- Coming up on "American Black Journal," we're gonna explore the connection between spirituality and racial healing, and how the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan is using it to break down barriers.

Plus we'll talk about the needs of children in foster care and how you can support them.

Stay right there, "American Black Journal" starts right now.

- [Narrator 1] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

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- [Narrator 2] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Narrator 1] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you, thank you.

(bright music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal."

I'm your host, Stephen Henderson.

It was five years ago this month that George Floyd was murdered by a Minneapolis police officer, setting off a worldwide protest against racial injustice.

For the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan, this watershed moment represented the opportunity to embark on a mission of linking spirituality to racial healing.

Joining me now to talk about this initiative are Bishop Bonnie Perry and Reverend Sister Veronica Dunbar.

They are both from the Episcopal Diocese of Michigan.

Welcome to "American Black Journal."

- Thank you.

- I think it's really interesting that five years, as we come up on that five-year anniversary of George Floyd's murder, people are starting to ask real questions now about the things that have been done since that, right?

Did it make any sense to engage in this experiment with DEI, for instance?

I mean, people are really questioning that.

People are questioning whether racial healing is possible or necessary, and I think you've gotta have pretty good answers right now.

(all chuckling) You know, I mean, people are pretty aggressive about this.

So I'm really curious first about how you made this decision to focus on racial healing as a result of what happened five years ago, and I guess how it is going, whether you feel like it's paying off in the ways that you thought.

I'll start with you.

- Yeah, no, Stephen, I was elected bishop and became bishop right before COVID.

- [Stephen] Okay, perfect timing.

- Right, it was perfect.

I think my consecration was the last big gathering.

- [Stephen] Really?

Wow.

- And I came here talking and wanting to do racial repair and reparations.

That was something I came here thinking that we really needed as a church, as a majority white church, that we needed to be doing this work.

And then we do COVID and then Mr. Floyd is murdered.

And it became super clear to me that we needed to do even more.

- Yeah.

- And as that was all happening, I had been developing a connection with my colleague, Sister V, and we began to do some book studies.

'Cause, you know, the white people like to read the books.

We do the book studies, right, but to begin to move the momentum.

And I think with George Floyd's murder, many people had bits and pieces of ideas, people of color knew for sure.

White people come in and out, like we know, and then we decide not to know.

And I think with that, there was a tearing away of the scales from people's eyes, much like Paul on the road to Damascus.

And it's like, now we're not going back, and now we need to move forward.

And it was not long after that, I invited Sister V to join my staff, and that we would have a dedicated staff person to spirituality and race.

- And race, yeah.

Yeah, that connection is not intuitive for everybody.

- Yeah.

And I think it is for us when we think about it, but I think for a lot of, even Episcopalians, that sounded a little odd at first, but really, spirituality underlies, you know, anything like repair, anything, like building community, certainly anything in our language and building the body of Christ, you know, and if we're going to have that kind of unity or repair, it does not come without justice.

You can't have repair without justice.

And so that meant, you know, just learning about who we are and how we got here, continuing education, but also just making those connections and dialogues with people who are just beginning to think about this because of what happened with George Floyd.

- And to have an on-ramp.

There's a justice on-ramp, but not everybody wants to go on the justice on-ramp.

- Right.

- Right?

So instead to say, "This is a spiritual issue, we are people of faith, and so we are people of faith, we address things from a theological and a spiritual lens."

And it became very clear to me in our conversations that this was a way that we could invite all sorts of people onto this road towards repair.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- 'Cause people hear social justice, and that puts up a lot- - Uh, we're not sure.

- But in our tradition, if we say discipleship, if this is how we become more Christlike, if this is how we embody our faith in the world, then that's looking at it differently and opening the door in a different way.

And so, we don't actually talk about social justice, we talk about discipleship, we talk about faith formation, and, you know, what it means to really deepen your faith and to embody it.

How do we embody the gospel?

How do we embody Christ's message?

- So you've taken a lot of folks on this journey, in five years, talk about what that journey looks like and what the outcomes look like.

- Yeah, so we ended up designing an anti-racism curriculum for our diocese.

It's one of the requirements for lay leaders and clergy.

And we had the opportunity to really shape it specifically for who we were here in Southeast and South Central, Michigan.

