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Design for Belonging Webinar: National Equity Project and Susie Wise

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Eventbrite - National Equity Project presents Design for Belonging Webinar: National Equity Project and Susie Wise - Friday, April 29, 2022 - Find event and registration information.

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Join Donna Murch and Barbara Ransby for a conversation about state violence, racial capitalism, and the Movement for Black Lives.

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When Books are Threatened Where Do We Turn? 3/29

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When Books are Threatened Where Do We Turn? 3/29

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Eventbrite brings people together through live experiences. Discover events that match your passions, or create your own with online ticketing tools.

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In this Woke Read Alouds episode, Ki uses Mr. Tiger Goes Wild to surface the concept of Respectability Politics and takes readers through a deep dive of how respectability politics show up in our lives and in our schools.

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Learn how to develop a plan for community assessment to guide efforts to better understand community needs and resources.

What do we mean by needs and resources?

Why develop a plan for assessing local needs and resources?

Who should be involved in developing a plan for assessing local needs and resources?

When should needs and assets be identified?

How do you develop a plan for assessing local needs and resources?

Developing a plan for identifying local needs and resources can help changemakers understand how to improve their communities in the most logical and efficient ways possible. This section provides a guide for developing and implementing a plan to assess the needs of communities and the resources available to them.

What do we mean by needs and resources?

Needs can be defined as the gap between what is and what should be. A need can be felt by an individual, a group, or an entire community. It can be as concrete as the need for food and water or as abstract as improved community cohesiveness. An obvious example might be the need for public transportation in a community where older adults have no means of getting around town. More important to these same adults, however, might be a need to be valued for their knowledge and experience. Examining situations closely helps uncover what is truly needed, and leads toward future improvement.

Resources, or assets, can include individuals, organizations and institutions, buildings, landscapes, equipment -- anything that can be used to improve the quality of life. The mother in Chicago who volunteers to organize games and sports for neighborhood children after school, the Kenyan farmers' cooperative that makes it possible for farmers to buy seed and fertilizer cheaply and to send their produce directly to market without a middle man, the library that provides books and Internet access to everyone, the bike and walking path where city residents can exercise -- all represent resources that enhance community life. Every individual is a potential community asset, and everyone has assets that can be used for community building.

Why develop a plan for assessing local needs and resources?
There are really two questions here: The first is Why assess needs and resources? Answers include:

It will help you gain a deeper understanding of the community. Each community has its own needs and assets, as well as its own culture and social structure -- a unique web of relationships, history, strengths, and conflicts that defines it. A community assessment helps to uncover not only needs and resources, but the underlying culture and social structure that will help you understand how to address the community's needs and utilize its resources.

An assessment will encourage community members to consider the community's assets and how to use them, as well as the community's needs and how to address them. That consideration can (and should) be the first step in their learning how to use their own resources to solve problems and improve community life.

It will help you make decisions about priorities for program or system improvement. It would obviously be foolhardy to try to address community issues without fully understanding what they are and how they arose. By the same token, failing to take advantage of community resources not only represents taking on a problem without using all the tools at your disposal to solve it, but misses an opportunity to increase the community's capacity for solving its own problems and creating its own change.

It goes a long way toward eliminating unpleasant surprises down the road. Identifying needs and resources before starting a program or initiative means that you know from the beginning what you're dealing with, and are less likely to be blindsided later by something you didn't expect.

The second question is: Why develop a plan for that assessment? Some reasons why you should:

It allows you to involve community members from the very beginning of the process. This encourages both trust in the process and community buy-in and support, not only of the assessment, but of whatever actions are taken as a result of it. Full community participation in planning and carrying out an assessment also promotes leadership from within the community and gives voice to those who may feel they have none.

An assessment is a great opportunity to use community-based participatory research, further involving community members and increasing community capacity.

A good plan will provide an easy-to-follow road map for conducting an accurate assessment. Planning ahead will save time and effort in carrying out the process.

A planning process will give community members the opportunity to voice their opinions, hopes, and fears about the community. Their idea of priorities might be different from those of professionals, but they shouldn't be ignored.

It may be important to address the community's priorities first, in order to establish trust and show respect, even if you don't believe that those priorities are in fact the most important issues. Building relationships and credibility may be more important at the beginning of a long association than immediately tackling what seems to be the most pressing need. Among other things, community members' priorities may be the right ones: they may see underlying factors that you don't yet understand.

Who should be involved in developing a plan for assessing local needs and resources?

As we've discussed, the assessment process benefits greatly when there's full participation from community stakeholders. Among those who should be involved:

Those experiencing needs that should be addressed. It's both fair and logical to involve those who are most directly affected by adverse conditions. They know best what effects those conditions have on their lives, and including them in the planning process is more likely to produce a plan that actually speaks to their needs.

Health and human service providers. These individuals and organizations, especially those that are community-based, often have both a deep understanding of the community and a strong empathic connection with the populations they serve. They can be helpful both by sharing their knowledge and by recruiting people from marginalized populations to contribute to the assessment.

Government officials. Elected and appointed officials are often those who can help or hinder a community change effort. Engaging them in planning and carrying out an assessment helps to ensure that they will take the effort seriously and work to make it successful.

Influential people. These can can include individuals who are identified as leaders because of their positions -- college presidents, directors of hospitals and other major organizations, corporate CEOs -- because of the prestige of their professions -- doctors, professors, judges, clergy -- or because they are known to be people of intelligence, integrity, and good will who care about the community.

People whose jobs or lives could be affected by the eventual actions taken as a result of the assessment. These include teachers, police, emergency room personnel, landlords, and others who might have to react if new community policies or procedures are put in place.

Community activists. People who have been involved in addressing policy or issues that could come up in the course of the assessment have a stake in planning the assessment as well.

Businesses, especially those that employ people from populations of concern. The livelihoods of local business owners could be affected by the results of the assessment, as could the lives of their employees.

When should needs and assets be identified?

Identifying needs and assets can be helpful to your organization at almost any point in your initiative. If your group has a specific goal, such as reducing teen pregnancy, identifying local needs (better communication between parents and teens, education programs, etc.) and resources (youth outreach programs, peer counselors) related to the issue can help you craft a workable, effective goal. On the other hand, if your organization is more broad-based -- if you're dedicated to helping the health needs of under-served people in your city, for example -- identifying assets and needs can help you decide which aspect of the problem to tackle first.

Assessments of resources and needs should be done regularly throughout your initiative:

Prior to planning the initiative. This gives coalition members, community leaders, and those being served an idea of how to improve their circumstances.

During implementation of an initiative. It is important to make sure that you are on target not only at the beginning and the end of a project, but also during its implementation. If car companies only did quality checks on the steel before the parts are constructed and the paint job after it rolled off the line, you might not be inclined to trust the engine. Identifying needs and assets during the life of the initiative helps you use your own resources well, and ensures that you're addressing the right issues in the right way.

On an ongoing basis. During monitoring and evaluation, either ongoing or after the completion of a project, it is important to celebrate successes and to learn from setbacks to further community development.

How do you develop a plan for assessing local needs and resources?

The best way to assess needs and assets is by using as many of the available sources of information as possible. "Possible" here depends on how easy the information is to find and collect, and what your resources -- mostly of people, money, and time -- will support. Developing a plan will allow you to take these considerations into account and use the results to determine goals, devise methods, and create a structure for a community assessment that will give you the information you need to conduct a successful effort.

The following guidelines, while they are laid out in a step-by-step order, may often turn out in practice to take a different sequence. You may find yourself carrying out two or more steps at once, for example, or switching the order of two steps.
Recruit a planning group that represents all stakeholders and mirrors the diversity of the community
Try to be as inclusive as you can, so that the group is diverse and truly representative of the community. You may have to work particularly hard to persuade people from groups that are generally not offered seats at the table -- low-income people, immigrants, etc. -- that you actually want their participation, especially if they've been burned by insincere offers in the past. It's worth it to take the time and effort, however, in order to get a real picture of all aspects of the community.

A truly representative planning group is not only more likely to come up with a plan that produces an accurate assessment, but is also a signal to community members that they are part of the process. They are more apt to trust that process and support whatever comes out of it.

Now is also the time to think about whether the planning group will also oversee the assessment. That arrangement often makes the most sense, but not always. If the planning group won't be the coordinating body, then part of its planning should determine who ought to be part of that group, and how to assemble it.

Another important determination at this point is whether the planning group and those who will actually conduct the assessment -- contact informants, construct surveys, facilitate public meetings, gather data, and report on and evaluate the assessment process -- will need training, and if so, how much and of what kind. Many people that haven't had a great deal of formal education, belong to groups that are often denied a voice in community affairs, or belong to a culture other than the mainstream one don't have the meeting and deliberation skills that many middle-class citizens take for granted. They might need training and/or mentoring to learn how to contribute effectively to a planning group. In addition, many people may need training in data collection methods, evaluation, and other areas important to the assessment process. Whatever training is needed has to be not only anticipated but planned out, so that it gets done in a timely and useful way. Now is the time to start thinking about it.
Design an evaluation process for the assessment, including the development of the plan
Why is this step here, at the beginning of the planning process, rather than at the end? The answer is that evaluation should start at the beginning of an effort, so that you can monitor everything you do and be able to learn from and adjust any part of the process -- including planning -- to improve your work. That's the purpose of evaluation: to make your work as effective as possible.
Decide why you want to conduct the assessment
There are a number of reasons why you might want to conduct a community assessment of needs and resources, among them:

The reasons for an assessment will affect from whom and how you gather information, what is assessed, and what you do with the information you get. It's obviously important to start planning with a clear understanding of what you're setting out to do, so that your plan matches your goals.

Determining how to address the needs of a particular underserved or neglected group.

Conducting a community health assessment in order to launch a public health campaign or combat a particular disease or condition.

Exploring how to steer the activities of a coalition of service providers or government agencies.

Understanding community needs and resources as a guide to advocacy efforts or policy change. You can't make credible policy recommendations without knowing about current conditions and the effects on them of current policy.

Assessing the impact, intensity, and distribution of a particular issue, to inform strategies for approaching it. This may involve breaking the issue down still further, and investigating only a part of it. Rather than looking at the whole issue of violence, for instance, you might want to focus on domestic violence or youth violence or violence among teenage girls.

Determine what data is already available
The chances are that a good deal of information about the community already exists. Resources:

It's important that make sure that whatever data exists is timely. The chances are that if it's more than six months to a year old, it's out of date and no longer accurate. Even census data, which is extensive and generally reliable, is a snapshot of a particular time. Since a full census is a once-a-decade event, census information may be as much as ten years out of date. There are updates in between, but only to selected categories, and not every year.

Federal government statistics, such as census and public health data. In the U.S., much of this information can be found on the websites of the U.S. Census, the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control, and the Department of Health and Human Services.

County Health Rankings & Roadmaps provides important health-related rankings and data for nearly every county in each U.S. state.

Assessments or studies conducted by local or state/provincial governments or government agencies.

Assessments or studies conducted by other organizations. Hospitals, human service providers, Chambers of Commerce, and charitable organizations may all conduct community assessments for their own purposes, and may be willing -- or even eager -- to share their results.

Studies conducted by researchers connected to local universities.

What you already know about the needs and assets of the community. The caution here is to realize that what you think you know may either be wrong, or may conflict with the opinions of community members. You should be ready to accept the facts if they conflict with your opinion, or to consider, as we've mentioned, the possibility of yielding to the community's perception of its own needs.

Figure out what other information you need
This is the time to finalize the questions you'll ask your informants, as well as the questions you hope to answer with the assessment. Those questions will depend on your purposes. In most cases, you'll want to find out what is important to members of populations of concern or those who might benefit from or be affected by any action you might take as a result of the assessment. You will probably also want to hear the opinions of the people who serve or work with those people -- doctors, human service staff and administrators, teachers, police, social workers, advocates, etc.

In addition, it will probably be helpful to look at some community level indicators, such as:

The number of and reasons for emergency room or clinic visits.

The number of places to buy fresh produce in various neighborhoods.

The percentage of motor vehicle accidents and traffic stops involving alcohol.

The number of teen births in the community in the past year, compared to those in other similar communities, in the state or province (or country) as a whole, and/or in past years.

Before you start, take careful stock of your resources -- people, money, skills, time -- to be sure you can do all you plan to. An assessment can be conducted with volunteers and lots of (free) legwork, or it can require statistical and other expertise, professional consultation, and many paid hours. Don't plan an assessment that you don't have the resources to carry out.
Decide what methods you'll use for gathering information
Much of the rest of this chapter is devoted to methods of gathering assessment data. Some general descriptions:

Each community is different, and so you might use any one or any combination of these and other methods detailed in this chapter, depending on what you're looking for and who can help.

Using existing data. This is the research you might do to unearth the information in census and other public records, or to find information that's been gathered by others.

Listening sessions and public forums. Listening sessions are forums you can use to learn about the community's perspectives on local issues and options. They are generally fairly small, with specific questions asked of participants. They can help you get a sense of what community members know and feel about the issue, as well as resources, barriers, and possible solutions. Public forums tend to be both larger in number of participants and broader in scope than listening sessions. They are gatherings where citizens discuss important issues at a well-publicized location and time. They give people of diverse backgrounds a chance to express their views, and are also a first step toward understanding the community's needs and resources. A good public forum informs the group of where the community is and where the members would like to go.

Interviews and focus groups. These are less formal than forums, and are conducted with either individuals or small groups (usually fewer than ten, and often as few as two or three.) They generally include specific questions, but allow room for moving in different directions, depending on what the interviewees want to discuss. Open-ended questions (those which demand something more than a yes or no or other simple answer), follow-ups to interesting points, and a relaxed atmosphere that encourages people to open up are all part of most assessment interviews. A focus group is a specialized group interview in which group members are not told exactly what the interviewer wants to know, so that they will be more likely to give answers that aren't influenced by what they think is wanted.

Direct, and sometimes participant, observation. Direct observation involves seeing for yourself. Do you want to know how people use the neighborhood park on weekends? Spend a few weekends there, watching and talking to people. If you regularly join a volleyball game or jog through the park with others, you're a participant observer, becoming part of the culture you want to learn about.

. There are several different kinds of surveys, any or all of which could be used as part of a community assessment. Written surveys may be sent to people in the mail, given out at community events or meetings, distributed in school, or handed to people on the street. People may also be surveyed by phone or in person, with someone else writing down their spoken answers to a list of questions. Many kinds of surveys often have a low return rate, and so may not be the best way to get information, but sometimes they're the only way, or can be given in situations where most people complete them.

Asset Mapping. Asset mapping focuses on the strengths of the community rather than the areas that need improvement. Focusing on assets gives the power back to the community members that directly experience the problem and already have the resources to change the status quo. If the changes are made by the community and for the community, it builds a sense of cohesiveness and commitment that makes initiatives easier to sustain.

Decide whom you'll gather information from
For the same reason that you've put together a planning group that represents all the different sectors of the community concerned or involved with the assessment, you should try to get information from as broad a range of people and groups as possible. The greater the variety of people that supply your data, the better perspective you'll have on the real nature, needs, and resources of the community.

Who the people concerned with your particular assessment are, however, depends on your particular focus and purposes. If you're concerned with domestic violence, you'd certainly want to include those directly or indirectly exposed to it, as well as emergency room personnel and police, in your data gathering. If you're concerned with preserving open space, you might look to include both environmentalists and developers. That doesn't mean you wouldn't want the opinions of a variety of others, but simply that you'd try to make sure that the people with the most interest and knowledge -- and often the most to gain or lose -- could have their say. You wouldn't want to miss valuable information, regardless of the opinions of the informant.

This brings up an important point. Your plan should make sure that the assessment includes the opportunity for all points of view to be aired. You may not like what some people have to say, but if you don't know that there are people with differing opinions, you only have half of the information you need.

Decide who will collect data
Will you use a participatory research process, whereby community members gather data themselves or in collaboration with professionals? Will you hire an individual or a group to gather information? If you choose neither of these, then who will do the work of interviewing, surveying, or carrying out whatever other strategies you've chosen to find information?

