Redefining Reconciliation

Redefining Reconciliation
Join us for part 1 of a 6 part series as we unpack the 5 Majors and 5 Minors of Race for Reconciliation, a movement to bring healing from the past, honor in the present, and hope for the future. Karin Conlee interviews expert Vonnetta West as they dialogue about the foundational messages of Race for Reconciliation starting with how to have these conversations and why racial reconciliation must be redefined for true progress to be made.

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R4R: Conversations that Educate and Elevate

Podcast 1: The 5 Majors of  Race for Reconciliation, part 1

Topic: Redefining Reconciliation

Guest: Vonnetta West

Well, welcome to the R4R Podcast. I'm Karin Conlee and I am the Executive Director of Race for Reconciliation. I cannot tell you how honored I am to have you joining this video or this podcast, whatever format you are listening to or watching this on, we are glad to have you. And I want to welcome, if you're tuning in by video you can see on the screen, I have a guest that you are going to, if you don't already know her by the time we're done you are going to love her like I do, Vonnetta West welcome to the R4R Podcast. 

Vonnetta: Thank you Karin.

Karin: Well, I am so honored that you are with us. This is one of our first podcasts for R4R and just to give people some context of who we are and what we are wanting to accomplish- This is a vision that really has been birthed out of knowing that this problem of racism has existed and lasted so long, far too long. Personally having lived in Memphis for the last 30 years it is the unfortunate location that Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered in 1968. The ramifications of that and of racism in the city of Memphis has impacted us personally in such a way that we decided we have to be a part of the solution.

R4R - Race for Reconciliation, it is an actual literal race, we will be hosting races throughout the country. But more than that, we want it to be a platform that educates and elevates and that’s really the purpose of this podcast is to have conversations that educate and elevate.

Vonnetta West that is joining me today could not be a better guest to have on some of our initial podcasts as we really define who we are, and we define the problem that exists, and we define how we can be a part of the solution. Vonnetta, she sent me the shortest bio hat she could possibly come up with.

Vonnetta: It was the shortest.

Karin: But still it is so packed with meaningful work that you have done and so I don't want to miss any of it. Let me just refer to a couple of different things. You are a leadership consultant, a content developer, an amazing writer. You are the host of a podcast called "Let Your Life Be Your Sermon", you are a pastor and started "Our Neighbors’ House". You are also a social media strategist, you also helped develop and create the curriculum at the King's Center that is now what they call their Non-Violence 365 Training and you have been their lead trainer at the King Center.

You are an expert on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. You have led and trained and taught on his teachings for almost 20 years, which means you must have been about 10 when you started, but you come with a wealth of experience. Just as we start I just want to thank you because you have been someone who has been willing to take a white woman who really grew up in a majority white culture and said, okay, we want to make a difference but we know we've got so much to learn.

One of the things that I hope will be true of this podcast is it will be a positive, safe place for people to learn. In this journey we have said listen, we want to provide healing from the past, we want to provide honor in the present, we want to provide hope for the future but we know that means having meaningful conversations that can be difficult. As a woman walking into this space you have just been someone who has been gracious to hold my hand to let me ask stupid questions, to say things that maybe I didn't even realize could be offensive to people and to gently and kindly teach me.

I'm still in that learning process and we are wanting people as they join this to find this as a place where they can be educated on the topic and become a part of a solution. So maybe just on the forefront on basic, basic, basic Vonnetta, if we're asking people to be a part of this conversation that haven't been a part of the conversation before, they don't know Dr. King's work. They haven't studied and understood the history involved here, the pain involved here, they don't even maybe if they're coming from a white perspective, know what to say or afraid they're going to trip all over themselves so let's start with the most basic. When you're having a conversation with someone of color, what do you call them? How do we refer to one another?

Vonnetta: Well, that for me, depending on the relationship, is very much based on what the person has told me they want to be called and sometimes that doesn't happen. But other times like if someone says to me African-American, I'm fine, but my preferred description is black. I don't have a problem just being black. It covers a lot to me, it covers a part of my identity that might not be covered in African-American. 

Generally, when I hear person of color, I think somehow someone is trying to include a lot of different people from different backgrounds but if you just referring to black people you can say black. I believe if you're talking about people in this country who are of African descent or you're talking about people all over the world, then there are different descriptors there, but generally, you know people will let you know.

