids to come to school, and you don't have to have it wait until someone does something.

Erika SASSON: Just to highlight that point. What we're talking about, obviously you can hear it in here, is harm reduction in a big, comprehensive, holistic way. And I want to just talk about some of the numbers that show that.

So, in one of our schools the year before we got there, there were 166 incidents and 115 suspensions. And into our third year in that same school, there are 14 incidents and the same amount of suspensions, more or less.

And it's not just about the response, again, to harm. It's about deviating a huge amount of that harm and helping these students build a muscle. A lot of the students will say to Maxine, for example, "If I don't talk to you right now, I'm going to punch somebody."

And that's, for me, gold on this project, because it means that they have built that muscle to verbalize their feeling about it without actually taking the action. And once you have that happening, someone on this team is going to talk them out of it in some way, and talk to them about something else, and help them move forward from it.

But we really want-that's the social-emotional learning that doesn't really seem to happen in these environments. And that's how you get the huge reduction in incidents and suspensions.

Omar CYRILLE: One of the more exciting things that we will see is-and this actually happened a couple of times, where we'll walk into a room and you'll see kids in a circle and they're just doing their own circle process. And we're like, "okay, we'll just step out, we'll see how they get it done."

There are times we allow students to, it goes back to having students have equity in the process, just as much as we do. And sometimes we'll not only have conversations in the office, we'll have conversations in the hallway.

We reposition ourselves to become smaller and allow the students to become bigger. Therefore, we get more information, they become more comfortable, and they feel like they can really come to us and share a number of details.

And they have their pride as well, just like anybody else. But when you don't really have enough money to purchase a bacon, egg, and cheese, you don't have enough to be able to go to the school store, and you're going to go through a nine-hour day and sit through eight to seven classes where you're being lectured at. It's not easy.

You could ask anybody on the team if they didn't have their breakfast or their coffee, how they would react to certain stressful situations. There would probably be tons of suspensions, but, in this case, firings!

So, it is coming with that understanding and realizing: I was 15 at one point, and this is exactly, I'd do the same thing that they would. But now that I do know certain things now that I am older, I can be able to give some game and be able to drop some gems for them.

WATKINS: So to pick up on the holistic aspect of restorative justice that Erica was talking about, I doubt there was a moment for any of you in this room where you were in one of the schools and suddenly realized, "Hey, what we're doing in here is actually racial justice!"

But I'm wondering in what ways doing this work in the schools made the link between restorative justice and racial justice-and the link between what students are bringing in from the outside world and into the school-started to make those links, stronger or more pertinent for you.

Kellsie SAYERS: I think that when we think about these young people and the things that they face inside of school and outside of school, it's directly linked to the history of racism in this country. So, to say that we're going to come into these schools and we're going to support these young people and we're going to invest in them, to me is inherently racial justice work.

These are Black and brown kids who are suffering the consequences of a history of racism within this country and within the larger world. Because we do have kids, a lot of our kids, their roots aren't in America, but the racism experienced by people of color in America is not any different than what they experienced back home in their countries.

So I think for me in thinking about doing racial justice work, I think it is providing these young people with the space to heal with traumas that are beyond them, that are in their bloodlines, that are things that were beyond their lived experience here.

And I think particularly in our schools, in addition to wanting to promote positive school culture and wanting to reduce discipline, I found myself doing this work as wanting to give kids the skills to be better, and to be better beyond the academic environment, but to be better for themselves, and their families, and the families they haven't had already.

Being able to build these social, emotional skills with these young people, I think is inherently racial justice work for these Black and brown kids in which investments like this aren't usually made in their communities.

Erica WRIGHT: Something that, probably a year and a half into doing this work, I was really disgruntled with this idea of restorative justice. I really didn't quite understand still what it was. And for me, I didn't understand it because in this country, the history of Black people in this country, has always been tied to oppression.

So my thing was: if Black people in this country, the history of it-slavery, and you go from slavery to the Reconstruction era, and Black Codes, and Jim Crow, all of these different things-what are we restoring to?

WATKINS: America has never been America to me, right?

Erica WRIGHT: I mean, essentially. So, thinking of this idea of restorative justice and racial justice for me, I feel like restorative justice to me is essentially getting back to humanity. And like Kellsie talked about, Erika talked about, the social-emotional learning that a lot of our kids, they don't get in schools.

And a lot of times they don't actually get in homes in their communities. So I feel like for them to sit in circle and, there's no phones in the schools and you have to talk and have conversations, it's been one of those things to where it's-you see them actually be able to come alive and be able to see their own personalities and create the people that they want to be.

So, I think for me, restorative justice and racial justice, it's creating something; there's nothing to restore here when we've always been oppressed-and this is the story of the kids in our schools, they've always been oppressed.

I had a class, and this was actually a class with students. It was a self-contained class. So, all of the students in my class all had IEPs. So, they had an educational plan. Favorite class.

And these kids literally talked about everything under the sun. And I mean, first sexual experiences, everything. And they would tell some things that me and the teacher would be like, "Uh, I don't really, like..."

But they were so comfortable with doing that with each other. And the kids would laugh. When they left that classroom, they knew that that it wasn't leaving the classroom with them and we can come back and have... We literally talked about everything.

So, the fact that these kids were so comfortable, and the teacher said that, prior to us doing circles in her classroom, she had some kids in her class who never- she'd had them for four years-they never said a word in class!

For them to go from that, to be able to share all of these things about themselves with each other. So, like I said, I think for me, it is just a matter of creating the type of community, the type of space that you want, even when everything around you is contrary to that.

Mischaël CETOUTE: I actually remember that Kellsie asked me that question of: how do I see racial justice as a part of, or in relation to, restorative justice during the interview.

And I remember telling her in that moment that I didn't think that you could extract the two from each other. I don't think you can possibly be doing restorative justice work in the world, or even America, and not be doing racial healing work, because the entire premise, as I understand it, of restorative justice is about connecting humanity, it's about this shared kinship, and the entire premise of racism is the opposite.

If you are trying to build community, then you have to address the divisions within that community. And it made me think a lot when we started this project, just about how racism was this distortion of community, and what we were seeing in the schools was the impact of that distortion.

When you tell people that they're not good enough, when you tell people that they're disconnected, when you tell them it's all "me, mine, and whatever you got going on is your problem," the result is an environment where everybody has their knives out, ready for the next person. Because if we're all in it on our own, then I got to get you before you get me.

And I think that that piece of it-what the product of racism is, is violence-I think is often lost on people because they have these insular lives in these privileged bubbles, where they get to discuss these issues from an arm's length.

In their mind, restorative justice is a fancy centerpiece, and it's a specific sequence of questions, and it's a specific sequence of seating, and it's not about the fact that there are no Black people in this room because no Black people feel welcome at Columbia University. Or no Black people feel welcome in this particular space.

For them, they're doing restorative justice because they're doing all the steps. And I feel for me, it's really important that we push back against this sort of corporatization and the mainstreaming of Indigenous practices that were originally for and by communities that were discarded.

This idea that you can be doing restorative justice work with all White people, or with all people who live in middle-class backgrounds, or with all people who went to college, and everybody there makes a certain amount of money... That's not restorative justice in my opinion, that is: we want to feel good about ourselves, so we're talking. That's not the same thing.

WATKINS: So, in terms of doing something more than just feeling good because we're talking, it occurs to me, accountability is a big concept that you hear associated with restorative justice.

But you guys don't just want this program to be about accountability for the young Black and brown students that you're working with, who are really the most powerless actors in the system.

You're trying to expand the notion of accountability-expand it into the staff, expand it into the administration, expand it into the Department of Education, which again, I mean, we're talking about deep seated problems in America. So, daunting to say the least. But how do we go about expanding this notion of accountability?

Erika SASSON: I just want to put one piece on that is that we don't really want to expand it to the staff and expand it to the administration. We want to start with the staff and start with the adults in the room. And it should be modeled then for the kids. Like that's all backwards, that we basically start and end with the kids, and we never get to the systems, and we never get to the power brokers.

If it's not there first, then the rest of it is kind of meaningless. So, I've come to this point where I've started to say: I don't want to hear about individual accountability anymore. I want to hear first about system accountability. I want to hear first about adults, adults in the room who are doing their share, and it's going to come from the kids as soon as the adults do it.

But to start with the reverse and expand up is in a way a recipe for a tweaking.

WATKINS: For the same thing happening?

Erika SASSON: For the same thing, I think so.

