CGC Journal - January 2024
We're Building a Co-learning Community of Empathetic Societal Change Agents
JANUARY 2024 | ISSUE 6
YEAR IN REVIEW
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Current Events - Race in the news
Featured news stories about race in America in 2023.
Emily’s Corner - Emily’s reflections and insights
Blame and Shame. (Plus highlights from 2023).
Talking With Kids -
A Conversations Journey on race with teens. Plus, highlights from 2023 discussions with kids.
Celebrating Change Agents -
Showcase of featured societal change agents in 2023.
Conversation Starter -
We start the new year asking … Where are you hopeful for this year?
Recommended Resources -
This month’s recommended resources, plus our list of resources from 2023 to help our community of co-learners grow their library of knowledge and insights
Community Corner -
We want to hear from you. We invite our community of co-learners to share with us what they are witnessing and experiencing in society where they live, work and play.
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CURRENT EVENTS
HAPPY NEW YEAR! Welcome to the beginning of a brand new series of monthly CGC Journals which we hope will provide you with unique insights into racial dynamics in our society today that inspire productive conversations. To start off this year, let’s take a brief look back at some of the news we featured in 2023 to see the path we traveled to get to this point in time.
Last year, we featured major news stories that were rooted in a common theme: race. As we enter 2024, race-related stories continue to make headlines. They collectively tell a story about a racially and economically segregated society passed down to our generation, and the current struggles over racial dynamics today embedded within our inheritance.
Here’s a look back over a few featured stories from our monthly 2023 CGC Journals:
DECEMBER 2023
AMERICA’S DEI WAR
Americans up and down the socioeconomic ladder are engaged in a national debate over the value of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts across myriad industries of society. But nowhere is the struggle more intense than in the education sector. (Read more: December 2023 CGC Journal)
NOVEMBER 2023
SIGNS OF CHANGE
Today, if we remain alert and aware of societal dynamics around race, we can clearly hear voices of oppressed peoples of color, alongside their White allies, demanding systemic changes in laws, systems, public policies, and private sector practices. Most recently, there have been positive responses to those demands, which gives rise to hope for building a more equitable and inclusive society over the course of the next generation.
(Read more: November 2023 CGC Journal)
OCTOBER 2023
AMERICA’S GREAT DEBATE:
SLAVERY, REPARATIONS AND LBJ’S GREAT SOCIETY
The world is engaged in a great discussion and debate over slavery. America is at an inflection point. It has long diminished, distorted and dismissed any serious national discussion about the true horrors of slavery, the century of domestic white terrorism and government policies that targeted Black Americans following the Civil War, and any steps toward a national reckoning, reconciling and reparations. Now, the world is elevating the issue and America can no longer sweep it under a very dirty rug of unresolved history handed down to present-day generations.
(Read more: October 2023 CGC Journal)
SEPTEMBER 2023
WHAT HAPPENED TO CORPORATE AMERICA’S RACIAL EQUITY PLEDGES AFTER GEORGE FLOYD?
On Aug 23, 2023 a week ahead of the 60th Anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley (MA-D), a member of the House Financial Services Committee, called on the five largest banks in America to provide a detailed update on $32B in racial equity commitments the institutions made following the murder of George Floyd in 2020.
Earlier this year, McKinsey & Company’s Institute for Black Economic Mobility released an update to its analysis of $340B in pledges made by more than 1,300 top corporations from May 2020 to October 2022. The findings were inconclusive.
Now, Congress is involved in the process of holding some of the CEOs of the nation’s top banks accountable for public pledges that capitalize upon the public trust.
(Read more: September 2023 CGC Journal)
AUGUST 2023
AMERICAN FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS EXAMINE THEIR HISTORIES WITH SLAVERY
There’s an interesting trend occurring among financial institutions in the US and Europe. In examining economic conditions in today’s society through a lens of historical context (how conditions of societal and financial inequity today came to be), Citigroup has emerged as a leader in conducting credible research and exposing how slavery and subsequent hostile systemic conditions over more than a century after the Civil War benefited a landscape of financial institutions and corporations.
In 2020, Citigroup published a seminal report that revealed racial inequity in U.S. cost the nation $16 trillion in just the last two decades.
On July 27, 2023, Fortune magazine published an article in which it reported that Citibank, along with multiple other financial institutions, were re-examining their past relationships with the institution of slavery and how they benefited.
(Read more: August 2023 CGC Journal)
EMILY’S CORNER
Emily Corner is a place of honest sharing; of reflections and insights and experiences that are unfolding in my journey as a co-learner. I welcome you here, and would love to hear your thoughts and ideas - feel free to reply to this email. I will read all that you share.
Blame and Shame.
A teacher approached me after our CGC Conversations Journey with students and staff of an Oregon charter school this week.
She shared that when she initially heard about our training together, she was hesitant and skeptical.
She shared that she’d had past experiences with trainings on race and equity in her teacher credential program. Those trainings were heavy on blame and shame — and she didn’t think that created meaningful learning or positive steps to move forward.
Today, with us, felt different, she said.
We began to talk about CGC’s core belief: that we all inherited this society together — none of us created it. But we can help each other better understand our inheritance so that we can become equipped as empathetic societal change agents. This approach was empowering and very impactful for her.
She shared a specific action step she would be taking in her lesson planning in the coming weeks.
Her testimony sheds light on a persistent problem in discussing race in America, and illuminates why so many White Americans, particularly teachers and parents, avoid or gloss over it. I am again pondering the role of shame: is it an effective way to create and build change? It is something that I often think about, both in our CGC learning spaces and in my own heart.
We want to understand truth, and we must. We can’t teach what we don’t know; and we can’t build something better if we don’t know what is that we want to build.
I continue to see the ways that the exploration of truth, surrounded in a space and environment of kindness and invitation, can lead toward deep and meaningful change.
Emily’s insights from 2023: