21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge ©

The Judicial Division is proud to announce our 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge ©.  The Challenge invites members to complete a syllabus of short, daily assignments (typically taking 15-30 minutes), that include readings, videos, and more. The 21-Day Challenge concept was conceived several years ago by Eddie Moore, Jr. to advance deeper understandings of the intersections of race, power, privilege, supremacy and oppression.   We are grateful to him for publicly sharing and encouraging others to use this concept as an educational tool. 

We will pursue the Challenge over the month of September and look forward to spending the month engaging ourselves and our fellow JD members in learning and advancing in our quests for justice. We will follow the syllabus below, that has been adapted from the ABA Section of Labor & Employment Law’s challenge earlier this summer.

We invite you to join us every other week in September for a discussion of the readings that will help us engage in diversity and equality work and bring what we are learning more deeply into our work and our lives.  These discussions will be approximately one hour, though we encourage you to attend for even a small portion if you can.

The Challenge is voluntary, and participation in the Challenge shall not be construed as agreement with every word of every assignment nor a commitment by any person to a particular professional position or strategy.  While it is not the intention of the Challenge to cause offense, some participants may be offended by some language used in the lessons. There is no requirement to complete the assignments to participate and participants can opt-out at any point.

21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge is the registered copyright of America & Moore, LLC. 2014. 

Syllabus: 21-day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge © 

Day 1

• Nikole Hannah-Jones, America Wasn’t a Democracy, Until Black Americans Made It One, The New York Times (Aug. 14, 2019)

Day 2

• Danielle Cadet, Your Black Colleagues May Look Like They Are Okay – Chances Are They Are Not (May 2020)
• Katy Waldman, A Sociologist Examines The “White Fragility” That Prevents White Americans From Confronting Racism, New Yorker (July 23, 2018)

Day 3

• Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations, The Atlantic (May 21, 2014)

Day 4

• Kimberlé Crenshaw, The Urgency of Intersectionality, TEDTalks (October 2016)

Day 5

• Megan Ming Francis, Let's get to the root of racial injustice, TEDTalks (March 21, 2016)

Day 6

• Project Implicit, Implicit Association Test (IAT), (This exercise requires navigating the sign up for the tests, which includes answering a series of questions for the researchers, but it is recommended that everyone do at least these tests: Race, Skin Tone, and Weapons-Race. Also, everyone is encouraged to add these tests if you are able: Asian American, Native American, and Arab-Muslim.)

Day 7

• Kristen Rogers, Dear anti-racist allies: Here's how to respond to microaggressions, CNN
• Ali Vingiano, 63 Black Harvard Students Share Their Experiences In A Powerful Photo Project, BuzzFeed (March 3, 2014)

Day 8

• James McWilliams, Bryan Stevenson On What Well Meaning White People Need To Know About Race: An interview with Harvard University-trained public defense lawyer Bryan Stevenson on racial trauma, segregation, and listening to marginalized voices, Pacific Standard (updated Feb 18, 2019)

Day 9

• "Media portrayals of black men contribute to police violence, Rutgers study says,” EurekAlert! Science News (Nov. 29, 2018)
• Leigh Donaldson, “When the media misrepresents black men, the effects are felt in the real world,” The Guardian (Aug. 12, 2015):

Day 10

• John Biewen, Seeing White (14-part series podcast, 2017),  S2 E14: Transformation (44 minutes, 10 seconds)
  • or, if pressed for time:
    • John Biewen, Seeing White (14-part series podcast, 2017),  S2 E1: Turning the Lens (16 minutes, 30 seconds)

Day 11

• Karma Allen, More than 50% of homeless families are black, government report finds, ABCNews (Jan. 22, 2020)
• Scott Winship, Richard V. Reeves, and Katherine Guyot, The Inheritance of Black Poverty: It’s All About the Men, Brookings (March 22, 2018), 

Day 12

• Hannah Giorgis, Black Art is dangerous because it marries the personal and the political, The Guardian (Feb. 22, 2015)
• Reggie Ugwu, Lena Waitheʼs Art of Protest: The “Queen & Slim” writer on mixing art and politics, the key to collaboration and those infamous comments about Will Smith and Denzel Washington, The New York Times (Dec. 2, 2019)
• Bryan Stevenson ’85, "We can't recover from this history until we deal with it." legacy of slavery and the vision for creating the National Memorial for Peace and Justice and The Legacy Museum, Harvard Law School YouTube (Jan 30, 2019)

