At a time when our country faces multiple threats our major political parties are developing their policy platforms in the lead up to the 2020 presidential elections. Regardless of issue or challenge, we have a deep and enduring need to be united in order to confront what is to come. Yet, our policy landscape is rife with racial inequities, and as such fails to create structures that would ensure the well-being of all our people.

We the undersigned call for racial equity to be a key principle across all of the issue areas and every policy in these platforms.

The Racial Equity Implementation guide provides a simple, accessible, and easy-to-read tool to foster conversations that can help food hubs to deepen their racial equity practices.

This assessment is a guide for workforce development organizations and practitioners to evaluate their programs, operations, and culture in order to identify strength areas and growth opportunities.

This Racial Equity Toolkit provides restaurant management with practical resources for assessing, planning, and implementing steps toward racial equity at your business. There is no step too small: every action you take helps your business thrive and fosters stronger local relationships with your workers and consumers.

The 2016 U.S. election results unleashed a wave of shock, fear, disillusionment, anger, and deep motivation, among other emotions, for many advocates and supporters of the racial justice movement. The early stages of the immense work that lies ahead has already begun — from providing support and preparing protection for some of the most vulnerable in our communities, to monitoring policy signs from the forthcoming administration, to driving solutions at the local level.

Race still plays a defining role in a person’s life trajectory, experiences, and outcomes. Shifting demographics make even more urgent our need to speak openly about racial bias and inequity, and their deep roots in our history, culture and institutions. However, when race enters our public conversations about important national issues, the dialogue is too often dehumanizing and racially charged. It too often focuses exclusively on racism at the level of the individual, dismisses systemic racism, or refers to racism in the past tense.

Watch a brief video of a success story where community-based organizations worked with their school district to predict and prevent racial disparities in schools.

We launched the Drop the I-Word campaign in September 2010 to eliminate use of the dehumanizing slur “illegal” to describe immigrants. By Spring 2013, the Associated Press, USA Today, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and many other news outlets dropped the i-word, affecting millions of readers daily nationwide.

Download PDF of the full toolkit: Overview: what are Racial Equity impact assessments? A Racial Equity Impact Assessment (REIA) is a systematic examination of how different racial and ethnic groups will likely be affected by a proposed action or decision. REIAs are used to minimize unanticipated adverse consequences in a variety of contexts, including the analysis of proposed policies, institutional practices, programs, plans and budgetary decisions. The REIA can be a vital tool for preventing institutional racism and for identifying new options to remedy long-standing inequities.

Download PDF of the Toolkit: Economic policies and public spending and revenue
decisions have enormous impacts—positive and negative—on different
racial and ethnic groups. A Racial Equity Impact Assessment is a
conscious and careful analysis of the effects of public decisions on
different racial and ethnic groups. Conducting a Racial Equity Impact
Assessment is a useful tool for assessing the actual or anticipated
effects of public policies and budgets in order to identify ways to
maximize equity and inclusion and minimize adverse and unanticipated
impacts.

Listen to the bi-weekly series of conference calls hosted by the Applied Research Center.