These are important questions, because their answers can affect the quality and quantity of information you get. Individuals in the community may be more willing to be interviewed and/or to give honest and detailed answers to people they know or can identify with, i.e., other community members. Participatory researchers may need training to be able to do a good job. You may need an experienced researcher to put together a survey that gets at the issues you're most concerned with. A combination of several types of data gatherers may work best. It's worth spending some time on this issue, so that you can assemble the crew that's right for your community and your plan.
Decide how you'll reach your informants
In order to get information from people, you'll have to contact them. There are many ways to do that, and you'll probably want to use several of them. In general, the more personal the approach, the more effective it will be. Some of the most common:

Posting requests on one or more local websites or on social media sites (Facebook, Twitter, etc.)

Choosing people at random (e.g., from the phone book) to receive written or telephone surveys.

Mailing or emailing surveys to one or more lists. Many organizations are willing to share lists of members or participants for purposes like this. Some will mail or email surveys under their own names, so that people receive them from an organization they're familiar with, and might be more willing to complete and return them than if they apparently came to them randomly.

Stopping people in a public place to ask them to fill out or, more commonly, give verbal answers to a short survey. You may have had the experience of being asked your opinion in a shopping area or on a busy sidewalk. People are somewhat more willing to answer questions in this way than to fill out and return a mailed or emailed survey.

Putting up posters and distributing flyers in public places (supermarkets, laundromats, bus stops, etc.) and/or sending them to specific organizations and businesses.

Using the media. This can involve holding press conferences and sending out press releases, placing PSA's (public service announcements) and stories in various media, or paying for media advertising.

Direct appeal to existing community groups. Either a member of the planning team or a leader or member of the group in question might make an appeal at a club meeting, a religious gathering, or a sports event for volunteers to participate in a survey, an interview or focus group, or a larger meeting.

Personal approach. Members of the planning group might recruit friends, colleagues, neighbors, family members, etc. by phone or in person. They might also ask the people they recruit to ask others, so that a few people can start a chain of requests that ends up with a large number.

Decide who will analyze the data and how they'll do it
Once you've collected the information, you have to analyze it to see what it means. That means identifying the main themes from interviews and forums, sorting out the concerns of the many from those of the insistent few, understanding what your indicators seem to show, comparing community members' concerns with the statistics and indicators, and perhaps a number of other analytical operations as well. Some of these might involve a knowledge of statistics and higher math, while others may require only common sense and the ability to group information in logical ways.

If you've engaged in a participatory research process, the community researchers should also be involved in analyzing the material they've found. They might do this in collaboration with professionals from local organizations, with consulting academic researchers, or with a paid consultant. If you've decided to hire an individual or group to conduct the assessment, then they'll probably conduct the analysis as well.

In either case, the methods used will probably depend on such considerations as how "hard" you want the data to be -- whether you want to know the statistical significance of particular findings, for example, or whether you'll use people's stories as evidence -- how much you think you need to know in order to create an action plan, and what kinds of data you collect. Chapter 37, although its title concerns evaluation, is actually about research methods, and contains a lot of good information about how to approach the choice of methods.
Plan whatever training is needed
We've already discussed the possible need for training. Now is the time to decide what, if any, training is needed, who should be involved, and who will conduct it. In order to keep members of the planning group on an equal footing, it might make sense to offer the training to everyone, rather than just to those who are obviously not highly educated or articulate. It is probably important as well that the training be conducted by people who are not members of the planning group, even if some of them have the skills to do so. The group will function best if everyone feels that everyone else is a colleague, even though members have different backgrounds and different sets of skills and knowledge.
Decide how you'll record the results of the assessment and present them to the community
Depending on your goals and what's likely to come out of the assessment, "the community" here may mean the whole community or the community of stakeholders that is represented on the planning committee. In either case, you'll want to be able to explain clearly what the assessment found, and perhaps to engage people in strategizing about how to deal with it. That means you'll want to set out the results clearly, in simple, everyday language accompanied by easy-to-understand charts, pictures, and/or graphs. Your report doesn't have to be complicated or to use technical language in order to be compelling. In fact, the more you can use the words of the community members who contributed their concerns and experiences, the more powerful your report will be.

How will you communicate the results to the community? With the availability of PowerPoint and similar programs, you have the opportunity to create a professional-looking presentation that you can use in a number of ways. It could be presented as a slide show in one or more public meetings or smaller gatherings, posted along with a narrative on one or more social media sites (Facebook, YouTube, etc.) and/or on your website, run as a loop in a public place, such as a local library, or even broadcast on community access TV. Furthermore, it could be used by a number of people without each having to fetch and carry large and cumbersome equipment or signboards and the like.
Decide who will perform what assessment tasks
The group should make sure everyone has a role that fits her skills, talents, and, to the extent possible, preferences. It should also make sure that all necessary tasks are covered. If more people need to be recruited -- as data gatherers, survey mailers, phone callers, etc. -- that recruitment should be part of the plan. The point of having a plan is to try to anticipate everything that's needed -- as well as everything that might go wrong -- and make sure that it has been arranged for. Assigning tasks appropriately is perhaps the most important part of that anticipation.
Create a timeline
Work out what should happen by when. How long will you spend on preparing for the assessment -- contacting people, training interviewers and/or group facilitators, preparing and printing surveys? How long will you gather information? How long will you take to analyze the data and write up a report? Each phase of the assessment should have a deadline. That creates benchmarks -- checkpoints along the way that tell you you're moving in the right direction and have gotten far enough along so that you'll finish the assessment on time with the information you need.
Present the plan, get feedback, and adjust it to make it more workable
Once the plan is done, it should be presented to at least a sample of those who will be asked for information and those who will have responsibilities for parts of the assessment. This will allow them to consider whether the plan takes the culture of the community into account, and is likely to make data collection and analysis as easy as possible. As a result of their feedback, you can adjust parts of the plan to make them more acceptable to the community or more workable for the assessment team.
Now you can celebrate the completion of the plan, but it's not an occasion for resting on your laurels
There's a lot of work ahead as you conduct the assessment, analyze the data you get from it, and make and implement action plans based on that analysis. It's important to have benchmarks built into the assessment plan and the action plans that follow, so you can keep track of your progress. But it's also important to hold your long-term vision in view, and to keep moving toward it until the community becomes what all its members want it to be.

In Summary

Needs and resources are really two sides of the same coin. In order to get a comprehensive view of your community, it is important to look at what you have and what you need. With these things in mind, you can have a positive impact on the problem you wish to address. Understanding the community's needs and assets will also help your organization clarify where it would like to go and how it can get there.

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Section 1. Developing a Plan for Assessing Local Needs and Resources

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Learn how to develop a plan for community assessment to guide efforts to better understand community needs and resources. What do we mean by needs and resources? Why develop a plan for assessing local needs and resources? Who should be involved in developing a plan for assessing local needs and resources?

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Resistance is a show about refusing to accept things as they are. Stories from the front lines of the movement for Black lives, told by the generation fighting for change. Hosted by Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr.

Email us: resistance@gimletmedia.com

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Resistance is a show about refusing to accept things as they are. Stories from the front lines of the movement for Black lives, told by the generation fighting for change. Hosted by Saidu Tejan-Thomas Jr. Email us: resistance@gimletmedia.com

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Since the onset of COVID-19, Asian American and Pacific Islanders have reported experiencing microaggressions, racial profiling, hate incidents and hate violence. Reports in our communities have spiked.

We know because of Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center (StopAAPIHate.com), which is designed to collect and track incidents of anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander hate crimes.

Russell Jeung, PhD is the co-launcher of Stop AAPI Hate and the chair of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University.

Now, in coordination with the Asian Pacific Islander Caucus and the Council for Racial & Social Justice at California Faculty Association, Jeung takes it one step further: how to combat this hate in the age of COVID-19.

This educational video, as well as a forthcoming curriculum guide, is built for classrooms across the country, intended to guide students and educators how to combat against hateful rhetoric, bullying and hate violence in our communities.

Educational Curriculum and Videos for High Schools and Higher Education

Educational curriculum: Combating Anti-Asian Racism in the Age of Coronavirus

Video: Combating AAPI Racism in Age of Covid-19

Video: Radio Free CSU l CFA and COVID-19, Episode 2: Vulnerable CSU Populations

Websites and Resources

Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center

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Combating AAPI Hate in Age of COVID-19 - California Faculty Association

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Since the onset of COVID-19, Asian American and Pacific Islanders have reported experiencing microaggressions, racial profiling, hate incidents and hate violence. Reports in our communities have spiked. We know because of Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center (StopAAPIHate.com), which is designed to collect and track incidents of anti-Asian American and Pacific Islander hate crimes.

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Combatting Anti-Asian Racism Curriculum Guide

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Combatting Anti-Asian Racism Curriculum Guide

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There's a thousand self-help books, talk shows, and Ted Talks about self-confidence. It seems to be seen as a magic bullet, something that would solve everything if we could get enough. But what I never see is an examination of why people continue to struggle with low self-esteem in the first place, particularly within oppressed communities.

Low self-confidence affects most aspects of my life. When I walk into a space, I often find myself looking for a validating presence. Someone who I can lock eyes with in the middle of a meeting if something strange happens or if something horrible gets said and no one else seems to react. This may sound intense or like a great deal of effort, but if you've ever been in a place where you feel like you're the only one reacting, or where people discredit when you say something isn't right, you may know what I'm talking about.

When I feel this way and I don't have understanding individuals to discuss it with, I tend to withdraw from the space. I become increasingly protective of myself and my work. I have a difficult time taking feedback because I'm unsure of where it is coming from, and sometimes, when it is laced with something that seems based on a marginalized identity of mine, I swallow it down. I've slowly become a master of looking fine until I get home.
We Shouldn't Be Blaming Ourselves
For a long time, I thought low self-esteem caused me to need so much validation from other people and lack faith in my own judgement. I remember in 3rd grade getting pieces of laffy taffy for doing "good deeds" and trying to write positive things about myself on tiny slips of paper to keep through the day. But the problem was, all those little pieces of paper were never able to stand against the immense onslaught of negative messages I received about myself growing up as a South Asian, queer, Hindu woman in a predominantly white, Christian town.

As I got older, people began noticing this lack of confidence. Someone finally called it "imposter syndrome." And the first time I heard the term, it sounded spot on. Imposter Syndrome is a concept that refers to high-achieving individuals who are marked by an inability to internalize their accomplishments and a persistent fear of being exposed as a "fraud."

I was stunned. Here was a word for something I've always felt. But the longer I dug into it, the more I felt the definition was missing some really crucial pieces.

See, imposter syndrome makes it sound like the problem is entirely internal and fixable by increasing one's self confidence or getting lots of validation. But my lack of confidence is also really influenced by my experience as a person with multiple marginalized identities.

Those words and stereotypes that were projected onto me as a child and adolescent still hold power and influence my feelings about myself to this day. They are like a field of voices that I have to battle to make my own be heard. Ones that called my name strange or refused to say it at all, or those who asked me the seminal question "feather or dot?" to determine if I was Native or South Asian.

There's a thousand stories I could tell, but all of them add up to the fact that my being Othered in the town I grew up in deeply affected my confidence and my belief in myself. That truth is not fully articulated when my lack of self-confidence is brushed off as "imposter syndrome."

Even the act of writing this article requires me to fight the very narrative I am discussing. Those feelings didn't come from some magic place that could be addressed by a back-to-school special and a hug. They came from racism, queerphobia and white supremacy. Holding that as truth helps me create change, rather than pointing the finger back towards myself and saying that somehow I have failed to be confident in my own possibility.

Each time I hold this truth close, I create a space in which my truth can actually live. This changes my narrative from one where I blame myself for every pain I have experienced. I become my own rescuer, instead of having someone to tell me to lean in and feel that they are my rescuer.

Believe me, I've heard it. Yes, I'm aware I'm awesome. No, I really don't need a pep talk. Yes, I'm aware I have potential. No, I don't need your validation to know it.

(Also a shout out to Jessica Williams for showing me how to cope with people doing that, because oh my god it was beautiful and helpful.)

One of the most helpful things I read was an article by Alexis Hancock on the tech industry, imposter syndrome, and racism. It helped me reassess my feelings of being responsible to repair every part of the environments that are toxic to me, which was how I used to cope with imposter syndrome.

"I recognize my environment as the imposter, and it's no longer up to me to fix its sickness." - Alexis Hancock, How the Rhetoric of Imposter Syndrome is Used to Gaslight Women in Tech

Her words are amazingly freeing and healing (even though I'm not a Black woman in tech like Alexis). Racism's ability to cause me harm in my environment is extensive and cannot be solved so simply by having more confidence in myself. My confidence in myself does not matter if I am seen as incompetent or lesser than due to stereotypes.
Gaining Self-Confidence through Naming Oppression
If I cannot be viewed as a person in the same way as my white colleagues, all my self-confidence will not change my perceived outcomes.

Because if I do not see myself as an imposter, but I am seen by others as having less potential, then leaning in is not sufficient. If I'm pushed into stereotypes of who I can be because of my race, sex, gender or other identities, then working harder to prove myself won't cut it.

I am not an island. I am part of communities and cities and worlds. Those places and other people affect me and are part of necessary interactions I must have in the world to live in it.

I can only control myself and how I respond to my internal feelings. Even those feelings are tricky some days, and that's ok.

I cannot control the world around me. But I can acknowledge that the world has harmed me. That the world, while a beautiful and magical place at times, has also caused much of this doubt inside me.

Nurturing my self-esteem is about more than celebrating myself. To feel more confident in myself and my abilities, I can let go of the immense feeling of responsibility I feel for my pain and instead put the blame squarely where it belongs. In that, I find my healing and my power, to know that the only imposter here is my fear is that I am not enough.

I was always enough.

I am always enough.

I will continue to be enough.

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Am I an Imposter, or Am I Oppressed? - Rest For Resistance

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There's a thousand self-help books, talk shows, and Ted Talks about self-confidence. It seems to be seen as a magic bullet, something that would solve everything if we could get enough. But what I never see is an examination of why people continue to struggle with low self-esteem in the first place, particularly within oppressed communities.

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bell hooks article

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Inspired by the work of The Nap Ministry, this care package explores rest as a portal for healing, communal care, and resistance, through art-making prompts, guided meditation, and a self-guided tour of works in the collection that speak to the themes of rest and restoration.

Response to Rupture

Healing Artist DejaJoelle leads viewers through a four-step interactive process aimed at creating healthy mental, emotional, and somatic responses to events outside our control.

ArtPause

During these times, it's easy for our lives to feel rushed and overwhelming. Join artist and art therapist Quinn Rivenburgh, MAAT ATR, to take a brief pause in your day. Using just a pencil and paper, this series of guided meditations and simple drawing activities will help you check in with yourself, give a bit of space for your emotions, and find your center.

A note: These meditations do not replace mental health treatment. If you are in crisis, click here to learn more or call 274747 anywhere in the state of Minnesota to be connected to a local crisis response team.

Channeled Anger + Bilateral Drawing
Here we will explore and encounter feelings of anger in a clear and structured way. Anger is a complex emotion, and carries many associations for many people. We will use bilateral drawing-drawing with both hands at once-to help us channel and integrate what emerges. Click here for a full transcript.

Play time 6:25
https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/05070708/Week1_ChanneledAngerBilateralDrawing.m4a

Letting Go of Judgement + Hidden Contour Drawing

In this segment, we will focus on our inner critic, and experiment with setting down our self-judgement. May this practice bring a bit more spaciousness into your inner life. Click here for a full transcript.

Play time 5:34
https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/05091131/Week2_Letting-Go-of-Judgement-Focused-Contour-Drawing.m4a

Unattended Grief + Interconnected Spirals

There is so much to grieve for, even in this past year alone. In this ArtPause, we invite you to take a brief moment to attend to a small bit of that grief. We will be working with spiral drawing as well as learning a simple self-hold to help us contain and tend to ourselves. Click here for a full transcript.

Play time 7:31
https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/05091218/Week3_Unattended-Grief-Interconnected-Spirals.m4a

Externalizing Mental Load + Rest and Restoration

Now we will be drawing and then moving into a guided restorative practice. The drawing practice is intended to help you set aside your worries and concerns for a time, so that your mind can more fully focus on the period of rest. Click here for a full transcript.

Play time 6:08
https://images.artsmia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/05091250/Week4_Setting-Down-your-Mental-Load-Restoration.m4a

Drawing Kits

Inspired by these activities? Pick up a FREE drawing kit onsite at Mia's Visitor Experience desk, flex your creativity and sketch your favorite work in the galleries, or practice some mindful meditation by drawing at home.