WATKINS: Well, so, how do you build a perch in order to change the power relations?

You have a little foothold in these Restorative Justice in Schools' classrooms you have in these high schools, these safe spaces. How do you build the perch to be able to do that?

Kellsie SAYERS: I think that that's been a huge challenge of this project. I think that we have tried in lots of ways to bring in the adults in the building to be accountable for their actions. And we've had some amounts of success with that, but I think it's incredibly difficult.

I think it's for the adults in our schools who were excited for RJ work, they were excited that kids would finally take accountability for the things that they were doing. And I think that we've struggled with holding the adults accountable. And I think that we've been able to do it on an individual level. Maybe we'll convince a teacher to apologize about something or to acknowledge a harm that they caused.

But I think we've not figured out how do you hold an entire system accountable. And I think part of it was partly the design of our project is, this was a randomized study. So, the five schools that we launched our project in, did not decide to be there. So, leadership in the school didn't decide that they believed in the principles of restorative justice and in the principles of holding everyone accountable.

So, I think that in an environment where a school is saying, "I want to sign up for RJ," maybe we would have more success with adults taking that kind of accountability. With that said, I think we had some success on accountability in the fact that we acknowledged to the young people, that it's not just you, this isn't just your fault.

And I think for a lot of our young people, that's the first time that they heard, "yeah, and they shouldn't have responded to you that way. You shouldn't cuss at your teacher, but also that was incredibly disrespectful, what happened to you in the classroom, and I want to acknowledge that."

And I think even if we weren't able to hold each of those teachers accountable, those young people being able to hear that what they're feeling and what they're experiencing is real, and it's wrong, is a powerful form of accountability that they haven't had before.

Erica WRIGHT: I also think it's a situation to where, when you think about school districts in general and you go to the headquarters, there are no children in these buildings. They're a bunch of adults. A lot of them who are much older, which is perfectly fine.

But in that sense, they never act, a lot of times they actually don't get to go to the schools. And if they do, it's to do a walkthrough, when you do a walkthrough all of the principals are going to make sure that everything is laid out so nice so that you can think that we're doing this awesome job.

In a lot of the schools that are doing really good jobs. But when you do that, you don't actually get to see what's happening. And they are going to put their best students to go and talk to the superintendent or talk to the chancellor. And of course, they're going to be like, "Oh my God, everything is like rainbows and sunshine. And like our little pots of gold," and that's not real.

So, when you have a system, or when you have a group of people, who run a system that's supposed to be for the betterment of children, but they don't actually interact with children, they don't actually work with these kids. You don't really know what they need.

And so, I think it's very difficult to change those systems because they hear about RJ, or they hear about like a particular behavior plan or something, and it's, "Oh yeah, we're going to give these to the schools! You guys are going to do that!"

But it's like, you don't actually know what these schools need. You've not actually spent time with these kids to see, this is what they need. And then, with that, you're not actually giving them the resources to be able to implement these systems into the school.

And so, in order for us to do this, and to have people in the DOE really understand, they're literally going to have to come and sit in these circles with these kids. They're going to have to actually sit in circles with each other so that they know that, "wow, okay, this is what this is. This is what this is about."

It's theoretical. It's a paper that they read, or a study that they saw or heard about, and now we're going to do it. But, it's like ... This is something that you have to do yourself. And, if you're not doing it, then how do you know that it's being done effectively, that it's being done right, that it's actually being done? And, like I said, until that happens, who knows?

Omar CYRILLE: We've looked at how to create certain processes, because we do have individuals in these buildings that are really, really great. We can use them to be able to help us as well. And, they tend to sometimes leave. And then all that work we've done just leaves with them.

And so, we've tried to create something to where, whenever we get somebody new, they can slide right in seamlessly. Therefore, we can create that culture, but not have it leave with all the people we created it with.

There are some schools that really want RJ, but they look at it as another way to restore order amongst students and not have accountability within themselves. For example, sometimes we'll get teachers come into the room about a student, but it's more-so a "can you fix this student? Can you talk to this student? And then, we'll write them a pass, and then you'll send them back."

But, I'm like, "You could probably talk to him and figure out there's something you did." Because when we talk to our students ... "This teacher yelled at me when I wasn't doing anything. This teacher cursed when I was just asking another student for a pencil."

It's just little simple things like that, that teachers are not understanding and not taking the time to ... Now, whether it's capacity, whether it's having 30 kids in your class at 8:00 a.m., and you're not able to really get any type of time, or you're not able to have anybody help out, and sometimes maybe something boils over.

Regardless, that needs to come out with that actual student, because not only have you embarrassed him in front of his or her friends, but now we don't know that you've said sorry. We don't know that this student also wants to be able to fix a relationship that they had prior to you. And, when they send him to us, we're just like, "Okay, we'll talk to the student." But, now you go back to class. What is actually fixed? Is it going to happen over and over?

Mischaël CETOUTE: I think that, if we want to get to a place of system-accountability, we have to start at the top. It cannot be a situation where the kid who throws a fit because their needs aren't being met is being punished, and the people who are systemically denying his parents a living wage, systematically denying his community of the resources that all the other communities get, they get to go home and say, "Well, we gave them a restorative justice program, so if they don't make it work, that's because they're just inherently deficient."

And it completely misses the point that there's no possible way that you can begin to heal the harm that's going on in the schools without acknowledging the harm that's happening to the principals and to the teachers who work in the schools.

When I came in, I came in as a teacher, so I was really sensitive to teacher-bashing, because that's the number one go-to for the last 20 years. And so, my approach was: I'm not going to criminalize and demonize the adults who actually show up every day, because, guess what? They're showing up every day. Yeah, they're problematic. Yeah, sometimes they say things that make me irk and think, "oh, my God, I can't believe someone said that."

But, at the end of the day, they are showing up every day, and they're not awful to every kid all the time. They're awful to some kids some of the time. And, sometimes I'm awful. I don't know what to tell you. Everybody's kind of awful sometimes.

If you start from this place of, "okay, well, what are you good at, and how do we make you better at what you're good at," then it's much easier to help the culture shift than coming from this place of, "well, here's all the places where you're deficient."

Erika SASSON: I was just going to add something, going back to the question of racial justice on this point. We're at the Center for Court Innovation. We do a lot of work in the criminal justice system and the civil justice system. That is the backdrop from which we entered into this work.

So, there's a lot of questions about interrupting the school-to-prison pipeline. But, for me, personally, I'm an attorney, and I was a prosecutor right out of the gate out of law school. I just thought it was interesting that when I was practicing law, and I was prosecuting a lot of drug and gun and gang types of crimes... And, this is in our native Canada, Matt.

WATKINS: You're outing me!

Erika SASSON: This one's for you and me. We don't get to blame America on this one!

But, literally, when you're a prosecutor, most of your time you're making deals with the defense counsel, so it's not a lot about litigating in court, it's a lot about coming up with a deal. So, mostly there were a lot of Black defendants. But, every time there was a White defendant, and almost without fail, the defense lawyer would say to me, "But, if you proceed with this, this is going to ruin my client's life."

And, I was like, "Well, I met with you this morning about a different case, and you didn't say that at all. You basically never say that to me when there's a Black defendant, so what's going on here?"

I felt that when it came to Black defendants, there was just this expectation that the defense said if I gave a good deal-because I was some kind of soft prosecutor-so, if I gave you a good deal, that's as good as you're going to get, and you should really take it.

That was the kind of advice that I would see given to Black defendants all the time: "Oh, take this. This is a really good deal." But, if it's a White defendant, there is all kinds of outrage about the harm of the system, and the harm of the prosecution, and all of that.

And you cut to a decade later, and I'm walking around these public schools. Meanwhile, my child's also in public school, but in a public school that looks really different than the public schools that we're working in. And, this public school that we're working in is filled almost entirely with Black children.

It just felt to me that there's this really similar expectation, that this is as good as you're going to get, even if that's an overwhelming mediocrity, even if it's baseline neglect. It's just something that I think connects to what we see in our justice systems.

Maxine GETZ: Part of how that plays out, and connecting to the racial justice side of it, is the immediacy of, kind of like, anticipatory punishment for the kids. The act of them being in school every day and the fact of it is that they're just constantly being anticipatorily punished.

So that when they have the opportunity for a couch for the lunchroom, or a speaker, or improving the water fountains because there's so much lead in the water-the kids have the idea already that they don't deserve it because they'll mess it up, because they've been told so many times that they're the ones who are going to mess it up, when that's just a complete issue of racism.