Right now things are so precarious, they're so hard, they've been this way for a long time that I think in order to not be offensive, sometimes we use phrases that might not be necessary. But then sometimes it leads to those difficult moments where people say, no, I'm not that and that's okay. 

Karin: Yeah. Well, I know for me for a long time I out of trying to be correct, I would say African-American and I'd refer to myself as Caucasian. My kids made fun of me for that and then I also had other people say that even that is not necessarily a preferred term because of different ways that that can be interpreted. 

Vonnetta: That's true because you know when you put American on something and you actually think about this, that nobody saying European-American or white American. So the fact that people from other nationalities, from other countries whether they were brought here as immigrants or they came as immigrants or you know came as captives, we don't get to decide and determine, you know, if we have that American attached to it. That's just the designation for people who aren't white. You don't you just don't hear this is an Italian-American, this is a German-American; it's just if you're not white you need American attached to it because white by standard in this country is American. So there are different things that come with that.

There are so many conversations that we don't really dive into, that I think this is really positive just to be asking why? America, even though the phrase America, the term, the word is offensive to some people. I'm in spaces every day where people are asking why we say this, why do this. You hear America and you really think about that America there's South America, North America so there's Americas. 

There's a lot of different languages. I always just encourage people just to approach language as reflecting the thoughts and the understanding of the person who is speaking or writing. Sometimes I understand things are different and so if there's something that we say, hey, I don't necessarily agree with that language then we just approach it, not like that's a dumb thing to say, but hey, you know sometimes why do you say that? Do you understand where that comes from? So I ask people that sometimes. Then the other times if I know somebody saying something purposely to be offensive then I may ask a different way. 

Karin: Vonnetta one of the things that we have been working on is as we walk into the space as an organization, one of the things that we wanted to do is provide a place where people feel like they can participate, that they can learn, that they can be educated and then become a part of the solution because you having walked in the space know that this is not just solving relationships, this is not just asking for forgiveness. There is a whole side to racial reconciliation that has to address some of the systemic problems that exist in our country. 

One of the things as you and I have dialogue, we've talked about okay, how do we major on the majors and how do we minor on the minors? How do we not get sideways energy and get distracted or allow things to enter in that would distract from our mission of wanting to bring healing, honor and hope? 

So we have developed what we're calling the five majors of R4R and what we're hoping to do and you have been gracious to help us with a series of podcasts, is that as we go through to really kind of set a foundation so that just like you said, we can have these conversations, we can ask the questions, but we also have kind of you know in the bowling alley language, we put some gutters in, you know, some boundaries in so that we don't end up in the gutter.

What I'd love to do as we come into this podcast is today to really talk about that first major. Because these are foundational to who we are I want to actually read if you're on video you'll be able to see this on the screen but read what this first major is and then for us to have a conversation about it. For you to help us to understand really what this journey is all about. 

So that first major that we're talking about we're calling Redefining Reconciliation. We say we believe that reconciliation is one step toward each other, standing together in transparency and truth, then stepping forward together in love and justice. It is not a pledge to simply get along but to connect, to correct what has been harmful. 

Now that's several sentences that are just packed with a lot of meaning. I think maybe as we start out and we think about this kind of first major, first pillar of who we are and what we want to do, we're talking about redefining reconciliation. For some people, they need to understand maybe even why we would say it needs to be redefined. What would you say in that context?

Vonnetta: Reconciliation has to be redefined because for many it seems to mean you know, let's just get along. Let’s just pretend as though we don't have these brutal systemic issues and also overt racism, and then also the language that supports it, rhetoric that supports this racism. So it's more than I'm just going to agree to be friends.

I hear a lot of talk about I need more friends who are different. That doesn't mean much to me anymore. The older I've got the more I realize I have like 10 white friends and I can have white friends who have each of them 10 black friends. That doesn't mean systems are changing or racism is being eradicated, that just means I may have some personal relationships that helped me be comfortable, may help me learn more about different groups of people. but if these systems aren't changing then we're really doing a disservice and injustices remain. Children are still in the school to prison pipeline. 

So I explain it to people this way; I have a nephew who's very dear to me, I have 6 nieces who are very dear to me. If you're saying to me Vonnetta, I want to be your friend and I want racial reconciliation and then we begin to talk and I discover that you're not willing to really put any work into getting my nieces and my nephew out of the school to prison pipeline they're in because they're black or you might not be concerned about systems that would criminalize my nephew simply because he's black. What that says to me is we don't really have a relationship, we're not reconciling. We've just agreed not to really dig into issues around racism and that's why racism continues to persist in this country and in the world. 

