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Many in Massachusetts remember or have studied the horrible stories of school desegregation in Boston. I didn’t grow up here but experienced a different kind of desegregation when I lived in Arlington, Virginia in the mid-1960s. In the fall of 1965, I started eighth grade at Gunston Junior High School. The previous year Gunston had been 90-95% white students, as were four of the other five junior high schools in Arlington at the time.

There was one junior high school in the Green Valley section of Arlington that was 90-95% Black students. Of course, that school had been allowed to fall into significant disrepair, so when Virginia schools were finally ordered to desegregate, the school serving Black students was closed and those students were bused to the adjoining white schools (note – it was only the Black students who experienced busing, because their school had been neglected and eventually torn down). Interestingly, school administrators held no meetings of students or parents in preparation – probably to avoid confrontations with white parents – I just showed up in September and the 8th grade class was now almost 50-50 Black and white students!

The next city over from Arlington is Alexandria which took a similar approach to desegregation (rarely is what occurred considered to have been “integration’), which is reported as mostly accurately portrayed in the movie, ‘Remember the Titans.’

Alexandria consolidated its high schools into one high school, T.C. Williams High School (unbelievably named for a segregationist school superintendent from the 1950s. Alexandria only just voted to rename the school in December). I had white friends who attended T.C. Williams the year they integrated, which was also 1965. In both cities, to no one’s surprise, while there was a lot of racial tension and fighting in the schools, there was far more difficulty among the adults then there were among the students.

‘Remember the Titans’ portrays sports, football in particular, as a potential bond for students and possibly a school and community at large, but that was over-dramatized. I remember the local Pop Warner football and Little League baseball teams being all white as the coaches and local business sponsors resisted Black players joining. Fortunately, there were teams on the other side of the city that were not white-only teams.

I was a preteen, so I had no idea of the importance of that time. And I know for most of you the 1960s is ancient history, but I encourage you to ask family members who were alive then about any experiences they had with desegregation, here or elsewhere in the country.

It tells the story of something that’s really going on right now, and even before the pandemic and during this pandemic,” said Donald Faison, who played Petey Jones. “We’re still dealing with fear in America.”

While the adults had the more difficult time with desegregation, a wonderful benefit that I experienced was not only having Black classmates and teammates but having Black teachers and coaches. I have many memories of the great role models for us as kids – similar to the coaches reflected (somewhat accurately as reported) in ‘Remember the Titans.’ The movie story lines were overdone to create drama, but the reality of the tone and tension is 100% true.

I hope we can all invest the time to learn more about desegregation, and Black History in America – all 402 years since the first slave ships arrived – as we strive to hold ourselves more accountable to pursing a more just and equitable world.

Read more about school desegregation here:

Washington Post – When a Va. County closed its schools rather than admit Black students

ESPN – Two decades later, ‘Remember the Titans’ is still relevant

The Atlantic – The lasting legacy of the busing crisis

Washington Post – Petey Jones, star on ‘Remember the Titans’ football team, dies at 65.

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Contact: Michelle Hillman
508-380-5486 (cell)
Michelle_Hillman@waysideyouth.org

Framingham, MA – Wayside Youth & Family Support Network received a grant for $29,769 from the MetroWest Health Foundation. Wayside will use the grant to create an Equity Training Center that will launch this year.

The new training center will provide educational workshops, personalized consultation services and community presentations to schools, local community groups, nonprofits and social service providers to challenge systemic racism, white privilege and increase equity within their organizations.

The goal of the center is to educate our youth and families, community partners and other nonprofits to develop anti-racist policies and practices that will challenge the strongholds of systemic racism. Trainings will be led by Wayside’s staff who are experts in diversity, equity and inclusion.

“We are beyond thankful for the grant from the MetroWest Health Foundation,” said Wayside’s President and CEO Eric Masi. “This will greatly benefit our community by educating people about diversity, inclusion, and equity. These free trainings will inform people about the daily oppression Black and brown people face and how to prevent it.”

This center intends to serve as a resource with a range of training topic available to the community and individuals including how to create systemic organizational change, talking about anti-racism with kids, examining white privilege and learning to have uncomfortable conversations about race and racism.

