From 2014 to 2016, I sought partners, and engaged the community in conversations about racial identity in Central Pennsylvania. Paramount in this effort was parsing out the multiple definitions of racism, and getting our community leaders on the same page of vocabulary about the subject.
By 2016, we had formed a regional committee with representatives from each county in the fund's 5 county service area, and I had engaged over 200 community members and 70 community leaders on the subject of racism in Central PA. There was (and is) widespread enthusiasm, and interest, in solving the problem of racism in our communities.
One of the first goals of Inequity Analysis organizing was to get 3 institutional leaders to take Undoing Racism™ training, and provide testimony about the value of the training. A partial-grant in the form of reduced admission to the training was given to Inequity Analysis from Undoing Racism™ for this purpose. The grant was given to a local United Way Diversity Council. This is where progress on the Inequity Analysis Training Fund ended.
As predicted by Undoing Racism™ leaders, institutions were the biggest bulwark against moving forward with a vigorous and inclusive anti-racism campaign. The two biggest barriers to institutional change are refusal to change institutional funding streams toward effective anti-racism efforts, and away from ineffective programs; and refusal to include leaders from the community, vs. entrenched partnerships and institutional leaders.
Immediately after this organization's leaders had taken the training, they demanded that they retain full and complete control over any continued efforts in our region, ignoring the year of organizing that had already ensued with multiple regional partners, and their pledge to give testimonials to the larger region about the training. As one can imagine, this is where partnerships dropped off, and the efforts for the Inequity Analysis Training Fund effectively ended.
The United Way members who took the training had positive reviews on the training, and changed their diversity program to model what they had gleaned from the experience, though they did not give any credit to Undoing Racism™, or the Inequity Analysis Training Fund.
The partner social justice organization plagiarized, word for word, materials from the Undoing Racism™ website, under their 'new program' they claimed they were creating called 'Race Matters', even though I had explicitly relayed in very clear and firm terms that Undoing Racism had a problem with people plagiarizing their materials.
At the end of this journey I was very surprised to find that:
1. Our rural, mostly 'white' communities are open, concerned, and ready to tackle the issue of racism
2. Liberal institutions, and organizations who purport to address racism, were incredibly aggressive actors in halting community efforts to 'undo racism'.
This blog is a documentation of my journey, and will occasionally be updated with my writings about racism, as I continue to face the solvable problem of racism in our communities.
The small amount of funds raised during Founder's Donation Events, $360, were transferred to the Coalition for Social Equity, a collaboration that includes Bloomsburg University, and the Columbia/Montour County United Way (different from United Way that took the partial grant).
Thank you to all who participated in this journey, and especially Undoing Racism leaders, who gave me better tools to address racism:
“If we can talk the same language, we get better outcomes, because we have more brain power to solve problems"
"Police deal with the failure of community institutions"
"If we can understand what racism is and how it operates, we can undo it."
"People aren't poor because of a lack of programs and services, people are poor because they lack power."
"If people understood how institutions keep people poor, instead of empowering them, we could change poverty."
Quotes from Diana Dunn, Undoing Racism™ Co-Founder
Quotes from Diana Dunn, Undoing Racism™ Co-Founder
