What is STARS??
STARS (Seeking Transformation toward Anti-Racist Systems) is an anti-racism team assembled for the purpose of investigating, analyzing, and dismantling racism at NDNU. Approximately 20 people including administrators, students, faculty, staff, alumni, trustees, SNDs, and friends from the wider community will be selected to begin work during the 2008-09 academic year.
Crossroads Anti-Racism Organizing and Training will train the STARS team, helping us to analyze racism and to develop and implement strategies to dismantle racism within our institutional structures.
Crossroads was founded in 1986 as an effort to develop new directions in understanding and combating the root causes of institutional racism in the United States.
Crossroads has developed an intensive process to develop and train an institutional anti-racism team. The process involves three specific phases, which build upon each other. Each phase has a duration of 3 to 6 months, and the entire training process normally lasts from 12 to 18 months. When the final phase is completed, the team members are prepared to use their skills and strategies to lead their institution toward long term structural and programmatic transformation.
In addition to faculty, staff, and students, community members will be an important part of this team as we work to become accountable to the communities that racism oppresses. Community members will be investing their time not only in the transformation of this institution, but also assisting the institution to participate in societal change that will impact our larger society.
We will be working to overcome a barely acknowledged and even more rarely confronted national history of racial injustice, the continuing effects of which conspire to perpetuate racial inequality, institutional stagnation and human suffering. The success of this work will demonstrate how well Notre Dame de Namur University carries out its mission. Will you consider joining us in this important work?
How Do I Join STARS??
The application deadline has passed to join STARS but that doesn't mean you can pitch in and help us transform NDNU! Contact Bobby Vaughn (bvaughn@ndnu.edu) for information.
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Concise Timeline of NDNU's Anti-Racism Work
More Anti-Racism and Racial Justice Resources
Organizations
antiracism.com - Offering tools and dialogue which inspire us to move through the barriers of racism and pave the way toward a thriving and socially just world.
The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond - a national and international collective of anti-racist, multicultural community organizers and educators dedicated to building an effective movement for social transformation. Facilitators of the "Undoing Racism" workshops.
Publications/Films
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Barndt, Joseph R. Understanding and Dismantling Racism : The Twenty-First Century Challenge to White America. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007.
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Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo. Racism without Racists : Color-Blind Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United States. 2nd ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006.
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Tatum, Beverly Daniel. "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" : And Other Conversations About Race. New York: Basic Books, 2003.
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Wise, Tim J. White Like Me : Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son. Rev. and updated. ed. Brooklyn, NY: Soft Skull Press, 2008.