This principle asserts that to strengthen our impact in building safety and preventing multiple forms of violence, violence prevention practitioners, and municipal and community partners need to understand and act collectively to address structural racism and advance racial justice. This means understanding that structural racism is rooted in a mental model and false ideology that assigns a hierarchy of value to groups of people according to phenotype. The Kellogg Foundation’s Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation initiative calls this work truth-telling. The Governmental Alliance on Race Equity says this requires normalizing conversations about racism. This false ideology has shaped every institution and all aspects of our culture from the founding of the country. The United States’ history is simultaneously rich with the agency and resilience of communities of color and the equally long struggles among all racial groups for justice and equity.
We need to eradicate structural racism within institutions and systems; otherwise, racism will continue to operate. Principle 2 states that the first step is to understand that racism is rooted in a false set of beliefs that we can recognize and counteract through actions, institutions, structures, and systems. If we do not fully understand that racism is a false ideology that has shaped our institutions and systems, we run the risk of falsely understanding racism as aberrant personal prejudice and racial inequities in safety outcomes as unfortunate consequences.
Building understanding involves education, dialogue, truth-telling, witnessing, and listening to and following the leadership of people with life experience of structural racism who are committed to racial justice practice. Embracing the truth and embarking on a transformational journey can be painful and challenging for everyone, in different ways, depending on if you have been harmed by or benefited from structural racism. Advancing racial justice will, to varying degrees, bring tensions and conflicts to the surface and require growth and change. But efforts to advance racial justice are not the cause of these tensions and conflicts; they are caused by structural racism.'
It's important to not episodically acknowledge structural racism and then abandon racial justice efforts when it feels uncomfortable. Rather, we need to embrace conflict in service of change. Conflict is a natural and necessary part of all relationships. Structural racism permeates our culture such that politeness and impassivity can be expected and rewarded over truth-telling. Addressing conflict in a nonpunitive and generative manner can deepen trust and foster relationships of learning, growth, and change. We need to normalize and sustain engagement across all levels of organizations and relationships as the pathway to trust-building, healing, and collective work to transform the manifestations of structural racism and achieve racial justice. It's also important to recognize that this principle, building shared understanding, is necessary but insufficient to achieve racial justice.
County of Santa Clara, Public Health Department, is normalizing conversations about racism and racial justice. The County of Santa Clara County Public Health Department (CSCCHD) works to prevent disease and injury, promote healthy lifestyles, create healthy environments, and advocate for policy and systems changes that advance department priorities. The Department holds a core value of equity: "We integrate strategies into our work that address injustices and structural inequities." They also hold a core value of partnership, and collaborate widely with community residents, community-based organizations, other government entities, and various sectors and systems within the county. The Department participates in the Government Alliance on Race Equity (GARE) trainings on normalizing conversations about structural racism and racial equity and now leads GARE trainings for health department staff and government and community partners. Multi-day trainings include opportunities to: 1) build shared understanding of structural racism and racial justice and their connections to community violence and community safety; 2) learn about United States history, including colonization and the institution of slavery and other injustices that have been imposed on communities across generations by government systems; and 3) acknowledge the agency and resilience of communities of color. CSCCHD also organizes local activities as part of the National Day of Racial Healing, held annually on January 19 to build restorative and transformative actions that are needed to move forward.