They are children. They deserve water. They deserve a couch in the lunchroom. They deserve literally everything that the kids at the school that I went to on the Upper West Side, and the school that your kids go to, Erica...it's just assumed that they'll get.

I mean, to your point, we've talked about this: How do you restore anything that they've never had a clean water fountain in their schools? But, that's also to Omar's point that they just want to maintain order in the schools, and they just want the kids to be well-behaved because they put restorative justice programs in predominantly Black schools because they want the kids to be really well behaved, better behaved in those schools. They want them to be easier to manage.

They're not acknowledging all of the things that they have done that have made it impossible to manage yourself in that daytime because you do not have access to water. You do not have access to a bathroom during the times that you want to go to the bathroom. There's nowhere for you to just congregate and sit. There's nowhere for the teachers to congregate and sit.

Everyone's telling you that the way that you communicate with your family is not how you're allowed to communicate in school. Everyone's telling you that the things that you want to talk about or the music you want to listen to is not okay to be talking about. The way that you're keeping your hair safe in school is not okay to be doing. It just brings all that into really harsh relief when a kid is like, "We can't have a couch in the lunchroom because we'll destroy it."

When I went to visit my high school, that they just built a new building for a few years ago, and it was literally the nicest place I've ever been to. They gave tons of couches to those kids, and they give them this insane theater because they love doing their productions of The Tempest with an actual pool!

That's a public school in New York City. They did The Tempest when I was in high school, and they broke through and flooded the entire basement, I think, because of the pool.

And, they just give it again, because they're like, "Oh, you're kids, you're going to mess up," instead of being like, "You get $2,000 one time for one couch. If you fuck this up, you never get that again because we expect you to fuck it up," and without them having to say, "because you're Black kids." That's just how they assume that.

Quaila HUGH: Potentially a tangent, but thinking about restorative justice as truth-telling and storytelling, and thinking about these DOE higher-ups needing to sit in the schools and listen to the kids...

They gave them all water bottles. Every child in the DOE school system was given the Swell-fancy water bottles. And there aren't water fountains in these schools with clean water. And that's my tangent.

WATKINS: Not a tangent!

Qualia HUGH: I just think restorative justice is we need to tell the truth and hear the stories of the kids being like, "We need water, not water bottles. We want to save the environment, but we need water first before we can fill these water bottles."

Maxine GETZ: Can I just say in some schools, you only got it if you had good behavior. So, you only got the water bottle for good behavior that you couldn't use to fill up anywhere.

Mischaël CETOUTE: I'd also like to add to that most African Americans are not lactose tolerant. It is generally understood that if you are Black-

Matt WATKINS: That was my next question, actually. I can just cross that one off...

Mischaël CETOUTE: Yeah, you probably should not be drinking cow's milk. What is the only thing that they offer at lunchtime to this school where 99 percent of the children are Black? Chocolate milk and, I guess, vanilla milk?

Omar CYRILLE: Regular.

Mischaël CETOUTE: Is it regular milk?

Omar CYRILLE: I guess so.

Mischaël CETOUTE: And then, what is the only thing that actually kind of tastes good? Pizza, which is cheese. And so, when you think about just this basic level: who is the school designed for? Who decided that all these Black kids need milk at every meal, you know what I mean?

Matt WATKINS: So, you guys are nearing the end of this three-year project now, and you've just taken this trip together as a team down to Montgomery, Alabama. You visited the work of the Equal Justice Initiative, The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration.

I don't imagine that it was news what you guys learned down there, but I'm wondering what the impact was of having this experience together near the end of this restorative justice project in the schools that you've been doing.

Xavier CORNEJO: Going into this work, I had the intention of learning about how to heal intergenerational trauma in communities, because it's something that I was informed about just from my lived experience in my hometown. Just recognizing how my family's history in this country is limited-it only goes back a generation or two, starting with my grandmother who came here from El Salvador.

It gave me a bit more perspective and understanding around what that intergenerational trauma looks like, but also recognizing that my struggle is connected to theirs. My community struggle is connected to the schools that I work with.

And again, I think speaking to the point that my colleagues had mentioned: restorative justice is about unification. It is about connecting to a humanness that is about a shared struggle and a shared liberation.

Quaila HUGH: For me, the trip... It made me reflect on how, obviously, we've moved from slavery to mass incarceration, and slavery is very clear-cut: you are enslaved because you are Black.

And I think the way that they are choosing to capitalize on our bodies now is far more insidious because it's like "you are being locked up because you are bad." And you clearly have a choice over being bad in ways that you don't have a choice over being Black. I think it just breaks up our community in far different ways.

And so, for me, the trip cemented that restorative justice is the only way that we're ever going to achieve any racial justice in this country because we need to continue to build our communities and keep our community strong and keep our faith strong. And I think that's going to be through restorative justice.

Mischaël CETOUTE: I think two things that were really powerful to me is, one, I had this moment where I went to Chick-fil-A right before I left, and it was the most integrated Chick-fil-A that I've ever seen. There were Black people working there, White people working there, Black people eating there, White people eating there.

And this is in Montgomery, Alabama, which, prior to, I don't know if I will be safe there. And my mom was like, "don't get in any cars with any strange White men." And I'm like, "mom, when have I ever done that?" But it was just this thing of: you won't be safe in the South. And I actually found it to be the opposite.

In my experience, I think New York city is one of the most racist cities I've ever lived in. And I think that not because people will scream n****r at you on the street, but because there's this sort of insidious liberal racism where you're constantly being told, "you should just be happy to be here. Aren't we great? Oh my God, we are doing so well."

And so, you're constantly being told how you should be appreciative of how liberal and advanced this place is, but then internally, whoa, this feels bad. I know in my soul that that is not how I feel about this interaction, and the power that you have over me is immense.

Whereas in the South, at least specifically in Montgomery, which is a majority Black city with a Black mayor and doing a lot of really progressive things about documenting the history of racism there, there was an honesty about where they had been, and an honesty about where they were trying to go, that I don't feel in New York, I didn't feel in Miami, I didn't feel that, really, in any other city that I've been to. So, I think that Montgomery, and the South in general, they've got something to say.

I'm really grateful that we took that trip together as a team, because I think that this team, for me, has been a really nice support mat where I feel I can fall into my feelings and somebody will catch me. And I think that that might not have been the case if I had gone with a different group of people or if I had gone by myself. I don't know that I would have been able to feel reenergized by it in the way that I did, as opposed to maybe demoralized.

Kellsie SAYERS: I think the trip, for me, brought up a lot of things. I think it made me think about where, as a Black community, I see us today. And I think it often feels, for me, that our generation thinks we're going to be liberated through our individual talents and gifts in a way that there isn't this larger community effort, and there isn't this investment that in order for people of color to be liberated in this country, it's going to take us working together. And it's going to take us believing in something beyond our personal gifts and talents.

And what does it mean to use restorative justice to build that kind of community again? What does it mean to use restorative justice to tell the stories of how our ancestors overcame, and that them overcoming had to do with community, and had to do with faith, and it had to do in believing that it was going to be something beyond you, and that you won't be saved solely by your gifts and talents.

And it just made me think a lot about our ability to have these conversations with young people, and to model for young people that you can invest in other people, even if they don't have the capacity to give you a lot back. So, I think a lot of the work we did in schools was just investing and we didn't expect anything back. And if people disappointed us, it was okay.

Erica WRIGHT: I've got a lot of feels. I don't even know. So, I am from St. Louis, Missouri, and I was there when the protests happened for the death of Michael Brown, and I participated in a lot of them. I took a lot of photos and was just there. That was the first time since I was a child that I saw communities come together within the city, and it was so much love.

People-the news and media-just showed, "oh, protesters are looting and all of these different things," and that was totally inaccurate. People came together and you could go down there in the morning time and never leave because they set up porta-potties, they had food-people donated food, drinks, water, Gatorade. Anything that you needed was there for you to be a part of this moment.

And so, I know that for our generation, we struggle, like what Kellsie talked about, with having that faith, because we hear the stories about what they went through during the Civil Rights Movement, and we see that we do have certain rights and we have certain freedoms.

But it's like Quaila said, and even Misch said, as far as the ways in which racism shows itself now, it's so insidious because it's like, "Imma smack the shit out of you and I'm going to hide my hand like you don't know it."

