Book by Lawrence Lanahan

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The Lines Between Us is a riveting narrative that compels reflection on America’s entrenched inequality—and on where the rubber meets the road not in the abstract, but in our own backyards. Taking readers from church sermons to community meetings to public hearings to protests to the Supreme Court to the death of Freddie Gray, Lanahan deftly exposes the intricacy of Baltimore’s hypersegregation through the stories of ordinary people living it, shaping it, and fighting it, day in and day out.

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This eye-opening account of how a city creates its black and white places, its rich and poor spaces, reveals that these problems are not intractable; but they are designed to endure until each of us—despite living in separate worlds—understands we have something at stake.

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• Link for powerpoint presentation: Implicit Bias Training from DCF's Racial Justice Team

  • ​This training is a follow-up to the Anti-Racism training DCF provided to CAC Volunteers in January 2021.  This very same training is offered to DCF employees and DCF has graciously agreed to provide this critical training to CAC Volunteers.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) has become an emotionally and politically charged term. It has catalyzed some state legislature to oppose it, pitted community residents against each other, and forced racial justice advocates to defend its merits. But why? How has a decades old academic framework designed to help scholars understand how racism and systemic oppression persist in the U.S. become a lightning rod?

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The panelists (click here for their bios) in this event shared research, counternarratives, and data about the importance of talking about race and addressing racism in schools and other organizational settings for the good of children and our social cohesiveness.
 

The Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History & Culture provides information and resources on how to make unbiased choices and be antiracist in all aspects of our lives.

Our biases can be dangerous, even deadly — as we've seen in the cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner, in Staten Island, New York. Diversity advocate Vernā Myers looks closely at some of the subconscious attitudes we hold toward out-groups. She makes a plea to all people: Acknowledge your biases. Then move toward, not away from, the groups that make you uncomfortable. In a funny, impassioned, important talk, she shows us how.

From Sarah Eagan, Connecticut's Child Advocate: Civil Rights Report - Disabling Inequity: The Urgent Need for Race-Conscious Resource Remedies 
 
This is a new report (no longer embargoed), released 3/21/21 by the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. The report focuses on students with disabilities and the systemic failure to meet their needs, especially children of color with disabilities and children who are exposed to trauma. The report includes several recommendations with implications for state and federal appropriations and policymaking, including the urgent need for greater funding to support education and mental health treatment needs of children and greater accountability for enforcing the civil rights of children. The report also urges immediate redress for the "over policing" of students of color with disabilities, an alarming issue that exists in Connecticut and which must be addressed by lawmakers.

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• Link for powerpoint presentation: BOLDLY LEADING ANTI-RACIST WORK WITHIN DCF 2020

  • ​Support DCF staff and providers at all levels in having a common language, common understanding -- the will and commitment to step into bold, skilled, respectful, authentic, confident roles related to the Department’s work of becoming anti-racist*, as a clear part of the Safe & Sound Culture DCF is striving to create and nurture

• Link to Connecticut State Fact Sheet from Casey Family Programs

Webinar from the National CASA/GAL Association network

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• Link to webinar slides

On Thursday, July 30th CCEH held a webinar on 'Addressing Racialized Trauma and Actively Engaging in Anti-Racism.' The panelists consisted of Fionnuala Darby-Hudgens- Director of Operations at Connecticut Fair Housing Center, Regina Cannon- Chief Equity and Impact Officer at C4 Innovations, Bobbi Riddick- MMW Assistant CAN Coordinator at New Opportunities Inc., Felicity Eles- MMW CAN Coordinator at New Opportunities Inc. and Tashmia Bryant- Capacity Building and Equity Program Manager at CCEH. All of the panelists were very honest and engaging which allowed for a great discussion on how to be active participants in anti-racist practices as well as navigating and addressing racialized trauma.

• Link for webinar

• Link to webinar slides

• Resources

The National CASA/GAL Association launched a new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Learning Center.

