Kelly Meeker 6/28/24 Kelly Meeker 6/28/24

Day 12:Your Next Daily Practice

Hey there my beloveds,

First, I hope, I hope, I hope, you’ll be able to zoom in and show up on Tuesday, July 9th. I want us to talk together about what we’ve learned and struggled with in the last 12 days as we’ve engaged in this journey. I also can meet the many of you who have showed up for this journey!

Second, I’m reluctant to “close” this experience at all. The path of antiracism is never done and it’s never over. This is a life-long walk and an ongoing commitment. And so, as we close, I find myself just wanting to drop into your “idea landscape” the many practices all of us can continually return to every single day. Practices I am trying, every day, to be accountable to and continually show up for. And, of course, this is not an exhaustive list!

When I was writing Antiracism as Daily Practice: Refuse Shame, Change White Communities, and Help Create a Just World, here were just a few practices I came up with (and the book not only has a whole lot more, it has pages of resources to identify people and initiatives where we can more powerfully do these things):

Transfer a majority of the time you spend reading and engaging with various forms of media to engaging with feminists of color—this includes feminist men and other genders of color, too. We can access multimedia that present a vision of a just multiracial democracy where all thrive. A digital media platform like Colorlines is a great place to start. Read current events through the analytical framework of BIPOC intellectuals—doing so will not only keep you up-to-date on the news. Over time, you’ll ever more deeply grow more racially aware frameworks that will shape how you see and understand other issues on your own.
Take a family inventory and audit, again (this is a throwback to Day 6—but segregated patterns will continually pressure and shape our lives, so we need to grow the practice of intentionality around how we expend our time, resources and energy).
Bumping into racism and experiencing our own growth edges or missteps in antiracism, can elicit a lot of feelings. Don’t (ever) only sit there with your feelings. Yes—feelings are important. Pay attention to them. Process them. But take concrete actions, with others, out in the world, even while you’re having feelings! Notice how your feelings shift and change when you’re in action with others.
Learn about who is leading and what they are focused on in your local context. Our neighbors deserve and need us to plug in with them. Change at the local level is vital! Make a list of who is working on what issues. Consider what your skills and gifts are and where those might make the greatest impact brought to amplify and support the leadership of people of color. Figure out what you can commit and do it; reliably, consistently and for a significant period of time.
Never stop actively leaning in for more learning about the history and contemporary realities of racism and white supremacy. And, share with others in your life you’re learning. Practice breaking white silence every single day—in ways small and large. Notice how you feel when you do it. Notice how you feel when you don’t do it. Notice what you wish you had done more capably—and practice so you’ll do so next time.
Make your own list of what practices you learn from people of color, identify for yourself, learn as you engage in multi-racial spaces (and share that list with others in your life).

That’s it for now, my friends. Again, no words to fully articulate my gratitude to you. Thanks.

With a longing for real justice and a desire for just peace in our collective lives,

Jen

Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.

Day 2: Talk with two people about what you need to do to interrupt, intervene or challenge a racist dynamic or situation and get their support in envisioning how to do it.

Day 3: Explore through the work of these projects (read about them, watch the videos) Acts of Reparation and the Community Remembrance Project as a way to contemplate generational legacies, learn about current efforts for remembrance and repair, nourish your own moral imagination for where you may be called to plug in.

Day 4: Find one question or one family story and decide to ask it or ask about it, to create “productive instability.”

Day 5: Try one of Chanté Griffin’s “tips” as a way of practice interracial relationship-building.

Day 6: Do an audit of where you spend your time and where you spend your money. Identify specific choices you could make to shift where spend your time and your resources from mostly white spaces into Black- and Brown-owned, run or majority spaces.

Day 7: “Spark a conversation with your child or students that inspires and liberates them to be more curious about how they can help dismantle racism” (thank you, Dr. Berry!). If you don’t have a child or students, connect with a friend or loved one who does—share what Dr. Berry got you thinking about and ask them about what they do.

Day 8: Identify at least one racial dynamic that exists in your familial relationship where you haven’t fully “gone home with your antiracist values on your sleeve.” Make a plan for how you’re going to lean in with some kind of interruption (a question? a curiosity? a response that disrupts but strives to stay in connection).

Day 9: Sit down for 5 minutes, take a deep breath, and imagine (maybe write about!) a time you experienced shame related to race. Then go to look White Awake: Waking Ourselves for the Benefit of All. Mark a time you can take one of their courses! They make them time flexible, they’re so so so good, and everything they do is on a sliding scale (we need this kind of approach and we need community—just like Chris Crass talked about on Day 1!).

Day 10: Subscribe and listen to Prentis Hemphill’s last podcast Finding Our Way as well as their new one Becoming the People, which is just dropping now! Pick up their new book What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World. Take note of—and start to listen to, read and follow—the other incredible leaders Prentis Hemphill is constantly in dialogue with.