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Inspired by the work of The Nap Ministry, this care package explores rest as a portal for healing, communal care, and resistance, through art-making prompts, guided meditation, and a self-guided tour of works in the collection that speak to the themes of rest and restoration.

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Introducing: Nice White Parents (Published 2020)

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A new five-part series about building a better school system, and what gets in the way. New episodes of “Nice White Parents” are available here, brought to you by Serial Productions and The New York Times.

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May 2020 | Volume 77 | Number 8
Learning and the Brain Pages 88-89

Dena Simmons

When I was in 3rd grade, I vomited every night because I was so overcome by fear and anxiety about the dangers outside of my family's one-bedroom apartment. I remember lying in the full-size bed I shared with my twin sister and aunt, shivering as gun shots exploded near the window.

It is only in the past decade that I have come to realize that I still carry with me the trauma of having grown up in an unsafe neighborhood terrorized by the violence of poverty and racist policies. For years, I had convinced myself that because I performed well in school and have continued to experience success in work and in life, I was fine. However, the traumas of a childhood burdened by fear, bigotry, and family suffering have not left me unscathed. To the outside world, I may look as if I am thriving-winning awards, speaking nationally, and writing a book-but underneath it all, I am still on my healing journey, still putting myself back together.

Through self-work and support, I have learned that my trauma manifests in my overachievement-and the resulting lack of sleep-because overworking is something I can control. I can control the emails to which I respond. I can control the articles I write. I can control the speeches I give. I can control the meetings I attend.

Although research on the connection between trauma and overachievement is scarce, there is anecdotal evidence suggesting a link (Maté, 2010). What we do know is that the effects of trauma can be both immediate and long-term. The typical mental health sequelae of exposure to violence and other adverse childhood events include post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, depression, and behavior problems. All of these are associated with lower grade-point averages and IQ, decreased high school graduation rates, and significant deficits in attention, abstract reasoning, long-term memory, and reading ability (Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University, 2016). But for me, most of these manifestations were not present. I graduated with honors from high school and excelled academically. For the most part, I do not suffer from depression or anxiety unless I am triggered.

We also know, from research, that trauma changes the biomarkers and brain structure in young people, which sometimes results in violent behavior, suicidal tendencies, and drug abuse (Park & Schepp, 2015). Additionally, youth who have experienced trauma tend to be less engaged in school, suffer greater chronic health conditions in childhood, and have lower employment productivity in adulthood (Wade et al., 2014). Again, these manifestations of trauma have not been true for me. I am mostly healthy and lead a productive life. (I sometimes wonder, however, whether my twin sister's chronic illness is a result of the toxic stressors we experienced as children.)

The fact is that while many people exhibit typical signs of trauma, many others, like me, have found ways to cope by pouring themselves into work to avoid the discomfort of their distress. Too often, the trauma of high achievers, especially those of color, goes unrecognized because their achievements are sometimes mistaken for resilience. While some of us may be excelling thanks to having a caring adult and other supports in our lives, the scars of our past remain, and we are still in need of care, love, and healing.

Deeper Healing

All this makes me worried about the overachieving Black students and youth of color who might be masking their pain. These worries are compounded by recent research showing that Black students' mental health needs tend to be undertreated and underrecognized, and that suicidal behavior is on the rise among Black children (Lindsey et al., 2019).

Trauma does not manifest in the same ways in different people. Thus, we must engage in a concerted effort to recognize the diverse manifestations of trauma in our students and stop lumping them under one umbrella. We can best support our students who may be at risk for trauma by getting to know them; discovering their gifts; paying attention to and meeting their unique needs; being consistent, nurturing adults in their lives; helping them find and access mental health services; and integrating healing-centered practices that build off of their strengths (Ginwright, 2018). We must also commit to developing anti-racist and anti-bias mindsets, pedagogies, and school policies, to disrupt the trauma of racism and other identity-based violence that many youth at the margins experience on a regular basis (English et al., 2020).

We must also remember that our students do not owe us their trauma for us to believe they deserve healing. Our responsibility is to create policies, practices, and school environments that do not traumatize or retraumatize our students.

As we aim to meet the needs of our students, adults like me who have repressed their traumas must also commit to taking care of ourselves, setting boundaries, and seeking support from friends, professionals, or family. Although not all educators can relate to my experiences, we are all susceptible to vicarious trauma, the emotional residue we pick up from other people's stories and experiences of trauma. If we are not whole for ourselves, we cannot be whole for our students.

By modeling our healing behaviors and practices, we can support students in recognizing their gifts and possibilities. Above all, together, we must commit to taking care of one another. We must do the necessary and deliberate work of confronting and eradicating the unjust systems that perpetuate trauma for too many of us simply because of the color of our skin, our zip code, our gender, our health status, and other aspects of our identities.

References

Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University. (2016). From best practices to breakthrough impacts: A science-based approach to building a more promising future for young children and families. Cambridge, MA: Author.

English, D., Lambert, S. F., Tynes, B. M., Bowleg, L., Zea, M. C, & Howard, L. C. (2020). Daily multidimensional racial discrimination among Black U.S. American adolescents. Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 66, 1-12.

Ginwright, S. (2018, March 31). The future of healing: Shifting from trauma informed care to healing centered engagement. Medium.

Lindsey, M., Sheftall, A. H., Xiao, Y., & Joe, S. (2019). Trends of suicidal behaviors among high school students in the United States, 1991-2017. Pediatrics, 144(5), 1-10.

Maté, D. (2010). In the realm of hungry ghosts: Close encounters with addiction. Berkeley, CA: North Atlantic Books.

Park, S., & Schepp, K. G. (2015). A systematic review of research on children of alcoholics: Their inherent resilience and vulnerability. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 24(5), 1222-1231.

Wade, R. Jr., Shea, J. A., Rubin, D., & Wood, J. (2014). Adverse childhood experiences of low-income youth. Pediatrics, 134(1), 13-20.

Dena Simmons is a lifelong learner, educator, and activist who supports schools throughout the United States in implementing social and emotional learning and culturally responsive and equitable practices. She is the author of the forthcoming book, White Rules for Black People (St. Martin's Press, 2021). Follow her on Twitter.

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The Trauma We Don't See - Educational Leadership

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May 2020 | Volume 77 | Number 8 Learning and the Brain Pages 88-89 Dena Simmons When I was in 3rd grade, I vomited every night because I was so overcome by fear and anxiety about the dangers outside of my family's one-bedroom apartment.

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How to deconstruct racism, one headline at a time | Baratunde Thurston

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Dr. Ibram X. Kendi: Creating A More Equitable Society Is In White Americans' Self Interest

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A Starting Place For Those That Want to Be Better Allies

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In the midst of the historic Black Lives Matter movement, many white and non-Black Americans are looking for an answer to the question, "What can I do to help?" Beyond showing up for and amplifying the voices of Black Americans at protests and signing petitions, white Americans can do the work of learning about systemic racism-and learning to be actively anti-racist.

Fortunately, there are plenty of resources to dive into right now. And while this is by no means a comprehensive list, these seven anti-racism resources are a great place to start. Six are developed and offered by Black women (the remaining one is developed by an educational organization).

Rachel Cargle: #dothework free 30-day Course and The Great Unlearn
Rachel Cargle is an academic, writer, and activist who works in "unpacking the racist histories of various American systems and affirming in the Black experience with tools of language, concepts, and cultural systems." Currently, Cargle is offering both a free 30-day anti-racism course called #dothework (which has a self-paced syllabus sent to your inbox every 10 days for 30 days total) and The Great Unlearn, which offers a monthly self-paced syllabus of readings, video lectures, and even templates for reaching out to your employer, local school districts, and other organizations about racial justice and accountability.

Nova Reid: Anti-Racism & Diversity Matters
Nova Reid is a writer, certified NLP coach, and consultant who has delivered a TedX talk and worked with clients including Change.org and Lufthansa on diversity and anti-racism-and offers her consultancy to businesses and corporations that are looking to improve inclusion and equity from the inside out. But for individuals looking to educate themselves and take self-starter steps in their anti-racism efforts, Reid currently offers an in-depth, Anti-Racism & White Privilege online course. It covers topics such as white fragility, how to use your privilege to effect change, centering and ego, and conscious anti-racist parenting. Reid also offers a free Anti-Racism Guide-which you can sign up for here.

Boukman Academy
The Boukman Academy (named after Haitian revolutionary Dutty Boukman) is a Black-owned school offering free lessons and educational resources for Black history, politics, psychology, and sociology. "Like Boukman, we aim to empower through action, providing education from a Black perspective to people of all ages," the website reads. The Boukman Academy also offers a podcast called " Red Black Green " that dives into Black history with subjects like Leopold II of Belgium's genocidal rule and what COVID-19 shows us about racism.

Rachel Ricketts: Spiritual Activism
Rachel Ricketts is an activist, writer, and speaker who offers a carefully curated list of anti-racism and racial justice resources for free on her website, as well as her Spiritual Activism Webinars. Start with Spiritual Activism 101, which focuses on how to "acknowledge our privilege, heal our race-related wounds and actively contribute to lasting and effective racial justice."

Monique Melton: Unity Over Comfort
Monique Melton, a podcast host and anti-racism educator, offers classes on her website that teach you how to identify and eliminate racism. On Melton's website you'll find an Anti-Racism 101 Crash Course, a Unity Over Comfort 10-week anti-racism learning program, and the Unity Over Comfort curriculum -which dives in deeper on anti-racism education on steps to eliminating racism. This curriculum features weekly 90-minute sessions for 12 weeks, weekly assignments, and live Q&A sessions with Melton.

Austin Channing Brown: The ACB Academy
Austin Channing Brown, author of the NYT Bestseller I'm Still Here, offers an educational program called the ACB Academy, which teaches lessons about racial justice and how you can make a difference after reading her book. The I'm Still Here: A Discussion Guide is a six-week course that includes videos offering stories on lived experience of race, a guide on facilitating a group discussion, and a list of 50-plus books, videos, and other additional resources to keep learning. You can also watch her web series, the TNQ Show, which has a full season of episodes on how you can be a part of the anti-racism movement.

Layla F. Saad: Good Ancestor Academy
Layla F. Saad is the author of the best-selling book Me and White Supremacy and is also the host of the Good Ancestor Podcast-making her one of the foremost experts on anti-racism and content for white people looking to educate themselves on the history of white privilege and racism. In her Good Ancestor Academy classes, Saad covers these topics in 60-minute lessons and 90-minute masterclasses:
How to show up in BIPOC-only spaces without white centering
Allyship in the workplace
Dismantling white feminism
Parenting & white supremacy

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These 7 courses will teach you how to be anti-racist

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In the midst of the historic Black Lives Matter movement, many white and non-Black Americans are looking for an answer to the question, "What can I do to help?" Beyond showing up for and amplifying the voices of Black Americans at protests and signing petitions, white Americans can do the work of learning about systemic racism-and learning to be actively anti-racist.

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'Children are not born racist,' yet teaching anti-racism not mandated in US schools

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When Brooklyn kindergarten teacher Vera Ahiyya gives lessons to her students, she talks to them about what it's like to be a Black woman in America.

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How parents can help kids understand the protests and fight racism

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Dr. Janet Taylor shares advice with parents who may be struggling to talk about racism and the unrest that has erupted after the death of George Floyd.

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We Are in the Future (2017) - This American Life

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Afrofuturism is a way of looking at black culture that’s fantastic, creative, and oddly hopeful.

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Tile painting by Ashley Newman of Baked in Brooklyn

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Workshops on sexual assault and consent are hugely popular on college campuses around the country. Chana visits one of these workshops to find out what's being taught, and more importantly, what college boys in particular have already learned about sex, back when they were kids. (13 1/2 minutes)

Comedian W. Kamau Bell has two daughters, and tries to figure out just how much about the violent history of racism and oppression his four-year-old can handle. W. Kamau Bell hosts the CNN show United Shades of America. (22 minutes)

While it's hard to explain to kids how babies come into the world, it might be harder to explain that people leave the world too - especially to a kid whose mom or dad or brother or sister has died. There are grief counseling centers all over the U.S. that cater specifically to children. Reporter Jonathan Goldstein visited one in Salt Lake City. Jonathan is the host of Heavyweight from Gimlet Media. (22 minutes)

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A teenage girl decides the only way forward is to tear something down and rebuild from the ground up. Elna Baker explains. A version of this story appears on getmortified.com (8 minutes)

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Norman Rockwell's "The Problem We All Live With," depicting Ruby Bridges, the first Black child to attend an all white elementary school in the South.

Artwork approved by The Norman Rockwell Family Agency.

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Who are you? What is racism? Where does it come from? Why does it exist? What can you do to disrupt it? Learn about social identities, the history of racism and resistance against it, and how you can use your anti-racist lens and voice to move the world toward equity and liberation. "In a racist society, it's not enough to be non-racist-we must be ANTI-RACIST." -Angela Davis
Gain a deeper understanding of your anti-racist self as you progress through 20 chapters that spark introspection, reveal the origins of racism that we are still experiencing, and give you the courage and power to undo it. Each chapter builds on the previous one as you learn more about yourself and racial oppression. 20 activities get you thinking and help you grow with the knowledge. All you need is a pen and paper.

Author Tiffany Jewell, an anti-bias, anti-racist educator and activist, builds solidarity beginning with the language she chooses-using gender neutral words to honor everyone who reads the book. Illustrator Aurélia Durand brings the stories and characters to life with kaleidoscopic vibrancy.

After examining the concepts of social identity, race, ethnicity, and racism, learn about some of the ways people of different races have been oppressed, from indigenous Americans and Australians being sent to boarding school to be "civilized" to a generation of Caribbean immigrants once welcomed to the UK being threatened with deportation by strict immigration laws.

Find hope in stories of strength, love, joy, and revolution that are part of our history, too, with such figures as the former slave Toussaint Louverture, who led a rebellion against white planters that eventually led to Haiti's independence, and Yuri Kochiyama, who, after spending time in an internment camp for Japanese Americans during WWII, dedicated her life to supporting political prisoners and advocating reparations for those wrongfully interned.

Learn language and phrases to interrupt and disrupt racism. So, when you hear a microaggression or racial slur, you'll know how to act next time.

This book is written for EVERYONE who lives in this racialized society -including the young person who doesn't know how to speak up to the racist adults in their life, the kid who has lost themself at times trying to fit into the dominant culture, the children who have been harmed (physically and emotionally) because no one stood up for them or they couldn't stand up for themselves, and also for their families, teachers, and administrators.

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In 2019, LFJ (then Teaching Tolerance) rolled out a series of articles challenging teachers to go beyond overused and whitewashed historical narratives when observing Black History Month. In 2020, we expanded that call by recommending that teachers widen their exploration of Black lives while also providing historical context so students will make meaningful connections to current issues.

It's not uncommon for educators to focus on slavery, segregation and other forms of oppression during Black History Month.

But only teaching a Black history steeped in trauma and struggle provides a very narrow view of Blackness and perpetuates the false notion of Black people's inferiority. This limited teaching of history can actually be violent.

Stephanie P. Jones, founder of Mapping Racial Trauma in Schools and an assistant professor of education at Grinnell College, examines the severity of such approaches in " Ending Curriculum Violence."

Jones' research shows that, too often, "the transatlantic slave trade and its resulting horror within the American slavery system are essentialized as all Black history itself."

She found that the hard histories of slavery, the civil rights movement and other traumatic events in Black history are frequently mistaught or introduced with little context. Curriculum violence occurs when, as too often happens, educators ask students to act out this history or empathize with enslavers' and other oppressors' perspectives.

As a result, students come away with a warped understanding of how racial inequity manifests today. And repeated instances of curriculum violence contribute to a larger traumatic experience at school-experiences that can affect Black students' mental health.

This doesn't mean you should skip teaching hard histories for fear of inflicting curriculum violence. Instead, you can take care to teach the truth and avoid harm in the process. Jones' article offers guidance on how to accomplish that. One way to start right away is to tell the whole story-not just a small part-of Black history. A first step is to commit to decentering racial trauma during Black History Month.

We will share some of our favorite resources focusing on aspects of Black history and culture that aren't centered on violence, trauma and struggle. We hope you'll use them to help your students recognize the many ways in which Black people have contributed to, inspired and created American culture while also leading the way in advocating for civic participation, inclusion and equitable spaces.