Day 13

• Rebecca Epstein, Jamilia J. Blake, and Thalia González, Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood, Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality
• Adrienne Green, How Black Girls Aren’t Presumed to Be Innocent: A new study finds that adults view them as less child-like and less in need of protection than their white peers, The Atlantic (June 29, 2017)

Day 14

• Perspectives in Poetry:  
  • Richard Wright - Between the World and Me
    
    • Author Bio
  • Langston Hughes - Harlem
    
    • Author Bio
  • June Jordan - Poem for Ms. Fannie Lou Hamer
    
    • Author Bio
  • Audre Lorde -  Who Said it Was Simple
    
    • Author Bio
  • Claudia Rankine – You are in the dark, in the car . . .
    • Author Bio
  • Alice Walker - The World Rising
    • Author Bio

• Perspectives on Change:
  • The Beatles – Revolution #1 
  • Nina Simone – Revolutions 1 and 2 
  • Nina Simone - Mississippi Goddam

Day 15

• Peggy McIntosh, Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of White Privilege

Day 16

• George Johnson, White gay privilege exists all year, but it is particularly hurtful during Pride, NBC News (June 30, 2019)
• Laverne Cox Talks about Intersectionality at Harvard (Video clips) (March 11, 2014)
• D-L Stewart, Black Trans* Lives Matter (TEDxTalks) (April 22, 2019)

Day 17

• N. K. Jemisin, How Long ‘Til Black Future Month? The Toxins of Speculative Fiction, and the Antidote that is Janelle Monae, Blog (Sept. 30, 2013) 

Day 18

• Sam Dylan Finch, 9 Phrases Allies Can Say When Called Out Instead of Getting Defensive, Everyday Feminism (May 29, 2017)

Day 19

• Jolie A. Doggett, 4 Questions About Hair that Black Girls Are Tired of Answering, HuffPost (Feb. 14, 2020)
• Jessica Moulite, Exclusive: Rep. Ayanna Pressley Reveals Beautiful Bald Head and Discusses Alopecia for the First Time, The Root (Jan. 16, 2020)
• Hair Love, Oscar®-Winning Short Film (Full), Sony Pictures Animation, YouTube (Dec. 5, 2019)

Day 20

• National Conference for Community and Justice, Colorism 
• Natasha S. Alford, Why Some Black Puerto Ricans Choose ‘White’ on the Census: The island has a long history of encouraging residents to identify as white, but there are growing efforts to raise awareness about racism, The New York Times (Feb. 9, 2020)

Day 21

• Karyn Lacy, How to Convince a White Realtor You’re Middle Class, The New York Times (Jan 21, 2020)
• Who is "Karen" and Why Does She Keep Calling the Police on Black Men?, On the Media (Podcast) (May 29, 2020)

Extra Resources

• Judicial Division Racie Equity and Inclusion Resources
• Eddie Moore Jr., 21-Day Plans
• National Museum of African American History and Culture, Talking About Race, an online portal designed to help individuals, families, and communities talk about racism, racial identity and the way these forces shape every aspect of society
• Robin DiAngelo, Ph.D, Critical Racial and Social Justice Education: List of Resources
• Verna Myers, How to Overcome Our Biases? Walk Boldly Toward Them, TED Talk (video) 
• John Biewen, Seeing White (14-part series podcast, 2017)
• Janice Gassam, Your Unconscious Bias Trainings Keep Failing Because You’re Not Addressing Systemic Bias (Forbes, Dec. 29, 2019)
• Michael Harriott, How to Be a Better White Person in 2020, The Root (Jan 9, 2020)
• Cheryl I. Harris, Whiteness As Property, Harvard Law Review, Vol. 106 No. 8 (June 1993)
• Eula Biss, White Debt, The New York Times Magazine (December 2, 2015)
• How to Not (Accidentally) Raise a Racist, Longest Shortest Time Podcast

Sign-up Now

Log-in to access registration for the bi-weekly discussions.