DAY 21: Reflection on Week Three, Looking Ahead to the Future

Today’s prompt builds on yesterday’s reflection about how the Challenge has guided you to think and act differently, perhaps more boldly, on this journey of racial equity and justice.

How will you put any of your new commitments into action, starting as soon as Monday? What do you need to do so? Do you have what you need, or can you organize it into being, perhaps with help from others?

There is work to do on your own, but much of the change we need will happen in collaboration with others as well. Looking back at past prompts, one of the first suggestions we often make under the “ACT” section is “Reach out to a friend, family member, or colleague to have this conversation.” Who are your potential accomplices at work, at home, or in your community? In the greater book industry? We are in this together. 

Commit to anti-racist reflection and action as an ongoing practice, a way to chronicle the year ahead through writing, drawing, music, or some other expression. Choose something that will work for you so that you can continue to reflect and integrate your learning from this Challenge, find opportunities for healing if needed and also see how your dreams for the future can begin to unfold. Let your own “garden” for justice blossom and extend across boundaries! 

From SIBA: Thank you so much for being present and participating in this 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge. Please feel free to share this with your staff and colleagues. May we all continue our work together as anti-racists to create positive change in our industry, our communities, and our world.

Author Photo Credit: Courtesy American University by Jeff Watts | Excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

SIBA thanks its generous sponsors, who have made the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge possible:

Many of the quotes used in the Challenge are excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

Although SIBA has modified when appropriate for a bookseller audience, the majority of prompts and resources come directly from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE). We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.

DAY 19: New Patterns, New Vision

In her book Emergent Strategy, adrienne maree brown writes that we are engaged in an “imagination battle,” that the current conditions are the result of someone’s imagination, a de-humanizing and domination-oriented view. There are so many other alternatives, if we would be bold, broaden our view, and band together with one another to create new living and life-affirming stories. There is a growing sense that these times call us to live more concertedly and pursue better ways of being and doing, ways that are just and regenerative of patterns of equitable well-being.

In Race and the Cosmos, Barbara A Holmes appeals to all of us to expand our views with the help of science and cosmology so that we can pull from a wider sense of who we are and could be. Watch this short video meditation (3 min) from Dr. Holmes offered by the Center for Action and Contemplation. 

In addition, we invite you to watch two short segments of this video from a talk given by Penobscot educator, author, and attorney Sherri Mitchell (Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset) on her book Sacred Instructions: Indigenous Wisdom for Living Spirit-Based Change (start at 19:35 and end at 24:12; then start at 29:12 and end at 33:02).

Lastly, watch the 2-minute video embedded on this webpage on “Bridging - Towards A Society Built on Belonging” from the Othering & Belonging Institute.

• As you consider systems, including organizations and communities, that work for everyone (characterized by equitable belonging and well-being), what comes to mind and heart?

• Have you had even small glimpses of that future in a moment or interaction? How could that be nurtured?

• Reach out to a friend, family member, or colleague to have this conversation. What is their imagined world? How can we encourage and support the imaginations of others?

• Engage your organization and/or your community (personal or greater) in an “imagination conversation." See if you can weave “opportunity narratives” to counter the narratives of fear that are out there.

More Resources

• The Art of Richard Haynes Jr.

Yesterday: Sovereignty
Tomorrow: Reflecting on Week Three

Author Photo Credit: Katy Grannan| Excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

SIBA thanks its generous sponsors, who have made the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge possible:

Many of the quotes used in the Challenge are excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

Although SIBA has modified when appropriate for a bookseller audience, the majority of prompts and resources come directly from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE). We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.

DAY 17: Reparations

The National Black Food and Justice Alliance, along with growing numbers of regional and local groups, including white accomplices, is calling for reparations of land and resources to Black and Indigenous people to account for decades of extracted wealth. For more on the history of, and some of the numbers associated with, the economic damage in the African American community, see this infographic.

The US Government has settled a few lawsuits brought by American Indian tribes for mismanaging natural resources and other tribal assets. This has been a very slow process and many recognize that this has not accounted fully for the economic damage done in those communities. Clearly, there is much more work to be done. 