Teach the History of Liberation Movements

The fight for Black liberation has always been an integral part of U.S. history, but too often we don't explore that narrative. Black liberation in the United States is much more than a fight to defeat slavery or Jim Crow. It's also exemplified in efforts to reject anti-Blackness: the refusal of Black people's humanity, dignity, agency and voice. People perpetuate anti-Blackness in the degradation of Black aesthetics, denial of Black people's grievances and pain, and the erasure or discrediting of Black culture.

There are numerous ways to tell the story of Black liberation movements. In addition to revolts by enslaved people in the U.S. and beyond, educators can learn and teach more about the everyday and revolutionary ways in which enslaved people fought for liberation. You can start with the episode " Resistance Means More Than Rebellion" on the Teaching Hard History: American Slavery podcast. And students can watch historian Tera Hunter describe the life and escape of Henry "Box" Brown here.

You can also work with students to examine other efforts and movements in which Black people resisted subjugation. These efforts include the work of the Black Panther Party and the Black Power and "Black Is Beautiful" movements. Students can learn more about Black queer liberation and womanism movements, which provided a template for activism today, such as Black Lives Matter.

Honor Black Civic Engagement

The civil rights movement is perhaps the example of Black activism that is most commonly taught in schools. Students should see that advocacy for Black civic engagement-although often attributed to individual figures such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.-was a collective effort that required the sacrifices of everyday people. For example, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was successful because Black communities united and pooled resources for a common cause and attacked segregated busing from multiple angles. This campaign required information sharing, volunteering and political engagement.

From the fierce activism and organizing of Ida B. Wells to the creation of the NAACP, Black people and organizations have a long history of uplifting their communities through civic engagement.

This Black History Month, educators can introduce students to those who aren't always highlighted, such as Francis Watkins Harper, Fannie Lou Hamer and Ella Baker. Show students how their intersectional identities both helped and hindered their causes.

Recognize Intersectional Black Identity

Students must understand that, like other marginalized groups, Black people have identities that intersect, creating complex lived experiences and compounding the effects of oppressive systems.

Scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in 1989 to study the social, economic and political ways in which identity-based systems of oppression and privilege connect, overlap and influence one another.

But recognizing intersectionality doesn't mean educators have to focus only on oppression when acknowledging intersecting identities. Show students that the overlapping of identities helps inspire and influence culture, activism and the consciousness of our society. Intersecting identities lend empathy and an appreciation for all human experiences, as shown in the activism of James Baldwin and Maya Angelou.

To start, some resources you can share with your students might be those that amplify the perspectives of the Black LGBTQ community, Afro-Latinx people and Black Muslims.

Celebrating Black Literature

Because literature is so central to the ways in which children learn about the world, Black History Month is a great time to recommit yourself to studying and teaching works by Black authors who can offer authentic depictions of what it means to be Black in the U.S. and beyond-as opposed to canonical texts that either ignore these perspectives altogether or tell them from the outside looking in. Works by authors like Ralph Ellison, Octavia Butler, Toni Morrison and Gloria Naylor can provide more accurate pictures of Black life and perspectives, even in the science fiction worlds of Butler's work.

Students can also delve into the biographies of authors like Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and Nikki Giovanni to explore how their activism influenced their work and vice versa.

This exploration doesn't have to be limited to older literature. Examine the works of contemporary writers such as Elizabeth Acevedo's " Hair," which delves into the politics of Black hair. Eve Ewing's " Electric Arches" provides a magical look into Black girlhood while Ta-Nehisi Coates' body of work -from essays to graphic novels-offers a Black male perspective on topics such as history, politics and fatherhood.

This exploration also shouldn't be limited to U.S.-born writers. Help students connect the common threads among Black people across the globe. The works of writers such as Chinua Achebe, Jamaica Kincaid and Wayétu Moore center Black lives throughout the African diaspora in historical narratives.

There is plenty of history to uncover. Studying these four areas of Black life-liberation, civic engagement, intersectional identities and Black literature-can help move classroom discussions past trauma toward enlightenment and empowerment. This doesn't suggest that the realities of racism and racialized violence aren't worthy of discussion. However, students deserve to learn more accurate, balanced and humanizing accounts of Black experiences.

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Black History Month: Teaching the Complete History

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In 2019, LFJ (then Teaching Tolerance) rolled out a series of articles challenging teachers to go beyond overused and whitewashed historical narratives when observing Black History Month. In 2020, we expanded that call by recommending that teachers widen their exploration of Black lives while also providing historical context so students will make meaningful connections to current issues.

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What does "white anti-racist" mean? How can guilt get in the way? And what's all this talk about being "colorblind"? Learning for Justice, then Teaching Tolerance, asked community activists to share their thoughts on these questions, and others. Their answers shine light on the concepts of comfort, power, privilege and identity.

Perspective:

This Q & A delves into the "finer lines" of white anti-racism and should be used with older students and adults.

The Participants:

Diane Flinn, a white woman and managing partner of Diversity Matters.

Georgette Norman, an African American woman and director of the Rosa Parks Library and Museum

Sejal Patel, a South Asian American woman and community organizer in South Asian immigrant communities

Yvette Robles, a Chicana and Community Relations Manager in Los Angeles

What does "white anti-racist" mean to you?

Diane: I associate this terminology with action and behavior more than an identity or subject position. Anti-racist, for me, is more indicative of a process of coming to a healthy and functioning sense of a white racial identity.

One of the functions and privileges of racism is that white people don't, as a whole, carry race as an identity -- you get to be individual, you get to be "yourself," you get to be the norm, you get to be whole and not partial or hyphenated. You do not have to make "adjustments" or "modifications" to know or name yourself.

I also think my discomfort [with the term anti-racist] is fueled by it being based on what I am not. It is the proverbial "I'm not a racist" disclaimer used by whites to separate themselves from the realities of racism and race-based privilege.

What are common mistakes white activists make when trying to be allies to people of color?

Yvette: Not acknowledging that they have power and privilege by the mere fact that they are white. That is not to say that other parts of their identity can't lead them to feel powerless, for example, being white and gay, or being white and working class. Another mistake I see is when white activists try to emulate a different culture by changing how they act, their speech or style of dress. It's one thing to appreciate someone else's culture; it's quite another to adopt it.

Georgette: The most common mistakes white activists make are 1) setting an agenda with the illusion of inclusion, and 2) having to have a franchise on comfort. God forbid a person of color says or does anything to make white activists feel uncomfortable. That means there can be no discussion of race and no challenge to their privilege, which means no challenge to their power.

Sejal: White anti-racists make a mistake when they shut out the poor and uneducated and keep in those "in the know" to decide what's good for people of color. No movement can work where there is divisiveness.

Also, if people of color want to have their own space and place in certain aspects of society -- say for a weekend or a month -- they shouldn't have to feel like they are being exclusive for doing this. White activists need to understand that society is their space and place every single day, and they shouldn't feel threatened or left out.

When attempting to be allies to people of color, is there a point when white people "get it" (and what does "getting it" mean)?

Sejal: "Getting it" is the biggest point, I feel. Getting it means many things: the ability for white activists to understand that they have a space and place of privilege. It really is up to white people to give up their privilege and be okay with that. Giving it up will make white people truly sensitive to the issues of racism, classism, sexism and homophobia.

White activists need to understand that they can't completely understand or "get" the experience of a person of color. They should trust that their allies, people of color, are not being too sensitive or complaining. Everyone, especially U.S. citizens, has some sort of privilege in their lives, and, as a person of color, I make sure that people have space to express themselves in a way they feel is right. I need to trust that my white allies will do the same for me when I need it.

Diane: I believe that white allies can "get it" if we define "getting it" as becoming attuned to the subtle effects of racial bias in everyday interactions and environments. We can "get it" if we recognize the systemic presence of racism and how race-based oppression is allowed to continue. If we identify and own racial privilege and, as white people, have our own experiences of exclusion so we can authentically empathize, then we are "getting it." We "get it" when we value equity, human rights and social justice.

How would you describe the stages of becoming a white anti-racist/ally?

Sejal: 1) Realize the meanings behind privilege, racism and whiteness. 2) Look within before you look outward. How do you relate to the definitions? Pinpoint the ways in which you experience privilege as a white person. 3) Look outward, find out the historical, global and social patterns of the effects of racism and other forms of oppression. 4) Act. Realize that you want to do something about this system, and come at it with a sensitivity and understanding that you come from a privileged background whether you like it or not.

How does guilt affect white anti-racism?

Diane: Guilt allows white people to maintain the status quo. Guilt creates paralysis. Guilt transfers the responsibility to people of color. Guilt continues the aspect of racism wherein white people put people of color in a situation of taking care of us.

By saying, "I feel so guilty, so bad," it puts the other person in a position of comforting. The other person is then silenced, must reposition or restate their truth. Or worse -- maintain their truth and risk being viewed as mean, insensitive and angry.

Guilt is where most white people get stuck. Guilt is the ultimate obstacle in the personal journey to being a white ally.

How can white privilege get in the way?

Georgette: Privilege and power perpetuate and maintain the hierarchy in our society. It defines 'being' by virtue of skin color. It also defines the kind of relationship you have or are allowed to have and with whom. While many white activists won't admit it, a black person would only have to call them on any issue, and they will promptly remind you of your place and your guest status at the table.

The question, then, becomes how does one get knowledge and access to that power? How does one rise above powerlessness and dependency? Self-determination is one component, but equally important is for white people to yield access to power.

Diane: It is challenging to recognize how my way of doing things and the rules of conduct that I understand are informed by privilege.

Privilege, by its very nature, will "get in the way" as white people move toward and work as allies.

Unfortunately, the more a white person works through his or her whiteness and toward being an ally, the more difficult it becomes to self-identify privilege. You usually can't see it when you are in it; in other words, do fish know they're wet?

What do you think of the concept of being "colorblind"?

Yvette: I hate it. While I think I get the "intention" behind the comment, the reality, when applied, is that a whole segment of the community -- people of color -- are disregarded. When I hear that we should strive for a colorblind society, I hear that we should all adopt to one norm, which may be the most familiar or comfortable for American culture. American culture in the U.S., in my opinion, translates directly to white mainstream culture.

There is no room for diversity in that statement. As a person of color, a Latina, a woman, it means that I need to let go of all that makes me who I am in order to blend into what is acceptable. A colorblind society reminds me of the melting pot theory. I would rather be a part of a "tossed salad," where all different types of people can coexist and live together while maintaining their own personal identities.

Diane: To be "colorblind" implies the invisibility of race, something we all know to not be invisible. My experience of the world is informed by being white; other people experience and interact with me informed by my whiteness so, for me, colorblindness feels like an erasure. To be colorblind is to not see my family, where we come from, our history, and our ways of being. "Colorblind" avoids difference rather than recognizing and valuing it. I do not see how a white activist can be an ally from a position of colorblindness. I understand that many people use this term to challenge racial stereotyping, to not see people "as" their color and the associated racial stereotypes, but it functions as assimilation. If we become "colorblind," than to which worlds and ways of being are we being blinded? What are we not "seeing?" And in which "hue" will we be operating?

Georgette: I personally find it offensive. The largest organ I have is skin, which happens to be brown and rather than accept it, some who call themselves allies want to be blind to it.

Sejal: Of course we have differences and its okay. Let's be realistic -- as much as it would be nice to have a colorblind society, that's not the way it is given our historical landscape. That's not the way we are socialized to think.

Discussion Questions

Diane says: "Anti-racist, for me, is more indicative of a process of coming to a healthy and functioning sense of a white racial identity." Why is the word "functioning" important?

Sejal says: "If people of color want to have their own space and place in certain aspects of society -- say for a weekend or a month -- they shouldn't have to feel like they are being exclusive for doing this." Why might people of color sometimes want their "own" spaces? Are there ever instances when white people should do anti-racist work in isolation? Why?

Guilt and white privilege, these activists say, can sometimes get in the way of white people being effective allies in the struggle against racism. What qualities or actions can help white people be effective allies?

The activists all reject the idea of "colorblindness." Many people contribute the "goal" of colorblindness to a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: "I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Was Dr. King advocating that people ignore color? Ignore racism? Why?

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What does "white anti-racist" mean? How can guilt get in the way? And what's all this talk about being "colorblind"? Learning for Justice, then Teaching Tolerance, asked community activists to share their thoughts on these questions, and others. Their answers shine light on the concepts of comfort, power, privilege and identity.

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COVID-19 Is Having A Devastating Impact On African Americans [Infographic]

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The number of Americans infected with COVID-19 has soared to approximately 370,000 according to the latest data from the Johns Hopkins University while just under 11,000 fatalities have been recorded. Statistics from several U.S. states and cities now suggest that the coronavirus is proving particularly devastating for African Americans.

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Learn more about how Statista can support your business.

Washington Post. (August 30, 2020). Rate of fatal police shootings in the United States from 2015 to August 2020, by ethnicity (per million of the population) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved October 01, 2020, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings-rate-ethnicity-us/

Washington Post. "Rate of fatal police shootings in the United States from 2015 to August 2020, by ethnicity (per million of the population)." Chart. August 30, 2020. Statista. Accessed October 01, 2020. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings-rate-ethnicity-us/

Washington Post. (2020). Rate of fatal police shootings in the United States from 2015 to August 2020, by ethnicity (per million of the population). Statista. Statista Inc.. Accessed: October 01, 2020. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings-rate-ethnicity-us/

Washington Post. "Rate of Fatal Police Shootings in The United States from 2015 to August 2020, by Ethnicity (per Million of The Population)." Statista, Statista Inc., 30 Aug 2020, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings-rate-ethnicity-us/

Washington Post, Rate of fatal police shootings in the United States from 2015 to August 2020, by ethnicity (per million of the population) Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings-rate-ethnicity-us/ (last visited October 01, 2020)

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Police shootings: rate by ethnicity U.S. 2015-2020 | Statista

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Learn more about how Statista can support your business. Washington Post. (August 30, 2020). Rate of fatal police shootings in the United States from 2015 to August 2020, by ethnicity (per million of the population) [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved October 01, 2020, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/1123070/police-shootings-rate-ethnicity-us/ Washington Post.

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Black Lives Matter: Anti-Racism Resources for Social Workers and Therapists - SocialWork.Career

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Roundup of free anti-racism webinars, suggested readings, movies/TV shows, podcasts, and healing racial wounds resources specifically for POC.

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If there's one thing that should give us hope about the future, it's that many young people today are more tolerant than previous generations and deeply care about social justice. Thanks to social media, young people have instant access to the world's problems, and they're increasingly expressing their disapproval with what they're witnessing. This instant access is transformative, but it can also be overwhelming.

Social justice is achieved through patience, hard work and sacrifice, and social media promotes a heightened state of perpetual motion. Information leaves one's Twitter feed as quickly as it comes, and just as someone takes the time to reflect on a terrible tragedy, another one starts trending. As a result, many young people care about social justice issues but often don't know what they can do to effectively make change. Below are some engaging ways that teachers can expose students to social justice so that they leave school with a sense of purpose and a strong belief that they can make a difference in the world. While applicable to any classroom, these strategies are especially useful to grades 7-12.