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From National CASA: "Recent events have caused us to reflect, dialogue and identify more proactive ways to address racism, injustices, diversity, equity, engagement and inclusion. To assist in these efforts, we encourage you to take advantage of the Learning Center (via link above). While this is not a comprehensive list, we have thoughtfully vetted these resources. Thank you for your willingness to expand your knowledge, particularly about topics that may affect the children we serve. These resources will be updated periodically."

The National CASA/GAL Association launched a new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Learning Center.

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In addition to the resources mentioned in the entry above, National CASA provides these resources on Latino Diversity and Inclusion.

These resources were shared at the Norwalk ACTS July 17, 2020 Restorative Practice Convening: Racial Trauma & Equity.

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The resources were provided by guest speaker Yanique Grant, LCSW. As a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Yanique’s specialization is in trauma and substance use, and more specifically working with individuals dealing with complex trauma such as that caused by racial injustices. She is the owner of Courage To Be, LLC, a private practice that offers diagnostic and psychotherapeutic services. 

At age 26, on the same day Donald Trump was elected in 2016, Michael Tubbs became the first African American mayor of his beleaguered hometown of Stockton, California, as well as the youngest mayor of a major American city. Stockton On My Mind, from filmmaker Marc Levin (HBO's One Nation Under Stress, Class Divide) follows Tubbs’ personal and political journey, exploring how growing up amid poverty and violence shaped his vision for innovative change.

Born to a teenage mother and a father in prison, Tubbs felt society destined him for either prison or death. Defying expectations, he received a scholarship to Stanford University and returned home to Stockton to “Upset the Set-Up,” serving first on the city council and then running for mayor. Now, Tubbs is launching some of the boldest social and economic policy experiments in the country in an effort to lift up his city of 300,000 residents, and turning it into a kind of social policy incubator.

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Available on HBO Go and HBO Now

List of resources from Norwalk ACTS to further knowledge and discussion about racial injustice.

Includes books, TED Talks, Movies, Documentaries & Short Films.

The Land of Inopportunity: Closing the Childhood Equity Gap for America’s Kids 

"Where a child grows up can determine their prospects in life more than you might guess. In most states across America, there are stark differences between communities that provide children the childhoods they deserve, and those where childhoods end too soon. These disparities threaten the future of our next generation, and they are being magnified by the effects of the coronavirus pandemic."

Tow Youth Justice Institute Issue Brief, 2019 Issue VI

Research has found that “white youth and youth of color engage in illegal activities at similar rates, however, there are substantial over-representation of youth of color in the juvenile justice systems across the country” and a serious difference in the way in which treatment or prosecution is dispersed.

Because of the link among cultural stereotypes and narrative, and systemic policies, practices and behaviors, implicit bias is one part of the system of inequity that serves to justify inequitable policies, practices and behaviors – part of the complex cycle people are trying to disrupt.

The good news is that... implicit biases are malleable and can be debiased through intention and practice of new strategies designed to “break” your automatic associations that link a negative judgment to behavior that is culturally different from yours. Interrupting implicit biases is complex work. “The topic of implicit bias is so complex and emotionally messy that it’s tempting to just want to gloss right over it jump to culturally responsive lesson planning and instructional strategies. But an important part of being culturally responsive is the ability to build trusting relationships with diverse students and to validate their experiences.”

NY Times Opinion piece by Jessica Horan-Block. Ms. Horan-Block is a lawyer.

My black and Latino clients are accused of abuse when their kids have accidents.
 

When a child experiences a mild head injury and a parent seeks medical attention, what happens next in New York City seems to depend on the ZIP code and the color of the parent’s skin.

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While a better-safe-than-sorry approach that accelerates child removals may sound like a responsible way to protect children, it ignores the harm and trauma children can experience when they are separated from their families and placed into foster care.

