we stand for racial justice
As an organization, Joyful Mind Project is committed to taking an anti-racist stance -- to going beyond "not being racist" and instead, asking ourselves what we can do to help dismantle systems of privilege and oppression… and then taking action. We believe that benefiting from a racist culture is inseparable from being racist. We are either actively working to dismantle racism, or we are perpetuating it.
This requires ongoing work as “cultural competency"can never be truly achieved. Instead, we must practice being culturally humble in each moment by looking within ourselves to find, untangle, and transform our own biases — and then we must act. And we must act now.
As an organization, Joyful Mind Project’s work is unreservedly informed by critical race theory. Kimberlé Crenshaw, a founding critical race theorist and a law professor who teaches at UCLA and Columbia University, writes:
“Critical race theory is a practice. It's an approach to grappling with a history of white supremacy that rejects the belief that what's in the past is in the past, and that the laws and systems that grow from that past are detached from it."
As clinicians, educators, parents, and youth service providers, this practice means looking at our interventions, relational patterns, our curriculum, our classroom and school policies, and seeking to intentionally disrupt white supremacy and white-dominant culture.
Ibram X Kendi tells us:
"To be antiracist is a radical choice in the face of history, requiring a radical reorientation of our consciousness."
We are commited to looking deeply at ourselves, our organizational policies, and to the ongoing work of racial justice. We hope you will make this commitment with us.