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…

09 April
On
In make PROGRESS

Today Collabyrinth principal consultant Melvin Bray challenged an elite group of thought leaders and public speakers to be courageous by adopting the use of a “Consciousness Rider” as a way to encourage program organizers to pursue beloved community. Riders are additional stipulations beyond fees for service or property that programmers must meet if they want a speaker, band or artist to fulfill a contract. Producers of public events have no reason to do better, unless talent and consumers insist they do better. This is one way to do so. If you make your living in front of an audience, leave a comment, committing to usemore…

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…

08 March
On
In arouse SOLIDARITY
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This is the tale of a 3-day design event in which middle school students and their teachers imagine and begin to create a more beautiful world. Our initial responsibilities were to start to arouse solidarity in participants with persons separated from them by social identity and to begin cultivating transformation in participants’ ways of thinking and doing toward others. We provided insight, design and impetus each step of the way and will continue to work with the school over the next year to help them to continue to progress.more…

02 February
On
In cultivate TRANSFORMATION
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Just when you thought they got it… “Join the nation that sees you <PAUSE> as a priority.”   What a perfect example of how easy it is to give with one hand and take away with the other, and not even know you’ve done it. It is certain nationwide thought it was making a bold statement with this commercial. “you matter,” the commercial was structured to convey. And that would have been the message had the narrator stopped at “the nation that sees you.” The thought was complete, and a particular point was made. But someone, somewhere decided that’s too much of a political statement. “Toomore…

08 January
On
In make PROGRESS
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Collabyrinth Principal Consultant, Melvin Bray, has been engaged by Auburn Seminary to co-organize the Table for Action Project Atlanta, along with professor and activist Letitia Campbell. In follow-up to an initial gathering of potential lead hosts 9 December 2014, Auburn sponsors Lisa Anderson and Macky Alston and they two local organizers met today to clarify the program’s vision, audience and timeline.more…

01 January
On
In cultivate TRANSFORMATION
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[EXCERPT]–In a classic study on race, psychologists staged an experiment with two photographs that produced a surprising result. They showed people a photograph of two white men fighting, one unarmed and another holding a knife. Then they showed another photograph, this one of a white man with a knife fighting an unarmed African-American man. When they asked people to identify the man who was armed in the first picture, most people picked the right one. Yet when they were asked the same question about the second photo, most people — black and white — incorrectly said the black man had the knife. Even before themore…