You have diversity but that's not justice and we have what we call inclusion but that's not addressing systemic issues. I can be included, we can have diverse spaces, we can say we reconciled but true reconciliation means we're coming together and we are agreeing to move forward towards love and justice together. That's different than Rodney King who said why can't we all just get along? 

I always joke that I think people have confused. Dr. King's philosophy with Rodney King who was brutalized by the LAPD and in response to the violence that broke out at a not-guilty verdict for those who beat him, he said why can't we all just get along? That's not quite what Dr. King was talking about, it was much more intrinsic than that. So reconciliation, it does, it has to be redefined. 

Karin: You would say, well, let me not put words in your mouth. Would you say from the white perspective in general people think reconciliation means let's get along? Is that what you can found as you've done training and as you have worked? Is that an accurate view?

Vonnetta: Let's get along, let's agree to disagree. I won't agree to disagree with racism, I just won't. I want to agree to disagree with any type of bigotry. Those things are much too vital to our humanity, to people being able to live. Racism affects people's livelihood, it affects whether or not they're in jail for the rest of their lives, it affects housing, it affects voting, voter suppression. Racism is not something you look at and say we're just going to agree to disagree on this but those are often things that I hear people say. We all have different opinions, but not about my value, not at you're saying we're going to unite on something. 

So this push for unity also goes hand-in-hand with this false notion of what reconciliation is. I always hear people talk about let's be unified. Around what? If you actually really believe in your behavior, and how you approach systems, if somebody really believes that I'm inferior then how can we unify? And if you're actually a proponent of justice who does not believe that the groups of people are inferior to white people, how can you unify with people who do believe that? These are fundamental things particularly for the body of Christ, they are anti-Christ so why would I unify with something that's Anti-Christ? 

Karin: You bring up many great points Vonnetta, but you know race for reconciliation is intentionally a value-driven event. The races are value-driven, but you know as we look at the seven spheres of influence in a culture, one of them is "faith is the church." We know that racism is not just a problem for people of faith, it's a problem for all of humanity and so we really want it to be a value-driven event but both you and I are pastors; we do come with a faith perspective and so that's definitely an element of this that as we continue we want to address all of those different spheres of influence and what it looks like for there really to be change. 

As you said, those words of unity and love and all can come in the context of faith but as we walk through this I want us to be able to really dive into some of those places that can be difficult. I think you know as a person who I grew up in a majority white culture, you know, I would never classify myself as someone who’s racist and even as we walked in this space for a little while now, I was thinking the other day, you know that reconciliation takes two people. It takes two people, it takes two races in this context. 

My observation is that okay, there's some people in a white culture that just don't think about it at all. Life is good or life is whatever it is, but they don't even allow themselves to really go down that journey. It's just kind of me myself and I and that's you know, okay I don't really think about it. Then there are other people that would maybe come at it and think, you know, my grandfather was racist or my father was racist, but man, you know, I have black friends and I've never done anything to anybody and I haven't you know, it's not my problem. I hate that it happened, but it doesn't reflect me. 

Then I think there are other people who again, I'm talking about different white responses to this that think man, I would want to be a part of the solution but man this is such a lightning rod subject and it's so polarizing and it's like crossing tan Atlanta Highway. Like you stick your foot out there and you're just afraid that you're just going to get plowed down saying the wrong thing or those kinds of things. Or then the response of even just shame like I feel so bad, I don't even know what to say. 

We're going to have again many conversations, but as we talk about this topic and trying to educate people that maybe you're coming into this conversation for the first time and maybe they identified themselves in one of those categories. What have you seen to be the keys to helping someone from the majority culture have a true understanding of the role that they need to play in order for change to actually happen? 

Vonnetta: You know, Bernice A. King, Dr. King's daughter, she often says to me we didn't create this we were all born into it. Well, you know the thing for me as a black person I can't help but deal with racism. It confronts me every day and I'm living in it and I'm dealing with it. It is actually, and this is a struggle word - I'll mention some struggle words in these podcasts. One of the "struggle" words we have right now is "privilege." It is actually a privilege to be able to say I don't think about race so I don't think about racism. I don't have that, I think about race and racism almost every day because it's smack dab in front of my face.