As opposed to back in the day where it was like, they served you racism on a platter. You saw it, you know what it was, you know that it smelled like shit, it tasted like shit, but you could see it and now you can't see it. I don't know what it's like to have to be walking in the street and move off of the sidewalk because a White person is coming.

But at the same time, like Misch said, I know what it feels like to be in a space where I'm not wanted. I know what it feels like to be in a space where I have to explain that I'm not here because of affirmative action. I'm here because I'm actually fucking smart and probably I know more than you do.

And so it's like, while so many things have changed, so many things are still the same. And in Ferguson, I saw the people come together for something that was so much bigger than us, but we were missing that spiritual piece so that when that dissipates, when that protest has gone there anymore, people are not necessarily still coming together because "we believe in this thing that is so bigger than us" in the ways in which, in the Civil Rights Movement, they had that.

And to know that they actually lived in a community and the ways in which now we may live, Black people, with each other, simply because segregation is still alive and real, but we're not actually living in real communities where we are taking care of each other. And essentially what we're trying to do in these schools is take care of each other in the ways in which when these kids leave their communities...

And that's not to say that none of these communities are not looking out for each other because that would be false, because they are in a lot of ways. But it's not in the way in which, like when I was a kid, if I was out in the middle of the street, my neighbors telling me to "get your ass out the street." And if you said something to them, if you got smart or you did anything, they were going to tell you, "I'm going to tell your grandmother." "Oh no, don't do that." We don't have that anymore.

And so to be there, in that space, for me it's like, I can visualize a time where Black people, actually, we lived in community with each other, and we loved each other, and we took care of each other in a way in which now we have bought into this very White American ideal that individualism... when it's like, we are a very communal people.

And I need us to get back to that. I want us to get back to that. And I feel like restorative justice is a way for us to get back to that. But we're so limited, because we're in the schools is really limited, and what does this look like for us to do this in whole communities, to bring us together?

And so, I guess, for me, Alabama brought up this idea for me that I've always been very much so about kinship. And I feel like those of us who actually really do want that, we don't actually live in the communities that raised us because we don't feel it. So, I guess I just feel like RJ is a way in which we can get back to that.

WATKINS: So, final question to put the cherry on this amazing conversation: As I said, you guys are near the end of this three years of work. Obviously, somebody can't replicate the work that you guys have been doing, and so much is based on the quality of the people in this room.

But is there advice that you would have, lessons you've learned, that you would share with people who want to try to set up something, at least, sharing in the spirit of what you guys have been trying to do in these schools?

Xavier CORNEJO: Something I would say to someone entering this work is: pay your dues. Coming into communities like the ones that we have, similar to what many of us have been saying now, Kellsie said that we are guests in these houses. And so, don't move in there expecting to be the landlord. Don't believe that you have it all figured out for people because you see it from the outside, looking in.

You have to be in community with people. You have to ask everyone, from the disempowered to the empowered, to understand what the lay of the land is.

Omar CYRILLE: One thing I would say is: don't come into the work to feel sorry for people-just get the job done.

Maxine GETZ: I think my biggest takeaway from this whole thing, agreeing with all of you, is just the importance of listening. I mean, as a White person doing this, the importance of listening and just, I don't know sh... stuff.

The way that they put restorative justice programs in predominantly schools with students of color, you've got to be thinking about how you can grapple with your own stuff so that you can show up for kids in a way that honors and celebrates daily their identities, so that I can be a White person who can talk to kids about what it's like to be Black.

Kellsie SAYERS: I'd say to do this work, you got to do it from a place of love. And I think that that requires a lot of grace. And Erica mentioned this: know when to tap out.

You've got to acknowledge your limitations and step back and say: "that's all I can give right now." And acknowledge you might've tried your best, but this just may not be for you.

Mischaël CETOUTE: First thing I would say to someone who is interested in doing RJ is to find the log in your own eye. That's obviously a reference to what Jesus says about finding the log in your eye before taking out the speck in your neighbors, but I think it works on multiple levels in that, as long as you are in community with other people, there's going to be things that you do wrong, that you have to own.

And if you can't do that piece, then no one's going to want to sit in your circle. They're going to sit in that circle and be like, "ah, last week he did this, and now he's talking all this fancy stuff about being in community and being in love-la la la, I'm not buying it."

The second thing I would say is that healing doesn't take place in isolation. And the wounds that you are trying to heal from can only really begin to breathe when you allow others to see them. And I think we live in a society that often tells us to hide our damage and to hide our wounds, and obviously it's not safe to do that with everyone. But if you find the people who you can show your wounds to, that is a huge piece in actually healing.

And the last thing I have is specifically for my White brothers and sisters: I have always recognized that I have White blood in me. I look in the mirror and I'm a Black man and I'm treated like a Black man, but I do not look like someone who is West African, from the continent.

There is a lightness to my skin, there's a lack of kink to my hair, that I can only attribute to a French slave master at some point. For me, knowing that at some point in my family's history, somebody sold their own kid is really, really paramount to understanding what slavery was about.

And so, the question that I would have for White people who are interested in doing this work is: how many slaves did your family own? If you can't look into that, then it's going to be very hard to look into the eyes of a kid who's suffering, because all you're going to see is your own guilt and your own lack of self-reflection.

Maybe your family's new to the country, you came here in the 1900s, or you've never had slaves. How have you all benefited from the White power structure that exists? That's a question that everyone should be asking themselves, but I think it's a question specifically that if you look in the mirror and you think that you're White and you feel that you are White, you really got to ask yourself a lot: How have I benefited? How have my ancestors benefited?

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New Thinking | Restorative Justice is Racial Justice

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Restorative justice is about repairing harm. But for Black Americans, what is there to be restored to? This special episode of New Thinking features a roundtable with eight members of our Restorative Justice in Schools team.

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https://www.brookings.edu/articles/black-progress-how-far-weve-come-and-how-far-we-have-to-go/

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Black Progress: How far we've come, and how far we have to go | Brookings

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Brookings Review article by Abigail Thernstrom and Stephan Thernstrom (Spring 1998)

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It's Women's History Month, and for the month of March people are celebrating the great achievements and contributions of women across the world. So what better time to pay tribute to black women innovators-who are all too often overlooked and excluded from our history books.

Here are ten awesome things that might never have existed without the invention or innovation of black women:

1. Everything good about your phone

Remember the days before call waiting and caller ID? If you answered "yes," you might be old. And you almost might have great appreciation for the research of Dr. Shirley Jackson, whose work led to those innovations, along with developments in touch-tone phones, portable fax machines, and the fiber optic cables that make your long-distance phone calls come in crystal clear.

Jackson was the first black woman to earn a doctorate from MIT, the first black female president of a major technological institute, and went on to became the first black woman appointed chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Her list of achievements, awards, and appointments goes on and on.

2. The heater

Isn't it nice that you can just walk into your home and turn on the heat when you're cold? You can thank Alice H. Parker for that.

Parker took it upon herself to design a natural gas-fueled "new and improved heating furnace." Her design earned a patent in December 1919 and helped give birth to the thermostat and the familiar forced air furnaces in most homes today.

3. Space-saving furniture

Sarah Goodes bed. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

In 1885, Sarah Goode became the first African-American woman to file a patent. Goode was born into slavery; after the Civil War she moved to Chicago. There, she met her husband and the two of them opened a furniture shop.

Back in the 1880s, most black families in Chicago didn't buy a lot of furniture because they lived in small homes and apartments. Seeing a need for innovative space-saving solutions, Goode designed the cabinet bed, a bed that could fold into a functioning desk. It's like a Murphy bed, only more useful.

It's hard to believe that Goode's cabinet bed isn't around today. Think of the space that could be saved in dorm rooms, studio apartments, or those new tiny houses everyone's talking about.

4. Home security

When Marie Van Brittan Brown and her husband Albert noticed increasing crime in their New York neighborhood, coupled with the fact that police were slow to respond to calls in their part of town, they set out to make their home feel safer. In 1966, Brown and her husband filed a patent for a household closed-circuit-television security system.

The system had a camera at the front door that looked through one of four peep holes at different heights. That image was broadcast to the user on a television set in another part of the house. It also had a two-way microphone, which allowed for communication with visitors at the door, and a remote switch that could unlock the door to let people in. If the person seemed unsafe, users could push an alert button to signal a nearby security firm.

Today, very similar systems can be seen in homes and apartment complexes across the nation.

5. Rock and roll

Many people have received credit for inventing rock and roll. Elvis Presley was referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll." Chuck Berry was the "Father of Rock and Roll." Alan Freed coined the term "rock and roll." But did you know that rock and roll also has a godmother?

