Editor’s Note: The William Winter Institute for Racial Reconciliation (winterinstitute.org) is named after a Mississippi governor. Its vision statement reads in part: “Envisions a world where people honestly engage in their history in order to live more truthfully in the present; where the inequities of the past no longer dictate the possibilities of the future.”
The theory of racial reconciliation can — and does — fill volumes of academic texts, but as a matter of practice, it boils down to the basic human intuition best expressed by an African-American community leader in a biracial meeting in the Mississippi Delta town of Greenwood:
“We don’t know each other. Because we don’t know each other, we don’t trust each other. And because we don’t trust each other, we don’t work together.”
In communities across our home state of Mississippi, and indeed everywhere in the country, the work of dismantling systemic racism and building equitable institutions cannot be accomplished by one person or one group. And yet most of the changes a community wants to achieve are within the reach of the people living in that community — if they work together.
As in Greenwood, hard and soft barriers separate communities along racial lines, and each of our brains are hard-wired to make snap judgments based on the divisions that have been constructed. These forces run counter to the natural human desire for connection.
Reconciliation is the process by which every member of a community is welcomed to a seat at the table and invited to share their stories, which contribute to a full and honest accounting of the community’s past and present. Communities that have reckoned with themselves truthfully and inclusively are prepared to work together to create systemic change — and to sustain it.
However, for many of the people we work with in Mississippi, truth-telling can feel dangerous. It is a state where racist atrocities were committed in public view, then never publicly spoken of again. Institutions designed to divide and oppress have been tweaked, but there is little public discussion of transformation. The silence is protected by the fear of re-stoking aggression, or of bringing unwanted negative attention to a state resentful of being looked down upon by people in other parts of the country “who’ve got it twice as good.” A gradual inertia has reduced outward tension and conflict, which to many feels like progress, and justifiably so. But it has been achieved by moving on from difficult questions without moving past them.
Just as wellness is not merely the absence of disease, reconciliation is not merely the absence of hostility. Rather, it is a continual process that seeks to make fragmented communities whole by, as Pastor John Coleman eloquently put it, “build[ing] a bridge of trust strong enough to bear the weight of the truth you are trying to deliver.”
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