When I apply for a job, the different things I approach in life you know how I go into the world if I'm in a store how I handle different things. My father's a 72-year-old man, he still won't leave the store with something out of a bag because when he was growing up if he didn’t put it in a bag even if it was like a soda, people could say he stole it even though he paid for it and as a young black boy, he would have been in jail or worse lynched. So he carries a bag with him. I always have to have a bag even if it's a case of water, I have my receipt in my hand.

Racism confronts us. Race is something I have to consider. I think when we are approaching these conversations we just need to think about something that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. had - this ability to examine the human condition and I don't think we do that enough. Everything is either just from my perspective or is you know, oh that's just them, but it's not. 

If we actually examine the history of not just this nation because if we think about this, racism had to exist somewhere in the heart before it even showed up on these shores because in order to get here as a people and say to our indigenous brothers and sisters, our indigenous family that you're not on our level, you're inferior to us, we're going to infect you with chickenpox, with smallpox, we're going to infect you with diseases, we're going to kill off your people and put you on reservations. That is as Dr. King said this nation was born in genocide when it was determined that our Native American brothers and sisters, our Native American family, they were inferior. So this is not even hundreds of years old.

If you ask me, think about how I had to be in the heart before maybe thousands of years old a spiritual ill, a sickness that is like people are saying if you think about it as something sick in us, you know, we need to fix it then it takes a level of consciousness to do that. What I always say is people hit consciousness at different times, but we are in a state of emergency. 

So everybody who says in some way that they believe in love and justice and in humanity, we just have to kind of rise up and say hey I can't afford to not talk about this, to not think about this and people who are thinking about it need to tell people. You need to be thinking about this and not just thinking about it but working on it somehow then I think that helps. If you get it like a critical mass of people who are saying this needs to be on the mind of every human being, let's work on this and let's eradicate this because it never should have been but it's certainly been too long that we've been grappling with this. 

Karin: I think you do bring up the point that was very interesting to me. Several years ago we gathered about 120 pastors about half black, half white in the city of Memphis and we basically walked through the Civil Rights Movement. It was a three-day conference where we went to the site of lynchings and tried to really help people look at the history and the reality. The gentleman that came and led that was someone from the UK and you know in a city that's 63% African-American and having that diversity within that group, we were a little bit worried would someone from the UK who was not black be a voice that would be listened to in that space?

He walked back through genocide in Rwanda and the conflicts throughout history that have to your point, this is not a new problem. This is a problem in the heart of us as human beings. So we do need to look at history and at our hearts in this. Vonnetta, talk to me about what you would say the different perspectives are in the black community towards racial reconciliation. 

Vonnetta: Some black people believe it's trash and I was just blunt and honest that we don't want to reconcile. How can you reconcile with what we would call the oppressor? That's just the language point-blank and I don't fault people for that. There are people who've been in painful situations, you know, they've had family members who have been lynched. You still have people today whose sons and their daughters are being brutalized because of racial injustice, you have people if you've seen the movie "Just Mercy" you have family members who are on death row for crimes they didn't commit because they're black. 

When you hear reconciliation and for some people…and the black community is so large, that's a lot and I won't pretend like I talked to even half of the people. I do have a lot of conversations around race enough to know that even this conversation I'm having right now with you, I have black people in my life who would say I can't do that. That's not their space you know, they don't feel as though that's something they should have to do or that they can do because they're not in a place where they feel as though I want to educate people on racism and racial reconciliation. I just want us to fix it.

So it's hard when you've been dealing with something for a long time, you just want it fixed. And if you feel like white people are the people who can fix it then why won't they just fix it? When you think about racism, it's ridiculous really, to think that you're superior because of something that had nothing to do with you, that you're just white and you're superior to everybody else in the world. That's a hard notion when we really think about that that the ridiculousness of it, it’s hard to comprehend how everybody in the world…for me it's hard to comprehend until I start to think again about the nature of racism and where it comes from. It's hard to see why we're just not getting rid of it, you know, why can't you see this? Well, because we have blinders on.