In the 1930s and '40s, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was one of the first people to combine gospel music with melody-driven urban blues, traditional folk, and a unique pulsating swing style. Today, Tharpe's musical style is considered one of the first definite precursors of rock and roll. Many music legends, including Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Johnny Cash, and Chuck Berry were influenced by Tharpe's unique musical style, yet somehow her name is often left out when people talk about the history of rock and roll.

6. A good hairbrush

Lyda Newmans hairbrush. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Have you ever seen those old-time movies where women run a brush through their hair 100 times, counting each stroke in what appears to be an unnecessary waste of time? They probably had to do that way back then. Brushes weren't as user friendly as they are today, and combing hair was a long and difficult process.

Lyda D. Newman's invention was simple yet revolutionary. In 1898, Newman patented her "new and improved hair-brush." The brush had evenly separated bristles, slots that kept dirt and hair neatly contained, and a detachable compartment for easy cleaning. The artificial bristles Newman used were similar to the plastic ones used today.

7. Downtown Los Angeles

Bridget "Biddy" Mason didn't invent the city of Los Angeles, but she did help shape the city's downtown area.

Mason was born a slave and traveled with her slave owner, Robert Smith, as he moved around the country. When Smith moved his family and slaves to California, Mason discovered slavery was illegal in the state, petitioned the courts to free herself and her family, and won.

With her newfound freedom, Mason worked hard as a nurse and midwife until she had enough money to invest in real estate. Eventually she was able to buy 10 acres for $250, on which she built rental homes, and eventually a larger commercial building she rented out. That land she invested in and developed is now the heart of downtown L.A. As she amassed her wealth, she also established the First African Methodist Episcopal church and donated time and money to multiple charities and community programs.

Despite all of her accomplishments, Mason was buried in an unmarked grave in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles when she died in 1891. Her real estate and money were passed on to her children, but the legacy was lost in the Great Depression. Nearly 100 years after her death, L.A.'s mayor-and 3,000 members of the church she started-gave her grave a proper tombstone, and Thursday, November 16, 1989, was declared Biddy Mason Day. Today a memorial to her achievements is erected at the site where her home once stood in downtown L.A.

8. A better menstrual pad

Mary Beatrice Davidson Kenner patented many inventions in her life. There was the new and improved bathroom-tissue holder which caught the loose end of the toilet paper for easier use and the back scrubber that attached to the shower wall for better-executed hygiene. She also patented an adjustable tray and pocket attachment for walkers which made travel more convenient for people who used walking aids, and a "sanitary belt with a moisture proof napkin pocket" which made the cumbersome precursor to the pad less messy and more effective.

9. 3D movies

Photo of Valerie L. Thomas by NASA. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Seen any 3D movies lately? You know why? A black women: Valerie Thomas, physicist, inventor, and NASA data analyst. When she wasn't busy managing the Landsat program, which has produced millions of images of Earth, she was inventing the technology which went on to become the premise for more advanced TV screens and modern 3D technology.

In the late '70s, Thomas discovered that concave mirrors can create the illusion of 3-dimensional objects and began experimenting with how she could visually transmit the 3D illusion. In 1980, Thomas patented her illusion transmitter.

10. Better eyesight

While she may not be responsible for everyone's sight, Dr. Patricia Bath invented a device that drastically improved the process for removing cataracts, which can cause impaired vision and blindness. Today, her Laserphaco Probe, which allows for quick and almost painless removal of cataracts, is used around the world.

Dr. Bath was the first African-American woman to receive a medical patent, co-founded the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness, and was the first woman to become the head of a residency program in ophthalmology. And if that's not enough, she pioneered the concept of "community ophthalmology"-a system that increased the amount of eye care available to low-income and underserved populations.

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10 Black Women Innovators and the Awesome Things They Brought Us - YES! Magazine

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It's Women's History Month, and for the month of March people are celebrating the great achievements and contributions of women across the world. So what better time to pay tribute to black women innovators-who are all too often overlooked and excluded from our history books.

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What is Restorative Justice? - Restorative Justice

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Skip to main content The three core elements of restorative justice are the interconnected concepts of Encounter, Repair, and Transform. Each element is discrete and essential. Together they represent a journey toward wellbeing and wholeness that victims, offenders, and community members can experience. Encounter leads to repair, and repair leads to transformation.

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Black Lives Matter Week of Action is a national, student-run event, held during the first week of February, dedicated to unapologetic conversations and presentations on Black culture, expression, and justice. SCI-Arc's prestige is based on revolutionary conversations demonstrating a direct influence on the educational spectrum and the overall discourse of design.

As a private institution with global recognition, SCI-Arc's student body represents over 50 countries-but with less than 3% being Black, there's a deficiency of Black culture imbued in the development of architectural theory, practice, and design. SCI-Arc's Black Lives Matter Week of Action embraces a unique opportunity to unite creative disciplines within cultural and societal issues, embodying the students' mission to create a collective platform of speakers with diverse disciplinary interests ranging from art to activism.

Black Lives Matter at School is a national coalition of educators, parents, administrators, and scholars organizing for racial justice in education. The movement dedicated a week in February to the annual Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action to coincide with and augment Black History Month. Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action is an act of unity to challenge the insidious legacy of institutionalized racism and oppression that has plagued the United States since its founding. The guiding principles of the Black Lives Matter movement are celebrated and discussed throughout the week: Restorative Justice, Empathy, Loving Engagement, Diversity, Globalism, Trans Affirming, Queer Affirming, Collective Value, Intergenerational, Black Families, Black Villages, Black Women, and Unapologetically Black. The Black Lives Matter Week of Action is supported and celebrated by thousands of schools, both K-12 and colleges/universities across the United States.

The week-long series of events at SCI-Arc is organized by Undergraduate students Allyn Vialt (B.Arch '21) and Babatunde-Majadi Adejare (B.Arch '23).

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Restorative Justice, Loving Engagement, and Black Women

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Black Lives Matter Week of Action is a national, student-run event, held during the first week of February, dedicated to unapologetic conversations and presentations on Black culture, expression, and justice. SCI-Arc's prestige is based on revolutionary conversations demonstrating a direct influence on the educational spectrum and the overall discourse of design.

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Day 1 focused on making the principle relevant for children by asking, who are the people in your family? We read Grandma's Purseby Vanessa Brantley-Newton. On one page, Mimi pulls out a sleeve of pictures from her purse with her family growing and changing over time. We looked at this picture, then invited students to draw pictures of their families. One student brought her laptop to her living room mantel, where she showed us photos on display of her and her brother. Other students shared drawings of a picture they would want to carry with them - a grandmother with her suitcase, a family at the beach, a water balloon fight with the whole family, and a celebration of mom's birthday.

Day 2 brought attention to relationships that bring us comfort and joy through the story Max and the Tag-Along Moonby Floyd Cooper. We connected with students' lives by asking them to think of how they can be comforted when they miss someone. I asked students if there was someone they miss right now, perhaps because of the pandemic. One student shared about a friend who moved away, and another shared about an aunt who died. We talked about what we can do when we miss someone. Though this was not where I imagined the discussion would go, it provided an authentic context for talking about finding comfort through our families.

Day 3 honed in on the idea of learning from people of different ages through the story Mango, Abuela, and Me by Meg Medina. This story really resonated with many of my students who have parents or grandparents who speak limited English, or are dual language learners themselves. One student in my class is a recent immigrant who primarily speaks Spanish - he lit up when he heard Spanish words in the story! After we read the story, I asked students, "How can you help someone in your family?" I then attempted to ask the question in Spanish, but my Spanish is pretty limited, so another student who speaks both English and Spanish chimed in and said, "I can handle this!" and proceeded to translate the question into Spanish. This moment really brought the story to life for us, as classmates were able to help each other out with their language skills. Then, we discussed ways we help our families. One student shared, "I help my mom with the baby." Another shared "my mom teaches me to speak Spanish," and another shared, "my dad is teaching me to speak Oromo." One student shared, "When my mom's back is hurting, I help her pick things up and make my own peanut butter and jelly sandwiches."

Day 4 broadened our thinking into the larger community. We read by Libba Moore Gray. When Miss Tizzy does not feel well in the story, students predicted that the children would make her soup and help get her medicine. When we finished reading, they enjoyed recounting the things the children did for Miss Tizzy. Following this story, we participated in Cupid's Kids and made Valentine's Day cards for senior residents in D.C. We talked about how this could bring joy to seniors, just like the children brought joy to Miss Tizzy.

