Transcript: Elizabeth Martinez said, very profoundly, that you can't understand racism in this country unless you understand what happened in 1790. I thought, what did happen? And she said, I'm talking about the Naturalization Act of 1790. And in that, if you studied it, you would find embedded that only free white persons can immigrate to this nation and begin the process that leads to citizenship. That didn't mean that all immigrants got citizenship right off, but it was the law of the land. She said it basically stayed the law of the land until the early 1950s. And she would challenge us. She said, what happened between this period–1790 to 1952? And people would say all sorts of things. What she was looking for was that all of the various systems that make up a nation–from education to incarceration, from healthcare to social service–that all of the systems were established during that time that white supremacy was the law. It wasn't just an opinion, it was the law. She blew my mind. I couldn't get over it. I still can't get over it. I said yes, yes! And that's why, even today, when we try to confront what's going on in our school systems that have such an overwhelming negative impact on students of color–why do so few graduate? All these questions–why are children of color more likely to be in foster care and stay there longer? You can't find one system in this country that you can't predict its outcome on the basis of race. So if that's true–and it is–then you have to understand that disproportionate outcomes are the intent of the system. But that doesn't mean that that intent can just be removed by saying, we no longer have that intent. You can't legislate something that becomes a part of a societal DNA. You can't just educate it away, you know? It's going to take hard-nosed organizing because it's not going to come easily. 

Now it's very hard for those of us who are in those systems–and most of us are in one way or another. If you're employed in this country, you're a part of a larger system. If you are unemployed, you are standing outside of that system. But whoever you are, your quality of life depends on the nature of your interaction with systems. Now, those of us who work at the professional level, who run those systems, we're called all sorts of things. From case managers to adjuncts to this to that, but we are educated and trained to play a certain role. But if you don't talk about the race construct–if you don't talk about and walk people through it to say, this is when it happened, this was the day, this was the intent, this is what it's meant–you won’t understand why the systems continue to produce such disproportionate outcomes.

Now, Joyce James and her colleagues in Texas, through their relationship with one of the Casey Foundations, began to take seriously the message of Undoing Racism. See, not all of us who go to a workshop take it seriously, or we don't connect it to our work. She did, and her cadres did. And they began to say okay, all of us are going to go [through the workshop]. You know what's the most amazing thing about that? They're saying that for the first time in the history of Texas there are fewer African-American children being brought into the system. So that never happened before, and the only thing she could point to as the difference was the organizing intent of the Undoing Racism Workshop. So she began to send every employee–from the most powerful to the entry level–through the workshop. She understood the organizing. See, most leaders won't go to the workshop, you know, because they think they already got it, or they're afraid of the implications of it. But what James did that is most powerful, is that they might have done 100 workshops, and I think she and her leadership–I might be a little wrong but I'm not far off–have attended every workshop. I always remember that when someone in a systemic position says I don't have time to do it, but I want my people to do it. It's a sure sign that you're not serious about what you're doing. 

So, disproportionality, again, is one of the great victories that the People’s Institute was a part of. We're not the reason for it, but we're a part of a nationwide movement, now worldwide, that began to discuss these things. You hear disproportionality everywhere you go now in the professional classes, but there wasn't even a word for it in 1990. So that's something that I think those of us in the anti-racist movement, at the People's Institute, can feel really good about. That a nationwide discussion is going on. Now, has it permeated every facet? By no means. But the movement is going. I would dare say that we did not envision this–maybe a couple of folks, maybe they envisioned it, but I don't think so. But now that it's happening, I think we should feel really good about what we're doing and where we're going with this.