18 January
On
In cultivate TRANSFORMATION
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collabyrinth’s rationale for the specific focus of it’s work could not be better articulated than it is in this excerpt from a speech by one of the best and brightest America has ever produced, Fred Hampton. Fred Hampton was cut down in his prime at the age of 21 by systemic racism. had his voice been amplified, many real tangible examples of beloved community would be proliferating realities in America by now. “A lot of people will tell you, ‘Well, the people don’t have any theory, they need some theory. They need some theory even if they don’t have any practice.’ And the Black Panthermore…

24 July
On
In cultivate TRANSFORMATION
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Steve Howe, Ernst & Young’s Americas and Firm Managing Partner, recently published a synopsis of the work E&Y has been doing internally around diversity and inclusion and recommending externally to their clients. E&Y’s efforts are a window into what Carolyn Buck Luce has referred to as market and social justice forces aligning. Justice organizations would be remiss not to seize the moment. People seeking a more just society cannot accomplish the systemic changes we desire without being able to influence the channeling of the resources that run the world.more…

20 July
On
In arouse SOLIDARITY, cultivate TRANSFORMATION, make PROGRESS
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It is at the end of this video that Collabyrinth’s work begins. Otherwise, the self-awareness “breakthrough” that occurs exists only to further serve persons of privilege–as if everything everybody goes through in the video is for the benefit of the white guy.more…

17 June
On
In arouse SOLIDARITY, cultivate TRANSFORMATION
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Many carry with them what might be described as a “broken truth” regarding other’s social identities that inhibit them from celebrating others’ full humanity. Broken truths can be difficult to name. Often a poignant story can help get at the heart of the matter, as it did at MountainTop 2015. This is a video excerpt of a retelling of Douglas Wood’s Old Turtle and the Broken Truth.more…

27 April
On
In cultivate TRANSFORMATION
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It’s All of Us: The Practice of Inequality The people must know before they can act. —Ida B. Wells Race like sexuality, is a place where power masks itself as nature. —Anthony Farley “To identify the practice of racial inequality, we must also have a framework for understanding what race is…. Anthony Farley offers a revision of the implied spectrum theory of sexuality to be applied to race, one that understands its structure as contingent upon situs and power. Race, like sexual orientation, is produced by social arrangements and political decision making. And these arrange ments, along with self-identification, are generative of the persistence ofmore…

25 April
On
In arouse SOLIDARITY, cultivate TRANSFORMATION
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This offers excellent critique of part of the design of the In Our Neighbors Shoes event in March 2015. As a part of the service learning, 8th graders participated in a simulation that was not quite as relational as it could and should have been and skirted too closely the edge of the trap into which Gwyneth Paltrow and so many others have fallen. The next iteration of such a fieldtrip will correct for the insight offered by Brittney Cooper in the excerpt below from her article “White America’s Gwyneth Paltrow problem: How it’s playing games with the lives of poor people” for Salon.com.  more…

20 April
On
In cultivate TRANSFORMATION
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“It Wasn’t Me!”: Post-Intent and Correlational Racism “Today, there is no longer any single articulating principle or axial process which provides the logic required to interpret the racial dimensions of all extant political/cultural projects.” —Howard Winant “Americans generally disavow a belief in an ideology of racism. But we must understand the terms of that disavowal. What, precisely, is being disavowed? What is the definition of racism that we have rejected in our purportedly racially egalitarian society? In U.S. race talk, we generally define racism as comprising two components: intentionality and determinism. More specifically, racism requires both the intent to disadvantage someone on the basis ofmore…

08 April
On
In cultivate TRANSFORMATION, make PROGRESS
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[EXCERPT]–“In war–whether a shooting war or a culture war makes no difference on this point–only some of the battles are carefully planned. Others explode as if from nowhere. A little skirmish or rearguard action can quickly turn into a major collision, a Battler of Gettysburg, for example. “Something like that happened in Indiana during the last days of March. A bill in the state legislature, a mostly sumbolic last stand by routed conservatives opposed to same-sex marriage, triggered a massive response from gay-rights advocates. Governor Mike Pence’s signature on his state’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) looked at first like a successful raid on competingmore…

06 April
On
In cultivate TRANSFORMATION
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“American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it.” ~James Baldwin “I have chosen to focus our attention on what I have turned ‘the practices of racial inequality,’ by which I mean actions that individuals take that researchers can identify as being clear decisions to disadvantage others on the basis of race. Identifying these decisions based on race is made possible largely by empirical social science research that reveals trends and makes comparisons between how different groups of people are treated. When we see the cumulative effect of the choices people make about howmore…