we are releasing our first volume in the UnLearn InEquity series today–UnLearn InEquity: An Introduction to Truth & Transformation. we are very excited! here’s a video synopsis of the book. we will post 1-minute clips of this video on social media as promos over the coming weeks. more…
Throughout 2022, Collabyrinth partnered with Auburn Theological Seminary to offer a series of accountability circles to, first, state-level justice leaders, then Black men leaders from all walks of life, and finally clergy at historically white settler churches, who are leading their congregations in reparations work. All three circles used the Truth & Transformation Model to frame their bi-weekly digital gatherings for a duration of 6 months. Auburn has been a tremendous partner in field testing the UnLearn InEquity methodology. We also want to shout-out Beautiful Ventures for hosting two of the circles in their gorgeous digital home known as The Dark Tower, a virtual homagemore…
Article as it appeared on Sojo.net, 8/22-2017 By Melvin Bray In the wake of the Charlottesville, Va., white nationalist race riot, several writers have reached for the metaphor of addiction to help characterize the gravity of what America is facing and the grip it has on us. It’s easy enough to understand why one would choose this particular comparison, especially when you take time to explore how compulsive behaviors affect the individuals engaged in them, their families and friends, and even their brains. The outcomes over time are devastating. In fact the similarities are so uncanny that it’s hard to justify calling this comparisonmore…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
“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…