by Lucretia Berry June 22, 2021. Originally published for/at (in)courage.me, May 17, 2021 Recently, I became exhausted and nauseated by the noise of Facebook and Instagram — so much so that I had to take a social media hiatus. Prior to my pause, I loved peeking through posts and images to get updates on my friends’ lives. I enjoyed broadening
May our celebrations extend beyond a cookout to reach for and honor all that June 19, 1865 wants to teach us about us.
Lucretia Carter Berry – June 11, 2021 “If it wasn’t for the Civil Rights movement, I would not have been able to be born,” our daughter said at age seven. She understood enough about our nation’s history of race-based laws, policies, and social practices to come to this realization on her own. She stomped around the living room furiously objecting.
Dorina Lazo Gilmore-Young – May 13, 2021 Sometimes when life hands you lemons, you have to make lemon meringue pie. Or maybe you go all in for lemon primavera pasta or a French lavender-infused lemon tart or Mediterranean garlic-lemon chicken kebabs! Well, you get the idea. Make lemonade if you have to, but don’t sit around feeling sour. This past
by Dr. Tehia Starker-Glass What more do you know about Dr. King? We honor Dr. King every third Monday in January. But what do we really know about him when we move beyond his I Have A Dream speech? What do we know about his childhood or him as a student — high school and college? These are the questions we
“Celebrating our cultural identity — acknowledging God’s expressed self through our collective journey — is not only food for our souls, but feeds those who have never experienced the Divine expressed in this way.” — Lucretia Berry
Tees, Tanks, Sweatshirts Choose your style and color! Brownicity – Many Hues, ONE Humanity — the word, the tagline, and the work — fosters space to expand our creative imaging for restoring our human family, fractured by toxic systems and narratives. When you wear ‘Many Hues, One Humanity,’ it will inspire and welcome the dialogue that folks long for. Please engage in ‘the
By Dr. Tehia Starker Glass As I re-read Frederick Douglass’ 1852 speech, What, to the Slave is the 4th of July, I thought about how Douglass must have felt as he composed this speech. He articulated how he was hesitant about the speech believing that the audience may be there to hear something different. His reluctance sat with me. Our
By Dr. Tehia Starker-Glass, Brownicity Education Advisor Juneteenth is the combination of June and nineteenth, the day in 1865 that 250,000 enslaved Africans, in Galveston, TX, were told — two and a half years after the Emancipation Proclamation — that the Civil War had ended and slavery was no longer legal. I did not grow up celebrating this holiday. But
Pastor Dan Berry is one of Brownicity’s certified instructors for the What LIES Between Us group study. He has pastored for 40 years in Iowa. After pastoring in predominately white spaces for several years, he began to realize the need to bring about racial healing — healing from the race/ist ideology and construct — in the body of Christ. For the last 30
As an educator, I am so encouraged by our online learning community. Repairing ourselves and communities from race/ism requires continued learning, equipping, and encouragement. ‘Doing the hard work of love‘ can be overwhelming and depleting. You need more than a one-time talk or a charged discussion of opinions. Through our online learning community, we offer you what you deserve – liberating education, hope-filled encouragement, and life-giving community. Have
Dear prospective learners, We are teaching our Foundations course face-to-face in January! Foundations is our popular, soft on-boarding course, featured in our online learning community. It’s similar to our high school elective, What Is Race/ism and our church inspired study, What LIES Between Us – Fostering First Steps Toward Racial Healing. FOUNDATIONS – WHAT IS RACE/ISM? Open to the community! Please
Thank you for listening to 3 in 30 Podcast‘s episode 101: Why & How to Talk to Your Kids about Skin Tone & Race! Welcome to Brownicity – Many Hues, One Humanity! I am Lucretia Berry. I get to work with my husband, our three children, and a team of other families and professionals to create learning-centered experiences for moms like you.
