Welcome!

The Addressing Racism Collaborative is comprised of Friends across the Yearly Meeting committed to connect you to the resources for the work of antiracism. Together we can better model the Beloved Community vision shared by Dr. Martin Luther King.  

This page includes resources to connect and support Friends and Meetings:

• to learn how Friends are facing the challenge of becoming antiracist,
• to help meetings share their wisdom and worries about antiracism work and
• to support meetings who are moving to become antiracist* communities.

We have listed some favorite blogs, books and resources used and suggested by us and others. 

We welcome your additions.   As we all continue learning together, we welcome your interest and advice.  

Wherever you may be on your journey toward enhancing equity and justice, members of the collaborative seek for all of us to learn together in this work. As we all continue learning together, we welcome your interest and advice. 

*If the term is confusing to you, see the glossary on this webpage; we use the work of Ibram X Kendi to understand this.

As Friends, we seem to have a heightened aversion to, or fear of, the shadow side—those parts that we’d rather not see. We like to focus on the light as if there is no shadow, and I understand.

This is not an unnatural desire. There is a belief operating there that says that if those things in the shadow were allowed to be seen, talked about, and acknowledged that we would surely die. I like to say that we want to be the underground railroad Quakers, but not acknowledge that we were also the Quakers who required African Americans to sit on separate benches during meeting for worship.

So we have this fear that we would die if the whole truth were brought to light. There is some truth here. If we truly acknowledge those parts that we deny—that may be our shame, our sorrow, our greatest fears—there will be death. And primarily I focus on the death of the illusion!

— Niyonu Spann, Letting Go of Illusion, Engaging Truth: Healing!, Michener Lecture, SEYM 2007