There is also a growing chorus of voices across race and ethnicity saying that reparations must not simply be transactional; they must be transformative in process, relationship, and outcome. See this proposal to repair Racial Wealth Disparity.

• What comes up for you as you read these resources and solutions related to reparations?

• How are you already, or how might you be, engaged in reparations through your bookselling work, studies, or community activity? Are reparations possible or enough? If not, what more or what else?

• Bring the guide from “Coming to the Table” and/or the “10 Point Reparations Plan” from the National African American Reparations Commission to your organization, business, school, community or place of worship. Decide on ways that you can collectively align with any of the points in that plan.

• Consult this list of Indigenous Principles of Just Transition and/or this toolkit –  Land Reparations and Indigenous Solidarity Action Guide (see the case studies, examples, and actions near the bottom of the page). Bring these ideas to your organization, business, school, community, or place of worship. Consider taking some of these steps together.

More Resources

• Ta-Nehisi Coates on the case for reparations (video) and article
• What would reparations look like? (New York Times)
• The case for interpersonal reparations
• Decolonizing Wealth
• Coming to the Table: Models for Reparations

Yesterday: Structural Racism / Wealth Gap
Tomorrow: Sovereignty

Author Photo Credit: Marion Trikosko/Library of Congress | Quote from Television interview, March 1964

SIBA thanks its generous sponsors, who have made the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge possible:

Many of the quotes used in the Challenge are excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

Although SIBA has modified when appropriate for a bookseller audience, the majority of prompts and resources come directly from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE). We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.

DAY 15: Structural Racism/Wealth Gap

Poet and novelist Ben Okri has written, “Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.” Systems scientist Sally J. Goerner has added, “The stories we tell ourselves about how the world works form our greatest survival tool.” Stories hold tremendous power in our world, work, and lives. 

At Food Solutions New England, their narrative strategy and other capacity-building work have benefitted from the work of The Storytelling Project, which identifies different kinds of stories that have been told to advance or prevent justice: stock stories (maintain the unjust status quo), concealed stories (accounts of those who are marginalized and oppressed), resistance stories (stories of anti-racist struggles which also have lessons about resilience), and counter-stories (ways to interrupt the status quo and create transformational alternatives). For more about these different kinds of stories, see pages 7-9 of The Storytelling Project Curriculum.

• What is your racial autobiography? Think about the stories you most often tell about your childhood using a lens that includes personal, cultural, and institutional racism.

• Reflect on the stories that circulate in your work, studies, and community life. Who and what do these stories promote and privilege? Are they advancing racial justice? Are they uplifting those who are marginalized? Are they inspiring new possibilities for racial equity and liberation?

• In the South, the word “heritage” is often used to sidestep or ignore the racist legacy of its history. “The American plantation wasn’t the quaint village community you saw depicted in your history textbook,” writes culinary historian Michael Twitty, “it was a labor camp system for exiled prisoners of war and victims of kidnapping.” Challenge/disrupt the perpetuation of stock stories around you. Hold them up for critique. Propose alternatives.

• Look at your own community’s landmarks and important cultural sites and ask if they are honoring a racist event or idea. Make a point of telling the other side of those stories. Recommended Reading: The Cooking Gene by Michael Twitty

More Resources

• Opportunity Agenda's Messaging and Language Resource Tools
• Definition and Analysis of Institutional Racism
• The REACH Equity Screen for Content Creators
• Beautiful Ventures Network
• StoryScape Exhibition

Yesterday: Reflecting on Week Two
Tomorrow: Raising the Next Generation

Author Photo Credit: Calvin Center for Faith & Writing | Quote from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

SIBA thanks its generous sponsors, who have made the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge possible:

Many of the quotes used in the Challenge are excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

Although SIBA has modified when appropriate for a bookseller audience, the majority of prompts and resources come directly from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE). We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.

DAY 13: Reflection on Week Two

Take some time to catch up on this past week’s prompts. Reflect on the different approaches we have explored so far for addressing the different levels of racism and white superiority/supremacy.

Which ones jump out that you want to use or explore more? Are there others that come to mind or that you are already using? Please share! What questions are you left with?