Source: https://www.nptechforgood.com/2014/01/12/19-must-see-social-media-and-fundraising-infographics-for-nonprofits/

8 Ways to Teach Social Justice:
1. Integrate Social Media
Now more than ever, activist groups mobilize online. Teachers can use social media to teach students about " hashtag activism," including its benefits and limitations. To provide an example of an assignment, teachers can ask students to research various social justice groups that use social media and then choose one group to present to the class. What do these groups do? How do they use social media? Are they effective or not? Bonus points can go to the students who make an effort to reach out to the groups.
2. Take Advantage of Project-Based Learning
If teachers want to take social media integration a step further, they can have students start their own social activist groups. Social media outreach can be one part of this, but students should also be expected to interact with like-minded activists (fellow classmates or neighborhood friends) in person. The goal of this project-based learning assignment is to see if students can effectively jumpstart an activist group, and if so, how they use this activist group to make change. The best part of this assignment: even students who don't "succeed" will learn a lot about social justice in the process.
3. Engage Students with Video
As great as it is to get students involved in contemporary causes, it's equally important to expose them to social justice activists who have been successful throughout history. Feature-length films like Selma or Erin Brockovich are bound to inspire students, as are shorter, more contemporary or YouTube videos. Whatever the case, videos about social justice can be more impactful than literature because the visual medium more effectively taps into the viewer's emotions.
4. Make Readings Relevant
At the same time, students should learn how to engage with texts and make them relevant to their daily lives. Teachers can guide students to do this by connecting literature to contemporary issues. Shakespeare's Macbeth , for example, is a canonical text that most high school students are required to read. Why not connect the play's theme, political ambition and the corruption of power, to the contemporary political landscape? This enables students to engage with otherwise outdated texts, while at the same time, encourages them to learn more about the contemporary world by connecting the characters in texts to real people. Students can even get into heated discussions about which contemporary politicians they believe to be most like Macbeth.
5. Assign Memorial Projects
When learning about history, students can sometimes feel hopeless. This is especially true when it comes to tragic historical events like the Holocaus. One way to overcome pessimism and persuade students that their voices matter, that they can bring justice into the world, is to assign memorial projects. With these projects, students actively engage with the past on an emotional level, which will inspire them to change the present. This matters, as the late Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel reminds us, "for the dead and the living, we must bear witness." That is, when students learn about the tragedies of the past, they'll be less likely to repeat them.
6. Invite Guest Speakers
Sometimes students want to hear from someone else besides the teacher. This is an opportune time to invite guest speakers into the classroom. These speakers can range from Holocaust survivors to community organizers to artists-anyone who devotes their life to social justice. Thanks to digital technology, these speakers don't always have to show up in person, as teachers can use Periscope to livestream their talks.
7. Encourage Classroom Collaboration
Teachers should create a collaborative classroom environment that promotes community-based learning. Rather than have students complete assignments by themselves all of the time, they can work on projects with their classmates. For example, teachers can assign a group of three or four students to research a particular social justice cause and then present to their classmates ways to get involved in this cause. These simple group exercises expose students to different points of view and encourage students to work together to resolve conflicts and come up with solutions, despite differences and disagreements. What's more, when students are allowed to work together, they are more engaged in the learning process.
8. Lead by Example
Finally, teachers must lead by example. That is, it's not enough to ask students to promote social justice if teachers aren't doing it themselves. At the beginning of the school year, teachers can establish a clear set of positive classroom policies that value inclusiveness and tolerance. It goes without saying, but teachers should always respect student input and never belittle students or make them feel inferior. If comfortable, teachers can bring a little bit of their personal lives into the classroom and let students know which social justice causes they care about. This establishes credibility and lets students know that social justice ultimately must be pursued outside of the classroom.

Source: https://www.brownpoliticalreview.org/2014/11/political-hashtagging-is-online-activism-effective/

Most of these engaging social justice lessons revolve around digital technology. Teachers may be daunted by this and think that it requires a lot of time and effort. To the contrary, teachers can integrate this technology within a matter of minutes. With LiveTiles Mosaic, a free UI design solution for any K-12 class with an Office 365 tenant, teachers can create a user-friendly digital classroom that combines all of these relevant social justice teaching tools. can be used for group projects, social media can be used to share relevant ideas and there's even a tool that allows teachers to embed videos. As the screen shot below illustrates, Mosaic is a practical and powerful way to bring social justice in the classroom for tech-savvy students that will want to access the learning materials at any time from any one of their mobile devices.

As globalization presses on, students are made aware of the many problems that need to be solved, from world hunger to climate change to disease prevention. A strong social justice education will prepare students to solve these problems, one small step at a time.

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8 Engaging Ways Teachers Can Expose Students to Social Justice

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If there's one thing that should give us hope about the future, it's that many young people today are more tolerant than previous generations and deeply care about social justice. Thanks to social media, young people have instant access to the world's problems, and they're increasingly expressing their disapproval with what they're witnessing.

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As many of us prepare to go back to work, physically or remotely (and for those who already have), the day may already be feeling incredibly exhausting and traumatizing before it has even really begun.

For Black people, we can turn off social media for a few days but we often can't turn off work. We are preparing to be re-burdened at work in an unnecessary way.

And for white people and people of color, the need to say something is real. But it's important that it is approached in a way that isn't burdensome, traumatizing, or re-triggering.

Here is a quick guide for ideas on how to approach today and every day at work. Please share as much as you would like.

As a reminder before you read:

I do not speak for all Black people.

I am speaking from personal reflection and observation. Please continue to invest and support those who have been carrying the burden of this work on their shoulders.

And yes, entrepreneurs, coaches, fitness leaders: these same guidelines are applicable for you too.

Do be mindful of opening up meetings and interactions with questions like "How are you?" or "How was your weekend?"

Recognize that by doing so, you can potentially be re-triggering what your Black colleagues are experiencing or dismissing their experience by pretending all is normal. It's not and hasn't been for a long time.

Do acknowledge what is happening, and share your empathy

This is an important one because to fail to acknowledge what is happening sends a message that it does not matter nor do Black people's emotions matter. There are too many organizations that are planning to say anything today. Do not let that be yours.

Do ask Black colleagues if they would like to make space to discuss first before you make space for them

In organization-wide meetings, team meetings, and even individual conversations, once you've acknowledged what's happening, don't just leap into a discussion. It is important that you ask if Black people (not white people) if they would like further discussion space or not as not everyone is comfortable, ready, or simply wants to discuss at work. Plus, think of it this way: If you are a Black person who has eight meetings in a day and every meeting automatically opens with discussion, think about how exhausting and burdensome that can be.

If Black colleagues say yes to wanting to make space, here is a quick list of dos and don'ts for the discussion (mainly don'ts):

Do listen.

Don't keep saying "I'm sorry" and put the burden on Black colleagues to respond.

Don't ask to be educated on racism, why something is, or their opinion on x that is happening. In fact, don't ask to be educated at all.

Don't take up space with how you are now "burdened" or "feel helpless." It is not your time.

Don't ask if you have done anything racist or take space attempting whether or not you are one of the "good ones."

Don't force us to share if we don't want to. Not every Black person speaks for every other Black person. Some may want to share and others may not. Don't force them to or look for them to do so.

White CEOs and executive leaders:

If you are sending an internal or external response out, ask Black colleagues in your organization if they would be willing to engage in what is shared. I want to name this as it is critical to begin including Black voices and perspectives in these conversations from the very beginning and truly listening, not debating, what a response should look like.

Be prepared if:

Black colleagues decline if they are feeling burdened. They are not required to be or become your token voice.

If and when the response conversation turns to a question of " What's next?" Because it should. It will. And it should happen.

Leaders and colleagues who are people of color:

Do remember that sharing acknowledgment and empathy is critical.

Don't equate your experience to the Black American experience. Acknowledgment is also acknowledging that it is different.

Don't become the "Black voice" for your team if you work in an organization where there are no Black colleagues or leaders.

And for my fellow Black leaders and colleagues:

Do remember self-care first in these moments.

Do take all of the space or none of the space that you need.

Don't feel pressured to speak.

Don't feel pressured to carry the black voice at work.

Don't take more burden on than you can carry.

Dynasti Hunt is the managing director of Talent and Equity at Third Sector. She is also a personal branding coach and fitness leader.
This article originally appeared in Medium and is reprinted with permission.

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5 thoughtful ways to approach discussing racism at work

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As many of us prepare to go back to work, physically or remotely (and for those who already have), the day may already be feeling incredibly exhausting and traumatizing before it has even really begun. For Black people, we can turn off social media for a few days but we often can't turn off work.

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Connections
Season 12 Episode 40 | 29m 1s |

Renee's guest is Pikeville, Kentucky native Walter Gilliam, director of the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy and associate professor of Child Psychiatry and Psychology at the Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine. Dr. Gilliam has talks about his research on implicit bias among preschool educators.

Aired: 07/07/17

Rating: NR

Problems Playing Video? Report a Problem |

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Connections | Uncovering Bias in Preschool Education | Season 12 | Episode 40

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Connections Season 12 Episode 40 | 29m 1s | Renee's guest is Pikeville, Kentucky native Walter Gilliam, director of the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy and associate professor of Child Psychiatry and Psychology at the Child Study Center, Yale School of Medicine.

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POV | Implicit Bias: Peanut Butter, Jelly and Racism | PBS

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What does implicit bias have to do with peanut butter?

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Social Justice Educators: A Note on Your Authority and Power

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Nurturing is Not Enough, A Case Study on Social Justice, Caring, and Discipline

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A Critical Perspective on the Use of the Trauma Narrative in American Schools

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Photo Collection

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The Photo Issue

Top photo: Jahi Chikwendiu

Introduction by Eugene Robinson

Racism is this nation's telltale heart beating ominously in the collective subconscious. From time to time we come to believe we have expiated and silenced it once and for all. But then it is back - changed, perhaps attenuated, but unmistakable.

Eleven years ago, we were congratulating ourselves on a historic milestone: the election of Barack Obama, the first African American U.S. president. Some dreamed - foolishly, it turned out - that we had finally entered a "post-racial" era. Instead, we find ourselves at a hyperracial moment of heightened friction, a time when six in 10 Americans believe race relations are "generally bad," according to a Pew Research Center survey, and nearly two-thirds believe it is now more common for people to express racist views than when Obama left office.

More than half of us blame President Trump for making race relations worse, according to Pew. But Trump may be more of a symptom than a root cause. If he exacerbates and exploits jagged divisions for political gain, he is able to do so because those divisions were already there.

It is depressingly easy to quantify the stubborn disparities that linger from our centuries of racism. The median black family earns just 62 percent of what the median white family earns, according to the Census Bureau, and has little more than one-tenth the accumulated net worth - gaps that have barely narrowed since the 1970s. Latinos fare, on average, just slightly better.

Much harder to catalogue is how Americans feel on a personal level. Racism hurts. A growing body of research shows it negatively affects the mental and physical health of its victims. Like any burden, it wears the bearer down. Sometimes it makes you feel like lashing out. Sometimes it makes you feel as if you are drowning.

In what surely is not a coincidence, racism is rising along with diversity. The country's 10 biggest cities and two biggest states are already majority-minority, meaning non-Hispanic whites no longer constitute more than half the population. The nation as a whole will reach that tipping point around 2045. Hispanics are now such a huge minority that one could argue the nation is already functionally bilingual. Perhaps the sense that demography equals destiny has something, or maybe everything, to do with the fact that about half of white Americans, according to a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute, believe discrimination against whites is as big a problem in the United States as discrimination against minorities.

This is how the war against racism goes: progress, setback, optimism, despair - a cycle that frustratingly repeats and yet somehow inches us forward. Racism may be worse than in the recent past, but the individual and collective punishment it metes out is a shadow of what black Americans suffered a half-century ago. We have no choice but to believe that the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was right when he said that the arc of the moral universe is long but bends toward justice. We have somehow taken a detour, however, and must find our way back to the true path.

This issue is devoted to photography that documents this moment - not just our external struggle with racism, but the internal struggles as well. Some of the images are beautiful and unsettling. Some are jarring. If some make us uncomfortable, that is progress. An easy conversation about racism is not a real conversation at all.
Eugene Robinson is a Washington Post columnist focusing on politics and culture.
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Law Enforcement

The photographer created his own crime scene. The infraction? Being black.

Text and photographs by Marvin Joseph

When I was tasked with creating imagery that shows what racism looks like, what came to mind were all the troubling but increasingly common ways African Americans die at the hands of law enforcement. Recently, for instance, a young African American woman, who was at home in Texas with her nephew and had been playing video games, was shot through her bedroom window by a police officer.

For further inspiration, Malon Ali and I visited the Spirit Halloween store. While we were looking for the ugliest masks we could find, we spotted the faux crime-scene tape. The epiphany took hold instantly for both of us. The tape would illustrate the message: that being black in America can be a crime. Malon's dark-skinned body would be wrapped mummy-like and consumed by this tape - which is proving impossible to shake off. His attempts as he leaps, poses, runs or even dances are in vain. He cannot escape the ever-looming presence of racism.
Marvin Joseph is a Washington Post staff photographer.
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Speak Your Mind

Talking about discrimination can require careful navigation

Text and photographs by Marvi Lacar

If the pain of overt racism is like a brutal stab wound - instant and searing - the trauma of systemic and casual racism is like the phantom pains from an amputated limb. It is the constant pinpricks of a wound that can't fully heal. It is the external reminder that you're not quite like the others, and the gnawing self-doubt that you may never be enough.

But to speak of this type of pain can be risky. You can be told, "You have such a chip on your shoulder. Get over it!" or "You're always acting like a victim!"

Most people of color play a balancing act when advocating for ourselves and our children. We straddle the line between finding a space to speak openly about injustice and trauma, and guarding ourselves so that our experiences and our grief aren't turned into racial tropes. We proceed with caution, lest our stories be stripped of empathy and subsequently used against us. There are consequences of vulnerability.

Yet some parents, like Ilka Alcantara and Alicia Volel, are cognizant of their inherited trauma and are more open to addressing the reverberations of hate around their two girls. Best friends Indiamara and Ayainna, both 11, grew up in middle-class homes in Dorchester, Mass., with two working professional parents. What is grim about their stories is the commonality of their experiences. They speak of everyday realities many children and families of color have grown inured to - realities so typical, in fact, that these daily offenses no longer possess an urgency in their hierarchy of problems.
Marvi Lacar is a documentary and commercial photographer and director. Her personal work is centered on the emotional and psychological manifestations of generational trauma.
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Toy Story

Even in dolls, our tendency to objectify black female bodies comes through

Text and photographs by Delphine Diallo

As a French Senegalese woman, I contend with the stereotype of what the black woman should represent. I've been a graphic designer, art director, video editor and now a professional photographer for the past 10 years, and yet, throughout my experience working in the industry, I was seldom given credit as the woman doing the work. People still ask me, at 42: Are you a model? In everyday professional life, I'm too often seen as an object, the fantasy of the exotic black woman. Even now I still have to answer "How did you get the job?" It diminishes not only the work I have done, but who I am.

When we are looking at the success of stars like Beyoncé, Rihanna and Nicki Minaj - and the archetype they represent - we see how over-sexualized their bodies are. That focus can bring about real pain in girls of color who don't look like them. I respect the work of those artists, but I'm sick of the perpetuation of "body first, mind after."

When I began exploring how to represent the black woman as an object, I didn't want to photograph a real woman because I wanted the focus to be the woman as a subject, not as an object. So I started to research the different types of black dolls the toy industry has created through the years. To my surprise, Mattel's Barbie had the most choices: curvy, skinny, light-skinned, dark, big hair, braids, short hair, colored hair. Despite that range, the dolls ultimately still represent preferences about the black body. Toys are for children to play with, but they can also carry their own messages.
Delphine Diallo combines artistry with activism in an effort to empower women, youth and cultural minorities through visual provocation. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, New York Magazine, Esquire, Artsy, Vice, Essence, Smithsonian Magazine, Time, Vogue Portugal and Aperture.
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Face to Face

How our skin color affects the way others see us

Text and photographs by Jana Curcio

Despite the universality of one's desire for freedom and acceptance, achieving that desire takes on a very different meaning based on one's culture, race and the tonality of our face. "Skin Tones" is an art project that examines the notion that an individual's perception of her- or himself is inherently tied to one's skin color, and this, in turn, determines one's perception of others. It influences bias on a personal level, and bias across races at a macro level. Race and racism go hand-in-hand, back-and-forth in different directions.

"Skin Tones" visualizes this idea through the use of color blocks - based on the human skin tone set. The faces are presented as fragmented forms and are intended to ask, "What is racism these days?" Do the words "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," etched at the base of the Statue of Liberty, still hold true? And as we respond to people seeking freedom and acceptance both within and outside the borders of the United States, how do matters of race come into our responses?

In combining multiple faces to form a collection of images, I wanted to look at the interconnected nature of our skin, its tonality and the perceptions we have of ourselves as well as the perceptions others have of us. In doing that, I juxtaposed many ethnicities - and also the many facets and faces of racism.
Jana Curcio uses composite digital photography and mixed media in her artwork to explore issues of interpersonal relationships and the complex struggle around one's identity. Her work has been selected for numerous international awards and has been shown in galleries across the United States.
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Unwanted Neighbors

In some areas of Chicago, the signs of environmental injustice are everywhere

Text and photographs by Carlos Javier Ortiz

For the past 15 years my work has focused on addressing injustice in black and brown communities. I target issues of structural discrimination, violence, poverty, migration, marginalization and human rights. My work in film and photography has always revolved around what I call the beautiful struggle: life after death, family stories, human resilience and bridging the spaces between these subjects.

