Series of Articles submitted to Promise

Building Partnerships for Racial Equity

The eight sites in the Racial Equity and Economic Security (REES) Project know that structural racism is bigger than community action, so partners with power and influence are crucially important. Teams in each site have worked hard to develop the tools that explain the impact of structural racism and show the benefits for all community members if racial inequities are eliminated. As team members at each site have found their voice, they have been able to engage the partners they need and together discuss ideas and strategies that address how race and ethnicity operate in their communities. These partnerships are critical for gathering information as well as implementing solutions.

The Community Action Partnership of Riverside County Team has a two-fold strategy. On the macro level, they are holding “Big View” meetings hosted by the Human Resource Councils in four communities. These meetings will educate the public about Crushing the Barrier of Structural Racism in the 21st Century. On the micro level, they are working to eliminate racial disparity in family day care licensing and in the provision and access to affordable and quality day care.

A Policy Advisory Committee, including a diverse group of influential people from government, business, education, health and the Riverside Community Foundation, oversees the macro level project. This Committee has designed the agenda and the Code of Conduct for the “Big View” Meetings. After the four community meetings, they will take the message on to college campuses, churches, and other venues.

The Technical Advisory Committee, composed of experts in the child care industry, is conducting a geographic mapping project to align need with services and bus routes and stops. Beyond that, it will attempt to determine the level of racial equity in the access to and provision of quality child care. County Transportation and Land Management are conducting the mapping at the request of the County Executive Office.

The tools that the sites have developed will be on the Community Action Partnership website. In Riverside, Lois Carson has condensed material from the Aspen Institute Seminar on Racial Equity and focused it on the key messages she wishes to convey. In Lexington, Ty Sturdivant has built on the same original material from Aspen and added illustrations that have helped him convey the impact of structural racism. In Atlanta, Dr. Joyce Dorsey is using radio and YouTube to talk about structural racism. (Follow links on their website www.facaa.org)

For more information, check out the Racial Equity and Economic Security (REES) project at www.communityactionpartnership.com.

Training Programs that Address Racism

Seven community action sites are part of Community Action Partnership’s Racial Equity and Economic Security (REES) Project. This two-year project, funded by the Ford Foundation, explores whether place-based strategies to reduce poverty and enhance economic security are more effective when they take the racial inequalities that are a result of structural racism into account in their program design.

Teams from each of these sites have had the opportunity to attend a four day Seminar on Racial Equity and Society presented by the Aspen Institute. When they returned home, they began to build partnerships and educate people in their community. The REES page on the Community Action Partnership’s website has two PowerPoint presentations that team members are using. These both provide a very good 45 minute introduction to Structural Racism and are extremely valuable tools for the community action network.

In addition to these introductory presentations, some communities are looking for deeper training opportunities. The Aspen Institute has prepared Training for Racial Equity and Inclusion: A Guide to Selected Programs to allow community leaders to compare a variety of available programs. This guide describes ten programs in terms of whether the focus is on individual, intergroup or structural racism; their approach to training; and, their intended outcomes. You can download this guide from http://www.aspeninstitute.org/sites/default/files/ content/docsroundtable%20on%20community%20change/training.pdf.

Most of the programs in the guide require trained facilitators, but one is designed to encourage communities to move forward on their own. The Study Circles methodology fosters dialogues that explore public issues and challenge current practices through a process that emphasizes democratic discourse and action. This model offers clear materials on its website to support peer facilitators. Go to http://www.everyday-democracy.org/en/Issue.1.aspx.

The Guide also raised a few overall concerns about the training programs they assessed. One is that too few programs are “grounded in sociological, political and economic theories that directly address the structural dimensions of racism – and too few programs transcend the individual and intergroup relations to address systemic racism.” Another challenge is to translate awareness into action. These are exactly the points that our Racial Equity and Economic Security (REES) teams are working to address as they engage partners in their work to eliminate racial disparities in education, employment, asset development or child care.