We Have Work to Do_3_0

Personal Racial Identity Awareness
1. The pre-requisite to addressing racial injustice is participating in one;s own racial identity awareness journey regardless of whether you are a BIPOC or white person. A racial identity awareness journey examines one's family history, patterns, and ideologies that have shaped them and creaed a racial identity. It acknowledges that we live in a "racialized" society that ascribes inherent value on the basis of one's ethnicity or race. This inherent value is man-made but shapes how we see ourselves and others. For example, by the age of 5, children understand that their is a racial hierarchy that they didn't create but have to participate in if they are to advance in society
2. Assimilation towards cultural norms and identities that are perceived to offer societal advantages. Ignorance of experiences outside of one's own personal context.
3. Awareness of a discrepancy betwen personal identity and other's perception of that identity=
4. A desire to interrogate those differences and discover one's true authentic self. Overcoming guilt and shame about one's identity
5. Active steps to larn more historical and sociological facts about one's identity
6. An unlearning of internalized negative stereotypes and perceptions of one's own identity
7. An appreciation and confidence in ones unique characteristics of identity
8. An understanding of one's identity and advocating for other's within the same identity group
9. Understanding and advocating for one's own identity and other's outside of their individual identity group.
Historical Education
1. Understand the history of racism in our systems and institutions across various historical eras
  1. Pre-Colonial (1619)
  2. Slavery
  3. Civil War
  4. Reconstruction & Jim Crow
  5. New Jim Crow
2. Understand the research on the negative impacts of racial injustice in policing, health care, housing discrimination, voting and democracy, economics, media and culture, the criminal justice system, faith and beyond.
3. Watch videos that educate on the history of America and racial injustice
  1. 13th (2016)
  2. When They See Us (2019)
  3. The Color of Compromise
  4. Just Mercy (2019)
  5. American Son
  6. The Hate U Give
  7. Slavery By Another Name (2012)
  8. Whose Streets?
  9. If Beale Street Could Talk
  10. Selma (2014)
  11. 12 Years A Slave (2013)
  12. Fruitvale Station (2013)
4. Read books on the comprehensive history of the nation and materials that explain the patterns of racial injustice in our history.
  1. Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America (Dr. Ibram X. Kendi)
  2. How to Be an Antiracist (Dr. Ibram X. Kendi)
  3. Waking Up White, and Finding Myself in the Story of Race (Debby Irving)
  4. White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (Dr. Robin DiAngelo)
  5. The Case for Reparations (essay by Ta-Nehisi Coates)
  6. Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race (by Beverly Daniel Tatum)
  7. Jason Reynolds, Ibram Kendi in Conversation | SLJ Day of Dialog 2020 (I’m not sure how long this will be available for free)
  8. Having 'The Talk': Expert Guidance On Preparing Kids For Police Interactions
  9. How to speak to kids about race relations in America (TODAY Show interview with Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely)
  10. BLACK LIVES MATTER AT SCHOOL – RESOURCES (National Education Association)
  11. Equal Justice Initiative (organization started by Bryan Stevenson, which also sponsored the creation of The National Memorial for Peace and Justice)
  12. Tulsa Race Massacre - article (Oklahoma Historical Society)
Civic/Community
1. Register to Vote and VOTE in every election (including local elections and primaries)
2. Where available, request an absentee ballot for voting during Coronavirus
3. Consider Running for local political office
4. Research local policies and proposals to understand how they impact communities of color
5. Show up at protest marches
6. Get involved in door knocking or virtual campaigns to educate voters
7. Register as a poll worker or election observer
8. Advocate policies that eliminate mass incarceration
9. Donate to on-the-ground organizations fighting against racial injustice
10. Volunteer time to help on-the-ground organizations fighting against racial injustice
11. Celebrate Junteenth Day (June 19) Black emancipation
12. Write your elected representatives
13. Be a community organizer
14. Fill out and return the census
Economic
1. Support practitioners of color who are providing education, training and consulting in racial awareness
2. Support business of color to help reduce the black wealth gap
3. Donate to organizations (local and national) that are supporting the work of anti-racism
4. Invest in black-owned banks and financial institutions
5. Divest in organizations that maintain unjust or racist policies or practices, and communicate the reason with these organizations
6. Use the economic power of the dollar to boycott businesses that maintain unjust or racist policies or practices
7. support government programs that advance black entrepreneurship, business, homeownership, education.
8. Advocate for economic policies that help correct previously unjust practies.
9. Support black-owned restaurants and eateries
Workplace
1. Leadership Teams
  1. Lead discussions of being an anti-racist organization through Town Hall Discussions
  2. Provide employees of color with access to mental health experts with experience in racial trauma to help employees navigate what they are experiencing on the job and in the world during this moment.