For this issue I was compelled to address the topic of race in a different way and thought about neighborhood effects on people of color, who are the most vulnerable population when it comes to environmental injustice in urban America. Environmental racism begins in the barrios and neighborhoods where black and brown people live, go to school, work and raise their families. In the third largest American city, Chicago's black and brown people live in some of the most polluted neighborhoods, surrounded by superfund sites, toxic landscapes, illegal dumping and air pollution.

We often don't correlate racism with polluted neighborhoods in American cities. That seems like something that happens on the other side of the world. But the reality of environmental racism has been rooted in America's history, in which municipal zoning laws and restrictive policies such as Jim Crow and redlining have locked the poor into toxic neighborhoods - and today not much has changed.

To illustrate the landscape where environmental injustice takes place in contemporary Chicago, I spent most of my time driving in and around black and brown communities: neighborhoods on the South, East and West Side of the city, once populated by European immigrants considered to be the undesirables many years ago. I didn't have to look hard for the structures polluting our neighborhoods; they tower over us, hiding in plain sight behind schoolyards, between ribbons of concrete highways.

The residents in these neighborhoods have injected their culture and labor to make the city what it is today. Chicago's politicians need to step up and provide safe neighborhoods, living-wage jobs and excellent public schools with a clean and healthy environment for the people who hold the city on their shoulders.
Carlos Javier Ortiz is a director, cinematographer and documentary photographer who focuses on urban life, gun violence, racism, poverty and marginalized communities. In 2016, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for film and video, and his work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago and the Library of Congress.
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Chokehold

The dangers of internalizing racism

Text and photographs by Jahi Chikwendiu

I keep hope, but I have lost all faith that this country will ever appreciably cleanse itself of deeply entrenched racism. Its barrage is constant and unavoidable warfare.

Before reaching school age, I knew of only one family in our neighborhood that wasn't brown. I was mostly shielded from even the idea of racism until yellow buses transported us out of brown stomping grounds and into school hallways that flowed mostly pink. It didn't take long to recognize how we all were being primed to understand racial differences and unequal treatment. My rambunctiousness compared with that of pink classmates seemed to always bring much harsher reactions - teachers' scolds from behind stern glares. I met with the principal's paddle more than a few times. When I stopped giving him the tearful response he seemed to seek, he'd solitarily confine me all day in the office's supply closet. The only light came from a sliver under the door that would allow my eyes to adjust from seeing total blackness to seeing the room as clear as day. Outside the door, chummy adult voices greeted one another as if there wasn't a child locked away nearby.

I was still in elementary school and playing in the living room at the home of friends when their teenage brother popped from one of the back rooms wearing what must've been their father's white Ku Klux Klan outfit. As my younger brother and I instinctively lurched back, he lifted the pointed hood to reveal his laughing face. Their father was also one of our peewee football coaches.

"Why are all the niggers in the back?" It was the first time, but not the last, I heard our high school football coach launch the n-bomb. It was during warm-ups, in front of all the players, in one of my first team practices after transferring to the school. When I found myself the only one openly protesting his racial slurs, the coach told me, "Son, I could make you a star. But I'm not."

Trying to list every racist act I've shunned and overcome would be impossible. Instead, when presented with the challenge to visually depict how racism stymies the collective potential of black people, I decided to create a series of photos meant to be a "Whitest Hands" version of Toni Morrison's "The Bluest Eye." In that book, Pecola Breedlove - a young black girl - is convinced that her life would right itself if only she had long, blond hair, white skin and the bluest of eyes. The images here are intended to be sirens: startling alarms to wake us from internalizing the myth of white supremacy and the reality of racism, which has led us to blind, deafen, silence, even choke ourselves. To refrain from internalizing racism's offerings is to give ourselves better chances of breaking the surface of racism's murky depths, like lotus flowers blossoming skyward.
Jahi Chikwendiu is a Washington Post staff photographer.
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The Race Card

The photo industry's historical bias toward particular skin tones

Text and photographs by Marc Baptiste

In the 1950s, '60s and '70s, the Shirley Card was used by Kodak as the guide across the board to match the skin tone in photography to a white woman (the original Kodak model at the time was named Shirley). It took Kodak years to modify its film to more accurately capture tones.

I have spent my entire career testing and mastering lighting, using various films, learning early on that you cannot use the same lighting for all skin tones. I believe that the level of integrity, care and responsibility of up-and-coming photographers - and my peers - to uphold a positive and accurate cultural narrative is changing for the better. Social media has given rise to those who embrace melanin and can create their own narrative. But there's still work to be done inside the media to ensure that the level of technical lighting skills matches the assignment when it comes to our representation.

Lack of inclusion and diversity in photography continue to have an impact. Colorism! In 2015, Kerry Washington was on the cover of InStyle magazine and appeared many shades lighter than her actual skin tone. More recently, Rihanna was on the cover of American Vogue and appeared much darker then her actual skin tone. Just saying.

As a photographer, I like all skin tones. We are all different, and we need to celebrate that. We need to keep it real.
Marc Baptiste was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and moved to Brooklyn at an early age. An internationally known fashion and portrait photographer, Baptiste says love for his birthplace influences all of his work. Styling by Alexander Garcia.
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Carved in Stone

At Georgia's Stone Mountain, the state's ties to the Confederacy cast a long shadow

Text and photographs by Sheila Pree Bright
"Georgia is beautiful. Yet on its beauty rests something disturbing and strange." - W.E.B. Du Bois
This photo essay - which I've titled "Invisible Empire" - explores the tension at Stone Mountain Park outside Atlanta. These landscape images are my visual journey around this appealing mountain, which features an enormous memorial that became a symbol of the white South and the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. The stone is the largest exposed granite in the country and home to a carving depicting Confederate leaders Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson.

In 1914 the United Daughters of the Confederacy advocated for a memorial so that the memory of the Civil War would stay alive and support the making of more Confederate memorials. On Thanksgiving night in 1915, white, male, middle-class citizens met atop Stone Mountain with a flaming cross and a Bible. The carving of the memorial began in 1923 and finished in 1972.

In the early 1920s, "evangelical Protestants in particular flocked to the Klan," according to Nancy MacLean's "Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan." They were mobilized by campaigns using the movie "The Birth of a Nation" and recruited from fraternities such as the Elks and secret societies such as the Freemasons - organizations that for decades had strict laws ensuring that they were for whites only.

Today the mountain and its surrounding park are known as a recreational spot for families and visited by 4 million people a year. On a sunny day, as I walked through this serene park looking at the yellow daisies - called Confederate daisies - I asked myself: What does it mean to absorb this energy in a public space? How should I feel confronted with this symbol of the Confederacy, which has terrorized black people for generations, while enjoying the alluring beauty of the mountain 10 minutes from my house?

My mother and father grew up during the Jim Crow era. In their daily lives they endured the trauma of racial hatred. I know I have internalized the same psychological upheaval. But I try to imagine what liberation from this painful legacy of violence looks like.
Sheila Pree Bright is an acclaimed fine-art photographer known for her photographic series "Young Americans, Plastic Bodies, and Suburbia." She is the author of "#1960Now: Photographs of Civil Rights Activists and Black Lives Matter Protests."
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In Our Skin

A photojournalist depicts what it feels like to be on the receiving end of ignorance and hate

Text and photographs by André Chung

I talk about race and racism with my friends often, sometimes daily depending on the temperature of our collective anger. So when I started this project, it was vital to create something collaborative because I knew there was more to be said than I could say alone. We have all had different experiences that led to different reckonings, but it was understood that none of us were unscathed.

When I think of racism, I don't think first about the injustice; I think about how it strikes my body. Racism knocks me outside of myself. Sometimes different versions of me rush forward to inhabit my corporeal self, giving me the strength to survive the psychic and physical onslaught. This is the feeling that I wanted to infuse the project with. As a photojournalist, documenting events is intrinsic to my work. However, documentary photography is too literal to get to the emotional, extrasensory experience that I think is necessary for these images. I encouraged my friends who were involved in the project to think about how racism makes them feel and to bring those feelings with them to the photo shoot. What I'm interested in are raw, emotive images that draw on symbolism and a disruption of realistic imagery. It is important to me to capture and render this viscerally, because I don't believe that we can interpret racism entirely through our intellect alone.

We cannot escape racism any more than we can escape our skin. Post-racial America has been and will remain a myth. I'll settle for a post-racist America, because in this moment we see that the distance we have traveled isn't far enough. For this project, we took aim at a country that won't recognize our humanity, or citizenship, or even our right to take umbrage. We insist that racism is the racist's problem, that our own humanity is intact, and that the people who spew hate are the ones who have the greater problem. We took the pain and used it, and became stronger than we were.
André Chung is based in Maryland. His work has always explored the relationship of people of color to the world. Photo editing by Dudley M. Brooks. Design by Christian Font.

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Visualizing racism: A collection of photo essays

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Nine photographers take on the challenge of depicting bigotry.

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Abolitionist Teaching and the Future of Our Schools

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" An essential, compelling and practical examination of the relationship between culture and cognition that will forever transform how we think about our role facilitating the learning of other people's children - and our own children! Zaretta Hammond forcefully traverses the socio-political landscape of race and learning, smashing our misconceptions and bias about the educability of black, brown and low-income students; setting us free to take a more thoughtful, deliberate approach to creating classroom practices and environments that result in true learning partnerships with our students. The framework Hammond offers skillfully weaves together cultural knowledge (students' cultural identities and how they see and make meaning of the world) with neuroscience (what we now know about how the brain processes and retains information) - the real artistry of culturally responsive pedagogy.
This book demonstrates high regard for the complexity of teaching and delivers an even higher regard for the promise and academic potential of the students we've made most vulnerable in our school systems if we, as educators, choose to act on what we know. This book should be required reading for every teacher education program in the country!"
-- LaShawn Routé Chatmon, Executive Director Published On: 2014-08-12

"All students can and will learn at high levels when provided the type of instruction described in this book. This work calls us to action by mandating that we move beyond looking for student outcomes that rely heavily on the regurgitation of memorized facts to applying the information learned to new situations. Each child's life outcomes are dependent on their ability to think critically. Dr. Hammond does just that in this book. She uses her mind well, writes effectively and provides analysis on the connection between brain-based science and culturally responsive instruction. This is a must read for those wishing to have a mindset shift and aptly implement rigorous instructional practices to support all students." -- Kendra Ferguson, Chief of Schools Published On: 2014-08-26

"Drawing on the research form neuroscience Zaretta Hammond explains what we should have known all along - all children are capable of higher order thinking and capable of producing intellectually advanced work if provided the opportunity to learn by caring and capable adults. Hammond dose more than explain the research. Drawing on years of experience in schools as an educator and trainer, she shows how this can be done even in schools that have grown accustomed to failure. At a time when the nation is searching to find ways to close the racial achievement gap, this book will be an invaluable resource. " -- Pedro Noguera, Professor, NYU

Zaretta Hammond is a former classroom English teacher who has been doing instructional design, school coaching, and professional development around the issues of equity, literacy, and culturally responsive teaching for the past 18 years. She teaches as a lecturer at St. Mary's College's Kalmanovitz School of in Moraga, California.

In addition to consulting and professional development, she has been on staff at national education reform organizations, including the National Equity Project and the former Bay Area School Reform Collaborative (BASRC). She has trained instructional coaches in reading development, especially targeted at students of color and English learners. She has also designed national seminars such as the three-day Teaching with A Cultural Eye series for teachers and school leaders. She is regularly invited to present at regional and national conferences. She has authored articles that have appeared in publications such as Phi Delta Kappan.

Along with a focus on culturally responsive teaching, Ms. Hammond has a strong research agenda around literacy, vocabulary development, and equity. She has designed culturally responsive tutor training programs aimed at volunteer reading tutors for a variety of non-profit organizations. She currently designing a literacy program to accelerate low reading skills among high school students. She holds a Masters in Secondary English Education.

She also writes the popular ready4rigor.com blog. Zaretta is the proud parent of two young adult children, both of whom she taught to read before they went to school. She resides in Berkeley, CA with her husband and family.

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culturally responsive teaching and the brain: promoting authentic engagement and rigor among culturally and linguistically diverse students

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educational equalization - united states

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teaching - social aspects - united states

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culturally responsive instruction; student engagement; brain-based teaching; achievement gap

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educational equalization - united states

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teaching - social aspects - united states

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teaching of students with english as a second language (tesol)

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teaching of students with english as a second language (tesol)

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students

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Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students [Hammond, Zaretta L.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Culturally Responsive Teaching and The Brain: Promoting Authentic Engagement and Rigor Among Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students

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A Collection of Articles for Black Lives Matter at School Week of Action 2019.pdf

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As nationwide protests against police brutality continue, teachers in their virtual classrooms are once again searching for ways to help their students process the killings of black people in police custody in the United States.

Speaking with Education Week on Monday, teachers said that they and their colleagues have a responsibility to address these protests, which erupted when George Floyd, an unarmed black man, died after a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes.

"Teachers cannot be silent during this time," said Patrick Harris, a 6th and 7th grade English and social studies teacher at the Detroit Achievement Academy. "Teachers have to take a stand. Students are absorbing this, [and] they're going to ask themselves later on in life or even now, 'What was my teacher doing during this time?'"

Talking with students about these events, as they experience them, is top priority right now, said Abdul Wright, who teaches 8th grade language arts in North Minneapolis. "I have to find a way to make meaning of this in a way that creates a better society for them," he said.

Some teachers whose classes have already ended for the school year are reaching back out to students, particularly their black students, giving them space to talk about their emotions and ask questions.

Other teachers in schools still in session are seeking materials and resources to teach about this moment, such aslesson plans that engage students in conversations about racism, policing, and protest.

On Monday, Chicago Public Schools released "Say Their Names," a collection of lessons and materials designed "to help foster productive conversations about race and civil disobedience."

The toolkit links to other organizations' resources on supporting black students' mental and emotional health, discussing the Black Lives Matter movement, and talking about anti-black racism with non-black students. And it encourages teachers to educate themselves on racism in the U.S. before broaching these topics with students.

In California, theLos Angeles Unified School District posted a collection of resources for teachers, for talking about race with children and addressing trauma. The superintendent of education in the state, Tony Thurmond, said the California Department of Education will also be releasing online materials and trainings.

For teachers looking for more classroom resources-for themselves and their students-Education Week has compiled the following list:

Resources about George Floyd's death and the current protests:

The Anti-Defamation League has created a short lesson on Floyd's death and police killings of black people, which includes a reading, discussion questions, and action steps for students aged 11 and up.

Resources for talking about race, racism, and Black Lives Matter:

In addition to addressing race and racism in lesson plans, experts and advocates have urged teachers to build a diverse classroom library with protagonists who look like their students.

The group Embrace Race compiled a list of 31 children's books that address race, racism, and activism. And the nonprofit Teaching for Change put together a list of social justice books for teens.

Joe Truss, the principal of Visitacion Middle School in San Francisco Unified and a consultant on racial equity in schools, has curated a list of books for teachers who want to engage in anti-racist work.

Starting these classroom conversations can be uncomfortable and challenging. But for black teachers, talking about police brutality and anti-black racism can be particularly emotionally draining. The Practice Freedom Project, founded by Atlanta educator Tamara Pearson, is hosting virtual meditations and reflections for black educators.

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15 Classroom Resources for Discussing Racism, Policing, and Protest

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As nationwide protests against police brutality continue, teachers in their virtual classrooms are once again searching for ways to help their students process the killings of black people in police custody in the United States.

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Teaching Tolerance provides free resources to educators-teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners-who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use our materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants.

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THIS TOOLKIT EMERGED OUT OF DISCUSSIONS THAT BEGAN IN BOSTON IN MARCH 2002. Members of Critical Resistance (CR) and partner organizations gathered for a roundtable discussion on abolitionist organizing strategies. One of the things that we agreed we needed to strengthen our work was a set of ideas, exercises, and resources to share with the people we organize with that would explain the idea of abolishing the prison industrial complex (PIC) and would help us take concrete steps toward that goal.

The kit is not a step-by-step guide to PIC abolition. It is a kit designed primarily for U.S.-based community organizers already working toward abolition and our allies. However, we hope it will be useful even for people who may not have thought much about abolition or who feel unsure about how useful it is as a goal...

