Racial Equity Challenge

YOU ARE INVITED

Join us and churches around the nation in a 21-day racial equity challenge. Through exposure to a variety of voices in videos, podcasts, and articles, we can listen, learn and grow, and be equipped to help make real change.

Thank you to Myers Park Presbyterian Church in Charlotte for adapting and sharing these valuable resources.

THE CHALLENGE

Pick one of the resources listed below every day for 21 days.

  • Diversify your understanding by doing some of each.
  • Track and reflect by using the planning tool below.
  • Share your reflections at the end of the challenge.
  • Pray for the places you are challenged and for those you are learning about whose lives may be different than yours.

TEST YOUR AWARENESS

This video shows us the importance of paying attention, and how much more we see when we are looking for particular things around us.

Use each question below separately as one day’s challenge.

  • Who is and is not represented in ads?
  • What are the last five books you read?
  • What is the racial mix of the authors?
  • What is the racial mix of the main characters in your favorite TV shows? Movies?
  • Who is filling what kinds of jobs/social roles in your world? Can you correlate any of this to racial identity?

Resources for Adults

Watch

This is Us, Dr. Eddie Glaude explains why blaming current racial tensions on Donald Trump misses the point. (video, 3 minutes)

Racism is Real, A split-screen video depicting the differential in the white and black lived experience. (video, 3 minutes)

Confronting ‘intergroup anxiety’: Can you try too hard to be fair? Explores why we may get tongue tied and blunder when we encounter people from groups unfamiliar to us. (video, 5 minutes)

CBS News Analysis: 50 states, 50 different ways of teaching America’s past, Ibram X. Kendi reviews current history curriculum production and use across the U.S. (video, 5 minutes)

The Disturbing History of the Suburbs, An “Adam Ruins Everything” episode that quickly and humorously educates how redlining came to be. (video, 6 minutes)

What Kind of Asian Are You? Humorous two minute YouTube video that illustrates the utter silliness of the way many white Americans interact with Asian Americans. (video, 2 minutes)

Birth of a White NationKeynote speech by legal scholar Jacqueline Battalora, offers a blow-by-blow description of the moment the idea of, and word for, “white” people entered U.S. legal code. (video, 36 minutes)

13th, Netflix documentary by Ava DuVernay about the connection between US Slavery and the present day mass incarceration system. (video, 1 hour, 40 minutes)

How to overcome our biases? Walk boldly toward themTED Talk by Vernā Myers, encourages work vigorously to counter balance bias by connecting with and learning about and from the groups we fear. (video, 19 minutes)

The danger of a single story, TED Talk by Chimamanda Adiche, offers insight to the phenomenon of using small bits of information to imagine who a person is. (video, 18 minutes)

How to deconstruct racism, one headline at a time, TED Talk by Baratunde Thurston that explores patterns revealing our racist framing, language, and behaviors. (video, 10 minutes)

Indigenous People React to Indigenous Representation in Film And TV, Conversation with a diverse range of Indigenous people by FBE about  media depictions of Indigenous people, Columbus day, and Indigenous identity. (video, 15 minutes)

What Being Hispanic and Latinx Means in the United States, Fernanda Ponce shares what she’s learning about the misunderstanding and related mistreatment of the incredibly diverse ethnic category people in U.S. call Hispanic. (video, 12 minutes)

Tyler Merrit Project: Before You Call (video, 3 minutes)

Listen

Code Switch, hosted by journalists Gene Demby and Shereen Marisol Meraji

Black Like Me, host Dr. Alex Gee

Scene on Radio – Seeing White Series, host John Biewen and collaborator Chenjerai Kumanyika

TED Radio Hour – Mary Bassett: How Does Racism Affect Your Health? host Guy Raz speaks with Dr. Mary T. Bassett, Director of the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University

Here & Now – Without Slavery, Would The U.S. Be The Leading Economic Power? host Jeremy Hobson and author Edward Baptist

NPR Morning Edition – You Cannot Divorce Race From Immigration journalist Rachel Martin talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas

Pod Save the People, Activism. Social Justice. Culture. Politics. On Pod Save the People, organizer and activist DeRay Mckesson

Biblical

Read the Book of Exodus, considering the history of liberation.
 
Read the Book of Acts, considering the development of the early church, inclusion, and a new community.
 
Word search JUSTICE in a Bible app (try biblegateway.com) and browse through the verses that come up.
 
Stated Clerk of the PC(USA), The Rev. Dr. J. Herbert Nelson, II, says there is work to be done
 
Former co-moderator of the PC(USA), Rev. Jan Edmiston, blogs at achurchforstarvingartists.
 
An reflection piece from Danny Murphy, General Presbyter, Trinity Presbytery, South Carolina – My Thoughts on George Floyd 
 
Statement from the Rev. Dr. Brian Blount, President, Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, VA.
 
“The Dream of Pentecost” a sermon by the Rev. Timothy Hart-Anderson, Senior Pastor, Westminster Presbyterian Church, Minneapolis, MN.

More ideas can be found on Eddie Moore’s page, the originator of the 21 Day Challenge.