  3. Make long-term organizational commitments early on so that people of color know that this moment of racial awareness is not just a temporary PR campaign or short-lived focus. Don't overcommit to trivial actions for performative display, but commit to work through the process for the long-haul. Establish milestones to re-evalute progress and re-align policies to meet the intended goals.
  4. If your company provides an employee assistance program (EAP) as part of their benefits package, make sure the program has culturally sensitive therapists available or extends benefits to see outside practitioners of color.
  5. Join, sponsor, and support employee resource groups
  6. Conduct regular employee engagement surveys, and review the results in segments by demographics to identify patterns that may be specific to particular marginalized groups
  7. Bring in an outside consultant to audit the organization's culture and sensitivity towards diversity.
  8. Own past patterns of racial injustice (both concious and unconcious) and develop steps for corrective action and repair
  9. Asses the demographics of your workforce and whether your ratio of employees represents the general talent pool and/or client demographics
  10. Evaluate compensation programs to ensure that your organization promotes equal pay for equal work. Are employees of color adequately compensated for their contributions to the organization?
  11. Review opportunities for more diversity in the organization's leadership team. Are there diverse candidates in the organization that can be promoted-up?
  12. Promote values of justice and equity in internal and external communications. Make justice a part of the organization's culture
  13. Ensure that the leadership team is modeling the cycle of transformation towards racial justice including listening, reflecting, responding, correcting and repairing.
  14. Provide Juneteenth (June 19), black emancipation day, as a paid company holiday.
2. Individual Managers
  1. Follow-up with employees of color during 1:1 sessions and provide resources and support for employees.
  2. Provide opportunities to amplify the voices of thought-leaders who are people of color.
  3. Shut-down micro-aggressions and acts of racial prejudice within the workplace immediately. Make sure employees of color know and understand that the management team stands with them.
  4. Provide clear goals for career advancement
  5. Support workshops, conferences and trainings that help employees grow in their personal career aspirations. Also support opportunities that improve the organization's cultural sensitivity
  6. Provide adequate time off to address racial stress and trauma
  7. As appropriate for the workplace, allow individual employee expressions in support of #blacklives matter (buttons, pins, t-shirt, etc)
  8. Support discussions of racial justice as issues of human rights and not political ideologies. Take a stand as a corporate organization that affirming black lives cannot be left to a choice of a particular political group but as a collective value that your organization deems as critically important.
3. Employees
  1. Recruit and recommend skilled candidates of color
  2. Go through anti-racist education and training for the workplace
  3. Recognize and acknoweldge the contributions of minority employees appropriately
  4. For employees of color, participate in employee resource groups and advisory boards to provide diverse representation
  5. For employees of color, provide honest and candid feedback (as comfortable) during 360 assessments and organizational audits
  6. For employees of color, take time off, as appropriate, to maintain mental health.
  7. For employees of color, review your current work responsibilities and discuss your long term career goals with your manager
  8. Attend workshops that expand your professional skills and/or increase your cultural sensitivity
  9. Co-sponsor or author papers, journals, articles and research that are culturally relevant in your respective field. (example: a success story on how your health care company is using technology to eliminate health disparities in marginalized communities)
  10. If your organization offers matching grants, donate to anti-racist organizations and have your organization match the donation.
  11. For non-employees of color, engage in town hall forums and informal/formal opportunities to hear experiences and stories from the point of view of your colleagues of color
  12. Value the expertise, experience and stories of your colleagues of color but don't expect them to be your only source of information about racial injustice. Do your homework before asking for perspectives and insight. Practice active listening when your colleagues are sharing their perspective
  13. Don't make conversations about racial injustice avenues to avenge one's personal guilt or shame about racism.
  14. Don't categorize your colleagues of color as a "model" minority or "not like the rest"
  15. For non-employees of color, give your colleagues of color space to process their responses to racial trauma in their own way. Not all people are comfortable sharing everything with everyone without feeling that their thoughts and expressions will be heard, listened to, and valued. Practice empathetic listening to your colleagues even when you may not fully understand their experiences.
Spiritual
1. Corporate
  1. Host/attend a service of Lament
  2. Learn and understand the neagtive impacts of racial injustice on spiritual institutions. How has the church been complicit in unjust sociatal practices?