Though we were only able to study one of the 13 principles, we covered multiple narratives and celebrated people of different ages in our own families and beyond. My hope is that this week brought joy to my students and helped them draw connections between their lives and the Black Lives Matter intergenerational principle.

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Centering the Intergenerational Black Lives Matter Guiding Principle in a Kindergarten Classroom - D.C. Area Educators for Social Justice

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Day 1 focused on making the principle relevant for children by asking, who are the people in your family? We read Grandma's Purse by Vanessa Brantley-Newton. On one page, Mimi pulls out a sleeve of pictures from her purse with her family growing and changing over time.

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"She Thrives: Black Women Making History Today" puts the spotlight on 10 amazing individuals whose achievements transcend generations, occupations and regions. These women - all leaders in their communities - are truly elevating the conversation around black identity, politics and culture. Meet all of our "She Thrives" honorees here.

Lisa Borders

President and CEO of Time's Up

61

Atlanta. Lives in New York City

"Failure is not fatal. It is feedback."

Harriet Tubman

Perhaps there isn't a person better suited to lead Time's Up than Lisa Borders.

Last fall, Borders was named the president and CEO of the movement to stop sexual assault, harassment and gender inequality in the workplace. The Atlanta native hit the ground running in January to start strategizing how to make the movement feel tangible and accessible to women everywhere.

In several interviews, Borders has characterized the Time's Up movement "as the civil rights movement of the 21st century." It may seem like a fateful path for her to follow. Her parents and maternal grandparents instilled in her the importance of equality, fairness and social justice. And Borders' paternal grandfather helped desegregate buses in Atlanta and preached in front of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"The values that he, and my parents, and my maternal grandparents instilled in me are certainly coming to life through this role," she said. "I really have had the privilege of learning at their feet and living through the civil rights movement, and frankly being a direct beneficiary."

Time's Up - and the Time's Up Legal Defense Fund - were launched in January 2018, after reports of abuse and harassment by powerful men in the entertainment industry sparked a reckoning there. The Legal Defense Fund, which is administered by the National Women's Law Center, has raised more than $22 million to help pay for legal fees for cases involving sexual harassment and work-related retaliation, according to the NWLC.

"We must work for safe, fair and dignified workplaces," Borders told NBCBLK. "But we also have to work on parity and equity for women in all industries, and we want them represented everywhere and reaching their full potential."

In 2019, Time's Up has made its mission to double the number of women in leadership across all industries, its website reports. If you remember, Regina King made a nod to this initiative at the 2019 Golden Globes, by pledging that all her future projects would have gender parity, with 50 percent of employees being women. That's the kind of work that Borders and the Time's Up team hopes to see more of this year, as the organization is set to release its strategic plan to accomplish its goals in the coming months.

Borders says her career path has also set her up for this moment. She's been a public servant, as vice mayor of the city of Atlanta; she was president of the Grady Health Foundation, where she oversaw fundraising for what was then Atlanta's only level-1 trauma center. Then, she worked at the Coca-Cola Foundation, where she led a global team that put money back into local communities. Most recently, Borders served as the president and CEO of the WNBA, fighting for women to have their rightful place in professional sports.

"I've had the opportunity to work with folks who were either underserved, underrepresented, whose voices hadn't reached their full potential, who didn't have their rightful seat at the table of opportunity," she said. "Every single one of those roles was a learning place and leverage point for me to pick up information, work through crises and help build capacity for individuals and for the collective."

On Feb. 18, Borders resigned as head of Time's Up "with deep regret" due to family issues.

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Lisa Borders is doubling down on efforts to reach gender parity across all industries

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"She Thrives: Black Women Making History Today" puts the spotlight on 10 amazing individuals whose achievements transcend generations, occupations and regions. These women - all leaders in their communities - are truly elevating the conversation around black identity, politics and culture. Meet all of our "She Thrives" honorees here.

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https://in.ewu.edu/titleix/wp-content/uploads/sites/119/2020/10/Implementing_Restorative_Justice_as_a_Step_Toward_Racial_Equity_in_School_Discipline_1.pdf

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http://www.lifeculturepeople.com/culture-2/2017/2/1/unapologetically-black

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Today, we pay homage to Carter G. Woodson, the unapologetically BLACK historian behind what we know today as Black History Month. He and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History started the precursor to Black History Month in 1926, when they deemed the second week of February "Negro History Week".

Wikipedia cites "This week was chosen because it coincided with the birthday of Abraham Lincoln on February 12 and of Frederick Douglass on February 14, both of which [are] dates Black communities had celebrated together since the late 19th century."

"If a race has no history, it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated. The American Indian left no continuous record. He did not appreciate the value of tradition; and where is he today? The Hebrew keenly appreciated the value of tradition, as is attested by the Bible itself. In spite of worldwide persecution, therefore, he is a great factor in our civilization.

-Carter G. Woodson

Let us all bask in the beauty of this month and remember the plight of our ancestors, as we continue to journey through our own new-millennium civil rights movement. Let us not forget our fallen. Let us not forget our modern day history. Let us in the raise of our voices for the injustices and disparities of this generation let us model our war cries after our forefathers and fight! Let us bask in the radiance of our brilliance and be loud, proud and UnAPOLOGETICALLY BLACK!

-Je'Don Holloway Talley

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UnAPOLOGETICALLY BLACK - LIFE. CULTURE. PEOPLE.

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What does it mean to be unapologetically black? By personal definition, I'd say it means to be centered, conscious, and deeply aware of your blackness. It means that you recognize the beauty in of our complexities; from lifestyle, to shape and color. Our slick language, our code; the varying dynami

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Fania Davis says it openly and her words are a clarion call to all of us committed to both restorative justice and racial justice:

Just as the restorative justice community has historically failed to adopt a racial or social justice stance, few racial justice activists embrace restorative justice. Calling for a convergence of the two...(the book) urges racial justice advocates to invite more healing energies into their lives and restorative justice advocates to bring more warrior energies into theirs.
-- The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice Fania E. Davis, April 2019

As the founder of Restorative Justice on The Rise, and as a white woman of privilege, it is imperative that I name the fact that colonization has murdered, oppressed, both seen and in unseen ways--the former an area of huge oversight by White people--and destructed lives of our Black Community outrightly and relentlessly for over 400 years. While Juneteenth celebrates the emancipation of slaves in Galveston, Texas, it is not, as Noliwe Rooks, Cornell Professor, says:

The pretending we've done for centuries needs to come to a halt now. The comforts we white folks have had are on the backs of hundreds of millions, and we are responsible for repairing this egregiously long-term harm.

What can anti-racist white communities do? First, we have to name the reality of the centuries of harms done. George Floyd, RIP, was not the first and sadly not the last to be slayed. The list of lives brutally slaughtered is long and impacts millions of families and communities, and the line of harm goes down generations, 400+ years to be precise. White people have to name it for what it is. And we have to do as Fania Davis emphatically invites: we have to be Warriors and Healers alike by amplifying our voices in alliance with and for Blacks and their rights.

Secondly, we must publicly acknowledge the harms we've caused as part of a white colonized system. We must see clearly our part in the harm. This begins with inner work that is radical and urgent. This means doing everything one can to think about white privilege's impacts. And the implicit and explicit biases we live day to day. It means extensively considering what it has been like to be white in America. And what differences are present as you wake up in the morning, dress for work or school for for your day, and walk out the door. What open doors are you not seeing, that were given to you due to your whiteness? What closed doors and threats do you think are a regular part of a Black man or woman or child's day, due to their Blackness? What are the hard truths about your entitlement that you may not even be aware of? What fears do Blacks have that you do not, and what are you doing to bridge that gap of understanding the visceral, marrow-bone reality of this for our Black Community?

These questions and more are critical and urgent.

Thirdly, we must do everything we can to use the privileges we've been afforded to take action. For example, as the Founder of Restorative Justice on The Rise, it is my responsibility to find ways to utilize the worldwide network we've established together, which is comprised of Black, People of Color, White, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, East Indian, and many others representing languages, heritages, stories of culture and life perspectives, and all share the same need: to be heard, seen, known, and understood at the depths of their being. And, to use this platform and network to impact policy that is unjust to the extreme. The extraordinary people in our network are why we exist. We have a responsibility to take action that is not just words or slogans, but to commit to a Warriorship of truth and advocacy that is selfless in servant leadership and Beloved Community.