So for a lot of black people that I talk to our racial reconciliation is not a goal that they believe we can attain and then for some, they believe we can attain it but we need to redefine it because it’s defined wrong. And then for some you know, we want reconciliation but there are things that come with it that we don't believe most white people who believe in reconciliation are willing to include. Then it's just a misunderstanding. Reconciliation will probably be grouped in those words, that glossary that we need when we are having these conversations we have definitions for them, you know, justice, reconciliation, racism. As we're talking about racism, I would venture to say that the majority of the people who may be listening to us might not even understand what that word means or what it is.

Karin: How would you define it Vonnetta?

Vonnetta: Racism has several manifestations but it's rooted in power and privilege. The notion that I'm superior and because my race is superior we deserve power, territory, money, we deserve to be in charge, we deserve to be in control of other people's bodies and their decisions. White supremacy very much to me, you can add other words in there; if you really look at the construct of it, it is white male, Christian, heterosexual supremacy is at the top and then there's you know white female, heterosexual, Christian and you can see it but you can see it in a construct.

Racism can be overt, it can be I'm going to exert the power and privilege that I have in personal relationships and how I communicate with you, how I treat you in a school, if I bully you because you're black or Latino or you know, it's a power thing. So when people talk about reverse racism, I always explain to them I don't know what that means; it's either racism or it's not. But it's pretty hard for a non-white person to actually have a power construct in this world where they can discriminate against and determine systemically the livelihood, the lifestyle, they help us. You look at these disparities with health with covid-19. Then you're seeing hundreds of years’ worth of history people think it's right now.

This is actually you were brought here, your ancestors were brought here as captives because of power. So because we thought we could convince people that African people were animals and savages we started to use this language because we wanted more power and territory and money in this country and in other areas that we got people to come work the land and we made them slaves - that's racism. It becomes a part of your economic system. 

And so for hundreds of years racism has permeated this nation, the United States of America but people can't see it because they're not looking systemically, they're just looking I have black friends or I read a tweet that said Lebron James make millions of dollars and he's still talking about racism. That man's income doesn't have anything to do with the racism he deals with. The fact that if he didn't have money if he walked in a store and a racist person worked in there that person could determine whether or not they say he stole something or just because he's black.

So it's this power construct that affects systems. It affects the criminal justice system. If you actually look at housing disparities, all of these different areas that are affected by this notion that whiteness is supreme and that everything else has to fall in line. So people are looking at me and saying but you went to college and you did this. Yeah but I dealt with racism. I dealt with racism in the workplace where I knew the expectations for a black woman were different than the expectations for a white woman and I faced that every day going the work. It puts a burden of stress and attention on you internally, mentally that I don't think a lot of people consider because they're just thinking we're diverse. We have black people at our organization, but they're not thinking how do our policies actually even apply in the workplace for black people, for Latino people.

Karin: You know Vonnetta, I hear what you're saying and know that having black friends is not enough and that's certainly where you know, one of the reasons why we're creating this organization is so that we can the races themselves will raise money to address the systemic problems of literacy, vocational training and minority leadership development in each city that we host a race. 

So we are wanting not just to educate but to elevate: to bring solutions, to bring resources to people in each City that are actually on the ground doing this work day in day out so I completely agree with you. But as you just talked about that being in the workplace, it did make me remember some conversations that I have had that without those relationships with black friends in my life I never would have realized. There's a gentleman that is incredibly educated and we were in a Board meeting the other day and he was the only black person in the room and we were all close friends and he made some comment about he was making a presentation to the CEO of this large organization and how he felt so much pressure not just for his own job but representing his race.

Those kinds of conversations I think if people don't at least begin to have conversations with people different than themselves then you don't even get that empathy piece. You don't even get that wow, I had no idea: here's someone I look up to and respect that you would be nervous because you represented your race? As a white person that's never crossed my mind. 

So in this journey what you just described in some ways can feel like oh my gosh, the problem is so big, you know, so big. Can we ever really make a difference? I want to go back to one of the phrases that we have in this redefining reconciliation statement because I think the imagery is really important and I would love for you to speak to it because we said this that we're just to step towards one another and then step forward together. We also use the words of transparency and truth; what does transparency and truth look like in the space of trying to heal? 

Vonnetta: Let me first say that I do believe the relational component is very important that unfortunately we just get stuck there so often but it's where we have to start when we can't get stuck there. Like you need to start having conversations black people and white people, however, for the most part though, I do believe white people should initiate those conversations and I also believe that transparency and truth we have safe spaces but those are hard conversations. So for me what I start to do if I'm developing a relationship with someone, first of all I don't believe in just developing a relationship saying I'm in this because we're talking about race.

