Here's What National Day of Racial Healing Means to Us
“I don’t want to pass away when I’m young. I want to live to however old I can live.””
As we have done over the last few years, today we reflect and participate in National Day of Racial Healing 2022. This year, we filmed talks with a few of our Initiatives of Change USA team (including staff and board members) and intergenerational community members about what racial healing work entails, how history informs our present and future, and how we can better practice restorative justice through intra-racial and inter-racial community building.
Allan-Charles Chipman, Faith Rooted Organizer & Transformation Strategist delves into the heart of racial healing and how we can each practice and activate these values: “Discover, Discern, Decide and Disrupt. What we unlearn is just as important as what we try to learn….Diversify your perspective. When you see things that stand against the healing you want to invoke, will you have a commitment to disrupt that conversation and redirect it towards where healing actually needs to go…Where there is racial wounding, it is important that agents of racial healing are also activated in those spaces.”
Rev. Dr. Lacette Cross, Pastor of Restoration Fellowship RVA also drops these pearls of wisdom about the collective healing process: “To see how the knowledge and inspiration from the books we are reading are shaping the depths of our dialogues and moving us to act in just and kind and radically hospitable ways that ultimately and hopefully transform who we are so that we might be able to usher some semblance of the beloved community that Dr. King so eloquently wrote about. We must continue our work of racial healing until our communities become brave spaces where we can live as our most authentic selves.”
We invite you to watch the full video above and share with your family and friends. Also stay tuned this week as we share additional messages of racial healing, truth telling and conciliation in honor of National Day of Racial Healing 2022.