We must drop the defensiveness and listen; we must take responsibility for our own honest inquiry about the past and the present. Just because you as a White are privileged doesn't mean you are being accused of being a bad person. Let's make that clear now. Defensiveness and fragility are selfish reactions to a very large and long term line of violence and what is needed is relentless humility and commitment. For those of us white folks who have been called out, self included, we have to open, not close off, and take the opportunity to recommit to action. One of the more common things I hear from white folks are things like:

How am I as a white person responsible for racism -- I didn't hurt anyone and I have Black friends.

I'm being accused of using my privilege, when it had nothing to do with race.

I asked my Black friend about their experiences and they blew up at me saying they shouldn't have to educate me.

That's just three simple scenarios that seem very common and they need to be addressed bluntly by us as white folks. Where to start? Simply don't make it about you, but that you have everything to do with responsible action. Drop the tendency to put up defenses and open to the minds and hearts of Black communities who are rightfully calling us out individually and as a colonized, broken system.

Additionally and urgently, we must understand there are forces that are served by keeping humanity fighting and separated. The "otherization" of people who happen to have different colors of skin, who happen to identify in ways that are outside the restricting limits of what is called "normal" in Western society, people who pray to Gods that mostly white privileged men do not approve of ....the list goes on and on of the ways, by design, that Colonized structures and domination attempt to control humanity and its narratives. This must end now. In this time many are realizing that the systems in this country (the United States) and our world are not for the people, but for a few who monopolize profit over people and whose objectives are not aligned with democratic principles, even whilst saying they are. This applies also to the race question: who is it serving to keep us fighting and keep us outside of our common-shared humanity (while still acknowledging the violence and reality of the generational impacts and losses)?

The restorative justice movement as a whole has a responsibility in this moment to act. As individuals and as networks, as rising platforms online where verdant dialogues that are blunt and honest are occurring, relationships of trust can be built and rebuilt from a new foundation that activates collective ability to increase the potency of our actions.

The Circle is inherent in all of us--it is a place to build and re build trust, it's a place to do the very hard work of facing discomfort. I imagine that Fania's astute observation about people involved in racial justice not embracing restorative justice might be out of a rightful need to feel immediate results and changes. I can imagine that the restorative justice movement's inability to stand in full for racial justice might be due to our over-arching urgent need to deconstruct our own worldviews that are embedded in our DNA and systems alike--and are white, colonized, and destruction-based to anyone or anything that does not serve its means and ends.

So today on this Juneteenth in one of the most difficult years possibly experienced on this planet, we get to see full force what Thomas Merton called the "Unspeakable": the violence and murder, the broken systems, the racism and injustice directed at Blacks and at People of Color, the slaying of our meek, the targeting of young Black Men and the list goes on. We face life or death in this moment--both quite literally and symbolically as a planet. We have a choice to stand up and rise. We have a choice as restorative justice practitioners to sharpen our swords of truth while equally holding healing spaces of potency for the ability they have to cultivate seen-ness, heard-ness, and to allow true action to result.

Healing does not start outwardly, it starts with individuals and is an inner process that deeply impacts capacity to work outwardly. When we who happen to be white act with fragility, don't linger on that, learn from it, and go deeper inside yourself to identify the spirit of life within you--whether that's spiritually oriented or a tone of deep and trusted guidance, tune into that part of yourself that links to what might be called the Great Mystery--the larger cosmological context that is indeed mirrored in each and every one of us. Go from Fragility to Responsibility.

In 2017 I was in Oakland for the NACRJ Conference, and Fania closed the 4-day event with an incredibly critical invitation, which I will paraphrase from memory (and hopefully accurately), inviting "white community of practitioners in the field to find their roots, their identities, and bring those forth". That remark was critical and I to this day wonder how many people took it seriously. But here we are today, in 2020, and the question arises, how can we work as allies and accomplices for anti-racism unless we reach deeply within our souls to explore the divine perspectives that inform us, that call on us to heal ourselves, love ourselves, and to bring forth the natural healing that arises from our own wholeness and presence, even as it stumbles through the many gates of initiation and loss? Can we hold the violence and destruction, let is pass through us without averting for a moment? Can we show up as RJ practitioners and white folks with roots that extend, like Bamboo, laterally and unified, and that can bend with hardship and return to support the whole?

Becoming a Healer means, as Frankl said, "to endure burning". Joseph Campbell, himself a white person, gave us the gift of the mythological aspects of the Hero's Journey, and becoming the healer through the course of blunt willingness to be humbled on this journey. This is the medicine of planting seeds of potent action.

Restorative justice programs are offering Impact Circles and spaces for critical discussions on white privilege and to hear the urgent concerns and needs of our Black, Indigenous and POC communities. One such program is Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth which Fania Davis was co-founder, and another, Talking Peace. Restorative Empowerment for Youth are hosting youth-led online Impact Circles. Many more are occurring. Fania was and is right, we have to unify to create the balance that is needed to move forward as an empowered, humble, activated movement. We can't bridge the divide she points out without getting brutally honest and that starts with Circles that are held with conditions that cultivate truth telling and respect. They are Circles that are small to ensure voice and choice. They expand and ripple out and empower Blacks and Whites alike, when the hard work of acknowledgment and self inquiry is happening. This is the ground of unified action towards lasting change. This is the ground of dismantling sick, colonized systems once and for all, and for both visioning in, and potently enacting the world we wish to live in that honors the lives of all equally in every seen and unseen form imaginable.
I'm rolling up my sleeves. I hope that you are too.-Molly Rowan Leach
Founder of Restorative Justice on The Rise. A People's Platform for Dialogue and Resources, Education and Connection, since 2011.

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Restorative Justice & Its Responsibility to Racial Justice - Restorative Justice On The Rise

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Fania Davis says it openly and her words are a clarion call to all of us committed to both restorative justice and racial justice: Just as the restorative justice community has historically failed to adopt a racial or social justice stance, few racial justice activists embrace restorative justice.

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By Stephanie Ornelas

Meagan Good is breaking barriers. The actress joined Morgan Debaun, CEO of Blavity Inc. (Creators of Shadow & Act), in a candid conversation during the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The two discussed making the leap to directing, what that meant for Good as a Black woman, and the obstacles she faced along the way. Good also discussed her recent projects - both on and off the camera - and how she was inspired to take on new roles outside of her comfort zone.

When it came to being behind the camera, Good had the strength to handle a slew of obstacles that would come her way. At 19, she already knew she wanted to be a producer, and by 24, she had produced and directed a music video all on her own.

But she explains that being a Black woman made it extremely difficult for her, as no one ever took her seriously, and she found herself having to teach herself.

"When you're a woman, people don't take you seriously, and when you're a Black woman people don't take you seriously. They'd say, 'just be an actress. Leave the biz stuff to the guys.'"

So when her cousin, who had just finished working on Glee, asked her to produce a music video for him, she recommended "a guy who can direct it."

There was just one problem: he wasn't available. And just like that, Good was directing her first music video. "I was terrified," she says. "But once I started putting the pieces together, I instantly thought to myself, I know exactly what I'm doing. "

Turns out Good did it quite well, and soon tons of industry professionals would inquire about working with her.

Through this, she's developed enough confidence to raise up more female writers and directors. Working closely with Kevin Hart's Laugh Out Loud initiative, she's aiming to put Black women at the forefront of comedy with a new screenwriting fellowship program called "Women Write Now," partnered with the Sundance Institute.

Designed to champion the next generation of Black women in comedy, the new initiative focuses on providing one-on-one mentorship opportunities to Black women screenwriters, as well as the funding to develop and produce those projects and a platform to exhibit them. This initiative recently supported the film Black Karen directed by Danielle Nicolet and starring Bresha Webb.

"Black women have stories to tell," says Good. "We need to have opportunities, not just for acting, but we need opportunities for Black women in all areas. And writing is an area where we haven't gotten as much exposure or support," Good stressed.

"I fell in love with Harlem,and I fell in love with Camille," Good says about her recent role in the comedy series available on Amazon Prime. "I love the show because it's unapologetically Black. We had a chance to show things we never get to talk about. And [Camille] is a type of character I haven't been able to play. She's similar to me. I'm a little offbeat," she laughs.

Good explains how initially she wasn't sure she would get the part. No one had seen her play a role like this before.

