with permission from the author.
For this year’s Black History Month, and because we are still in a pandemic, I leaped at the opportunity to virtually participate in the
: Lift Every Voice Racial Equity and Poverty, a series of online conversations that “inspires anti-racism action through art and courageous conversation.”
From soul-shaking poetry to a one-person play, this was a great way to bring our community together to reflect. Because it used Zoom, we were able to have breakout rooms with a handful of participants to share our personal reflections.
In our breakout, one participant shared earnestly and somewhat curiously, “My friends and I get how redlining and restrictive covenants prevented people of color from homeownership before the civil rights movement of the 1960s. But it seems the systems aren’t racist anymore; we have laws to stop that now. Instead, it just seems that it is based on a person’s financial situation.” I appreciated this white woman spe