About Wayside Youth & Family Support Network: Founded in 1977, Wayside Youth & Family Support Network is a non-profit, nationally accredited human services agency headquartered in Framingham, Mass. dedicated to building strength, hope and resiliency through its family-based outreach services, residential treatment programs, and community-based counseling services to thousands of children, youth, and families throughout Central, Eastern and Northeastern Massachusetts. To learn more about Wayside, please visit www.waysideyouth.org or follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn.

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Vice President of People & Culture and Chief Diversity Officer

After the murder of George Floyd companies issued statements of outrage and committed themselves to improving their corporate culture. They also raced to hire a Chief Diversity Officers (CDO) to guide them in just how to do it without making costly mistakes. As the title implies, CDO’s are responsible for developing and implementing the diversity, equity, & inclusion strategy of an organization. They oversee initiatives, employee relations and tie business outcomes to the diversity, equity and inclusion work of the organization. They can create real organizational culture change with the proper budget, reporting structure and support. As CDO’s value has risen across industries, it’s important to pay attention to more than just their titles. Follow the work they are doing in cities like Boston which hired Dr. Kathryn Crockett, a published author and MIT lecturer of Public Policy and Urban Planning as its Chief of Equity. Boston Mayor Walsh established a cabinet-level position “to embed equity and racial justice into all City planning, operations, and work moving forward.”

Under Dr. Crockett’s leadership, the Office of Equity will be charged with leading the Administration’s efforts across departments to embed equity into all city work, and actively work to dismantle racism by putting an intentional focus on supporting communities of color and marginalized groups across all departments, and building equitable governmental structures to sustain this work.

Read about what strategies CDO’s have tried and tested. Below are links explaining the importance of CDO’s and a few to watch for.

Harvard Business Review: Do you know why your company needs a Chief Diversity Officer?

Medium: What is a Chief Diversity Officer and Why Does Your Company Need One?

City of Boston: Dr. Karilyn Crockett

CNBC: NBA appoints Oris Stuart as chief people and inclusion officer

Workday: Carin Taylor bio

FairPlayTalks: 2020’s Top 50 Chief Diversity Officers

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Development Manager

Today, Dec. 1, 2020, is Giving Tuesday. If you follow Wayside on social media, you know that we are participating and asking the community to support the work Wayside does by donating to us. Nick Kane, Wayside’s Development Manager, shares why nonprofits should be applying an equity lens to fundraising.

My name is Nicolas Kane.  I have the privilege of being male, growing up in a white, Catholic, and loving family, living in an affluent suburban town in MetroWest Massachusetts, and being well educated.  In fact, much of my life is full of privilege apart from being Latinx (I was adopted as a baby from Bogotá, Colombia), gay, and someone carrying a diagnosis of ADD.

I have worked in nonprofit fundraising for over a decade, the last two and a half years of which as the Development Manager at Wayside Youth & Family Support Network.  Wayside provides a wide variety of mental health counseling and support services to children, young adults, and families in Massachusetts. Chief among Wayside’s values are a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion and anti-racist practices.  This commitment extends beyond the agency’s clinical work to the administrative side of the agency.

In my role, at times I face ethical issues around accepting donations (both cash and in-kind) including how both the source and intent of contributions may or may not align with the agency’s core values.  Wayside’s fundraising is unique as our contributed revenue is not primarily used to support annual operating expenses as in many other organizations. Instead our fundraising allows us to go above and beyond the traditional scope of care we provide for the 6,000 youth and families we serve every year. More simply stated, we can provide emergency food and clothing for families in need, backpacks with school supplies to youth, and presents during the holiday season for the youth in our residential programs.

Within the past year, my colleagues and I have encountered and discussed the following ethical issues impacting potential donations:

1. Can/should we accept money or gift cards to support families facing food insecurities to a food provider donated by an organization that historically and currently aligns with other agencies whose values discriminate against populations served by Wayside?
   1. How do we balance the notion of providing food to a hungry population with the reality that the support to do so comes from an organization whose values contradict our mission?
   2. What is the impact on the individual served? Do they accept the opportunity to obtain food and compromise their own integrity of identity, or go hungry and retain their sense of self-worth and pride?
2. Can/should we accept a cash donation from a company/a company’s philanthropic arm that has been challenged for being a performative organization with no substantial actions around anti-racist work?
   1. What if it is an in-kind donation and comes to us from an individual or group genuinely invested in our agency’s mission to support the youth and families we serve?
3. If an organization works to help with substance abuse treatment and/or substance prevention, should the organization accept a donation (cash or in-kind) from a supplier of legal substances (i.e. marijuana, alcohol, and/or tobacco)?
   1. What if the donation is designated to be used as a part of the organization’s “educational outreach efforts” (i.e. youth substance abuse/prevention)?
   2. Can/should we serve alcoholic beverages as a part of our fundraising events?

