image by: @ohhappydani
Take the Challenge:
Learn more about racial equity alongside other SFDPH employees and integrate social justice into your work and life.
The challenge starts on July 21, 2020 and goes for 21 days.
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Materials for each week of the challenge will be posted on this site before the start of that week.
Introduction
As mass movements for racial justice have erupted over the last few months, we in the United States have been pushed to grapple with our country's legacy and current-day reality of racism. As Dr. Ayanna Bennett, Director of DPH’s Office of Health Equity, shared following the murder of George Floyd:
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"Racism is an organizing force in our country. Whether it is overt or covert, a consideration of racial hierarchy is built into most of our institutions and many of our cultural practices. The foundation of that hierarchy is anti-blackness. Anti-blackness directs the physical violence of our society at the bodies of Black/African American people; this point is not in dispute this week for most people.
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Racism also delivers violence to the minds, health, and families of Black/African American people through structural inequities and everyday interpersonal racism. As a government worker, you have a role in combating, or perpetuating, both of these forms of racial oppression...".
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Dr. Bennett challenges us to "Face the problem. Read, watch, listen, learn. You are not in the fight if you can't even see it happening... There can be no spectators. Addressing racism is a core part of everyone's work."
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"The time is never in the future in which we will work out our salvation.
The challenge is in the moment; the time is always now."
James Baldwin
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