During training at the Institute for Dismantling Racism, Inc. (IDR), Damon Sanders-Pratt watched a movie where, on the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed, a white schoolteacher in Iowa told her blue-eyed third-graders that they were better than their brown-eyed classmates.

The blue-eyed children enjoyed extra recess time, were allowed second helpings at lunch, and received an assortment of other advantages. By the end of the day, the blue-eyed children had begun calling their classmates “brown eyes,” and the brown-eyed children were ready to fight.

The teacher’s example of arbitrarily assigning advantage showed IDR participants what happens with institutional racism. “The reason why racism never gets to be fully addressed is it gets defined in so many ways,” explains the Rev. Willard Bass, executive director of IDR and assistant pastor of Green Street United Methodist Church, where his nonprofit is housed. “In the training we say that racism is harming all of us.”

IDR defines racism as prejudice based on skin color and the misuse of power by systems and institutions. In 2004 IDR began teaching multiracial groups of people who work within institutions how to address barriers to justice due to policies and procedures.

This training “makes me think about myself and choices I make and how I deal with people,” explains Sanders-Pratt, who is an Assistant Forsyth County Manager and African-American.

A calling he couldn’t ignore
Before he founded IDR, Bass worked as a chemist in the N.C. Department of Natural Resources, as an industry process engineer, and as a departmental marketing manager for Reynolds. He’d also owned his own contracting business. In 2000, he entered Wake Forest University Divinity School.

“I ran from my call for 25 years,” says Bass, who is African-American, Native American, Latino, and white.

At divinity school, Bass took classes with the Rev. Dr. Douglass M. Bailey, founder and president of the Center for Urban Ministry, Inc., and an associate professor of urban ministry at the School of Divinity. Bass wanted to do community-building ministry, Bailey recalls, and “he realized we can’t do community building without dismantling racism.”

That’s important to understand because, as Bailey explains, “Racism is the primary urban reality. It is systemic racism that produces most all of the other urban issues such as poverty, paltry public education, access to health care, violent crime, and the new ‘industry’ of the criminal justice penal system, etc.”

IDR, a nonprofit affiliate of the Interfaith Partnership for Advocacy and Reconciliation, has received funding from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the Winston-Salem Foundation, and the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation. Crossroads Ministry, an antiracism nonprofit, partners with IDR to provide training, and the seven organizational teams pay for ongoing support. IDR also provides a Youth Anti-Bias Leadership League, social justice initiatives, and Latino antiracism training workshops.

While Bass was in school, he agreed to talk to Bailey’s students about racism. On one occasion Bass asked, “Doug, how long do we have to do this?”
Bailey replied, “Until we get it.”

Hard work at IDR
IDR teaches history: The United States passed laws that granted white people privilege and access to power, Bass explains.

“We live in a system that has produced a racist culture,” agrees Bailey, who spends time traveling across the country teaching urban churches how to minister to their communities. “As a white male privileged person, I’m a recovering racist.”

Each IDR workshop is comprised of African-American, Latino, and white participants, who learn from workshop leaders and share insights that both educate and sometimes surprise one another.

For example, white members of Sanders-Pratt’s group say they don’t sit around their dinner table talking about race. “In my family, you definitely hear about it,” says Sanders-Pratt, who was born in the Bronx. “I just kind of take it for granted.”

He acknowledges that people might cite him as proof that African-Americans have equal opportunities for success. But, “there were many people who were in a similar situation as I was and didn’t.”

Because her first experience was in fourth grade during desegregation, Forsyth County Health Department Social Worker Robin Macklin admits she had a difficult time with white people not being able to see racism. By the end of the training, she says she knew she wanted to be a part of the health department’s antiracism team, where she now serves as co-leader with Charles Cahill.

“It was an awakening for me,” Macklin says. “It’s a process, and the journey is well worth it.”

Participating in training has to be voluntary, notes Dr. Tim Monroe, director of the health department. “It’s a matter of the willingness to be self-aware and self-critical, and that’s a hard thing to do.

“I learned a lot, and I thought I knew a lot when I went in,” says Monroe, who is white and whose wife is African-American.

Discussions allow people to voice their experiences in an open, nonconfrontational setting in an effort to build honest dialogue.

“People walk away with two feelings: I did not create this, and at the same time I’m ultimately responsible for this,” says the Rev. Kelly Carpenter, pastor of Green Street UMC and board member of IDR. “Those who participate share a common language.”

It takes teamwork
What has taken centuries to instill in our community will certainly take time to change, and that’s why building team support within organizations is important.

Systemic racism is especially relevant to public health because it is the department’s responsibility to evaluate the health of the community and to be aware of racial disparities in health outcomes, which are a fundamental measure of human welfare, Monroe says. The distribution of wealth and beneficial resources are a function of racial injustices, he explains.

“When you’re the beneficiary of a system, it’s harder to see,” he notes. “We don’t wake up every morning aware of our skin color and how it impacts our lives.”

His department has a nine-member team, and 87 employees have done the training — more than a third of the department’s employees. “We still have a long way to go,” Monroe says. “We don’t like to acknowledge it; [but] it’s important that we continue to think about it.”

Laura Elliott, communications director for the Experiment in Self Reliance (ESR) and a commissioned deacon in the Methodist Church, already was involved with CHANGE (Communities Helping All Neighbors Gain Empowerment) and active in political and public-policy issues addressing social justice when she took IDR training four years ago.

“It was a spiritual thing for me,” Elliott says. “There was a lot of healing and reconciliation that was a part of the process of the training.”

In her work and community service, Elliott says she has seen that Winston-Salem has a tradition of African-American and white leaders working together.

“We’re good at bringing people of all different races to the table,” she explains. “What IDR makes you aware of — it also matters who’s in control of the table.”

Despite the healthy discomfort IDR requires — or maybe because of that — those who participate in the training believe IDR is a boon to Winston-Salem. Macklin says, “It’s a safe haven where you can have dialogue for healing, hope, and moving forward.”

For more information about the Institute for Dismantling Racism, contact Willard Bass by calling 336-722-8379 or by e-mail at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).