So we did that.

And we also, and Bonnie can talk more about this, we partnered with the Episcopal Divinity School on an Anglicanism and Social Justice course that lasted two years.

And we just sent out the invitation, we came up with money for scholarships.

- We plowed a great deal of money into giving deep financial assistance to folks to engage in a two-year course of study to deal with, to reckon with, to see what our faith says about the sin of racism.

- Yeah.

- Right?

And this is right after Mr. Floyd's murder, and I had contacted the folks at the Episcopal Divinity School and Union Theological Seminary to say, "I am tired about the issues of race and justice being the icing for people's formation.

I wanted the bricks and mortar, help create a program, that I can have my people attend."

And we did.

- Yeah.

- And how many folks did the two years?

- We had a total of 30 people just from our diocese during the two years.

But this program, it pulled in people from the entire country.

- Okay.

- So all Episcopal diocese and outside the Episcopal church went through this very intensive and well-formed course.

- And when you say that it's taking them through the understanding of what your faith says about racism, give us just some examples of what you're drawing from.

So the Bible, is it stories, is it just belief?

What does that look like?

- Well, some of it is gonna look like James Cone's book, "The Cross and the Lynching Tree."

- [Stephen] And the Lynching Tree, yes.

- Right, and to be able- - [Stephen] That's sitting on my coffee table in my living room right now.

- So James Cone was my advisor at seminary.

- Okay.

- Right.

And to be able to say, "These two are connected."

That lynching is crucifixion.

- Yeah.

- Right.

And that we cannot, and as white people, we cannot differentiate.

We need to be able to see that.

And we need to know, are we the ones who were standing by and they stood by watching?

Are we again at the foot of the cross or are we just walking by?

- [Stephen] So what are you finding?

- When I specifically go into congregations, you know, I will draw directly from the Bible, particularly from the Book of Acts, because you have this story of these people from completely different backgrounds who would've never interacted otherwise.

They're called to make community with one another, and they're called to really change the world that they live in.

Well, how do they do that?

And so there are many ways that I can draw from the Bible and say, "And this is also about what we're meant to be doing right now, and this is how it relates to racial repair."

- Yeah.

- So, yeah.

When I go in, the Bible is something that I can draw from.

- The Bible is where you're starting.

Yeah.

And what are you finding from the folks who are participating in this?

Is it working?

Is it sinking in?

And again, you're not trying to indoctrinate people, but you're trying to get them to see something that maybe is not obvious.

- I like to go in and say, "I love good questions.

And that the Bible is not here to give us answers, it's here to make us ask really good questions."

And so, just kind of opening that door of looking at the Bible in a different way to say, "This is speaking to us now in maybe ways I didn't see before."

And, you know, it's not gonna be like all of a sudden everyone's gonna have this moment of enlightenment.

But it's really in little steps.

- It's bit, I mean, you know, bit by bit, morning by morning, as the psalmist writes.

And one of the things, so we have the work that Sister V's doing, and we are also doing pilgrimages.

So we are going- - You're going to see the history and the context.

- Right.

And we're going to Montgomery, we're going to Selma.

We're going to Birmingham, right, and we are going to, we're going to the Legacy Museum.

And we are seeing, we are immersing ourselves in a world of pain to understand just for a moment of what enslavement of human beings actually is.

- [Stephen] Yeah, yeah.

- And what it might feel like, and how it's connected to lynching, mass incarceration.

- Right.

- For people to begin to reckon with that and to go between the Legacy Museum, where we're really immersing ourselves in that story, that experience of being an enslaved person.

And then we're having Eucharist, we're having communion, St. John's in Montgomery, which is a wonderful (indistinct) place, also a building built by enslaved people.

- [Stephen] Right, right.

- And so, going between the two, and that's the legacy of the Episcopal church.

- So what's, for you, five years after George Floyd is murdered, what is the proof that this is working, and what's the sign that you still have more to do?

(all laughing) - I think the proof that it's working is that people are willing to have the conversation a little bit more.

It's still uncomfortable, but we are learning that life in the Spirit involves discomfort.

- Yeah.

- And we have to go with it.

- [Stephen] Yeah.