Even when I met you and Chris I wasn't thinking we're just going to have these great conversations about race. I said no, we need to build a relationship, you know, do we care about each other? Are we involved in each other's lives? It can't just be I'm going to just meet some black people or I'm going to meet some white people; it has to be, what's your family like? Who are you as a person? Let me get to know you, you know that helps us understand each other. What's your background? And then as we start to talk then you can learn what you learned about that man at work. Hey he's dealing with these things, but then you just start to think what do I do with that? Like you're asking it just doesn't sit there for you, you're thinking wow, I never thought about that. And so you're getting to know people from different places and that's the transparency.

If I feel like I can be transparent with you then we're making progress. If I can say to you hey Karin, it's great that we're hanging out together and essentially our relationship starts to shift into man, this is really troubling me today. This last week I called and I was talking to a white friend about some of the things that are happening in the world around race and racism, I just broke down and started crying. If I feel like I can do that, then you're somebody for me who I've said you really care about this, you're going to help to examine it because I just don't cry with people who just going to say they're there Vonnetta, it's going to be alright. I cry with people who are going to say what can we do? 

And so that is the transparency and truth we have this major issue and it's hurting people. Racism kills. I say that to people just so it starts to shake us up. This isn't some kind of blasé thing - racism kills. If we can get to that place where we're transparent enough to say racism isn't the thing of the past, it's happening today, if I started to tell you about my experiences today how 10 years ago they wouldn't let me in a golf club in Georgia and this isn't like in 1960, this is Georgia like 2000-2010. People still looked at me and thought your white friends can come in but you can't you know.

That's a different space; that transparency, that pain is hard for many black people that I know for us to even get in that place when we're sharing pain like that [Inaudible: 38:43] because historically what have you cared about my pain if I really think about it. People were brought here from Africa so they can have pain inflicted on them. So we have those historical pictures and we look at the things happening in systems and overtly today transparency is hard. But if I build a relationship and then I can say this is somebody I can be transparent with or I can sit in spaces and be transparent like I am with you about race and reconciliation then somebody has to take the lead. I just think I'm one of the people who can take the lead and help us be in those spaces. 

I'm hoping that somebody's watching this podcast and they say hey, you know, she's pretty transparent about that and she's saying some hard things in a way that I can hear it. That's my goal to my language when I talk to just one-on-one in groups of black people; it would be different than how I'm talking now because I realize that my ultimate goal is to get us to authentic reconciliation not to just express my pain and my hurt and my anger and I'll do that too but somebody has to do it. And then there's some people who say no I want to be part of that. They will have to learn without me and I honour that and I understand that.

Karin: Well, Vonnetta. I know we are just at the very, very tip of the iceberg.

Vonnetta: It's a lot.

Karin: There's a lot but I hope that as people join us, I hope that they will stay with us for this journey.

Vonnetta: Me too.

Karin: We're going to do a series this will be you know, who knows but we're thinking 6 podcasts where we're going to talk about each of these majors. And as we go through them we're going to touch on a lot of different topics, but I think the first 5 are really the places that we are going to really define who we are and then the last podcast really the things that we're not going to do, some things that we're going to avoid and things that will protect us so that these conversations can be healing, they can be helpful, they can make differences. And so I just want to thank you for joining us for your authenticity, for your transparency. 

For those that are just taking the first step and just coming into this conversation, there are resources on our website www.raceforreconciliation.org. You can check out movies, books podcasts, things that will help you to begin to educate yourself as Vonnetta talked about. We've got to understand the history to be able to really be a part of the solution. And I also just encourage you in the same way that Vonnetta just talked about the relationships are important to begin to build relationships with other people outside of who you are and what you look like is a very important first step. 

Vonnetta I love what you said, you know what? In most situations that white person needs to be the one to initiate that conversation. Ask some questions with a willingness to listen, with a willingness to hear and understand and to begin to be a part of the solution.

Thank you so much for joining us Vonnetta. I look forward to being back with you for another set in this series and thank you for all of you who are listening or watching for taking the time. Again, go to raceforreconciliation.org and learn about race dates coming up as we begin to expand to different cities and you can also look at different resources that we want to make available to you to educate so that we can elevate. Take care.