...this toolkit is not an ending point, but a place to start thinking about these issues. It is a living document that you should add to continually as you discover more ideas and materials that help you take concrete steps toward PIC abolition. If you come across an exercise that you think gets to the heart of the issue, send it our way. If you hear about a great group working to end the PIC, let us know. If you develop pamphlets or talking points or keywords that make doing this work easier, give us a call. We need as many tools as we can get to fight this fight...

.- CR ABOLITION TOOLKIT WORKGROUP, 2004
Part 1: ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS, INTRODUCTION, TABLE OF CONTENTS Part 2: INFORMATION SHEETS Part 3: INFORMATION SHEETS cont., WHY DO WE DO THIS? HOW DO WE DO THIS?, CONFRONTING "CRIME," CONFRONTING HARM Part 4: COMMON SENSE, FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS, TOOLS FOR FRAMING ABOLITIONIST ARGUMENTS IN TERMS OF WHAT WE WANT Part 5: WORDS MATTER: THOUGHTS ON LANGUAGE AND ABOLITION, SHRINKING THE SYSTEM Part 6: ABOLITIONIST STEPS, ALTERNATIVE PRACTICES, SEVEN EASY STEPS: IDEAS & QUESTIONS FOR EVERYDAY ABOLITIONIST ORGANZING Part 7: KEYWORDS Part 8: KEYWORDS cont., RESOURCE DIRECTORY Part 9: BIBLIOGRAPHY, APPENDIX Part 10: APPENDIX cont.

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THIS TOOLKIT EMERGED OUT OF DISCUSSIONS THAT BEGAN IN BOSTON IN MARCH 2002. Members of Critical Resistance (CR) and partner organizations gathered for a roundtable discussion on abolitionist organizing strategies.

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THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX

The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems.

Through its reach and impact, the PIC helps and maintains the authority of people who get their power through racial, economic and other privileges. There are many ways this power is collected and maintained through the PIC, including creating mass media images that keep alive stereotypes of people of color, poor people, queer people, immigrants, youth, and other oppressed communities as criminal, delinquent, or deviant. This power is also maintained by earning huge profits for private companies that deal with prisons and police forces; helping earn political gains for "tough on crime" politicians; increasing the influence of prison guard and police unions; and eliminating social and political dissent by oppressed communities that make demands for self-determination and reorganization of power in the US.

ABOLITION

PIC abolition is a political vision with the goal of eliminating imprisonment, policing, and surveillance and creating lasting alternatives to punishment and imprisonment.

From where we are now, sometimes we can't really imagine what abolition is going to look like. Abolition isn't just about getting rid of buildings full of cages. It's also about undoing the society we live in because the PIC both feeds on and maintains oppression and inequalities through punishment, violence, and controls millions of people. Because the PIC is not an isolated system, abolition is a broad strategy. An abolitionist vision means that we must build models today that can represent how we want to live in the future. It means developing practical strategies for taking small steps that move us toward making our dreams real and that lead us all to believe that things really could be different. It means living this vision in our daily lives.
Abolition is both a practical organizing tool and a long-term goal.

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THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX The prison industrial complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems. Through its reach and impact, the PIC

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Involvement of teachers of color in all aspects of the organization is crucial. Democratic decision-making processes need to be upheld, ensuring the meaningful participation of every member in systems and structures. Shared accountability for our actions as individuals and as an organization. Learning and collective action is a partnership between the students, teachers, parents, and...

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The Atlantic covers news, politics, culture, technology, health, and more, through its articles, podcasts, videos, and flagship magazine.

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The Bleak Truth Behind My 'Inspiring' Path From Oakland to Yale

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When I decided to attend Yale five years ago, people held me up as an example of a black student who "beat the odds." I wish they were more curious about why my brother wound up in prison instead.

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Shawn Ginwright Ph.D.
From time to time, researchers, policy makers, philanthropy and practitioners all join together in a coordinated response to address the most pressing issues facing America's youth. I've been involved with this process for long enough to have participated in each of these roles. I recall during the early 1990s experts promoted the term "resiliency," which is the capacity to adapt, navigate and bounce back from adverse and challenging life experiences. Researchers and practitioners alike clamored over strategies to build more resilient youth.

In the early 2000's the term "youth development" gained currency and had a significant influence on youth development programs, and probably more importantly how we viewed young people. Youth development offered an important shift in focus from viewing youth as problems to be solved to community assets who simply required supports and opportunities for healthy development. Since that time, a range of approaches have influenced how we think about young people, and consequently our programmatic strategies. I have, for the most part, attempted to nudge and cajole each of these approaches to consider the unique ways in which race, identity and social marginalization influence the development of youth of color.

More recently, practitioners and policy stakeholders have recognized the impact of trauma on learning, and healthy development. In efforts to support young people who experience trauma, the term "trauma-informed care" has gained traction among schools, juvenile justice departments, mental health programs and youth development agencies around the country. Trauma informed care broadly refers to a set of principles that guide and direct how we view the impact of severe harm on young people's mental, physical, and emotional health. Trauma informed care encourages support and treatment to the whole person, rather than focusing on only treating individual symptoms or specific behaviors.

Trauma-informed care has become an important approach in schools and agencies that serve young people who have been exposed to trauma, and here's why. Some school leaders believe that the best way to address disruptive classroom behavior is through harsh discipline. These schools believe that discipline alone is sufficient to modify undesired classroom behavior, but research shows that school suspensions may further harm students who have been exposed to a traumatic event or experience (Bottiani et al., 2017). Rather than using discipline, a school that uses a trauma informed approach might offer therapy, or counseling to support the restoration of that student's well-being. The assumption is that the disruptive behavior is the symptom of a deeper harm, rather than willful defiance, or disrespect.

While trauma-informed care offers an important lens to support young people who have been harmed and emotionally injured, it also has its limitations. I first became aware of the limitations of the term "trauma-informed care" during a healing circle I was leading with a group of African American young men. All of them had experienced some form of trauma ranging from sexual abuse, violence, homelessness, abandonment or all of the above. During one of our sessions, I explained the impact of stress and trauma on brain development and how trauma can influence emotional health. As I was explaining, one of the young men in the group named Marcus abruptly stopped me and said, "I am more than what happened to me, I'm not just my trauma". I was puzzled at first, but it didn't take me long to really contemplate what he was saying.

The term "trauma informed care" didn't encompass the totality of his experience and focused only on his harm, injury and trauma. For Marcus, the term "trauma informed care" was akin to saying, you are the worst thing that ever happened to you. For me, I realized the term slipped into the murky water of deficit based, rather than asset driven strategies to support young people who have been harmed. Without careful consideration of the terms we use, we can create blind spots in our efforts to support young people.

While the term trauma informed care is important, it is incomplete. First, trauma informed care correctly highlights the specific needs for individual young people who have exposure to trauma. However, current formulations of trauma informed care presumes that the trauma is an individual experience, rather than a collective one. To illustrate this point, researchers have shown that children in high violence neighborhoods all display behavioral and psychological elements of trauma (Sinha & Rosenberg 2013). Similarly, populations that disproportionately suffer from disasters like Hurricane Katrina share a common experience that if viewed individually simply fails to capture how collective harm requires a different approach than an individual one.

Second, trauma-informed care requires that we treat trauma in people but provides very little insight into how we might address the root causes of trauma in neighborhoods, families, and schools. If trauma is collectively experienced, this means that we also have to consider the environmental context that caused the harm in the first place. By only treating the individual we only address part of the equation leaving the toxic systems, policies and practices neatly intact.

Third, the term trauma-informed care runs the risk of focusing on the treatment of pathology (trauma), rather than fostering the possibility (well-being). This is not an indictment on well-meaning therapists and social workers many of whom may have been trained in theories and techniques designed to simply reduce negative emotions and behavior (Seligman 2011). However, just like the absence of disease doesn't constitute health, nor the absence of violence constitute peace, the reduction pathology (anxiety, anger, fear, sadness, distrust, triggers) doesn't constitute well-being (hope, happiness, imagination, aspirations, trust). Everyone wants to be happy, not just have less misery. The emerging field of positive psychology offers insight into the limits of only "treating" symptoms and focuses on enhancing the conditions that contribute to well-being. Without more careful consideration, trauma informed approaches sometimes slip into rigid medical models of care that are steeped in treating the symptoms, rather than strengthening the roots of well-being.

What is needed is an approach that allows practitioners to approach trauma with a fresh lens that promotes a holistic view of healing from traumatic experiences and environments. One approach is called healing-centered, as opposed to trauma-informed. A healing centered approach is holistic involving culture, spirituality, civic action and collective healing. A healing-centered approach views trauma not simply as an individual isolated experience, but rather highlights the ways in which trauma and healing are experienced collectively. The term healing-centered engagement expands how we think about responses to trauma and offers more holistic approach to fostering well-being.

A shift from trauma informed care to healing centered engagement (HCE) is more than a semantic play with words, but rather a tectonic shift in how we view trauma, its causes and its intervention. HCE is strength based, advances a collective view of healing, and re-centers culture as a central feature in well-being. Researchers have pointed out the ways in which patients have redefined the terms used to describe their illnesses in ways that affirmed, humanized and dignified their condition. For example, in the early 1990s AIDS activists challenged the term "gay-related immune deficiency" because the term stigmatized gay men and failed to adequately capture the medical accuracy of the condition. In a similar way, the young men I worked with offered me a way to reframe trauma with language that humanized them, and holistically captured their life experiences.

A healing centered approach to addressing trauma requires a different question that moves beyond "what happened to you" to "what's right with you" and views those exposed to trauma as agents in the creation of their own well-being rather than victims of traumatic events. Healing centered engagement is akin to the South African term "Ubuntu" meaning that humanness is found through our interdependence, collective engagement and service to others. Additionally, healing centered engagement offers an asset driven approach aimed at the holistic restoration of young peoples' well-being. The healing centered approach comes from the idea that people are not harmed in a vacuum, and well-being comes from participating in transforming the root causes of the harm within institutions. Healing centered engagement also advances the move to "strengths-based' care and away from the deficit based mental health models that drives therapeutic interventions. There are four key elements of healing centered engagement that may at times overlap with current trauma informed practices but offers several key distinctions.

Communities, and individuals who experience trauma are agents in restoring their own well-being. This subtle shift suggests that healing from trauma is found in an awareness and actions that address the conditions that created the trauma in the first place. Researchers have found that well-being is a function of the control and power young people have in their schools and communities (Morsillo & Prilleltensky 2007; Prilleltensky & Prilleltensky 2006). These studies focus on concepts such as such as liberation, emancipation, oppression, and social justice among activist groups and suggests that building an awareness of justice and inequality, combined with social action such as protests, community organizing, and/or school walk-outs contribute to overall wellbeing, hopefulness, and optimism (Potts 2003; Prilleltensky 2003, 2008). This means that healing centered engagement views trauma and well-being as function of the environments where people live, work and play. When people advocate for policies and opportunities that address causes of trauma, such as lack of access to mental health, these activities contribute to a sense of purpose, power and control over life situations. All of these are ingredients necessary to restore well-being and healing.

The pathway to restoring well-being among young people who experience trauma can be found in culture and identity. Healing centered engagement uses culture as a way to ground young people in a solid sense of meaning, self-perception, and purpose. This process highlights the intersectional nature of identity and highlights the ways in which culture offers a shared experience, community and sense of belonging. Healing is experienced collectively, and is shaped by shared identity such as race, gender, or sexual orientation. Healing centered engagement is the result of building a healthy identity, and a sense of belonging. For youth of color, these forms of healing can be rooted in culture and serves as an anchor to connect young people to a shared racial and ethnic identity that is both historical grounded and contemporarily relevant. Healing centered engagement embraces a holistic view of well-being that includes spiritual domains of health. This goes beyond viewing healing only from the lens of mental health, and incorporates culturally grounded rituals, and activities to restore well-being (Martinez 2001). Some examples of healing centered engagement can be found in healing circles rooted in indigenous culture where young people share their stories about healing and learn about their connection to their ancestors and traditions, or drumming circles rooted in African cultural principles.

Healing centered engagement offers an important departure from solely viewing young people through the lens of harm and focuses on asset driven strategies that highlight possibilities for well-being. An asset driven strategy acknowledges that young people are much more than the worst thing that happened to them, and builds upon their experiences, knowledge, skills and curiosity as positive traits to be enhanced. While it is important to acknowledge trauma and its influence on young people's mental health, healing centered strategies move one step beyond by focusing on what we want to achieve, rather than merely treating emotional and behavioral symptoms of trauma. This is a salutogenic approach focusing on how to foster and sustain well-being. Based in positive psychology, healing centered engagement is based in collective strengths and possibility which offers a departure from conventional psychopathology which focuses on clinical treatment of illness.

Adult providers need healing too! Healing centered engagement requires that we consider how to support adult providers in sustaining their own healing and well-being. We cannot presume that adulthood is a final, "trauma-free" destination. Much of our training and practice is directed at young peoples' healing but rarely focuses on the healing that is required of adults to be an effective youth practitioner. Healing is an ongoing process that we all need, not just young people who experience trauma. The well-being of the adult youth worker is also a critical factor in supporting young peoples' well-being. While we are learning more about the causes and effects of secondary on adults, we know very little about the systems of support required to restore and sustain well-being for adults. Healing centered engagement has an explicit focus on restoring, and sustaining the adults who attempt to heal youth- a healing the healers approach. Policy stakeholders should consider how to build a systems that support adult youth worker's well-being. I have supported organizations in creating structures like sabbaticals for employees or creating incentives like continuing education units for deeper learning about well-being and healing.

Marcus's comments during our healing circle "I am more than what happened to me" led me to question our approach to trauma. What blind spots do we have in our approaches to supporting young people who experience trauma? How might the concepts which are enshrined in our language limit rather than create opportunities for healing? What approaches might offer "disruptive" techniques that saturate young people with opportunities for healing and well-being?

The fields of positive psychology and community psychology offers important insight into how policy makers, and youth development stakeholders can consider a range of healing centered options for young people. Shifting from trauma informed care or treatment to healing centered engagement requires youth development stakeholders to expand from a treatment-based model, which views trauma and harm as an isolated experience, to an engagement model which supports collective well-being. Here are a few notes to consider in building healing centered engagement.

Healing centered engagement begins by building empathy with young people who experience trauma. This process takes time, is an ongoing process and sometimes may feel like taking two steps forward, and three steps back. However, building empathy is critical to healing centered engagement. To create this empathy, I encourage adult staff to share their story first, and take an emotional risk by being more vulnerable, honest, and open to young people. This process creates an empathy exchange between the adult, and the young people which is the foundation for healing centered engagement (Payne 2013). This process also strengthens emotional literacy which allows youth to discuss the complexity of their feelings. Fostering empathy allows for young people to feel safe sharing their experiences and emotions. The process ultimately restores their sense of well-being because they have the power name and respond to their emotional states.

An important ingredient in healing centered engagement is the ability to acknowledge the harm and injury, but not be defined by it. Perhaps one of the greatest tools available to us is the ability to see beyond the condition, event or situation that caused the trauma in the first place. Research shows that the ability to dream and imagine is an important factor in fostering hopefulness, and optimism which both of which contributes to overall well-being (Snyder et al. 2003). Daily survival and ongoing crisis management in young people's lives can make it difficult for them to see beyond the present.

The greatest casualty of trauma is not only depression and emotional scares, but also the loss of the ability to dream and imagine another way of living. Howard Thurman pointed this out in his eloquent persistence that dreams matter. He commented, "As long as a man [woman] has a dream, he [she] cannot lose the significance of living" (p. 304). By creating activities and opportunities for young people to play, reimagine, design and envision their lives this process strengthens their future goal orientation (Snyder et al. 2003). These are practices of possibility that encourage young people to envision what they want to become, and who they want to be.

Healing and well-being are fundamentally political not clinical. This means that we have to consider the ways in which the policies and practice and political decisions harm young people. Healing in this context also means that young people develop an analysis of these practices and policies that facilitated the trauma in the first place. Without an analysis of these issues, young people often internalize, and blame themselves for lack of confidence. Critical reflection provides a lens by which to filter, examine, and consider analytical and spiritual responses to trauma. By spiritual, I mean the ability to draw upon the power of culture, rituals and faith in order to consistently act from a place of humility, and love. These are not cognitive processes, but rather ethical, moral and emotional aspects of healing centered engagement.