- And to create opportunities and spaces for people to just dwell in that discomfort while they're learning about the legacies of racialized injustice that maybe they didn't see before.

But here it is.

- Congratulations on the work and thanks for being here.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

Have us back in a few more years and we'll tell you even more- - Yeah, right, we'll ask the same questions.

- Of what's happened because we're going somewhere.

Because we are really clear in the Episcopal church, people are beloved.

- May is National Foster Care Month, and that's a time to bring awareness to the needs of children and teens in the foster care system, and to recognize the families and professionals who support them.

According to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, there are about 10,000 young people in foster care in our state.

Here to talk more about providing support for these children is George Winn.

He's the Chief Strategy Officer at Judson Center.

Welcome.

- Thank you for having me, glad to be here.

- Yeah, so 10,000 children.

I don't think most people know there are that many children in the foster care system.

Talk about the work that goes into making sure that they're cared for.

- You know, that's a very good question.

When you talk about the fact that we are looking at 10,000 kids who have been abused and neglected, unfortunately, have been removed from their home abuse and neglect, you have to really first just give honor and praises, and thanks for that devoted caring population of foster parents.

- Yes.

- I truly believe that foster parents are unsung heroes because not only are they really working with the child who's been removed out their home due to trauma and abuses we talked about, but also they are a support system back for the family.

When you think about foster care, most people think about foster care from the perspective of, these are the entities that come in and rip and remove kids from the families.

Judson Center, that's not what we do.

Our first primary goal is really to keep kids and families safe, and safety is the primary thing.

And then we're looking at family reunification.

And we know that while we're working on family reunification, as long as there's safety and we can remove those barriers, we're trying to get those kids back home.

But in order to do that, you have to have a safety net.

Foster parents bringing that safety net for ensuring safety, caring, nurturing, guidance, and support that goes above and beyond what they do on a day-to-day basis.

They just open up their hearts and their doors.

- Right.

I mean, I'm not sure many people understand what makes a family say, "Hey, we want to help other families out, support other families.

We're gonna open our home."

It's a very dramatic act to take on to other children.

Talk about who some of these families are and why they're doing what they're doing.

- Great question.

First of all, everyone cannot be a foster parent.

- [Stephen] Right?

- There's a lot of people who care and a lot of people who want to support and do some things.

Foster parents take a different approach.

They act.

So it's not about just telling people what the problem is, they act.

So you're talking about someone who's caring, someone who's devoted, someone who's nonjudgmental, someone who's willing to get into the trenches and provide support and love and unconditional care for someone that they may or they may not know.

If you think about it from the lens of a child's view, when a child is removed from their home and separated from their birth families or families of origin, that foster parent is right there providing that safety net, providing that hope, providing that healing, providing that safety to support these kids as they've been traumatized.

- Yeah, yeah.

What about that connection that you mentioned before between the foster family and the family of origin?

I think that's something else people don't necessarily understand that there is this connection and interaction that is aimed at helping that family of origin get back together.

- I've seen, because we know that foster parents provide that temporary, I wanna really emphasize, that temporary care is not permanent unless there's some other things that have happened that cause these kids to be available for adoption, but they come in and fill in that gap, and filling in that gap, they're not only working with that child, because remember, the reason the child is placed in their home or out of care is not because of something that child did.

So they are willing to open up those doors, but also making sure that that connection is still maintained by that biological family.

So they have weekly visits where they're working with the child to come in, and the child may come to an office setting or a community setting where they're visiting with their parents.

The foster parents keep encouraging that relationship.

They oftentimes create those relationships with that bio parent and can create a safety net or support system far and beyond what the system is able to do.

Those are natural supports that happen overnight, and not instantly, but it's something that they're willing to do.

- Yeah, yeah.

Let's talk about some of the challenges that you see at Judson to the care, the continuing care of these 10,000 children.

Obviously, lots of things in the world are changing right now.

I would imagine that some of those things have an effect on the foster care space.

What are the things that you worry about, I suppose?

- The sleepless nights really for me is seeing kids come into care with multiple siblings, and as they go through this traumatic event of abuse and neglect, when they're removed from their home and they're placed in foster care, and because it's multiple kids, one foster home may not be to take all those kids.

- [Stephen] All of 'em, yeah.