"TV for me is always scary because it's such a huge commitment. I like being a nomad and not knowing what character I'm going to play next," she says. "When I decide to take a role on TV it's because I made the decision that if I end up living in this space for years, I'm going to be really happy here. And that's what Harlem is to me. It represents, not just sisterhood on the show but sisterhood behind the scenes," she explains.

Today, she's directed a number of music videos for artists like Adrienne Bailon and Diarra Sylla, as well as a short film, and, more recently, her first feature film alongside writer Tamara Bass, which can be found on Apple TV+.

And for actors wanting to make the switch to the director's chair but are still unsure, Good had some pretty insightful advice:

"Put one foot in front of the other and ask a lot of questions," she says. "More importantly, trust your instincts because nobody else has them. What you bring is unique and special and only you can bring it. Even if you don't have a lot of help or support starting out, it will bring itself full circle and you will blow your own mind."

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Unapologetically Black: A Conversation with Meagan Good presented by Shadow and Act

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By Stephanie Ornelas Meagan Good is breaking barriers. The actress joined Morgan Debaun, CEO of Blavity Inc. (Creators of Shadow & Act), in a candid conversation during the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. The two discussed making the leap to directing, what that meant for Good as a Black woman, and the obstacles she faced along the way.

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"It is better for young transgender women to know that there's a life out there for them that doesn't involve sex work, either prostitution or p-rnography, nor does it rest on the vagaries of celebrity, stardom and being discovered. I am not a celebrity, I live a good life but it lacks glamour and excitement. That's kind of the whole point."

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Why I Had To Come Out As A Black Trans Woman

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There’s no period of homelessness and no vignettes where I wake up in a hospital, lucky to be alive. My life is quotidian and it is that very character that makes my story worth telling.

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"As we near the end of Black History Month, we’re featuring ten lesbian, gay, transgender, same gender loving, and queer leaders (pictured clockwise) who are making history as they pave the way for the welcome and affirmation of all people across Christian traditions."

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Black

10 Black Religious Leaders Advancing LGBTQ Justice

As we near the end of Black History Month, we're featuring ten lesbian, gay, transgender, same gender loving, and queer leaders (pictured clockwise) who are making history as they pave the way for the welcome and affirmation of all people across Christian traditions.

1. Archbishop Carl Bean

Former Motown recording artist Archbishop Carl Bean has dedicated his life to sharing the good news that "God is love, and love is for everyone." In 1977, his hit song " I Was Born This Way" became the first gay liberation dance hit. Five years later, Bean founded the Unity Fellowship Church Movement, which continues to empower "those who have been oppressed and made to feel excluded and ashamed." Archbishop Bean's 2010 memoir documents his journey from disco stardom to ministry.

2. Rev. MacArthur H. Flournoy

Rev. MacArthur H. Flournoy is the Director for Faith Partnerships and Mobilization for the Human Rights Campaign and serves as the National Minister of Public Policy for The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries. Rev. Flournoy has worked internationally on issues of human rights, health disparities, HIV/AIDS, and racial/LGBT justice in faith contexts.

3. Bishop Yvette Flunder

Raised a devout Pentecostal, Bishop Yvette Flunder began a career in social justice ministry as a young adult that has continued throughout her ministry. In June 2003, she was consecrated as the Presiding Bishop of The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, a multi-denominational fellowship of 56 primarily African American Christian churches. Bishop Flunder also founded the City of Refuge United Church of Christ in San Francisco in 1991 as a ministry of restoration and reconciliation. Listen to an interview with Bishop Flunder at LGBT Religious Archives Network.

4. Rev. Cedric A. Harmon

Rev. Cedric A. Harmon is the co-director of Many Voices, an organization committed to creating a national movement for gay and transgender justice from within the Black church. An ordained pastor affiliated with the National Baptist and Missionary Baptist Churches, Cedric served as religious organizer for Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. In our latest video, Rev. Harmon discusses LGBT inclusion in the Black church.
In 2010, Rev. Darlene Garner (left) and Rev. Candy Holmes
were one of the first same-gender couples to marry
legally in Washington, D.C. (Photo via MCC)
5. Rev. Elder Darlene Garner

Rev. Elder Darlene Garner was ordained in 1988 and has pastored multiple congregations of the Metropolitan Community Churches (MCC) in the U.S. and South Africa. Since 1993, she has been one of MCC's spiritual leaders. She is currently the Director of the MCC Office of Emerging Ministries. She oversees MCC ministry development in Asia, Canada, Europe, Latin America, and Oceania; diversity and inclusion; and multicultural competence. She also convenes the triennial MCC Conference for People of African Descent, Our Friends and Allies, next happening in Atlanta in May 2014.

6. Rev. Candy Holmes

Rev. Candy Holmes has been a part of the Metropolitan Community Churches for over 25 years. She lifts up a healing liberation theology, an ecumenically-based vision, and a social justice-seeking ministry that boldly proclaims "God's love includes everyone." She serves in multiple leadership roles in the MCC, including chair of the MCC Conference for People of African Descent.

7. Minister Louis Mitchell

Minister Louis Mitchell has been involved in the fight for health, respect and self-determination since the early 1980s, with deep engagement in political, mental health, recovery, and black church contexts. Mitchell serves as the Community Engagement Consultant at Transfaith, and he is one of the founding members of the TDOR Unite! Coalition. He is also a founding member of both The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries' TransSaints and the Trans People of Color Coalition.

8. Bishop Tonyia Rawls

Bishop Tonyia Rawls is the founding pastor of Unity Fellowship Church Charlotte in North Carolina. She is also the founder and executive director of the Freedom Center for Social Justice, located in Charlotte, NC. In a recent video from the Many Voices Video Campaign, Rev. Rawls tells how meeting Archbishop Carl Bean led her home.

9. Rev. Jonathan Thunderword

Rev. Jonathan Thunderword is an ordained minister in The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries and an influential advocate for the transgender community. He is the founding pastor of By the Way Baptist Church in Norfolk, Virginia, and he has served as both the Chaplain for the Transcendence Gospel Choir and the Minister of Interfaith Outreach at the Church for the Fellowship of All People. He has also worked to combat police brutality in the trans community and has served as an outreach worker and counselor in HIV/AIDS education and prevention.

10. Pastor Joseph Tolton

Pastor Joseph Tolton is a spiritual leader, public advocate, and entrepreneur. He serves as the National Minister of Global Justice for The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries and Associate Pastor for Rivers at Rehoboth Church in Harlem. Pastor Tolton is also the Deputy Director of The Global Justice Institute, providing strategic planning consulting services for LGBT advocacy groups in Uganda, Rwanda, Kenya, Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia.

In memoriam: Minister Bobbie Jean Baker

Minister BobbieJean Baker was a pioneering transgender spiritual leader, who passed away in a car accident on January 1, 2014. Minister Baker believed her ministry was to help transgender people reconcile their spirituality, but also to help provide practical assistance with overcoming substance abuse, homelessness and more. Baker moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1992 from Memphis, TN. She served as West Coast Regional TransSaints Minister of the Fellowship of Affirming Ministries and Lay Minister at Transcending Transgender Ministries at City of Refuge United Church of Christ. She was the lead singer in the ground-breaking transgender group Transcendence Gospel Choir for a decade.

Baker served as a mentor in the Transgender, Gender Variant, & Intersex Justice Project's Diamond Project Mentorship Program and has been actively involved in the Formerly Incarcerated and Convicted People's Movement. She also worked for several Bay Area non profits as a peer advocate, case manager, supportive housing manager, with certification as an HIV Risk Assessment Counselor and Domestic Violence Specialist. She was a seminary student at the Pacific Religion School, as well as a sought after speaker and workshop leader.
Tribute to Minister Baker provided by Transfaith
Like many transgender leaders, Minister Baker's legacy is found in the lives she touched.
Header photo credits: Archbishop Carl Bean, Bishop Yvette Flunder, Rev. Elder Darlene Garner, Rev. Candy Holmes, Bishop Tonyia Rawls, Rev. Jonathan Thunderword, Pastor Joseph Tolton Special thanks to Transfaith, Many Voices, Metropolitan Community Churches, The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries, LGBT Religious Archives Network, National Black Justice Coalition, and Elixher for providing and publishing biographical information included in this list.
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10 Black Religious Leaders Advancing LGBTQ Justice - Believe Out Loud

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As we near the end of Black History Month, we're featuring ten lesbian, gay, transgender, same gender loving, and queer leaders (pictured clockwise) who are making history as they pave the way for the welcome and affirmation of all people across Christian traditions. 1.