Previously, we reviewed the inability, unwillingness, or a combination of both, demonstrated by many for-profit, significant institutions and many large non-profit and religious organizations, to achieve greater improvements in Black liberation, Black parity, and Black-white cooperation during much of the latter half of the 20th century and early part of the 21st century. In retrospect, the institutional process employed by large for-profit and non-profit organizations to accomplish Black-white parity for an acceptable number of Blacks simply hasn’t worked on a meaningful scale as a practical and policy matter.
There has been progress, to be sure, but at a slow pace, and the count of Blacks, positively impacted, has been relatively small. Compounding this performance, the national phenomenon of over-imprisonment of Blacks, in comparison to whites, became intolerable on any basis, and violence and unequal treatment toward Blacks by law enforcement across the nation have rightly gained considerable attention and dismay.
Comments in these “For Racial Healing” pages have been made describing the reasons that mixed purpose institutions have been held captive by tensions existing among numerous allegiances, some of which ran, in practical terms, in contradiction to racial healing priorities. For example, competing net revenue growth among corporations and related, competing stock prices often interfere with the need to allocate greater funds to amend behavior for the disinterest and disregard that have dominated so much of the past Black experience in the country. A mixed priority repeatedly also occurred with religious and other non-profit organizations as they relied on moneyed interests to assure institutional longevity, and those moneyed participants frequently did not see Black-white racial healing as requisite, prioritized, or even needed. When so many religious institutions became socially engaged at all, they often simply followed an approach of engagement by moving on social concerns highlighted in the then current news, which made it hard, if at all, to develop and continue a well-structured, comprehensive, Black-white racial healing program.
Moreover, our analysis, particularly in the #8 article, included a review of an extensive study, conducted by the University of Michigan, that revealed the fact that white men are more prejudicial toward Blacks than white women, and yet, since most organizations in this country have been disproportionately influenced by white men’s views, this factor illustrated another fundamental drawback to principal institutions, as appropriate conduits for ensuring racial equity and racial change.
In response to these realities, many Black and white Americans began to realize with greater clarity that the then current protocols for Black liberation and racial healing between Blacks and whites were far from acceptable, and other initiatives needed to be undertaken. Steps in some quarters began earnestly to focus on those disappointing and neglected results for past Black life, present conditions, and prospects for the future. In consideration of these trends, some religious-affiliated and non-profit organizations have established special purpose groups or entities that emphasize anti-racism programs to function at a more accelerated speed with fewer competing interests and with a deeper focus on issues of Black-white importance and engagement.
At the same time, most people could not have noticed a new development, which occurred among various religious-affiliated and certain other non-profit entities in recent years, that bears a distinct relevance to the “For Racial Healing” protocol. One can easily imagine this protocol becoming an essential, programmatic element for many non-profit and religious-affiliated entities, which have begun exploring the prospects for anti-racism attention and action that more forcibly include Black-white, personal connections and allyships to achieve racial healing.
For example, many churches, cathedrals, synagogues, historic racial sites, numerous state and local governmental organizations, and independent entities, etc., gather people for informational meetings so that attendees can learn much more about ways for whites to become less racist as individuals and the United States, less racist as a nation. Groups of people start to convene, exchanging information and opinions, dissecting in repeated sessions the experiences that often create the circumstances that have contributed to the attitudes, strictures, and conduct of white racism against Blacks. These groups frequently ask big questions and reach out to individuals who have the capability to answer and explain pertinent issues. Several groups often coalesce to talk about trans-local, racial matters. Mission statements get created, and writers on racism and anti-racism are invited and hold seminars and conferences in-person and via the internet. These specific-function groups have been located across the country – from New York to California and from the Gulf Coast to Michigan. I have been part of many of these anti-racism meetings and discussions by being present physically, telephonically, or by internet.
In this respect, a few non-profit and religious entities have even created separate, quasi-subsidiaries, which I believe are the best models to carry out the specific mission, agenda, and responsibilities for the founding sponsor-entities. This separation, as subsidiaries, has given them more latitude and isolated the newly established entity from the same mixed priorities, vagaries, and volatilities that have often degraded the sponsoring organization into a loss of focus for an espoused racial healing protocol. For this purpose, it would be wise, for instance, to look at the structure employed at The Center for Reconciliation in Providence, Rhode Island and the Absalom Jones Center for Racial Healing in Atlanta, Georgia, among others.