The other key component, is taking loving action, by collectively responding to political decisions and practices that can exacerbate trauma. By taking action, (e.g. school walkouts, organizing peace march, or promoting access to healthy foods) it builds a sense of power and control over their lives. Research has demonstrated that building this sense of power and control among traumatized groups is perhaps one of the most significant features in restoring holistic well-being.

I ran into Marcus at a street fair in Oakland not long ago. He was excited to see me and wanted to share with me that he was in a new relationship so he introduced me to his girlfriend. "This is my friend Michelle"! He introduced her with a sense of pride, and accomplishment. He also shared with me that he had enrolled in a program that was training him to become a medic. As we chatted for a while in the warm sun, dodging children, and fast walking parents, he leaned toward me and whispered, "yeah Dr. G, I'm not entirely healed, but I'm hopeful". I smiled, gave him a "brotha hug" and we departed ways.

I suppose, that if we had more time to chat he would have explained that healing is a process that we navigate for a lifetime. He might have shared with me that the future of his healing journey had just begun. Seeing him again, holding hands, sipping a soda with his new girlfriend was a powerful reminder, that he was so much more than the trauma he had experienced. As practitioners, researchers and policy stakeholders we need to listen and learn from young people who have insights that can advance how we think about trauma and healing. Shifting to healing centered engagement offered new questions, and strategies about how to support young people who experience trauma. Healing centered engagement is just a step toward a more holistic, and humanistic framework to support young people who have been harmed. Such an approach encourages us to think and act more boldly about how to restore young people and create places where they can truly flourish.

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The Future of Healing: Shifting From Trauma Informed Care to Healing Centered Engagement

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From time to time, researchers, policy makers, philanthropy and practitioners all join together in a coordinated response to address the most pressing issues facing America's youth. I've been...

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Sociopolitical Systems

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The term sociopolitical system refers to systems composed of both social elements and political elements and the interaction between them. ¹ In asking the question where does governance come from or on what do we base governance on? The answer is sociocultural institutions. Political systems sit on top of and are dependent upon their underlying social system - in that political institutions emerge from and are determinant of the actions and relations between agents. ² The idea of sociopolitical systems is explicitly designed to focus one's attention on the interaction between the social system and political system and processes that involve elements of both. Sociopolitical analysis helps us to identify and trace processes that span both the social system and the political system. Such processes can not be fully interpreted by simply focusing on their manifestation within the political realm, in that they have their origins within more fundamental social processes - from which they can not be fully separated. In such cases, it is of value to look at the whole of the social and the political realm as a single organization so as to identify and trace these interactions and processes. One such example would be political movements. ³ These processes of change often originate in informal social groups that over time galvanize into political movements. In understanding such issues as racism, inequality or populism it is required to look not just at the political system itself, but also at cultural factors and social factors within the broader community. Sufficed to say, studying politics and power as closed systems yields only limited results, to understand more fundamental and complex phenomena it is important to recognize political systems as open systems embedded within a broader social system.

Social Systems

Social systems are a type of system composed of individual people and the relations between them through which they are interdependent within the whole organization. Unlike a simple set of people or a group of people, where the members may be independent, the essence of social systems is the interdependence between members.A social agent is an abstract representation of an individual or organization that has some degree of autonomy in their capacity to make choices and to act independently on those choices. In order to make choices agents must have some representation of their environment and some set of rules under which to make those choices, we can call this a schema, conceptual system, a culture or worldview. A schema gives the agent the means for classifying and interpreting information from their environment, they have some logic under which to make decisions and they have some form of value system that defines what are better or worse states, they then make decisions and take actions to effect their state and that of their environment towards their desired ends.Thus an agent is not just a decision maker it is also an actor. To be an agent the individual or organization must have means for effecting its environment in some way. A stone is not an agent but a monkey is because it has the use of its body to move things in its environment. All pre-social must have influence over their environment in someway. They are able to sense information, make decisions based upon their set of rules and take action to achieve their desired state. This combination of elements that gives an entity agency may be called a cybernetic system or a regulatory system, in that agents use these elements of communication and action self-interested regulate themselves and their environment according to their value system.Social systems exist whenever there is more than one social actor and their actions are interdependent in someway. In the course of pursuing their interests and activities agents inevitably interact and in that interaction, they become in someway interdependent, what happens to one affects what happens to another and vice versa. These relations of interdependence can be defined as positive or negative depending on how the goal attainment of the individuals relate to each other.When the goal achievement or benefit of one agent is negatively correlated with another this is called negative interdependence. Negative interdependence is when one agent can only achieve their desired end by another failing to, i.e. there is a negative correlation between their states. Positive interdependence is when there is a positive correlation of some kind between the welfare of each agent in the relation; meaning what happens to one also happens to another, all win or lose together. ⁴ This interdependence means what one does affects another and the whole organization. Social systems are composed of agents, the interdependent relations between them and the organizational structures that emerge out of their interaction, what we can call institutions that exist on various levels.
5 ⁶ ⁶ These types of interdependence are very fundamental to the dynamics of social systems and describe much of how agents relate to each other. They can be seen to strongly affect the dynamics of cooperation and competition and the resulting overall social system that emerges.

Institutions

Recurring patterns of interaction between members form what are called social institutions. A social institution is a specific pattern of relations between members of a society.Institutions - like schools, religions, armies, sports clubs, charities, businesses, governments - are made of individual members but in order for them to operate successfully, they have to organize and coordinate their members within overall processes through which they perform functions.In order to have institutions - which are a type of social agent - individual actors have to give over their agency to the organization, that means giving over their own decisions and actions to the organization for it to act as an integrated whole. Institutions are the aggregation of the agency given over by their members. In their combined and synchronized activity, the organization as a whole can perform functions and processes that none of its parts can - in such a way we get the emergence of new features, processes, and functions on different levels within the social system. Individual social actors create the institutional structures but then these institutional structures feedback to constrain the members towards the aims and motives of the whole organization. For example, in order to enable the process of learning within a classroom students must be relatively quiet and attentive during a class. In such a way when the students enter the class they give over some of their agency. They bind themselves into an agreement that is required for the collective process of the educational institution to take place effectively and the institution will regulate the members through various forms to ensure they conform to its ends. Thus emerges a complex dynamic between the macro-level institutional structures, rules and norms and the individual's agency, motives and interests - which can be seen to encompass much of what we study in political and social science. ⁷ In their organized and persistent set of relations, they provide order to a social system but also serve important social functions. Thus institutions are structures or mechanisms of social order and cooperation governing the behavior of a set of individuals within a given community. They can also be understood as a persistent constellation of status, roles, values, and norms that respond in some way to societal needs. ⁸ Thus they require the individual to conform to the specified roles, norms and procedures that enable the institution to function effectively. This set of rules that members are required to follow may be formal or informal; depending on the type of organization and how important it is to its overall workings. ⁹

Political Systems

Political systems are a type of social institution, like all social institutions they are a kind of social agent; they are an organization that makes decisions and takes actions based upon those decisions. More specifically political systems are a type of social institution that makes decisions and acts for the public; where public means, relating to or affecting a population or a community as a whole. Thus politics emerges naturally out of the very defining characteristic of social groups, that is to say, their interdependency. Wherever we have interdependence between members what one does affects the other and collective decision making and action is required to regulate the combined organization. We can then see how this idea of interdependence feeds through to the definition of politics; where politics is the process of collective decision-making and implementation. The key word being collective, which is captured in the term public. Politics is the process of collective decision-making and implementation.
Although we formalize political processes into abstract rules and institutions, in its essence politics is a very organic part of social systems. To have a political system, we must have more than one person and they have to be interdependent or autonomous in some way. That is to say, there must be the potential for their ideas and actions to diverge in some way. In such a case we have a question about how the combined organization will operate, whose opinion will be included in making decisions? How will the process of reaching a combined conclusion be conducted? How will it be implemented and enforced? Answers to these questions will describe the political process of collective decision making and implementation. Politics and political systems are social institutions that perform a process of management, they manage the public realm, what is also called governance. The word governance derives, ultimately, from the Greek verb κυβερνάω [kubernáo] meaning to steer, like a person steering a boat. Public governance is enacted through a regulatory system composed of a number of different institutions, such as lawmakers, public administration, law enforcement, etc.

Types of Political Systems

A primary question in the analysis of political systems is to ask on what is the authority or legitimacy of the political system based? On what basis does a person come to have influence over the collective decision-making process? On what should we base whether someone has a greater or lesser influence? The simplest answer to this is force. That whoever has the strongest will or can exert the greatest force will be able to overpower the others and thus exert their will over the combined organization. This dynamic was most clearly describe by the philosopher G. W. F Hegel in his book The Phenomenology of Spirit where he noted that when two conscious beings, who believe themselves to be absolutely free and unrestrained, encounter each other there is a struggle for recognition, leading to the "master-slave dialectic", where one member ultimately has to submit to the other and become the lesser party (constrained) in the combined agency that is guided by the master who has a greater say in the organization. A political system based upon the use of force to determine political decisions and actions leads to an authoritarian political system. The continuous struggle over power through force is a highly costly activity - as illustrated by the fact that most animals do not directly fight but use various displays of power as a proxy. Thus in most political systems, the use of force is not explicit or manifest, it is mediated and diffused in many different forms; propaganda, intimidation, displays of power, manipulation of various kind etc. In a regime based on force, power is a central component of the political system, in that power is the capacity to get others to do things against their will.Most political systems throughout civilized history have been authoritarian in nature. Originally, the state was a military institution. For many centuries, it was just a territory ruled by a leader such as a king who was surrounded by a small elite group of warriors and court officials; essentially a rule by force over a larger mass of people. Slowly, however, the people gained political representation for none can really be said to be a member of the State without the right of having a voice in the direction of policy making. 11 To effectively exercise power authoritarian systems favor or enforce strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom. Authoritarian systems emphasize structure over function within the institution; the primary aim is to maintain power and the mechanisms of control. ¹²

Rational Institutions

Whereas authoritarian political institutions define the interest of one or a limited number of actors influencing the overall decision-making process and ensuring this position through forceful structures of obedience, political institutions may also be managed according to their functionality within the broader society; their results for the whole society can be a basis for their organization. That is to say instead of force being the basis for participation in decision making, an objective set of rules that apply to all and are design to achieve optimal outcomes for all can provide a legitimate basis for governance. Such rules are derived from the application of reason within a process of decision making based on the discourse between different opinions where the outcome is measured according to its value to the whole of society.Entities that act according to reason or are designed according to reason are called rational. Rational means to subsume particulars under general rules based on reason.For us modern people it seems apparent that order comes from reason whether this is the order to our universe that we have derived through scientific inquiry or the rational foundations our institutions. For premodern societies, the order to the world is something that is given and reason has little role to play, the order is fixed and given by the social and cultural elite.Modernity has seen a switch from political organizations based on one's status within a community to contract based relations. The new sociologists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries recognized that contemporary society was novel. Traditional society related individuals through statuses or roles in local and parts were highly similar in function. Modern society increasingly related individuals through explicit legislation governing individual contracts, hence, voluntary associations, in which society is characterized by a high degree of division of labor.
Such political systems instead of being based upon the subjective interest of a few are based on objective reasons given, that are designed to be in the interests of all. Reason is the capacity to form ideas and opinions based upon a coherent and consistent objective set of logical rules which accord with empirical data. It is a rule that one must follow to have an objective reason for one's actions. The categorical imperative is an example of a rational moral system. Simply stated it is the rule that one should only do what one would wish to become a universal rule. It is subjecting one's actions to following an objective rule that is in the interests of everyone instead of the interests of any specific subjective group or individual, thus it is a rational moral code. ¹³ In the case of political institutions, this means to subsume the specific particularities of any group under general rules defined by all, or rules designed to be in the interest of all. In order to do this, it must be that all are equal before the political institutions which then determine eventualities based upon a set of rules derived from reasoned based discourse.
Taken in the broader context of human civilized history this rise of reason in the modern era is truly radical, in that it has required us to discard other sources of social ranking. To make all equal before reason. For most people that lived before the modern era the idea that people are equal and that reasons should determine things would make little sense to them. ¹⁴ ¹⁵

Social Contract

The modern era has witnessed a massive rise of rational institutions as they have become the dominant institutional technology of modern societies around the world. Richard Price the English philosopher and author in talking about the ongoing French Revolution of his time summed this up when he said, "the French are rightly replacing kings with laws and priests with reason and conscious." From Plato through to the medievals the idea that a just society could be constructed without virtuous rulers was incomprehensible - for the ancients, the ethics of individuals could not be separated from the conduct of politics.The rise of rational institutions is most clearly seen in the formation of the social contract theory of the state, which rejects the idea that religion or tradition should determine politics. Social contract theory starts with the idea of humans in a state of nature where all are equal - which is an explicit rejection of many traditional social systems engendering innate inequalities, such as the aristocratic system or the caste system.Because the state of nature is seen to be a war of all against all - as Thomas Hobbes posited - out of entirely rational self-interest each individual will come to the conclusion that if they can leave this condition they should due for purely self-interested reasons.Most justifications for modern political communities is that order comes from the structures that self-interested citizens freely impose on themselves and is constructed out of deliberative reasoning and discourse by the people; what we call democracy. ¹⁶ From this perspective, political systems had to be ruled by the virtuous and wise to be successful. The modern era took a radical departure from this, recognizing that political society will often have to continue without moral virtue and still find a way to be just and stable without it. That stable outcome and order could emerge from the interaction of purely self-interested individuals. Political theory in the modern era became increasingly based around the idea of the rational self-interested individual and how to develop systems for managing politics based upon reason with an aim to provide the maximum benefit to all. Governance in the modern era came to be understood in terms of social contracts to serve rational self-interested individuals. ¹⁷ Thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and others formulated a basis for public authority as a social contract among rational self-interested individuals for the sake of personal security and advancement. Modern political philosophy searched for the foundation to political organization and legitimacy in the individual's rights and self-interested reasoning. The test of a political system came to be formulated as whether rational self-interested people would choose it. ¹⁷ Power and authority belonged to law and offices, not to people and only as long as they perform their functions while tradition and religion were seen to have no place in determining political organization - which are very radical ideas given the existing status quo for most of human civilization.
Social contract theories then go on to construct a foundation for government based on the assumption that people are rational beings. The idea of social contract theory is that a political system is just if it would be chosen by rational self-interested individuals in a pre-social state of equality; the so-called "state of nature". ¹⁸ Everyone will lay down their weapons and cooperate, each allowing others an equal amount of freedom, as long as this works the individual will stay true to the agreement and that is the social contract. But in order to solidify this construct, it is necessary to have some overall third party organization to enforce it and make all obey or else it is of little value. Thus power must be transferred to the sovereign to allow it to enforce this contract. Thus free pre-social individuals out of their rational self-interest come to give up some of their freedom to a political body for the sake of security. The government then only has those powers and rights that the members have given up in the contract. This is individualistic in that it posits rights on the individual instead of the whole, the individuals give their rights to the whole. ¹⁸ Within this political paradigm, the government is seen to be a fiduciary power to act for certain ends of the community. A fiduciary is a trustee, one who holds money in trust for another. Governments are rational instruments for the public good and this limits government power. Governments only have the powers given up to them in the social contract and must use them for the common good. Governments must always obey their constitutions and governments have many legal and technical limitations on their actions. ¹⁸

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Sociopolitical Systems The term sociopolitical system refers to systems composed of both social elements and political elements and the interaction between them.1 In asking the question where does governance come from or on what do we base governance on? The answer is sociocultural institutions. Political systems sit on

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Your survival has never depended on your knowledge of white culture. In fact, it's required your ignorance.

White People: I Don't Want You To Understand Me Better, I Want You To Understand Yourselves

H i white person in my DMs, let me respond here in the hopes that I never have to again.

Almost every day I get a message like yours from a random white person - on Facebook, Twitter, or email - offering to provide me...

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White People: I Want You To Understand Yourselves Better

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
White People: I Don't Want You To Understand Me Better, I Want You To Understand Yourselves H i white person in my DMs, let me respond here in the hopes that I never have to again. Almost every day I get a message like yours from a random white person - on Facebook, Twitter, or email - offering to provide me...