- And so now, not only was this child separated from their bio parents, but they also was separated from their siblings.

They also was separated from their school.

They also were separated from their community.

So then when you have to think about how does that feel on a young child in terms of the trauma that they've experienced, but also how do you normalize some of the things that just happened?

None of this is normal, but yet this is what they go through each and every day, and the expectation is that when this young person comes into a stranger's home, and sometimes it's a relative, and when it's relatives that have stepped up to the plate to care, there's a little difference in that type of placement.

But for a foster parent, you have to understand, first of all, that child's development and some of the issues and reasons and understand from a loving, caring, nonjudgmental, passionate way to give that child a space, to make sure that that child feels comfortable in an environment that has just been totally changed for them.

- Right, right.

What are the things you tell families who are thinking about becoming foster families and the things they ought to consider before they take that leap?

- The first thing that I would say to someone interested in becoming a foster parent is it's a gift from the heart.

Foster parents, people can give time, people can donate money, but when you open up your heart, you open up your doors, you open up your family to someone in need is tremendous.

I also say these kids have never came into care and raised their hand to say, "You know what?

I wanna be a child who's abused and neglected."

That's what I wanna be."

I tell them that, and I share the fact that they can make a tremendous difference in the lives of a human being.

They can be supporting the next president of United States.

They can be supporting the next astronaut.

They can be supporting the next educator.

Their life is unlimited, and their success, they just need some guidance, some support, and someone that cares unconditionally.

- Yeah.

Do you find it more or less difficult right now, I guess, to get families to do that?

Again, with all the change that's going on in the world, is that discouraging people?

Is it, or is it maybe encouraging people to do this?

- It's more difficult than ever before, because not only are you talking about the day-to-day stressors that we deal with just in our day-to-day lives, we are also asking them to put some of the things that they have going on aside and take on some additional responsibilities, and that's huge.

And so what we're seeing across the state of Michigan, and certainly at the Judson Center, those foster parents who have been doing this for years, they're getting tired.

And so how do we grow and develop the next generation of foster parents?

How do we take a look at our family systems and say, "Can we have a family member who knows that someone in their family is struggling, that needs a hand from the family to jump in and support these kids development?"

How do we contribute back to the community to make our communities and neighborhoods safe for the kids and the families that are resided in them?

- Yeah, and how do you do that?

How do you convince families of that?

- It's through education and awareness.

It's through outreach, is through having other foster parents.

The best recruiter for a foster parent is another foster parent.

- Is another foster parent.

- It's another foster parent.

Because foster parents can tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And I will tell you, while we're improving the sector, we have a lot of work to do.

But open the lines of communication, and one of the things that at Judson Center we provide is not only are you taking a child in to provide that shelter, that love, and the condition, but we also provide integrated care or behavioral health services because we know these kids deserve and need that because they have experienced trauma.

We also have programs, like, if autism or other things that these children may be going through.

We also have primary care so that you can get the physical services that you need as well.

The Judson Center wraps all of these supports around that foster parent.

We also have ongoing training.

So you get training, we have support, support groups on a monthly basis where not only my staff are there, but I'm also attending to listen and address some of the concerns.

You also have advocates that we're working within the courts that we can help that process along as well.

So there's a lot of different supports that we provide here at the Judson Center to support our foster parents.

We also do activities.

We have coming up this month, we are having a foster parent appreciation dinner.

We are just going out to say thank you for what you do.

We also take the time to just send cards to our foster parents just saying, "Hey, here's a card to let you know we're thinking about you."

So it's a lot of little things that you do, or we are doing, just the basics to let them know that we are here and they're not doing this just by themselves.

- All alone, yeah, yeah, okay.

Well, congratulations on the work that you're doing at Judson, and thanks for being here on "American Black Journal."

- Well, thank you for having me and thank you for celebrating those 10,000 kids, certainly in the foster care system, but over 6,000 foster parents that we have in the state of Michigan.

- That's gonna do it for us this week.

You can find out more about our guests at americanblackjournal.org, and you can connect with us anytime on social media.

Take care, and we'll see you next time.

(bright music) - [Narrator 1] From Delta faucets to Behr paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator 2] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at DTEFoundation.com.

- [Narrator 1] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you, thank you.

(light music)