A Spiritual Path to Unity & Social Justice

No two people have the same lived experience. Learning that your experience and understanding of the world is vastly different than someone else's and is shaped by the social construct, forces & messages around you is a first steps towards overcoming racism. Because racism continues to work its evil upon this nation, an essential element of the process will work to learn about current conditions and their causes, and understanding, in particular, the deeply entrenched notions of anti-Blackness that pervade our society. 

Articles, movies and books are one source of information to build the capacity to truly hear and acknowledge the voices of those who have directly suffered from the effects of racism. 

 It is not acceptable to expect those people so weighed down by injustice to also educate us on their experience or what needs to be done by white people . There is plenty of available information to begin doing the work required. We invite you to consider the following to begin:

Article: Both Black and White, and Neither 

Book: 'White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide'

Book: 'The Invention of the White Race'

Documentary: I Am Not Your Negro

Documentary: Black America Since MLK: And Still I Rise

A world without prisons? Ridiculous. Schools that foster the genius of every child? Impossible. A society where everyone has food, shelter, love? In your dreams. EXACTLY. 

Imagination: A Manifesto is a proclamation of the power of the imagination. It is an invitation to rid our mental and social structures from the tyranny of dominant imaginaries, and a field guide for seeding an imagination grounded in solidarity, in which our underlying interdependence as a species and planet is reflected back at us in our institutions and social relationships.

In 2018, former NC Teacher of the Year James E. Ford began devising a vision for a standalone nonprofit that deals explicitly with race and education issues in North Carolina. From this vision, the Center for Racial Equity in Education (CREED) was born, a North Carolina-based nonprofit actively pursuing racial justice by closing the knowing-doing gap in the field and filling an organizational void in the state. CREED launched publicly in 2019, releasing two research documents exposing the role of systemic racism in education.

Since then, CREED has grown to a small but mighty team of dynamic individuals, with varied skill sets and backgrounds, committed to transforming the educational experiences of Black, Latinx, Native American, and Asian students in North Carolina.

Down Home North Carolina is building power with poor and working-class people in North Carolina’s small towns and rural communities. ALL ARE WELCOME AT DOWN HOME. Together, we are taking action to increase democracy, grow the good in our communities, and pass a healthy and just home down to our grandbabies. 

We are poor and working class and we know that building multiracial power is essential to change.

By weaving together our  different experiences, we can shape a democracy that serves working people, where our labor is valued, and our food, water, and land is healthy. 

As we embark on our third year of creating space for meaningful, transformative conversations about race, you are invited to see the documentary "Power". In Power, Ford examines the history of American policing in order to see what its future may hold. The slave patrols created in the 1700s to track down enslaved persons; the often violent police suppression of the Civil Rights movement; and more recent wrongful deaths rhyme in ways that are difficult to ignore within a deeply entrenched framework of violent racial inequity. Yet in many communities throughout the country, the police are seen as a necessary bulwark against the threat of crime and disorder. The documentary allows this contradiction to drive the narrative forward, with insights from scholars and critics of the police alongside those of law enforcement officers and civilians whose lives have been negatively affected by policing.

Every month we gather... An essential element of the process will be honest and truthful discourse about current conditions of racism and their causes, and understanding, in particular, the deeply entrenched notions of anti-Blackness that pervade our society. 

Two organizations that are addressing and working to overcoming racism in education are CREED and Down Home North Carolina. We will hear from each of these groups on the last Sunday in August at the Charlotte Bahá’í Center, 3415 Marvin Rd.

"Justice is a capacity of the human soul. It enables each of us to see the world through our own eyes and not through the eyes of others... "

Justice is a capacity of the human soul. It enables each of us to see the world through our own eyes and not through the eyes of others. It protects us from the blind imitation of tradition, from religious prejudice, and intolerance. Our capacity to be just enables us to treat others fairly and equitably rather than being concerned solely with our own self-interest.

A film directed by Stephanie Welch that examines the history of the eugenics movement in the United States and its perceived resurgence through contemporary genetics. The film argues that the belief in biological determinism—the idea that some groups, races, and individuals are inherently superior and more deserving of rights—has threatened the American Dream since its inception, being used to justify the disenfranchisement of women, Black people, and Native Americans. It claims that modern genetics represents a new form of eugenics, where the concept of the "gene" is misused to justify social inequality and resist progress in racial and gender equality.

If race doesn't exist biologically, what is it? And why should it matter? Our final episode, "The House We Live In”, is the first film about race to focus not on individual attitudes and behavior but on the ways our institutions and policies advantage some groups at the expense of others. Its subject is the "unmarked" race: white people. We see how benefits quietly and often invisibly accrue to white people, not necessarily because of merit or hard work, but because of the racialized nature of our laws, courts, customs, and perhaps most pertinently, housing. Join us for Part 3, engage in compelling small group discussion and identify lines of action you can take to make a difference.

Join us for our May Discussion - The American Coup: Wilmington 1898

Fear, loathing, and the only successful coup d’état in American history

This is the story of the only successful overthrow of a domestic government in American history. Once generally referred to as a “riot,” the events of 1898 in Wilmington, North Carolina are now more widely understood to have been a massacre of its African American citizens, and the overthrow of an elected government.

The Bahá’í Community of Charlotte invites the public to attend Race Unity Day: Toward Oneness, a free and uplifting celebration dedicated to unity, justice, and collective healing. Taking place on Sunday, June 8, 2025, from 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM at the Charlotte Bahá’í Center, the event marks two years of ongoing, monthly community dialogue and action addressing anti-Black racism and promoting oneness.