Day 11: Here’s your action for today. Take stock of whether or where the issue of Christianity and civic life is percolating around you (in your extended family, school board, city) and determine a way you can take a step to engage. Write down three questions or ideas about how you might focus (for example, “Is Interfaith Alliance taking on Christian nationalism locally? When’s their next forum” “Is my church actively talking about this? if now how might we start?” “What’s my version of speaking up the way Rev. Rucker did?”

P.S. Save the date: Join me and others who took part in this experience for a live conversation on Tuesday, July 9th at 5:00 PST/6:00 MST/7:00 CST/8:00 EST as a way to wrap up and reflect on our 12 Days of Action. Register here.

Kelly Meeker 6/27/24 Kelly Meeker 6/27/24

Day 11: What’s Religion Got to Do with It?

Greetings friends,

We have a very specific kind of focus today. It has to do with one of the ways white supremacy is showing up in our nation right now.

You are no doubt aware that a version of Christianity strongly aligned with forces of white supremacy is at the crux of our democratic peril. If you weren’t (seems unlikely), the image of the same man who cheered on white nationalists storming the Capitol while waving Nazi and Confederate flags announcing he’s selling “God Bless the USA” Bibles early this spring should do it.

If you plan to watch the presidential debates tonight, be prepared to listen for this entanglement of Christianity and white supremacy. It doesn’t matter that the former president isn’t really a Christian. He’s further seeding a dangerous storm that’s been brewing for a long while.

I’m so grateful for the powerful and long-time work that Dr. Robert P. Jones, founder of the Public Research Institute has been doing to raise the alarm bells and shed light on this dangerous brew.

So many white Americans woke up in 2015 to find out people in our families and communities had voted for a man who spouted racial vitriol and rhetorical violence again Black people, Mexican people, communities of color broadly (as well as vitriol again Muslims, women of different racial/ethnic groups, people with disabilities and so many others). So many of us who were never even remotely tempted to vote for this man, found out that the Christians in their lives—white Christians—were no exception.

Whether you’re religious or not—let alone Christian—those of us who have white Christians in our lives need tools, fodder, narratives and counter-narratives to help us do the persuasive, consciousness-raising work that’s necessary in faith communities all over this nation for our civic well-being.

Dr. Jones’ work is one way to grow your knowledge and ability to engage such folks. Subscribing to his weekly Substack letter is a great way to do that.

Earlier this spring in my hometown paper, a local white pastor wrote of his desire that his young son learn the full story of U.S. history, including about enslavement of African people and dispossession of Native people. He said he would teach his son that Christian faith calls him to “love and repentance to correct racial injustices.”

I was so glad Rev. Eric Rucker wrote this piece! In Iowa right now, for a pastor to publicly speak and reject the false whitening of our national story and articulate a longing to repair racial injustice is courageous and important. The grip of racism in white Christianity runs deep and in Iowa, as in so many other places, it’s being politically mobilized.

We need these kinds of voices being raised everywhere as we move further into election season. We need, ourselves, to be having conversations with our neighbors and family members, within and beyond houses of faith. So, I want to encourage you to similarly be in those conversations—especially the ones where supremacist Christianity is being turned on democracy.

Here’s your action for today. Take stock of whether or where the issue of Christianity and civic life is percolating around you (in your extended family, school board, city) and determine a way you can take a step to engage. Write down three questions or ideas about how you might focus (for example, “Is Interfaith Alliance taking on Christian nationalism locally? When’s their next forum” “Is my church actively talking about this? if now how might we start?” “What’s my version of speaking up the way Rev. Rucker did?”

Thanks for being in this walk. We need each other to speak up and stand up. We need each other so much.

Jen

Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.

Day 2: Talk with two people about what you need to do to interrupt, intervene or challenge a racist dynamic or situation and get their support in envisioning how to do it.

Day 4: Find one question or one family story and decide to ask it or ask about it, to create “productive instability.”

Day 5: Try one of Chanté Griffin’s “tips” as a way of practice interracial relationship-building.

***Save the date: Join me and others who took part in this experience for a live conversation on Tuesday, July 9th at 5:00 PST/6:00 MST/7:00 CST/8:00 EST as a way to wrap up and reflect on our 12 Days of Action.*** Register here.

Kelly Meeker 6/26/24 Kelly Meeker 6/26/24

Day 10: How Shame Hurts our Movements

Hey there my friends,

We’re actually talking about shame for a second day—the reflections and invitation to an action step build on yesterday’s conversation. The activist Richie Reseda calls shame a “neurotoxin.” He says we actually reproduce the same patterns that systems of supremacy and oppression use when we use shame in our social justice movements. By “using shame,” he means shaming one other when we make mistakes or cause harm instead of finding ways to hold each another accountable when we (we! because we all make mistakes and we all cause harm!) in a model that aims for transformative justice.

Phew! This is important. Not only do I see social justice movements falling into the trap of weaponizing shame in lots of ways right now. But those of us who are white are particularly tempted to wield shame against one another.

Here’s the equation. I see that white person over there, doing something racially ignorant and/or harmful. Because I have deep sense that perhaps I am myself innately unworthy (because I have unmetabolized shame), part of me begins to panic that that proximity with this person is contagious. That my unworthiness (which, I secretly think is true) will end up exposed!