  3. Lead/attend a small group book discussion on awareness of racial injustice
    1. Be the Bridge (https://bethebridge.com/)
    2. The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church's Complicity in Racism (Jemar Tisby)
    3. Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity (David Swanson)
    4. Woke Church (Dr. Eric Mason)
    5. Roadmap to Reconciliation 2.0: Moving communities into Unity, Wholeness and Justice (Dr. Brenda Salter-McNeil
    6. Beyond Colorblind (Sarah Shin)
  4. Listen to the experiences of congregants/church members of color and evaluate ways that the church can pray for and support them
  5. Model repentance before the congregation for individual and systemic racism. Acknowledge the corporate sins of the church towards black/brown people who are created in the image of God.
  6. Invite guest speakers from diverse backgrounds
  7. FInd ways that your church can partner with local community organizations that are ministering to needs outside of your local community
  8. Amplify the voices of faith leaders who are people of color and usually are not included in your quotes, references or examples.
  9. Find ways to support local congregations of color in the ministry
  10. Introduce topics of racial justice in theological study including the study of church history.
  11. Respond to the issues of racial injustice with a pastoral letter or statement on injustice. Support the letter with a Biblical framework for justice and concrete steps towards repair.
  12. Evaluate giving/missions towards urban church planters and churches ministering in urban communities
  13. Host/attend a prayer service
2. Personal
  1. Read/study from theologians/pastors of color or that are outside of your normal traditions
  2. Prepare your heart to examine areas of injustice in your own life (Psalm 139:23-24)
  3. Acknowledge and confess sins of racial injustice
  4. Repent for sins of racial injustice and where appropriate, practice repair and reconciliation.
  5. Invest in spiritual formation/reformation through a personal study on God's heart for justice
  6. Understand your spiritual gifts and how they can be used in the fight against racial injustice.
  7. Read and implement 21 Ways to Become an Anti-Racist Ally (Faith Edition) https://bit.ly/AntiRacistAlly
  8. Develop and practice rhythms of empathetic listening, lament, repentance and self-care
  9. Write a letter of lament
  10. Learn the history of racism within the church and spiritual institutions
  11. Seek opportunities to pray with and collaborate with Christians of color
  12. Listen to sermons and podcasts from a diversity of speakers
    1. The Witness - A Black Christian Collective
    2. Truth's Table
  13. Condem racism, bigotry and discrimination in all forms (James 2)
Family
1. Explain the history of race and racism to your children
2. Attend a protest march/rally together as a family. Allow the kids to think about their experiences and to create signs in their own words that explain their response to racial injustice.
3. Talk with your children about their expereinces in their educational institutions and friend groups. Help them identify unjust practices that they may have committed or that may have been committed against them.
4. For parents of non-black children, help you children to understand the difference in expereince from other individuals. Explain to them how their experience may not be the norm for everyone. Teach them how to go beyond just loving everyone and how they can proactively be anti-racist in their own contexts.
5. Parents of black and brown children should especially continue to affirm their children's dignity and worth and counter the prevailing cultural narratives
6. Give children an opportunity to express their anger, grief, sadness, or lament towards racial injustice. Do not stifle the ways that they may choose to express these feelings whether through art, music, creativity, writing, drama or other skills.
7. Meet your children's friends' parents and get to know them better.
8. Teach children about God's heart for justice and the church's responsibility to live out these commandments
9. Encourage friendships with a diverse group of children
10. Model anti-racist behavior as adults
11. Pray together as a family for our nation and for the elimination of racial injustice
12. Find opporunties to donate time and financial support to anti-racist organizations
13. Provide age-appropriate books and resource to understand racism and racial justice
  1. Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You (A Remix of the National Book Award-winning Stamped from the Beginning by Jason Reynolds and Ibram Kendi
  2. Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library (by Carole Boston Weatherford)
  3. Just Mercy (Adapted for Young Adults): A True Story of the Fight for Justice (Bryan Stevenson)
  4. Hair Love (by Matthew A Cherry)
  5. Sulwe (by Lupita Nyong'o)
  6. Antiracist Baby (by Ibram Kendi)
  7. I am enough (by Grace Byers)
  8. My hair is a garden (by Cozbi Cabrera)
  9. When God Made You (by Matthew Paul Turner)
  10. Colorful: Celebrating the Colors God Gave Us (by Dorena Williamson)
  11. Thoughtful: Discovering the Unique Gifts in Each of Us (by Dorena Williamson)
  12. God's Very Good Idea (by Trillia Newbell)
  13. God Made Me and You (by Shai Linne)
  14. The Gospel in Color: For Kids (by Curtis Woods and Jarvis Williams)
  15. Voice of Freedom: Fannie Lou Hammer: The Spirit of the Civil Rights Movement (by Carole Boston Weatherford)
Schools/Education
1. Provide opporunities for school Town Halls to discuss racial injustice among students, faculty, staff and parents
2. Provide space for students of color to process and respond to the current events
3. Assess the impact of previous educational policies and whether changes need to be made in educational models
4. Representation matters in education! Evaluate whether the current hiring practices provide opportunities for people of color to be hired and promoted in positions of teaching, administration and staff. Does the current workforce represent the student demographics? If not, what can be done to increase representation?
