The following are notes taken from the Racial Justice Issue Action Team session during the 2018 Justice Summit.
Initial Goals:
- Identify actions items — but with foresight and a focus on the impact of the action(s) on people and communities of color
- Explore the resources we discussed to look inward and explore how we do this work authentically in ourselves and in our congregations
Identifying Some Elements of White Culture
- Time conscious
- Individualistic
- Need to be right
- Winning
- Action-oriented (often at expense of reflection)
Action Planning
- Education –before you act or create a stand, do the inner work
- Facilitate the infrastructure that helps us do what we do with JUUstice Washington
- Take introspection back to our congregations. Observe what is happening. Process. Model the behavior that we want.
- Flashstances
- Conversation groups and caucusing
- Breaking White Silence discussion group (UUC)
- Beloved Conversations (group at UUC–are we walking our talk)
- Speak up when you see something. Film it. Listen to the stories of others.
- Want: Resources for smaller congregations; expenses of speakers and to purchase curriculum
- Longer book studies and conversation groups
- Eracism Minute – one minute of sharing/bearing witness about turning points, times that we’ve witnessed our racism, etc in the beginning of service
- Want: Resources for working with RE/youth
- White majority needs to start/continue the conversation–silence is complicity
- ESUC – Workshop on talking to kids about race
- Black Lives Matter sign
- Poor People’s Campaign
- White supremacy is a white people’s problem, we need to do the work to talk and address it
- Amplify the voices of those who have not been heard.
- There are efforts to bring ethnic study classes into schools. Go to your school board, speak
- Moral fusion coalition, speaking to republicans
Resources
See the Racial Justice Resource page for more details on the resources below.
- What it Means to be White – Robin DiAngelo
- White Fragility – Robin DiAngelo
- Witnessing Whiteness
- Beloved (book)
- Centering
- CSAI – 3 year study on White Supremacy
- Living in the Tension
- Workshops by Shelly Tolchuk
- Website: whiteally.com
- Aisha Hauser – youth programming
- Collective Pack – works to elect people of color
- Sneetches
- Poor People’s Campaign book
- The Third Reconstruction
- The New Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of color-blindness
- An Act of State
- Moral Fusion Coalition