And so, I create as much distance from that person as I can. Perhaps I even publicly shame them—call them out, say how problematic they are—for their ways in order to protect the mirage that somehow I am pure and untainted.

This is no way for white folks to create spaces where we are walking with inviting, challenging, supporting and insisting that other white folks—and we ourselves, if we’re honest—can grow, learn and change!

When we distance ourselves and weaponize shame against other white people we become unable to do the work we’ve repeatedly been told by Black and Brown people is ours. Namely, work with other white folks, take responsibility for that part of the multi-racial justice moving.

Friends, shaming other white people is not a justice strategy.

In recent years, activists like Richie Reseda, Prentis Hemphill and Alicia Garza all asked versions of the question “do we believe in transformation?” “Do we believe people can change?” If we don’t, we may as well quite working for justice. So, surely we must believe that. Yes?

But, if we’re weaponizing and wielding shame against others in our justice work, we’re demonstrating that we think some people are innately unworthy, and thus cannot change, and thus can just thrown away.

(To be clear: these activists are clear—as am I—that refusing to weaponize shame is not the same thing as not holding people accountable. We all need to be held accountable and hold one another accountable! But we need to do it in ways that are rooted in a sense that we all cause harm, we all have the capacity for transformation, and all of us are necessary in this collective journey.)

Here's your action for today. Subscribe and listen to Prentis Hemphill’s last podcast Finding Our Way as well as their new one Becoming the People, which is just dropping now! Pick up their new book What it Takes to Heal: How Transforming Ourselves Can Change the World. We need to listen and walk with the knowledge and wisdom of leaders (like Hemphill) who are rooted in radical justice, as well as humanizing, liberating, transformative ways of being with and seeing ourselves and one another. Added bonus? If you start to regularly to Prentis Hemphill, you’ll you’ll get to know other incredible leaders too because they are constantly in dialogue with such folks!

This shame stuff is long haul work, my beloveds. Well, antiracism itself is long haul work too—life long, generations long. (Most work worth doing is.)

That’s just one more reason to be at it in some way, shape, or form every. dingle. day. of our lives.

See you tomorrow.

Jen

Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.

Day 2: Talk with two people about what you need to do to interrupt, intervene or challenge a racist dynamic or situation and get their support in envisioning how to do it.

Day 4: Find one question or one family story and decide to ask it or ask about it, to create “productive instability.”

Day 5: Try one of Chanté Griffin’s “tips” as a way of practice interracial relationship-building.

P.P.S. It’s not too late to sign up for 12 Days of Antiracist Action! Share this sign up link with your friends and we’ll help them get caught up: https://mailchi.mp/10b7b14d2037/murwtz2krf

Kelly Meeker 6/25/24 Kelly Meeker 6/25/24

Day 9: The Presence of Shame

Greetings friends,

There’s a difference between guilt and shame.

Guilt has to do with having done something wrong. Shame has to do with being wrong. (Like—innate unworthiness.)

White guilt and racial shame will both play a large role in the white experience as long as white supremacy and racism are pervasive. They’re consequences of having some awareness or a desire to be just, be in relationships of integrity with people of color, and otherwise live on the right side of history. All this while simultaneously understanding whiteness means unjust privileges, and access and insulation from racist violence and harm that affects other people.

Guilt and shame can leave us very stuck in our antiracism growth.

However—in my (very) unprofessional assessment—guilt is a developmentally normal response to being white and recognizing the reality of racism. While shame is evidence of having been developmentally harmed. This difference matters.

Guilt is easier. The way we metabolize guilt (get unstuck!) is through action. We learn to engage in accountability, redress, and repair for harm we have caused individually. We learn to take action, with others, to challenge and interrupt the harm caused in and by racist systems and structures.

Shame is tougher. Thandeka, who wrote a book many years ago called Learning to be White, described the process of being racialized as white as a developmental process rooted in the shame/shaming of white children and youth. She recorded numerous first-person accounts of white racialization among adults who grew up in the 60s and 70s—stories where children and youth were punished for “crossing racial lines” and made to understand their communities would expel them if they didn’t get back in line. The specific ways racialization happens is very different in more white families today than it was in the 60s and 70s. But, the larger processes remains similar.

Being shushed for noticing difference, told not to challenge grandma when she’s racist, watching parents say we “value equality” but stay uninvolved when racism roars into public life. At developmentally vulnerable ages—a time when you literally depend on adults for survival—many white children learn their belonging is contingent and love is conditional as part of their racialization.

Shame (you are unworthy! unloveable! innately bad!) becomes woven into the experience of the racial self as subtle, but powerful, messages about belonging are entangled with expectations that one goes along with whiteness in one’s family. (My video gave a not-so-subtle example of this).

No wonder shame comes roaring up when we encounter the demands of racial justice and the urgency of antiracism. Our whiteness, necessarily made visible and seen because of its relationship to racism, is still tangled up in shame and it makes itself known when we step into this journey.