Consider having a conversation with someone else about your thoughts, feelings, and discoveries about ways to undo and promote healing from racism and white supremacy.

Yesterday: Equitable &Liberating Forms of Bookselling
Next Week: Anti-Racism and Your Community

Author Photo Credit: Vogue.com/O’Shea Tometi | Quote from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

SIBA thanks its generous sponsors, who have made the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge possible:

Many of the quotes used in the Challenge are excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

Although SIBA has modified when appropriate for a bookseller audience, the majority of prompts and resources come directly from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE). We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.

DAY 11: Institutional Racism

Institutional racism shows up in both formalized and informal ways, from Human Resources policies that privilege white dominant norms of “professionalism” to cultures that instill a sense of belonging to those who feel more comfortable in norms of whiteness (go back to the prompt from Day 4 to dig back into this). Watch this video on the impact of redlining in the US. To disrupt institutional racism, it is helpful to name it and also help an organization understand its progress toward anti-racism and pro-equitable belonging. Review both this continuum on becoming an “anti-racist” organization as well as this graphic of the “predictable phases of race equity work.

• What do you already know about the ways institutional racism shaped and continues to shape your community? What more are you curious about locally?

• Where would you put your organization (bookstore or other organization in the book industry) on the above continua? Where would you ideally like to see your organization or group?

More Resources

• Awake to Woke to Work
• We Will Be Undone
• Seeing Collective Impact Efforts with a Racial Justice Lens
• Anti-Racism Accountability Standards: An Example for Organizations

Yesterday: Internalized Racism
Tomorrow: Equitable & Liberating Forms of Bookselling

Author Photo Credit: Shutterstock/Udo Salters Photography | Quote from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

SIBA thanks its generous sponsors, who have made the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge possible:

Many of the quotes used in the Challenge are excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

Although SIBA has modified when appropriate for a bookseller audience, the majority of prompts and resources come directly from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE). We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.

DAY 9: Expression of Racial Diversity

Booksellers know it’s important to view their physical and online store through the eyes of their customers. You check out your window displays, walk through the aisles, look at what books you and your staff have positioned for special promotions and recommendations. Today we ask you to do this exercise through the lens of anti-racism and racial equity. What do you see? What is missing?

• Are your reading choices, and what's displayed on your staff picks shelf inclusive of BIPOC authors? If so, what racial groups are represented?

• Are you buying books and gifts that reflect white authorship/white audiences? Do you ask for ARCs of BIPOC books from publishers and sales reps?

• What is the percentage of  BIPOC representation in your online, social media, and in-store displays? 

• What about your author and other event programming? Do you ask for BIPOC authors when submitting your event grids?

• Write an internal anti-racist statement for your store. Involve your staff and pay attention to the parts of the process that generate discomfort. (Here is a resource for talking about anti-Black racism.) Ask yourselves how you would turn that internal policy statement into an external, public statement. For inspiration, see the Anti-Racist Action Plan created by Tubby and Coo's Mid-City Bookshop in New Orleans, Louisiana.

• Here are 5 Things Bookstores Can Do. Pick one or two to do right now.

More Resources

• AMIBA's Shop Black-Owned Business Campaign
• Katherine Morgan on Bookselling to White "Allies"
• Creating a Work Environment That Embraces Access, Equity, and Justice
• 8 Ways to Measure Diversity That Have Nothing to Do with Hiring
• Under the Umbrella Bookstore’s Anti-Racist Action Plan

Yesterday: Racial Diversity in the Workplace
Tomorrow: Internalized Racism

Author Photo Credit: Carl Van Vechten | Quote from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

SIBA thanks its generous sponsors, who have made the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge possible:

Many of the quotes used in the Challenge are excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

Although SIBA has modified when appropriate for a bookseller audience, the majority of prompts and resources come directly from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE). We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.

DAY 7: Reflection on Week One, Looking Ahead to Week Two,

Racism, and confronting racism, involves feelings--emotional and physical--as much as ideas and concepts. Recognizing these emotions and physical reactions is crucial to effecting lasting change. As you reflect on this week's prompts and resources, what feelings and reactions arose for you? What did you notice in your body? Why do you think some things had more emotional impact than others on you?

