Welcome to American Black Journal.

I'm Stephen Henderson, your host.

Every year on Tuesday after the martin luther king jr holiday, we observe a national day of racial healing.

Now, this event was created by the W.K.

Kellogg Foundation as a way to bridge the divide and build a better world for children, families and communities.

As part of the observance this year, the organization's president and CEO, June Montgomery Abraham, has written two new books that are focused on racial healing.

One is titled How We Heal, and the other is a children's book called Our Differences Make US Stronger.

I spoke with Montgomery today, Brown, about the new books and the importance of racial equity.

It's always great to see you and talk with you.

Welcome back to American Black Journal.

Thank you, Stephen.

I think the last time I was here was about a decade ago when we were talking about this subject.

Yeah, right.

Yes.

I hope it wasn't quite that long, but it was a long time.

And and, you know, that's a good place to start.

The idea that ten years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, pick the time period.

This is an issue that has been with us for an awfully long time.

And it is not any less relevant today than it was at any of those past periods.

So let's start there and just have you kind of assess where we are as a nation with the idea of racial healing and and also do our viewers a favor and define what you mean by racial healing, because I think that's a little different than what some people think that means.

So, yes, I couldn't agree with you more.

This work is needed now more than ever.

It is work.

And for us at the Kellogg Foundation, it's been a journey.

But the work around healing is about bringing people together and connecting people so that we can bridge what we see as an empathy gap in our nation.

What we want to do is connect people in ways that allow us to work through our differences, through affirmation, through storytelling, through gaining shared understandings and building trust.

This is work that has to happen.

And as as I've said, this has been a journey.

And what I know is when communities and organizations focus on building environments that promote healing conversations and advance healing thinking in their organizations, they perform well.

People are connected and they're able to work through differences in very productive ways.

So, you know, our National Day of Racial Healing always follows Martin Luther King Day.

So that after being inspired by his and his vision, we promote the act of coming together, of connecting across our differences, and we give people the tools and show them how they can conduct healing conversations, how they can lead this work in their organizations, and how we can create new possibilities for communities and children and families through this work.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, it also strikes me that any effort to do this work now bumps up against a lot of dynamics in our in our country and in our culture that are pushing in the opposite direction.

Right.

Things like social media.

I think the 24 hour news cycle on cable, the sort of sensationalist instincts that that drive that they all seem to be pushing us to identify people in our nation who are different from us as the enemy, as the threat, as something to be to be feared.

And so just talking about the idea of racial healing, I think, you know, meets meets this this incredible this incredible set of challenges that seem to be around every corner right now.

Yeah.

And, you know, same is a good word because that is the narrative that is around every corner.

And that is all we hear and that's all we've heard.

But what I've seen in practice is there is just as much work going on around the practice of healing in communities and how communities are taking this on, as in ways to really grow their communities and uplift their communities.

So yes, we hear a lot of this dichotomous thinking is either this or that.

But in our healing work is not so divisive.

There are all possibilities between this or that.

And what the healing methodology does is teach us how to connect across these commonalities.

And instead of debating one another and shaming or blaming, we get to a space where we can hear one another and hear each other's stories and find commonality that we can then build on to grow our communities.

We don't see that happening in soundbites, but I see it happening on the ground in our communities.

And what we have to do as leaders is continue to promote this conversation.

And that's at the end of the day, racial healing is about having the right conversation across differences so that we can close what is an empathy gap in this nation and begin to build mutual understandings and mutual respect and and connect through our commonalities in a way that we can begin to work together in the future?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Can you can you, for our viewers, give us some, I guess, examples of that hope that you see in these these communities or ways in which this is working that that are instructive for people here?

What is it about this that tells you this can work and that things are not as pessimistic as as they are often portrayed?

Yes.

I like to use the the story of Flint, Michigan, where here in Detroit, everyone remembers the water crisis in Flint.

And you probably remember how divisive the community was.

The community was fragmented.

Trust was at a low point in the community.

No one trusted one another's.

The leaders were not working together.

They were blaming one another.

And the Kellogg Foundation supported Flint with our truth, racial healing and transformation effort.

We came into the community.

We promoted the healing conversations.

We created that space and allowed them to connect their leaders with one another, to begin to build a pathway forward, working together.

And we were successful.

The leaders were able to come together and address that crisis in a way where they address the needs of people on the ground.

And they understood that those needs were very different in certain parts of the community.

That developed empathy had developed a way of connecting, and it brought the leadership together.

Now, what's more important about that work is when the pandemic hit and flat, those bonds remained.

So the healing work was enduring and the leaders were more prepared to come together during the COVID epidemic and make sure that everyone in the community was seen and heard and had access to health care.

They wanted healing practitioners in their community.

So the work is very enduring.

And once you understand how to work through differences, most people continue to do so.

So while we promote a day, what we really want is everyone to develop the practice and to understand how to have a conversation across differences that can continue to be embedded in their leadership approach moving forward.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you've written a few books about this.

Let's talk about what role you feel that those books can play in this effort and what inspired you to take up the pen?

Yeah.

So, you know, healing is based on storytelling, and the book is about interconnecting stories is the story of of my healing journey and my pathway.

From Detroit, Michigan, to leading the W.K.

Kellogg Foundation.

But it's also a story of the Kellogg Foundation and its healing journey and how we were able to transform an organization that practices this methodology.

And finally, is stories of our grantees, stories of this work on the ground, stories of the possibilities that this work creates.

So the inspiration is to allow people to to understand this practice through stories and to see themselves and see their story in these stories and to be inspired to act accordingly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's that's so key to to any effort to to, to heal these divisions.

I think a lot of folks look at what's going on and feel like they're helpless to make a societal change or a cultural change or to or to stop the things that we all kind of see when we go on social media or watch television.

And you've almost got to turn that upside down and say, you know, think about the places where you interact with people yourself.

Think about the places where you actually have agency to make things different.

And that's where you begin this work and that's where you have the potential to have real impact.

That's exactly right.

And what I know is that many people are yearning to have these conversations and they don't know how.

And without the tools, it could feel daunting or you may feel vulnerable.

And that's why we're providing these tools.

There's a conversation guide available on Day of Racial Healing that over where you can see the flow of how to conduct such a conversation.

There are other tools.

There are examples of how communities have done this work.

And so we do want to equip people to have these conversations and to show them when you start from a place of affirmation and not blaming or shaming one another, that you can get to a place of productive conversation across differences.

And that's what we want.

We're not trying to say that we're all going to agree with one another forever.

But what we are saying is that all of our faith depends on our ability to work across differences.