SHARED VALUES, NEW VISION

ARC believes that:

• Racial justice is key to social justice.
• People have the capacity to learn, grow, and change.
• Popular culture, as well as the rich diversity of cultures, can shape and advance equity.
• Racial justice benefits everyone, and even white people have a stake in it.
• We must invest in the leadership of young people to sustain a long-lasting racial justice movement.
• Mobilizing a diverse range of political and cultural resources is crucial to advancing racial justice values.
• Political transparency, genuine partnerships, and high expectations will help further racial justice.
• Racial justice IS possible to achieve.

 
RACIAL JUSTICE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

ARC envisions a world where people can attain their full potential, free from racism, war, poverty, sexism, environmental degradation and other forms of oppression.

Our goal is to change the way society talks about and understands racial inequity.  Modern movements require modern solutions that match the complexity of the problem. ARC’s strategic framework for advancing racial justice includes:

• Focusing on structural racism and systemic inequality rather than simply personal prejudice.
• Focusing on impacts rather than intentions.
• Addressing racial inequality explicitly but not necessarily exclusively.
• Proposing solutions that emphasize equity and inclusion rather than diversity.
• Developing strategies to empower stakeholders and target institutional powerholders.
• Making racial justice a high priority in all social justice efforts.

Taking the movement into the 21st century requires us to update both ideas and tactics.  We speak to people’s deepest values and use media and technology to tell new stories, build our constituency, and shape government and private institutions.

WHAT WE DO

FOUNDED IN 1981, ARC investigates the hidden racial consequences of public policy initiatives and develops new frameworks to resolve racially charged debates. With offices in New York, Chicago, and Oakland, we have three programs that serve these ends: Media and Journalism, Strategic Research and Policy Analysis, and the Racial Justice Leadership Action Network.

We use Media and Journalism to deliver stories that are not reported elsewhere, move people to action in support of racial equity, and push a society silenced by guilt and confusion toward concrete discussions of racial justice in the 21st century.  Through Strategic Research and Policy Analysis, we expose structural inequities by conducting both quantitative and qualitative research; produce reliable, relevant and accessible reports and interactive tools that help researchers, activists and policymakers take next steps; and build the analytical foundation for racial justice campaigns across the nation.  Finally, ARC’s Racial Justice Leadership Action Network trains a new cadre of journalists, community organizers and elected officials, through popular education, convenings, and mobilized action, to make these solutions real. ARC’s annual Facing Race Conference has become the national convening of organizers, activists, and intellectuals on race and politics.

ARC was one of the first racial justice organizations to begin writing about and advocating for equity in the emerging green economy, a set of changes that we predict will be on the scale of the industrial revolution. We recognize that people of color, women and poor people have been left behind by other economic innovations, and that these people who have borne the brunt of pollution-based economies deserve some relief from the illness, poverty and instability that comes along. We also understand that discrimination itself fuels inefficiency and waste - in the phenomenon of suburban sprawl, which started with white flight from inner cities. The green revolution, then, can't actually succeed either morally or pragmatically, without racial and other kinds of equity. We explored these questions in our Green Economy special issue of ColorLines (March 2008), which sold out within weeks.

UPCOMING

ARC is developing a Toolkit on Equity and the Green Economy — including releases in Summer and Fall of 2009 of Case Studies, a Model Policy Bank, and a Framework of Measures and Standards—that advocates can use to design fair programs and policies within the burgeoning green economy. For struggling communities, “green jobs” offer new employment, the potential for job growth within an expanding industry, as well as the chance to help improve the global and local environment. Unfortunately, in most cases, the "green" plans that have been developed are not explicit about driving local economic development or job creation, and almost none are explicit about racial and gender equity. Without specific benchmarks, we might miss the chance to ensure that new federal, state, and local legislation are developed and implemented fairly. ARC plans to combine these three components in an easy-to-use, downloadable toolkit that can be distributed to thousands of organizations and individuals across the country who will be able to use it to ensure that the enormous promise of the green economy reaches poor people, communities of color, and women. Our current work reflects our long history of examining the racial dimensions of environmental, educational and health issues, all of which are at play in the green economy.