5. Review the English Language Arts, Literature, Social Studies and History curriculums to ensure that it presents a well-rounded historical perspective that honors everyone including Native Americans, Africans, African-Americans and other ethnic minorities.
6. Ensure that Black History is taught throughout the school year and not just during black history month
7. Ensure that school libraries have culturally and ethnically diverse titles
8. When bringing in guest speaks and guest lecturers, ensure that professionals of color are represented, especially in underrepresented fields (e.g. STEM, entrepreneurship)
9. Establish best practices for culturally-sensitive educational policies and collaborate with similarly-situated educational institutions on ways to advocate that #blacklivesmatter.
10. Assess the school culture and sensitivity towards issues of diversity
11. Attend and support parent, teacher, and student associations (PTSA)
12. Evaluate sponsorships and internships for people of color with local businesses and organizations
13. Ensure availability of extra-curricular activities that expand academic possibilities including: robotics club, math club, debate, etc.
14. Hire an outside organization or utilize the board to do an assessment/exit interview with faculty/staff of color to assess the organization's progress with diversity and areas for improvement
Other
1. Call out racist jokes & statements
  1. Use creative arts to express appreciation for racial justice
    1. Educate yourself. Understand the difference between individual and systemic racism
      1. Educate yourself about racism as much as possible before asking people of color for help.
      2. Understand the power of words to help or to harm. Just because someone doesn't intend to say or do something racist doesn't mean that the impact isn't there. Instead, practice humble acknowledgement of the intent and work to repair the damage done by the actual impact. Listen, Correct and Repair.
      3. Be willing to examine your personal assumptions, beliefs, attitudes, and actions. Receive constructive feedback from people of color with humility, gentleness and respect.
      4. Be ready to not only learn new information but to practice humble unlearning of some previously held information. It is ok to acknowledge that deeply held beliefs possibly could have been an incomplete picture or maybe didn’t accurately represent a robust history. Some things need to be reprogrammed and unlearned.
      5. We must learn to sit in the present discomfort, listen to various voices, discern applicable principles and when the time is right take action.
      6. on’t discount listening as an active engagement step
      7. Be willing to critically engage with one's deeply held beliefs despite whether they esteem the source of the idea or the idea is intertwined with a particular theological, cultural, or political principle.
      8. A good start is to look at your current ambit of influence such as your workplace, school, neighborhood, or faith community and see how you can begin or deepen relationships
      9. Often, the thought is to invite marginalized individuals into already created spaces, but authentic application requires those in the dominant culture to bravely engage and support minority-led spaces.
      10. Everyone isn’t called to a macro platform. Instead of changing the world all at once, make your world a changed place. Examine your
Individual Racism The assumptions, beliefs, attitudes, and actions of an individual towards another that expresses prejudice, hate, bias, or microaggressions based on race. Individual racism can occur at both an intentional and unintentional level and can be both active and passive.
Systemic Racism A system in which ideologies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and public polices entrenched in established institutions works in various ways to target specific racial groups and produce unjust outcomes for specific racial groups, either by current intent or or a continuation of historic intentional systems.
Copyright 2020 :: Pastor Joseph Ardayfio, Esq. For Your Glory, International E-mail: info@marshillfellowship.com Twitter: @pastorjoseph IG: @pastorjoseph1
Editors Note: The current moral moment focuses on the particular plight of black and brown people. Awareness of these issues should spark an overall heart for racial justice. Many of the principles outlined in this document are applicable to other commonly marginalized ethnic groups including, but not limited to: Indigineous People, Latinx and People of Color. While all of the nuances of each of these communities are not enumerated in this roadmap, the broader discussion of racial justice must consider justice from a multi-layered perspective.
Link for Sharing: https://rebrand.ly/WeHaveWorkToDo
Active Steps towards Racial Justice listening reflecting responding correcting repairing and building
The Work of Racial justice starts in every household
Racial Justice must leverage our economic resources for good-will
We are called to shape and influence the policies and practices that govern our nation's ethos
Our children learn how to respond to racial injustice through their peers and teachers
There is always more to learn about racial justice
Our workplaces should mirror the values that we esteem as a nation
How do we learn about the history of race and racism in America?
Our Spiritual Formation often guides our principles of racial justice and awareness
Working through individual and systemic racism requires us to go through our own racial identity awareness journey