A Spiritual Path to Unity & Social Justice

Race and Gun Violence

Tiffany Garner, Policy Advocate with Futures Without Violence, along with her colleague Leila Milani, will present compelling work on reducing gun violence and the unique challenges of how that work intersects with racism. Our preconceived notions and bias around fear, crime and its connection to the Black community is investigated and illumined.

Join us Sunday, December 21 for a powerful afternoon of learning and discourse.

2:00-6:00pm at the Charlotte Bahá’í Center

“The purpose of justice is the appearance of unity among men.” — Bahá’u’lláh

We welcome Pamela G. Senegal, Executive Director of the Charlotte YWCA. 

DID YOU KNOW?

The mission of the YWCA is the elimination of racism and the empowerment of women? Join us for a fascinating discussion and learn about more ways you can support this work in our community.

“When women participate fully and equally in the affairs of the world, when they enter confidently and capably the great arena of life, and when they are fully recognized and empowered, then and only then will the basis for universal peace be established.” — 'Abdu'l-Bahá

Join us for a discussion on Environmental Justice with cleanAIREnc. This month’s Overcoming Racism discussion explores environmental racism; how race, place, and power intersect to determine who breathes clean air, who has safe drinking water, and who bears the burden of pollution and environmental neglect. 

“We cannot segregate the human heart from the environment outside us and say that once one of these is reformed everything will be improved. Man is organic with the world. His inner life moulds the environment and is itself also deeply affected by it. The one acts upon the other and every abiding change in the life of man is the result of these mutual reactions.”

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. 

MORE RESOURCES

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

The 400-Year Holocaust: White America’s Legal, Psychopathic, and Sociopathic Black Genocide - and the Revolt Against Critical Race Theory examines and discusses the relationships between the legal history of anti-blackness and Whiteness through colonialism and the United States, and its impacts on present-day America. It centers anti-blackness as the core tenet of "racism" in White America and amplifies its relationship to the inherent "value" of Whiteness (i.e., White identity, White culture, White institutions, etc.). The text repositions and critically examines four core White American economic, moral, socio-cultural, and ideological institutions: human sex trafficking, rape, pedophilia, and violence (murder).

It positions racism as a disease/illness (i.e., psychosis, psychopathy, sociopathy, etc.), rather than a mere "social construct"; and amplifies the significance of anti-blackness and Whiteness within and throughout White American institutions (i.e., legality, politics, language, economics, etc.), past and present.

Link for more on Dante King

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... "

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.

See more on our Resources Page