So, what do we do about shame?

I actually don’t know.

But I do know this. Shame is a huge barrier to white antiracist growth. Shame makes it too easy to shut down to the work of justice (at best) or respond with resistance, disdain and anger (at worse). And I know that shame (of any sort) can only lose its grip when we find ways to acknowledge it’s there, talk about it, and name it. So, I know that’s where we need to start.

Friends, here’s your action for today. Sit down for 5 minutes, take a deep breath, and imagine (maybe write about!) a time you experienced shame related to race. Then go to look White Awake: Waking Ourselves for the Benefit of All. White Awake offers a unique path into understanding how white racial formation has affected us (historically, communally, psychology) and connects us with others to help us build community (the kind Chris Crass talked about on day one!) and move holistically into the work of collective liberation for all. Mark a time you can take one of their courses! They make them time flexible, they’re so so so good, and everything they do is on a sliding scale.

You are loved and you are necessary in this collective work. Thanks for risking being vulnerable with me today.

Jen

Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.

Day 2: Talk with two people about what you need to do to interrupt, intervene or challenge a racist dynamic or situation and get their support in envisioning how to do it.

Day 4: Find one question or one family story and decide to ask it or ask about it, to create “productive instability.”

Day 5: Try one of Chanté Griffin’s “tips” as a way of practice interracial relationship-building.

P.P.S. It’s not too late to sign up for 12 Days of Antiracist Action! Share this sign up link with your friends and we’ll help them get caught up: https://mailchi.mp/10b7b14d2037/murwtz2krf

Kelly Meeker 6/24/24 Kelly Meeker 6/24/24

Day 8: Talking About Race in our Families

Greetings friends,

A confession: today’s action focus has me caught up in all my feelings. Here’s why.

The powerful and clear message Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry gave us, yesterday? One reason those of us who are white need such explicit encouragement, education and direction is because we grew up in families that practiced white silence. When I wrote Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America I had so many white parents tell me that reading it made them realize they didn’t just need to parent their children differently, the book was showing them how to re-parent themselves!

Meanwhile, here’s the thing . . . as we begin to grow our antiracist understanding, skills and commitments . . . we don’t suddenly get different families. Once we hit a point where we realize how destructive and pervasive racism is on our world, we find ourselves part of the same families that made white silence or even active complicity with racism the familial cultural norm.

I cannot count the number of times, since 2016, I’ve heard white people say flippantly, “whatever you do, when you go home for that next holiday, don’t talk about politics or race.” I’ve even heard white folks offer that advice sincerely as a strategy to survive the difficult days we’re living in.

But, friends, we cannot do that!!!! We must not do that! There are so many reasons why.

Communities of color have made clear that white folks must work with other white folks, not only to take on more of the labor people of color can’t opt out of in order to survive (let alone thrive); but also because we’re also often in spaces with other white folks where people of color aren’t even present!
Every time I don’t interrupt, push back, engage race/racism in my family I not only teach the next generation of white kids that silence-to-avoid conflict is the right response to racism, but I also get re-formed in my own whiteness and complicity.
Finally? Transforming white communities cannot happen if the family isn’t taken seriously as a primary point of engagement. We need massive structural change and redistribution of access and resources; we also need to literally change the racialization of white communities as part of that change work. Those of us who are white, striving to grow antiracism, are absolutely key in that work and we have a lot more to do than we have to do this point.

In my video today, I talk about the strategy I’ve tried to take with my own extended family relationships. It’s the “Stay in it. Stay in it. And stay in it again, until it’s clearly time to go” strategy for antiracism in white-on-white relationships.

Here’s your action for today then (specifically for my white friends). Identify at least one racial dynamic that exists in your familial relationship where you haven’t fully “gone home with your antiracist values fully on your sleeve.” Make a plan for how you’re going to lean in with some kind of interruption (a question? a curiosity? a response that disrupts but strives to stay in connection?). Then—remember those two friends you’ve been checking in with? Reach out to them, or connect with folks who are part the brownicity forum—in short, get yourself some support!

Thank you for staying in it with me, with one another, and in this journey.

Jen

Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.

Day 2: Talk with two people about what you need to do to interrupt, intervene or challenge a racist dynamic or situation and get their support in envisioning how to do it.

Day 4: Find one question or one family story and decide to ask it or ask about it, to create “productive instability.”

Day 5: Try one of Chanté Griffin’s “tips” as a way of practice interracial relationship-building.

P.P.S. It’s not too late to sign up for 12 Days of Antiracist Action! Share this sign up link with your friends and we’ll help them get caught up: https://mailchi.mp/10b7b14d2037/murwtz2krf

Kelly Meeker 6/22/24 Kelly Meeker 6/22/24

Day 7: Let’s Talk about Racism with Our Kids, with Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry

Friends,

I’m so excited about our focus today!