Earlier, I described the reasons that large for-profit and non-profit organizations had failed, mainly as a result of mixed claims and priorities, in their efforts to achieve the kind of racial improvements we anticipated from them in the 1960s and 1970s. The entities I now envision as venues for and partners with “For Racial Healing” protocol are very much different. For the most part, they are relatively new, single-purpose groups or subsidiaries of non-profit organizations, focused solely on racial liberation and healing. These specialized groups and entities would, by having demonstrated attributes toward common goals, be appropriate for an implementation of the “For Racial Healing” protocol. I have already worked with some of these groups and entities that could support the ideas and expectations that appear in these essays, and those with whom I have already worked represent only a sampling of persons and organizations throughout the country that can be part of an overall responsive community. These are the groups and entities and many more to come in the future that can combine their energies and visions with the “For Racial Healing” approach, and it would be very constructive for these groups and entities to use the protocol as part of their continuing curriculum.
What happens now and how do these groups and gatherings otherwise relate to the described “For Racial Healing” approach? Multiple people have voiced a desire to have the opportunity to participate in Sheila-Chester model allyships, relying on the discipline of authentic passion and its contributions to understanding, empathy, healing, love, and co-inherence in one-to-one settings that can collect an alliance of allyships. It is not unreasonable to believe that many such groups can take on the necessary work associated with the protocol. In particular, these groups can provide for the utilization of the authentic passion communication and relationship mode, with the mode to go both ways – white to Black, and Black to white, as previously described.
These larger groupings of allyships could interface with each other so that white support of Blacks and Black support of whites can become more easily effective, especially should the winds of renewed racism continue to sweep ritualistically across the nation or regions of the nation. The one-to-one, Black-white allyships can rise in group denial against those persons and those ideas that would reinstate views and policies that should remain dead and buried, never to rise again. It would be helpful for an alliance of allyships to exist as a ballast against invasions from the past or against those who wish to harm allyships forged to protect both Black-white relationships and an adopted pluralism for future generations.
We have the spiritual infrastructure to make this happen: to stand against invasions, such as the filiopietism-damaged heritage axis or against those who fault allyships for being too optimistic or idealistic to last or to benefit the future, who fault Martin Luther King’s weapon of love as being too pure to have justification, who argue for benign separation and encourage only the assurances of technical rights and freedoms without the human initiative, racial healing, and love that make sure larger goals and visions can happen. For without allyships between Blacks and whites, we will be less directional and less formidable against those winds that can, when provoked, blow furiously and fiercely against us and our chances to be more than we are.
We are obliged to work authentic passion through individuals who avow a primary commitment to and interest in a racial healing approach. The conduits through which these allyships and authentic passion can be instrumental already exist and appear to be increasing. We have learned over time that institutional priorities often, even for many non-profit entities, functioned in ways that did not produce opportunities that Blacks could have enjoyed. At the same time, we have learned to struggle and reach for Black-white coalescence to benefit us all – not just for Black equity, but Black-white freedom that can only exist if we surely and individually agree to work together to effectuate important and visible allyships with and for each other.
Of course, a first and major step consists of the recruitment of Black and white persons who will be willing to commit to a one-to-one, Black-white connection leading to allyship and willing to nurture that relationship to love. Over time, it will be quite constructive for allyship to become visible to others and to officialdom that the Black-white relationship is more than simply close friendship, but also supportive of racial healing and racial equity. A critical function of the Black-white relation is the integration of Black-white lives together, including interracial family outreach and celebrations of various types, so that the relationship increases into love with, hopefully, other family members on both sides becoming integral for and integrated into the allyship. With regular communications, outings, visitations together socially and for the community, and at-large appearances, Blacks and whites will be aware of the status of those allyships and the views and commitments associated with those allyships, which cannot then be neglected.
Even though the “For Racial Healing” protocol is meant to galvanize the public more substantively and energetically toward racial healing, it is also meant to create long-term attitudes in favor of maintaining acceptance of and empathy toward Black-white equity and indisputable allyship, which incorporate the various elements of authentic passion. Toward this end, it is reasonable to expect that the protocol will help foster a new generation of leaders committed to the Black-white struggle for racial equity with more actual experience of living with Black-white engagements, including a common attitude toward pluralism and multi-racial coherence.
Next Time: The Loneliness of a White Writer on Racial Healing