The assignment. Ask a few people who know you well, what they think your biggest strengths are and where they see you being brave in the midst of what you’re dealing with. — Niki Hardy (Breathe Again – Learning to Breathe Again, p. 65.) I followed the instructions as Niki laid out at the end of chapter three. Honestly, I
You deserve a space and a community cultivated to nurture your growth. And we’ve created that just for you. Grab your CHARTER MEMBER spot today! We LOVE supporting our friends who want to learn how to contribute to racial healing and deconstructing race/ism. And, we know that the best way to help is on an ongoing basis, month after month. So, we’ve
Confessions of a Supermom Wannabe hostess, Kristen Wheeler asked to talk with me about ‘racism and how to bring love to what can be a very charged subject and conversation in our society today.’ She is a gracious host and asked great questions. She’d done her homework on Brownicity and me. I was impressed!! Check out our podcast episode.
by Karen McNary I came to the Virginia in Slavery Pilgrimage on Palm Sunday weekend feeling hurting but hopeful, exacerbated yet expectant. The weekend marked the end of the sixth week of the seven-week An American Lent devotional by the Repentance Project. By this time my emotions were raw and real. Daily reading about the intentional, pervasive ways Blacks have
The rich and greedy serenade their worshipers with siren songs of supremacy, scarcity, and manifest destiny. Lies seize weakened, weekend minds. Forced, false, FEAR-filled desperation armed as ‘savior’ destroys sacred lives in sacred spaces. Meanwhile, the rich and greedy take the spoils for themselves, buy their offspring a private education, and repeat the cycle. (YEP! It’s all the same lie!)
I am embarrassed that I responded this way. But with my brow positioned to convey confusion, I thought to myself, ‘But wait! Its not February!’ My first grader loves to teach me what she learns in class. Some days, it feels like she enthusiastically recites every second of every interaction with teachers and peers. As a lover of learning, I
By Tiffany Trudewind Part 1. Seeing Color My second grader filled the car with electric energy as he climbed in and handed me a sheet of paper with a class announcement. It was finally here. He had watched his older sister and brother experience fun second grade activities at this school and now it was his turn. His class had been
Williamson’s Chapel UMC and Morrow’s Chapel UMC (Mooresville, NC) are gearing up to host the next What LIES Between Us 5-week series, Sundays, September 9th through October 7th. Childcare is sponsored! …and the children will be fed dinner! …and because its open to the public, you can invite friends! What an incredible deal! LEARN MORE & REGISTER HERE! We look forward to seeing you this
Our eight year old daughter and I (Lucretia) had the privilege of joining Latasha Morrison (Be The Bridge to Racial Unity) to interview Dorena Williamson, author of ColorFull. ColorFull is a children’s book that takes a life-giving approach to talking about skin tone and race! ColorFull encourages us to acknowledge and celebrate the many hues of humanity instead of adhering to the colorblind
To participate in the 3-part workshop series on ‘Raising White Kids’ by Jennifer Harvey: Purchase ‘Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Children in a Racially Unjust America’ by Jennifer Harvey. RSVP “Going” to our facebook event and then share the event with your friends. Meet us at Advent Coworking* on Sunday, March 4 at 2pm, ready to discuss chapters 1 – 4. Meet us
Rummaging through keep-sake boxes, looking for memorabilia for an unrelated project, I found this old friend! My little book–just as I had remembered it! I was elated and relieved. I thought I’d left it at my mom’s house with other childhood keep-sakes, which meant that I may never see it again…moms can’t be expected to store everybody’s stuff forever! When I discovered
Did you attend the Fresh Take Conference last Friday? Were you intrigued by the keynote address, If We Don’t Keep Them in the Dark, They Will Light Up The World? Did you attend the complementary workshops, How Caregivers and Teachers Discuss Race with Children (Dr. Tehia Starker-Glass of UNCC) and Building the Capacity for Healthy Conversations about Skin Tone and Race with
by Dr. Tehia Starker-Glass, Associate Professor of Elementary Education and Educational Psychology in the department of Reading and Elementary Education at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. As caregivers and teachers, how can we move beyond the popular, but over-simplified ‘dream’ lesson, and truly honor all that Dr. King and the nation did to move civil rights forward? Furthermore, if we are a social
If you enjoyed this group study and would like to do it again or invite friends and family to attend, this is the perfect opportunity! The series takes place over five consecutive Sundays (1/14-2/11), 4-5:30pm. Register NOW to reserve your spot. To reserve childcare, email Julie Wentzat jwentz@mpumc.org. Have you seen our latest newsletter? It features an amazing TED Talk about talking to children about race and a two-episode podcast about