“We want [kids] to know what racism is so . . . they feel empowered to dismantle it.” -Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry

“Our ‘why’ [for talking about racism with kids] should be rooted in liberation and justice . . .” -Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry

For years after antiracism became a primary orientation in my life, if you’d asked me about it, I would have gotten very intense. I would have told you, in no uncertain terms, that antiracism was about fierce protests, speaking truth to power (loudly), and hard-core community organizing.

Those answers wouldn’t have been wrong, of course. Racial justice can and does require those things.

But it would have never occurred to me to consider that how one parented or grand-parented, engaged the young person who lived next door or talked to kids at church or in a community group was a vital way to be faithful to the work of living racial transformation and taking daily action to co-create a just world where all of us can flourish.

And then?

Then I became a parent.

Wow, did I quickly realize two things. I realized what our children learn and learn to do now has everything to do with what they’ll be able to do later and how they’ll shape the kind of world we’re creating. I also realized I was woefully unequipped to translate my adult understandings of racial justice, into the language and developmental landscape of a two-year-old.

How to explain why shouldn’t we sing the “1 little, 2 little, 3 little Indians” on the Disney CD? How to teach them to recognize and challenge racism if (when!) they saw it on the school playground? How to teach them to acknowledge racial differences in ways that were truly respectful (in a society that so rarely modeled respect) and about injustice (without making them feel bad for being white)?

Wow, again did I become so grateful for Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry in the last few years.

Dr. Berry has long been at the work—educating, modeling, inspiring, challenging, and equipping adults to increase our racial literacy and capacity for antiracism. But she’s also one of the most powerful and inspiring people I know when it comes to teaching adults how to walk with kids and youth in transformative ways for the sake of liberation and justice.

(If you loved her video in this email, I absolutely recommend you check out her Tedx talk, Children Will Light Up the World if We Don’t Keep Them in the Dark. You won’t be the same.)

Here’s your action for today. “Spark a conversation with your child or students that inspires and liberates them to be more curious about how they can help dismantle racism” (thank you, Dr. Berry!). If you don’t have a child or students, connect with a friend or loved one who does—share what Dr. Berry got you thinking about and ask them about what they do.

(Also, if you’re a parent—go to brownicity or follow them on Instagram to build yourself a community of support and ongoing resourcing for yourself. If you don’t have children, could you give a copy of Hues of You to a friend who does?)

All of our children deserve many, many adults who are actively and daily creating the conditions in which they can, indeed, light up world! Because, indeed, they will.

Jen

Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.

Day 2: Talk with two people about what you need to do to interrupt, intervene or challenge a racist dynamic or situation and get their support in envisioning how to do it.

Day 4: Find one question or one family story and decide to ask it or ask about it, to create “productive instability.”

Day 5: Try one of Chanté Griffin’s “tips” as a way of practice interracial relationship-building.

P.P.S. It’s not too late to sign up for 12 Days of Antiracist Action! Share this sign up link with your friends and we’ll help them get caught up: https://mailchi.mp/10b7b14d2037/murwtz2krf

Meet Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry

Brownicity’s President & Learning Community Director, Lucretia Carter Berry, PhD is an antiracism curriculum specialist, course designer and author of What LIES Between Us - Fostering First Steps Toward Racial Healing, a TEDx speaker, and a writer for in(courage).me. She earned her Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction from Iowa State University and her BA from South Carolina State University.
Learn more about Dr. Berry’s work in her books: *Teaching for Justice & Belonging - A Journey for Educators & Parents*, *Hues of You - An Activity Book for Learning About the Skin You Are In*, and *What LIES Between Us Journal & Guide: Fostering First Steps Toward Racial Healing*.

Kelly Meeker 6/22/24 Kelly Meeker 6/22/24

Day 6: De-Segregating for Justice and Relationship

Welcome to our 12 Days of Antiracist Action! We're so thrilled you're here. Today, I invite you to listen to Chris Crass speak about connection out there (out here!) in the movement for racial justice. And that’s maybe the first thing we need to know: none of us is alone. And we need to know that because the growth, shifts, and changes white antiracism calls us into are beautiful; but they also can be difficult for lots of reasons!

Hello my beloveds,

We’re halfway through our 12 Days of Action—and as we dig in again today it’s a good time to go back to the list of three specific ways you want to grow your commitment to antiracism. Is the list the same? Has it shifted? Has this experience made clear other areas of antiracism growth that are important in your life?

Something that continues to be important to me is to regularly check in with myself about my antiracist practice. Antiracism is not just about knowledge or values. Those things are important, but it’s primarily about behavior. So, having an intention practice of how I’m growing my capacity for antiracist behavior needs as much intention as does any kind of growth I want to see in my life.

This connects directly to today’s invitation to action.

The “space between” white people, and Black people and other people of color, that Chanté Griffin calls our attention to, is not only a consequence of legacies of racism, which have marred our relationships with each other. They are also perpetuated by longstanding structures of segregation, which directly affects all our lives.

In housing, schooling, city planning and more, segregating forces have acted on our over and over again—historically, and on up through the now. In the lives of most white Americans, because of forces set into motion long before most of got here and choices our ancestors made about whether to resist those forces or not (usually not) segregation is the default.