For more information on tuning into emotions and embodied intelligence, check out The Move to End Violence and The Focusing Institute.

Last Week: Anti-Racism and You: Dismantling Bias
Tomorrow: Racial Diversity in the Workplace

Author Photo Credit: Allan Warren

SIBA thanks its generous sponsors, who have made the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge possible:

Many of the quotes used in the Challenge are excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

Although SIBA has modified when appropriate for a bookseller audience, the majority of prompts and resources come directly from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE). We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.

DAY 5: Interpersonal Racism

Interpersonal racism – when a person’s conscious or subconscious racial bias influences their interactions and perceptions of other people – is very real. Everyone, and especially white people, have a role in calling out racism and bigotry, and this can be a hard thing to do. Even if it is not difficult, it can be difficult to do in a way that is ultimately productive. We invite you to look over this checklist of racist behaviors and interventions (starts on page 6) as well as the 21 images of frequently heard micro-aggressions in this article. Consider how you see your own role and responsibility around addressing interpersonal racism.

• What acts and expressions of interpersonal racism do you see around you? Are you comfortable with intervening in racist behavior? If so, how does it look different with different people?

• Be aware of how you talk to customers. Do you address white people and BIPOC people differently? If so, how?

• Listen and observe more closely for subtle and not-so-subtle racist aggressions around you today and this week, including in the media.

• Consider ways to intervene or to support others in doing so. If you’re not comfortable doing this, find an opportunity to share the checklist and invite people to consider their behaviors and ways of checking themselves and others.

More Resources

• Sources of White People’s Resistance Regarding Racism
• “Love While Challenging Racist Behavior” by Ana Perez
• Detour Spotting for Anti-Racists
• A Trip to the Grocery Store
• Getting Called Out – How to Apologize

Yesterday: Whiteness and Anti-Blackness
Tomorrow: Reflection on Week One

Author Photo Credit: Medium.com | Quote from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

SIBA thanks its generous sponsors, who have made the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge possible:

Many of the quotes used in the Challenge are excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

Although SIBA has modified when appropriate for a bookseller audience, the majority of prompts and resources come directly from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE). We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.

DAY 3: Racial Socialization

Socialization is a process we all go through – it is how we develop values, habits, and attitudes and learn to function in the world. Understanding the process of socialization can help us understand how we came to where we are in our views of race and racism in the book industry (and other related systems) and what we are willing and able to do to work for justice.  Consider this model of socialization and look at the different forces at play that reinforce attitudes and beliefs, and also at what can create new patterns (a theme for the third week of the Challenge). Also, watch this short video (less than 4 minutes) on “the culture cycle” at play around race in society.

• What do you see as the most important influences in your own racial socialization (parents, other family members, community, teachers, friends, colleagues, institutions, etc.)?

• What forces push you away from deeper consideration of, and work for, racial equity? What supports might pull you towards more steady work for racial equity in the book industry and other systems?

• Share the cycle of socialization and/or culture cycle with friends, family members, and colleagues. Talk about your respective paths of socialization. What actions could you take to support each other in positive change? Start taking some small steps! Share with others to inspire and encourage them.

More Resources

• RESiliance
• Inheritence: An Autobiography of Whiteness by Baynard Woods
• Cycle of Liberation
• EmbraceRace: Stories
• Doing Race Through the Culture Cycle

Yesterday: Dismantling Bias
Tomorrow: Whiteness and Anti-Blackness

Author Photo Credit: Vaschelle Andre | Quote from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

SIBA thanks its generous sponsors, who have made the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge possible:

Many of the quotes used in the Challenge are excerpted from Words of Change: Anti-Racism by permission of Sasquatch Books. Copyright 2020 By Kenyra Rankin. All rights reserved.

Although SIBA has modified when appropriate for a bookseller audience, the majority of prompts and resources come directly from the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge created by Food Solutions New England (FSNE). We are so grateful for their extraordinary work creating this program and making it available to other organizations.