After thoughtful consideration of these questions, I find myself remembering two things: to consider the spirit in which a gift is given and to hold space for these donors; specifically, around their capacity to change. I am reminded of Wayside’s core values – strength, hope, and resiliency. Wayside believes in a strength-based approach, focusing on affirmative and inspirational strategies that promote sustainable change.  We believe in the power of hope as a central factor in providing motivational resources necessary for change.

Consider the following two scenarios:

1. A donor of ill repute offers a donation to a nonprofit. The nonprofit declines the donation based on opposing ethical beliefs. The donor changes for the better and then offers the donation to the nonprofit once again. The donation should be re-examined and perhaps accepted.
2. A donor offers a donation to a nonprofit. The nonprofit accepts the donation. Time passes and the donor’s true character reveals values and beliefs in diametric opposition to that of the nonprofit. The donation should be re-examined and most likely be returned.

In both instances, I believe we as fundraisers must hold space for a donor’s ability to change and commit ourselves to continued review and revision of our gifts and gift acceptance policies.

Ultimately, nonprofits will continue to rely on philanthropy to support their work and sustain their missions. Nonprofit fundraising and fundraisers must evolve with the times and must apply an equity and racial justice lens to our work.

Over the course of my career in nonprofit fundraising I have come to better understand the impact of privilege. Those like me who are fortunate to have privilege in many ways should utilize that privilege to support equity and social justice for all.  It is the responsibility of those who hold the privilege to engage in conversations and actions promoting racial justice and inclusion.  Furthermore, working for a mental health/human services agency like Wayside, this problem must be addressed.  More specifically, as fundraisers we must challenge the way in which we consider philanthropic contributions and gift acceptance policies to support this effort.

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Wayside Youth & Family Support Network has long been committed to becoming an anti-racist, social justice and advocacy organization that serves vulnerable youth and families across the state. We apply an equity lens to every facet of what we do – from increasing the diversity of our staff, to training employees and parents how to talk about race and racism, to creating an inclusive workplace by examining all of our institutional practices, including the images we hang in our buildings, for equal representation.

In the days following the killing of George Floyd by police, our CEO, Eric Masi, spoke directly to our staff about the pandemic of racism, pledging to turn emotion into action. We provided staff with anti-racism resources, invited them to participate in our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Committee, encouraged them to learn how to hold anti-racist conversations across our agency or join a newly formed group for white allies of anti-racism. We shared our DEI Action Plan and accountability measures. We formed task groups to address racism at a systemic level and sent emails outlining “One Anti-Racist Action You Can Take Today” to give staff the opportunity to do their own work.

One of our recent “One Anti-Racist Action You Can Take Today” emails challenged our 500 staff to learn about Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day, and plan how to celebrate. Juneteenth marks the day in 1865 that Union soldiers led by Major General Gordon Granger arrived in Galveston, Texas, to announce the end of the Civil War and slavery. It took two years after the Emancipation Proclamation was issued until the last slaves were free.

This week, the Juneteenth action was also posted on our social media channels. Staff commended us on Facebook and began calling for Wayside to recognize June 19 as an official paid holiday and give Black staff the day off. They advocated for current and former Wayside staff to do the same. The post was shared 17 times and urged anti-racist colleagues, friends, family and white allies to use their voices and act.

Their advocacy made us proud. We listened and our senior leadership team re-examined how we failed to recognize and support holidays that call out the oppression of Black people. As one of our staff pointed out on Facebook, Juneteenth should be a day for Black and Brown people to celebrate and take time for self-care. It is also a day for white people to look at their own internalized racism and privilege and consider how they can impact racial equity.