If we want something different, then—if we want robustly multi-racial interactions, connections and community—we have to make choices that make such realities possible. We have to actively choose against segregation every day in ways small and large; or segregation will simply continue to have its way with us.

This is your action for today. Do an audit of where you spend your time and where you spend your money. Literally list it all out. Then identify specific choices you could make to shift where spend your time and your resources. Move your time and resources from mostly white spaces into as many Black- and Brown-owned, run or majority spaces as you possibly can. (Where do you get your haircut? Shop for groceries or buy books? Which library or what neighborhood parks do you take your kids to? Where do you volunteer? Who is your dentist? I could go on and on.)

Intentionally choosing against segregated patterns is a practice that allows us to invest more directly in the well-being of communities of color. Beyond that it also makes interracial relationships more possible and likely, because leaving white spaces (and doing so again, and again, and again) allows new possibilities that the default-setting of a life lived within the confines of segregation never even lets us imagine.

Jen

Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.

Day 2: Talk with two people about what you need to do to interrupt, intervene or challenge a racist dynamic or situation and get their support in envisioning how to do it.

Day 4: Find one question or one family story and decide to ask it or ask about it, to create “productive instability.”

Day 5: Try one of Chanté Griffin’s “tips” as a way of practice interracial relationship-building.

P.P.S. It’s not too late to sign up for 12 Days of Antiracist Action! Share this sign up link with your friends and we’ll help them get caught up: https://mailchi.mp/10b7b14d2037/murwtz2krf

Kelly Meeker 6/21/24 Kelly Meeker 6/21/24

Day 5: Loving Your Black Neighbor as Yourself with Chanté Griffin

Greetings friends,

The relationships we build across racial lines matter. And the reality is that longstanding histories of racism and racial separation caused by racism have done their work, so lots of us white folks stay on “our” side of those lines.

This is just one reason we are so fortunate to get to hear from Chanté Griffin today.

I got to read an advanced copy of Chanté Griffin’s new book (which just came out this month!) Loving Your Black Neighbor as Yourself: A Guide to Closing the Space Between Us. In the book, Ms. Griffin shares beautiful, concrete, and specific ways of being—practices that those of us who are white can live into when it comes to building relationships with Black people.

One of many reasons this book is such a gift is that Ms. Griffin faces squarely something that is kind of taboo to talk about publicly: white folks too often don’t show up in “neighborly” ways with Black folks we live in proximity to.

Ms. Griffin assumes that many white people do want to better and build meaningful, care-filled with Black people (and I think she’s right). She also understands that—odd as it may sound—many of us aren’t even sure how to do so and our worry that we might do or say the wrong thing, and cause offense or even harm, prevents us from trying. So, we stay away.

In response, Loving Your Black Neighbor as Yourself provides practices for white folks to learn that are informed by Black cultural values, rooted in justice, and framed by love—practices to help close the space between us. It also offers reflection exercises to help us dig into “where” we get stuck and “why.” These invitations help make deeper transformation more possible and transformation that makes authentic interracial relationships more likely.

So, here’s your action for today. Listen to Chanté Griffin’s suggestions and then look at your daily life. Do you have Black neighbors? A co-worker or fellow parent at your kids’ school who is Black or BIPOC? Are there Black people or other people of color who are part of some predominantly white space or organization you are also part of, but who you haven’t taken steps to connect with? Try one of Ms. Griffin’s “tips” as a way of practice interracial relationship-building.

Creating a more just world in which all of us can flourish is about changing the structural conditions we all live in and about changing the interpersonal conditions of our living. In fact the external and internal are connected—because we need to change the world together.

Thank you, Ms. Griffin for pouring out your knowledge, energy and wisdom in support of white growth. Thank you friends, here, for taking a next action step with me and with one another!

Jen

Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.

Day 2: Talk with two people about what you need to do to interrupt, intervene or challenge a racist dynamic or situation and get their support in envisioning how to do it.

Day 4: Find one question or one family story and decide to ask it or ask about it, to create “productive instability.”

P.P.S. It’s not too late to sign up for 12 Days of Antiracist Action! Share this sign up link with your friends and we’ll help them get caught up: https://mailchi.mp/10b7b14d2037/murwtz2krf

Meet Chanté Griffin

Chanté Griffin is a journalist and artist who creates socially and soul-conscious art.
She write about wildly popular topics like race and faith, plus less popular subjects like Rihanna’s latest baby news trending on Twitter.
Ms. Griffin is a contributing writer for *The Washington Post, Faithfully Magazine, and L.A. Parent*; and her articles, essays, and interviews have appeared in numerous other publications.
At my core, Chanté Griffin is an advocate who uses media and the arts to advocate for the issues closest to her heart, particularly **loving our Black Neighbors** and protecting natural black hair at work and school.

Kelly Meeker 6/19/24 Kelly Meeker 6/19/24

Day 4: Facing White Familial Legacies

Hello my beloveds,

I remain so grateful about how many of you are showing up for these offerings, insights and invitations. And, I want to say something else . . .

