Join us on Wednesday, Oct 25, for a conversation about what racial healing looks like in real time for the Black community.
What part do institutions, communities, and individuals need to play in order to establish justice and create the possibility for equity and unity?
Join Word In Black for a special Facebook Live on Wednesday, October 25, at 5 p.m. PT/ 8 p.m. ET for a conversation with Dr. Joy DeGruy and Dr. Bahia Cross about what is needed to bring about true racial healing.
“If you grew up in America, you’ve been socialized to be anti-Black
Dr. Joy DeGruy, an internationally renowned researcher and educator, is the founder of the Be The Healing movement. It centers racial healing in justice and truth, asks us to reckon with racial trauma and violence of enslavement, break the cycle of suffering, honor the resilience of our ancestors, and redeem the promise of liberation.
“If you grew up in America, you’ve been socialized to be anti-Black — including Black people,” DeGruy said in June. “All of us have been socialized to be anti-Black. In other words, to normalize the attack and the harm of Black people.”
With almost 40 years committed to scholarship and service as a social worker, therapist, and historian — and as the author of the essential book “Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome,” Dr. Joy presents a clear vision of what reclaiming our health and humanity requires.
Dr. Bahia holds a doctorate in social work research, and has focused on the experiences of Black female adolescents in foster care.
Along with working with Dr. Joy on building the Be the Healing movement, Dr. Bahia — who happens to be Dr. Joy’s daughter — is the founder and executive director of the Black Parent Initiative. The Portland-based nonprofit focuses on improving the lives of the city’s Black and multi-ethnic children by promoting health, cultural identity, and parent education, and ensuring caregivers have the resources they need to enable kids to thrive.
“It’s time to show off ourselves in our communities in a new way and in a beautifully organic, positive, knowing manner that allows us to shine with the brightness we’ve always had — but that institutions, policies, and laws have continuously sought to dim and extinguish,” Dr. Bahia wrote in a recent op-ed for Word In Black.
Dr. Joy and Dr. Bahia will be joined in conversation by Word In Black managing director Liz Courquet-Lesaulnier as well as Ashanti Branch, founder and executive director of the Oakland-based Ever Forward Club.
Join us for a conversation that, as Dr. Bahia wrote, is “committed to beaming light and love to every Black child, woman, man, and all the other ways we identify ourselves.”