We were humbled by the fact that Black history is so unknown to white people that we did not think about the importance of the annual holiday to our Black and Brown staff. That we should have recognized that this year, more than any other time in history, celebrating freedom on Juneteenth comes with the heavy weight of grief and exhaustion from fighting for civil rights for generations.

For those reasons, all Wayside staff now have Friday off as a paid holiday. We’ve asked them to share how they are celebrating and observing Juneteenth and provided white staff with 10 actions they can take.

It’s been 13 years since Governor Deval Patrick signed a proclamation making June 19th Juneteenth Independence Day, a day of observance in Massachusetts. According to The Guardian, Juneteenth is a holiday for most of the country and that “currently 46 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia recognize Juneteenth as an official state holiday or observance.” No president has declared it a federal holiday.

We will celebrate Juneteenth by acknowledging our bias and doing better.

Becoming an anti-racist is not just about educating ourselves. It’s about taking action to give up our privilege. Isn’t it time that we make Juneteenth a paid holiday by giving our Black, Brown and white allies a day off to celebrate freedom?

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Juneteenth, also known as Emancipation Day, marks the day when Union soldiers, led by Major General Gordon Granger, arrived in Galveston, Texas to announce the end of the Civil War and slavery. It was June 19, 1865 and although the Emancipation Proclamation had freed slaves more than two years earlier there was minimal enforcement in Texas due to a lack of Union troops. 

Each year, Juneteenth is a day for Black people to celebrate freedom. This year Juneteenth carries deeper meaning in the wake of Black lives lost to police brutality in the last few weeks and months. It’s hard to think that freedom is on the minds or in the hearts of Americans after the murder of George Floyd, after demonstrations for liberation or after the President was planning a political rally today.

Black and Brown people are calling on white people to stand with them and take action. They’ve been fighting too hard and too long. ​​​It made us think about what do we want white people to do to celebrate Juneteenth? 

10 Things We Want White People to Do to Celebrate Juneteenth

1. We want white people to deeply consider the wound of racism on the hearts of every Black American.
2. On Juneteenth we want white people to read, study Black history, Black poets, Black leaders, Black achievements.
3. We want white people to do things about racism as readily as they do things for their own children.
4. We want white people to make a list of resolutions, of promises, of vows about what will it take for them to use their power, their privilege, their platforms of power to give space to Black and Brown leaders.
5. We want them to find an accountability partner and make the list public of what actions they will take. They CAN do this on social media. A lot of those actions will be giving up privilege and making room for folks who they may not have noticed have no room at all.
6. We want white people to stop talking about how uncomfortable it is to talk about racism or police violence.
7. We want white people to stop being afraid of their own internalized white supremacy. We want them to search and look within at hard facts of thought and deed. Who cares about being comfortable? What about being true, brave and real instead?
8. Then we want white people to stop talking and listen to what needs to be done.
9. We want white people to plan on spending time in spaces with folks who are not like you.
10. We want white people to hold other white people accountable not on social media, instead with measured voices that call folks in to look and wrestle – to change. We are interested in courageous conversations, in hearing folks out and in allowing themselves to feel terrible and to let that feeling be a crucible for change.

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Staff Recommendations: 

Taiany Goulart, site manager, Wayside Medford

How to Be an Antiracist by Dr. Ibram X Kendi

So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire

Carlton, Wayside DEI consultant 

An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

Jodie Nierintz, senior program director, Wayside Milford

An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Fredrick Mann, Wayside clinician 

Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love, and So Much More by Janet Mock. “Mock’s Story of growing up in California and Hawaii as a low-income trans girl of color.”

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay. “Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health.”

Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. “This book looks at the ways we do harm by failing to understand one another, a problem Gladwell investigates through the child-abuse scandal involving Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky, the trial of Amanda Knox, the suicide of Sylvia Plath, the deceptions of financier Bernie Madoff and the TV, and more.”

Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald. “This book explores hidden biases that we all carry from a lifetime of experiences with blind spot cover social groups – age, gender, race, ethnicity, religion, social class, sexuality, disability status, or nationality.”

Other recommendations: 

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison 

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents by Julia Alvarez 

Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in The Cafeteria by Beverly Tatum 

On the Other Side of Freedom: The Case For Hope by DeRay Mckesson 

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