. . . the way this experience is set up means lots of what I offer here may sound individualistic. There are reasons for that—I don’t know each of you or your local or life contexts, nor where you may be in your antiracism journey. And since this isn’t set up as a communal course format, where we talk to each other, I can’t speak to specifics about engaging community or collective work where you are.

But, make no mistake, every action challenge here is offered with the aim to point us toward joining with others. And/or it’s an invitation that aims to better equip us to show up well when we do join with others. Antiracism is collective work—work to do together—even while we have individual responsibility and choice about taking it up each day in our own lives, using our specific skills, gifts and spheres of influence.

And today we are thinking about our connection to communities as a second day of focus on generational legacies--specifically, about white embeddedness in white families, in white relationship-networks, in white community.

Over time whiteness in our familial systems has developmentally set us up to experience real challenges when we begin to realize “racism and white supremacy is a crisis, and I want to be part of doing something meaningful about it.” Besides doing our part to co-create different conditions for the next generation (something Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry is going to point us to in a few days), we need to practice engaging our own families, right now.

The temptation to comply with white silence and avoid meaningful conversations about race and racism is profound. We are pressured to keep quiet for the sake of avoiding conflict or to subdue our justice commitments if they make our families uncomfortable. We are also pressured to live with under-complicated (even false) messages about our familial ancestors. White silence maintains white cohesion.

In today’s video I describe some ways my family “kept quiet” about some of our racial legacies and I encourage you to generate “productive instability” in our family systems.

That’s also your concrete action for today. Find one question or one family story and decide to ask it or ask about it. (If you need help finding the courage, call those same two friends you called on day two!).

“Mom, what was our family doing when redlining came to our home city in the 1950s?”

“Grandpa, what did you and our family at the time think about the civil rights movement?”

“Sibling, you know how every time our sister-in-law says that racist thing at the summer gathering no one says anything? I’m going to say something this time. Will you have my back?”

Notice how it feels to ask and what seems to happen when you do. And then: do it again. Changes happen over time, and I guarantee you if you practice repeatedly breaking white silence and challenge white cohesion in your family—new things will grow.

See you tomorrow.

Jen

Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.

Day 2: Talk with two people about what you need to do to interrupt, intervene or challenge a racist dynamic or situation and get their support in envisioning how to do it.

P.P.S. It’s not too late to sign up for 12 Days of Antiracist Action! Share this sign up link with your friends and we’ll help them get caught up: https://mailchi.mp/10b7b14d2037/murwtz2krf

Kelly Meeker 6/19/24 Kelly Meeker 6/19/24

Day 3: What’s a Generational Legacy?

Greetings friends,

Today is Juneteenth! It’s a good day to think about generational legacies.

What does that mean? Generational legacies have to do with the way the past has shaped us, what our families have passed down, the reality that what we experience today is made up of choices, structures and histories that came before us—these are part of the racial legacies we all inherit.

Juneteeth has been commemorated for generations by Black people. It honors the day—June 19, 1863—when Union troops arrived to Galveston Bay, Texas to announce the news of emancipation, which had actually gone into effect a full six months early (on January 1 of that year). There’s an incredible chapter in Clint Smith’s book, How the Word is Passed, which is about the power of memory, where Smith describes what he experienced when he participated in Galveston’s annual Juneteenth celebration in.

In Iowa, where I live, the 2024 theme for Juneteenth is “Remembering our history. Releasing the past. Reshaping our future.” There are all kinds of events to educate all of us (we white folks too) and inspire us to take actions together today for a more just racial future. So, here’s a bonus action step in honor of Juneteenth—or a re-do if you didn’t take one of your steps in the last two days—right now, go look up what’s going on in your area and pop on over to participate. While you’re at it, take note of the organizations that are sponsoring these events.

Do this for the sake of your own learning and to offer Black people in your community your visible support. Take your kids. Invite a friend.

Now, onto today’s video!

In today’s video I talked about two efforts to repair the injustices that exist today because of generational legacies: Acts of Reparation and the Community Remembrance Project sponsored by the Equal Justice Initiative.

Here’s your concrete action for today. Take a half-hour or so to read through and watch the videos produced by and about work of these two community-based initiatives. Sign up for updates to these projects.

This action isn’t merely about consuming knowledge.

Remembering, repair and reparation brings those of us who are white into contact with the material and moral debt white communities owe to Black and Brown communities. But it does more than that. Racial division in our society is a consequence of racial harm existing between white communities and communities of color. Beginning to open ourselves to and, then, joini with others to find ways to redress the harm that has been done that we can move ever hope to move into relationships rooted in justice and love across racial lines.

To explicitly learn not only about our shared racial histories (which bequeathed white communities and communities of color different legacies), but how people today are together engaging in repair-focused, transformational work in relationship to that history and to one another is a vital part of our antiracism journey.

To listen and learn about how folks are coming together already to talk about and do the work of remembrance and repair is an action. Next thing you know you’ll be plugging in with them to do it too, or finding folks who are already at it in our local context.