Why are we so bad at talking with children about skin tone and race? If we don’t keep them in the dark, children will light up the world.” This is the revelation that inspired this talk, which I shared at TEDx Charlotte (October 2017). I share a few real life instances where people exhibit how horrible we are as a society at talking
by Dr. Tehia Starker Glass, UNCC’s College of Education. Tis the season for depicting the stories that coincide with the holidays! Thanksgiving is up next and my husband and I have the responsibility of educating our 18 month old and 3 year old about what and why we celebrate. We choose to say, “No Thanks” to going along with the ‘traditional’ depiction of
Pursuing Extraordinary Outcomes in Public Education National Conference UNC Charlotte Center City October 30, 2017 Presenters: Lucretia Carter Berry, Brownicity.com, Tehia Starker Glass, UNC Charlotte This presentation represents a university and community partnership of assisting parents to discuss race with their children. /broun’ isədē/ Brown represents melanin. Ethnicity means “that which we have in common.” We are all hues of
Although this post was created for a school’s parents event, any and everyone is welcome to engage and share this content. At this month’s Parent Advisory, Lucretia will lead us in an important discussion. Telling children, “ we don’t see color,” or “everyone is the same,” does not help them understand that race should not matter. In fact, it leaves them vulnerable
The next “What LIES Between US‘ five-week course is being hosted by Church at Charlotte, Sunday evenings beginning September 10th from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. We designed this series specifically for ‘beginners’ to the race conversation and analysis. Participants gain historical and social context for racial division, support for self-reflection, healing, and growth, and have the opportunity to develop community with others
This year’s Loving Day (2017) marks the 50th anniversary of the1967 United States Supreme Court decision Loving v. Virginia which struck down all anti-miscegenation laws remaining in sixteen U.S. states. Learn more at LovingDay.org. What has changed in 50 years? According to a new Pew Research Center analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data, in 2015, 17% –one in six– of
We continue to be pleasantly surprised when we learn that someone is interested in the Brownicity story; that people outside of our family are getting something from it; that they are moved and inspired by it. I see so much division and fist pumping, but very few people stepping across the aisle to offer a gentle embrace for solidarity and inclusive
Parents and teachers: Participate in this study (Parent Survey, Teacher Survey) conducted by our very own Dr. Tehia Starker Glass of UNCC’s College of Education. If you are one of the first 50 participants for this study, you will receive a $50 Amazon gift card! Simply, complete both the survey AND an interview by July 15, 2017. In addition to the gift card,
(Church at Charlotte’s City Series Podcast with guest Dr. Lucretia Carter Berry of Brownicity.) What is she going to say about race? Who is she going to blame?” These are the thoughts that I imagine are behind those wide eyes staring forward at me. I can feel people subconsciously strapping in for what ever wild and treacherous ride that they
Why? Because we need to know what has happened and how it has affected all of us before we can move towards recovery. Bring your brokenness, your pain, your questions, your desire to heal, your willingness to learn…bring your whole self to this experience and leave inspired, encouraged and empowered. Register here. You desire healing and change, but where do you
For our family, it seems ridiculous to pretend that we don’t see differences in our skin tone. In fact, we celebrate the diversity of our beautiful hues that make up the tapestry of our and the ‘hue-man’ family. Also, it seems odd that we would not talk about race with our young children, considering that we live in a society
We entered 2016 knowing that we were to continue to disrupt the race narrative and send a dismantling ripple effect to expose the racial legacy of lies and injustice. Without knowing exactly how we would do this, we aligned with the disruption! 2016 seems to have been the year to shape and catapult us into who we are becoming. 2016 invited us into spaces where families
This is the beginning of an intricate text conversation I had this morning with my cousin, who is a wife, mom of two, and an award winning educator. I was furious and heart broken! But not wanting to jump to conclusions, I held myself back from blaming this hideous presidential campaign we endured for the last two years. You know, the