“Moonias! Moonias!” (“White Man! White Man”) the children screeched as I stood outside their home on the Maskwacis First Nations Reservation. As a Community Social Worker, I had been summoned to investigate a child abuse allegation. I was twenty-two years old and it had never occurred to me that the color of my skin was […]
Am I living my own story, or living someone else’s? -Dr. Howard Stevenson Earlier this year, Dr. J. Derek McNeil sat down for a conversation with one of his life-long friends, Dr. Howard Stevenson, about trauma and resilience, especially as these topics relate to African-American men and boys. Dr. Stevenson is a clinical psychologist who […]
We live in a culture constructed on the scaffolding of systemic racist ideas, the racialization of ethnicity or safely siloed in our own ethnic communities. The murders of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Ahmaud Arbery; as well as the Make America Great Again anthems, have illuminated where we are in regard to equity and justice. […]
Scott Erickson is a multi-hyphenate artist: a touring painter, co-author of two books, and a performer of autobiographical, multimedia, interactive plays. As Andrea Sielaff, researcher for Resilient Leaders Project at The Seattle School, conducted qualitative interviews about what contributes to resilience in ministry, Scott was identified as an exemplar of resilience by one of his […]
When I returned from a week away around the Memorial Day holiday and learned of George Floyd’s murder at the hands of police officers, I sat in stunned silence and then I wept. There seems to be no end, no respite from the violence and oppression, no collective awareness, repentance, or change. I was preparing […]
Over the past months, we’ve watched the pandemic unfold, contouring to the same or worse racial disparities that are usually found in our society and health systems. The same barriers to access exist now in Black and Native communities as existed last fall. The same internalized biases exist in exhausted healthcare works as existed before. […]
On January 22nd of this year, I attended Jamar Tisby’s lecture at Seattle Pacific University based on his book, The Color of Compromise. He began with the story of a speech by White civil rights lawyer Charles Morgan Jr at the Birmingham Young Men’s Business Club in Birmingham, Alabama the day after the murder of […]
In spring 2018, the Practicum (now Listening Lab) team hosted a meeting for students who identify as underrepresented on campus (Persons of Color, LGBTQIA+, Sage, Conservative Theology, etc.) to invite conversation around the question: “What has practicum been like for you?” What followed was a series of often painful accounts of struggles that went beyond […]
Throughout the last several weeks, the faculty of The Seattle School have engaged in ongoing conversation, reflection, and education–individually and collectively–as we considered how to respond to the systematic oppression of and violence toward Black human beings in our country. For me personally, faces of students keep coming to mind–from the UW, Cascadia College, and […]
We say their names, lingering as we light a candle for each of them on the vigil altar: Ahmaud Arbery. Breonna Taylor. Tony McDade. Maurice Gordon. Rayshard Brooks. George Floyd. Our altar grows all-too-crowded, even if we say names from just the years since Black Lives Matter was founded. All fellow people, Americans, neighbors, friends, […]
Manuel Ellis. George Floyd. Breonna Taylor. Alton Sterling. Troy Robinson. Sandra Bland.Tamir Rice. Michael Brown. Eric Garner. James Chaney. Mack Charles Parker. Emmett Till. Mary Turner and unborn child. The “60 million and more,” as Toni Morrison puts it. While our bodies and souls ache with the recent abuses of power, we also recognize them […]
It is difficult for me to separate the deep hurt from watching George Floyd die from that of the generations of hurts mingled together of black and brown bodies who have died for no good reason. I want to be clear: there is no less pain when black and brown bodies harm each other, or […]