I’d love to hear back from you about what moves, challenges or inspires you from Acts of Reparation and the Community Remembrance Project. Let me know!

See you tomorrow.

Jen

Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.

Day 2: Talk with two people about what you need to do to interrupt, intervene or challenge a racist dynamic or situation and get their support in envisioning how to do it.

P.P.S. It’s not too late to sign up for 12 Days of Antiracist Action! Share this sign up link with your friends and we’ll help them get caught up: https://mailchi.mp/10b7b14d2037/murwtz2krf

Kelly Meeker 6/18/24 Kelly Meeker 6/18/24

Day 2: Interrupting Antiracism

Greetings friends,

In the video I made for you today, I read a story I wrote for Antiracism as Daily Practice. It’s a true story about the first time I risked actual relational capital and, despite being nervous (and sweating a lot!), stumbled my way into directly addressing an incident of racism I’d borne witness to.

What I didn’t share in the video is the larger context that made this risk-taking step possible. It became possible for me only because I’d begun participating several months before in a community that met regularly and was committed to both cheering and challenging one another in meaningful antiracist action. I knew a group of humans would support me as I took a deep breath and went to talk to my professor. I also knew that my relationships with these folks, who I’d come to love, meant they would hold me accountable (in love, but clarity) if I didn’t speak up.

Relationships explicitly rooted in a shared commitment to antiracism helped me live into my authentic values.

So, here's your action for today (and it builds on yesterday’s challenge!). Identify an interruption of racism, or some kind of racist dynamic, you know you need to make. This could be a dynamic or situation that regularly comes up in your extended family, your workplace, with a neighbor or a friend. Now, talk through what you need to do with it with at least two people in your life!

Every time we act, we change the world in some way. Let’s make even our smallest actions move it in the direction of justice!

Jen

Day 1: Make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism.

P.P.S. It’s not too late to sign up for 12 Days of Antiracist Action! Share this sign up link with your friends and we’ll help them get caught up: https://mailchi.mp/10b7b14d2037/murwtz2krf

Kelly Meeker 6/17/24 Kelly Meeker 6/17/24

Day 1: Welcome from Chris Crass

Hey there my beloved humans,

“. . . [They] knew something better was possible.” -Chris Crass

“. . . [We] know a multi-racial democratic society is possible.” -Chris Crass

Listening to Chris Crass speak in today’s video moved me to my core. And, I’m just so thrilled to welcome you to our 12 Days of Practice! Thank you for signing up.

There’s a world of connection out there (out here!) in the movement for racial justice. And that’s maybe the first thing we need to know: none of us is alone. And we need to know that because the growth, shifts, and changes white antiracism calls us into are beautiful, but they also can be difficult for lots of reasons!

So, we need other people.

But, or better put, and—it tends to be the case in white communities and white racial culture that thinking collectively or looking towards others to connect around antiracism or racial justice isn’t our first disposition. For a lot of reasons, whiteness has enculturated most of us white folks into a default-mode that is pretty individualistic.

Yet, for antiracist journey: we need other people.

We’re going to start this journey, then, with an inspiring call to action from Chris Crass. Chris is amazing—among many, many other things he helped co-found the national organization SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice).

In today’s video, Chris not only lays out a clear explanation of how white supremacy has been used to divide the many of us who long for “. . . a more dignified world for all people.” He also—and we don’t always hear this in antiracist organizing—calls those of us who are white to understand our lives and wellness are at stake too. Chris invites us to connects our hearts to our souls and our values—because this is a journey of love and liberation for all.

Your challenge today is to make a list of at least three specific ways you want to grow your lived commitment to antiracism (literally write it out! make it plain for yourself! keep it before you!). What do you hope to learn? What do you need to explore? What do you aim to realize more fully in your living and in your community when it comes to justice?

Friends, If you find your heart feeling heavy in these hard times, remember we are walking this path together. And, if you need a reminder, then let me say follow, listen to and learn from Chris Crass any place you can—because he’ll make sure you can’t forget. You are one heart in a sea of hearts, believing in the world we can create together.

Jen

P.P.S. It’s not too late to sign up for 12 Days of Antiracist Action! Share this sign up link with your friends and we’ll help them get caught up: https://mailchi.mp/10b7b14d2037/murwtz2krf

Day 12:Your Next Daily Practice

Day 11: What’s Religion Got to Do with It?

Day 10: How Shame Hurts our Movements

Day 9: The Presence of Shame

Day 8: Talking About Race in our Families

Day 7: Let’s Talk about Racism with Our Kids, with Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry

Meet Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry

Day 6: De-Segregating for Justice and Relationship

Day 5: Loving Your Black Neighbor as Yourself with Chanté Griffin

Meet Chanté Griffin

Day 4: Facing White Familial Legacies

Day 3: What’s a Generational Legacy?

Day 2: Interrupting Antiracism

Day 1: Welcome from Chris Crass

Meet Chris Crass

Jennifer Harvey