“We will never let the pain have the last word. We’re bigger than the things that happened to us and held us back. Our parents had a bigger vision… We will win this century in the name of liberty and justice for all!”
-Van Jones
Reporting in from Columbus, Ohio, where we spent Thursday helping to kick off the Transforming Race 2012 Conference, hosted by the Kirwan Institute. This year’s theme is “Visions of Change,” and the tone was set by this evening’s keynote from Van Jones. His call to was to embrace a “deeper patriotism” where “diversity is the solution to pretty much every problem we face in the new century.”
Melinda (pictured above on the left), Cynthia (right), and I (middle) made our first conference contribution by way of yesterday afternoon’s session on “Facilitation Skills for Racial Justice Work,” a fuller experience of which is available in our upcoming 2 day workshop in Boston in early May, Fundamentals of Facilitation for Racial Justice Work. Follow more of the discussion today and tomorrow via Twitter through hashtag #TR2012 or #TransformingRace.
“ What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the basic structure of our society than with the language we use to justify it. In the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race, explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt. So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against African Americans.”
“We are the children of Martin and Malcolm. Black, white, brown, yellow. Our birthright is to be creators of history. Our right, our duty is to shape the world with a new dream… We have to begin to thinking of ourselves, we are the ones who are going to shape the world with a new dream. The old American Dream was based so much on exploitation of the earth and of other peoples. So our revolution can’t be the way that we thought of revolution to acquire more things; our revolution has to be one that grows our souls.”
|Photo by cambodia4kids.org|http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/3987334968|
A year ago I blogged about the critical role of convening in collaborative multi-stakeholder change work, particularly as it plays out through a funder. Having been in Michigan last week working with a group of diverse foundations in a customized Facilitative Leadership session, I have additional thoughts to offer stemming from a very productive and provocative conversation about how to address and manage power dynamics when one attempts to initiate a partnership or collaborative effort and one is holding the purse strings or a significant portion thereof. Read More
“In the 1960s all hell broke loose… The media called it a “riot.” The black community called it a revolution… Rebellion was an explosion of anger. Revolution was a tremendous leap forward, a tremendous evolution of consciousness and responsibility; a whole new way of thinking…We have the opportunity to change our thinking and our philosophy by understanding what is really happening; what time it is on the clock of the world.”
Last week I blogged from San Diego while co-delivering Engage for Results with my colleague Melinda Weekes to a group of grantmakers in partnership with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations. This session focused on engagement strategies to help foundations be more effective and accountable as funders and providers of other important resources to their grantees, surrounding communities, and other funders. The end of our first day focused on power as an ever-present dynamic, not just in the foundation-grantee dynamic, but also in a number of other dimensions of difference within and beyond organizational walls. Read More
This is the 26th official celebration of the national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I remember the struggle to establish the holiday and wonder what Dr. King himself might think of what it has become.
We’ve been having a good conversation at IISC about ways to challenge and re-frame race discourse in ways that are truthful, loving, compelling, welcoming and so much more. Last week, I posted a video from Jay Smooth about shifting from a discussion about “being” to a discussion about “doing.” Let’s keep the conversation going.
Video blogger and hip-hop radio host Jay Smooth makes an eloquent case for understanding that being good does not require us to be perfect, and that learning to live with our imperfections is a way forward in contemporary race discourse. I’d share a few of his comments, hoping this will inspire you to find the time to listen to the whole talk.
“Are you saying that I am racist? How can you say that. I am a good person! Why would you say I am a racist?”
And you try to respond “I’m talking about a particular thing you said.”
“No, I am not a racist.”
And what started out as a “what you said” conversation turns into a “what you are conversation,” which is a dead end that produces nothing but mutual frustration and you never end up seeing eye to eye or finding any common ground…
I’ve thought a lot about how either/or thinking reinforces hierarchies of oppression. As Tema Okun recounts in The Emperor Has no Clothes, “Inherent in western culture is the very act of defining ‘us’ in ways that claim superiority over an opposite and increasingly threatening ‘them.’”
