Small Bites Friday Five 06-12-20:
20-30m – Watch ABC’s Blackish or Mixed-ish for light fare through a social justice lens.
15-20m – Find the local city council and school board websites and inform yourself.
10-15m – Visit Tolerance.org’s magazine section and read one article.
5-10m– Check your voting status at whenweallvote.org and encourage one friend to do the same.
A Whole Zero Minutes– Don’t judge anyone else’s helping unless it’s doing harm.
– #SmallBites
With the launch of #SmallBites, I have set out to help those who want to create more equitable classrooms and communities. Many, in shock and outrage, are eagerly consuming resources and investing time and energy to learn about and stand against systemic inequities that have long plagued our society. I feel in that energy a world-wide awakening, even as some alte-Garde political and cultural regimes dig their heels in.
We decide if this will be a trend or a moment, if that “one day when the Glory comes” will be sooner rather than later. You can begin with strategies mentioned in #SmallBites. The weekly Friday Five will allow you to keep up the anti-racism marathon by allowing you to pace yourself and not get so overwhelmed that you give up. As you hit your stride, you can create some space to go deeper.
Unfortunately, every problem can’t be tackled only with strategies that take less than 30 minutes. Going to a protest takes a day, reading a book, a few days. Making lasting change for marginalized populations across the globe, a lifetime and more.
To that end, I have had inspiring conversations with white colleagues this week, in particular with Barbara Bray, author of Define Your Why. Those conversations have produced this work in progress that uses Helm’s framework of racial identity to help people identify where they are on the journey to becoming more culturally responsive.
If you find yourself wanting a heaping round of seconds after consuming #SmallBites, open the document, set a spell and sift through the links, book titles and social action sites. Cut on some Brad Paisley with LL (hey, I liked the song!) or Freedom Sounds while you do. Take what you need, leave the rest. This ain’t a clean your plate kind of party. Social responsibility is both necessary and personal.
For now, go fast–because it’s been too long in coming to go slow–but keep a sustainable pace, because we can’t afford to lose even one voice.
How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time, so pop in to YouTube next week for a serving of #SmallBites and follow me on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook.