Church seminar in Colorado teaches people to be "anti-racist" (not just "not racist")
On a crisp Saturday morning in Boulder, 50 people, most of whom were white, streamed into the basement of a tony downtown church to spend three hours immersed in the history of racism in America, a lesson that included uncomfortable truths, disturbing images and a belief that knowledge, ever powerful, could lead to change.
Outside, it was one of those blustery but sunny autumn days that draw people to Chautauqua Park for one more snow-free hike, or out to the Saturday farmers' market for local honey and heirloom squash. It wasn’t a bad day to run errands or sit on the sidelines at your kid's soccer game.
[Regan Byrd] recited a defense used by people who say racism is no longer a problem: "There were some bad people who did bad things, and we're past that and we’re over that." History classes in school might cover slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction and the Civil Rights era. But they skip the efforts to create second-class systems that persist today, she said, and that's just the start of systemic racism.
"Understanding history is critical to understanding oppressive systems," Byrd said. "Most of us are not even 10% into understanding the history of these systems."
Individual and explicit acts of racism are good at grabbing the attention of the public and the body politic. In November, following an FBI report that 123 hate crimes were reported in Colorado in 2018 (an increase of 16%), Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser announced the formation of a coalition to fight hate crimes in the state.
Implicit, unconscious bias and systemic racism — the kind of racism that affects housing, employment, schools and the justice system — can be harder to see or quantify, but they're no less a part of the public conversation.