Urban Trauma: A Legacy of Racism
Maysa Akbar, PhD
Adolescent and Child Clinical Psychologist; CEO, Integrated Wellness, New Haven
School Discipline, Trauma and Race

It's easy to look down at urban communities and wonder why economic and social disparities still exist when so many people of color, despite facing severe adversity, have done better. They have broken the "cycle." Yet there are those in urban communities who continue to be plagued by what Dr. Maysa Akbar has defined as Urban Trauma – a set of conditions that sustain modern day oppression. Dr. Akbar makes the case that since the time of slavery, systemic trauma in our urban centers is a result of poverty, overcrowded housing, poor physical and mental health, despair, violence, crime, and drug abuse. Not only is Urban Trauma real, but by denying its existence we deny our communities of color the chance to heal and break their cycle.

New York Times Opinion Piece by Denene Millner

"Stories about the everyday beauty of being a little human being of color are scarce. Regardless of what the publishing industry seems to think, our babies don't spend their days thinking about Harriet Tubman, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and black bodies swinging; they're excited about what the tooth fairy will leave under their pillows, contemplating their first ride on the school bus, looking for dragons in their closets.

They want to read books that engage with their everyday experiences, featuring characters who look like them. Just like any other child. White children, too, deserve — and need — to see black characters that revel in the same human experiences that they do."

White Like Me, based on the work of acclaimed anti-racist educator and author Tim Wise, explores race and racism in the U.S. through the lens of whiteness and white privilege. In a stunning reassessment of the American ideal of meritocracy and claims that we've entered a post-racial society, Wise offers a fascinating look back at the race-based white entitlement programs that built the American middle class, and argues that our failure as a society to come to terms with this legacy of white privilege continues to perpetuate racial inequality and race-driven political resentments today. 
 

Other suggested reading/viewing that came out of the discussion:

• Book: The New Jim Crow, Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander.

• Documentary Film: 13th. An in-depth look at the prison system in the United States and how it reveals the nation's history of racial inequality. Available on Netflix

• Book: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

NY Times Opinion piece by Robin Bernstein 

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People of all races see black children as less innocent, more adultlike and more responsible for their actions than their white peers. In turn, normal childhood behavior, like disobedience, tantrums and back talk, is seen as a criminal threat when black kids do it. Social scientists have found that this misperception causes black children to be "pushed out, overpoliced and underprotected," according to a report by the legal scholar Kimberlé W. Crenshaw. That's why we must create a future in which children of color are not disproportionately caught up in the criminal justice system, a world in which a black 17-year-old can wear a hoodie without being assumed to be a criminal.

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Creating that social change, however, has proved difficult. And that's partly because the concept of childhood innocence itself has a deep and disturbing racial history.

NY Times article By Stephanie Clifford and Jessica Silver-Greenberg.

The agency’s requests for removals filed in family court rose 40 percent in the first quarter of 2017, to 730 from 519, compared with the same period last year, according to figures obtained by The New York Times.

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In interviews, dozens of lawyers working on these cases say the removals punish parents who have few resources. Their clients are predominantly poor black and Hispanic women, they say, and the criminalization of their parenting choices has led some to nickname the practice: Jane Crow.

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“It takes a lot as a public defender to be shocked, but these are the kinds of cases you hear attorneys screaming about in the hall,” said Scott Hechinger, a lawyer at Brooklyn Defender Services. “There’s this judgment that these mothers don’t have the ability to make decisions about their kids, and in that, society both infantilizes them and holds them to superhuman standards. In another community, your kid’s found outside looking for you because you’re in the bathtub, it’s ‘Oh, my God’” — a story to tell later, he said. “In a poor community, it’s called endangering the welfare of your child.”

The factsheet is a result of collaborative effort among the Schools Committee, Justice Consortium, and Culture Consortium to address race and trauma in the classroom. This resource for educators is a tool that is particularly important at the outset of the school year and provides support for educators to address ongoing national conversations in a trauma-informed manner.