What began as a summit hosted by Whole Child Leon County in early 2019 has become a coalition of community leaders and advocates known as Equity Tallahassee Leon — a group committed to starting the difficult conversations surrounding implicit bias and racism in Leon County.
Courtney Atkins, the Executive Director of Whole Child Leon, says a facilitated discussion of more than 300 people in September 2019 led to the community wanting to embrace the work that Whole Child Leon was doing. From there, they created the steering community of Equity Tallahassee Leon.
The steering community has nine members total, which includes City Commissioner Dianne Williams-Cox and Shonda Knight, the executive director of community and media relations for the Leon County Sheriff’s Office.
“We decided to create a website and have videos of people in our community telling their stories dealing with racism in an effort for people who think it’s not happening here or don’t understand racism or the historic background of institutional racism to use this as an educational moment and be able to listen to their neighbors talk about their experiences,” Atkins said.
Atkins says examples of inequity in Leon County include redlining in communities and the lack of resources in Title 1 schools.
“I think that schools on the north end and other economically secure areas, their PTOs are a lot more active because maybe there’s one parent in the household not working and they can be involved, but when families are struggling with poverty and working one or two jobs, it’s hard to get super engaged in your child’s school,” Atkins said.
Williams-Cox said food deserts in Leon County are also examples of inequity in the community. As the second Black woman to be elected as a City Commissioner in 200 years, her hope for this coalition is to lift up those who feel like they have been left behind and continue the conversation on solutions to move the city forward.
“We cannot let there be another 200 years before that happens again,” Commissioner Williams-Cox said. “Those are also the kinds of things we have to look at as far as equity in employment as well and making sure people can earn a decent living.”
Knight said that her hope is that the coalition can start to break down some of the barriers that exist when it comes to racial tension, stereotypes and misinformation.
“For me, the more we get out of our comfort zones and open our minds and hearts to want to learn someone else’s perspective, the more we’re going to learn what makes all of us valuable,” Knight said.
Equity Tallahassee Leon has a challenge for the first week of March, “an exchange of perspectives,” to get people to reach out to someone of a different race and background to sit down, have a deeper conversation and then share it on their website.
“We really want people to understand that equity is not the same as equality,” said Atkins. “We want to ensure that racism and ethnicity are not predictors of life outcomes.”
Equity Tallahassee Leon Challenges Community to “An Exchange of Perspectives” added by Shamonee Baker on
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Gas up another .06 cents… from $1.99 to $2.86 now… in just a couple of short months of the Dementia Joe Biden Sadministration and NaziCrat control. And don’t forget the tens of thousands of good paying jobs that were destroyed along with this insanity. Why be energy independent and pay $1.99 per gallon, when you can pay $2.86 per gallon and finance terrorism. At this pace, I may have to revise my prediction of $3.00 a-gallon by summer to $4.00 a-gallon by summer. But never fear my friends, the Washington Post claimed yesterday that the long-promised $1400 check will “lift millions out of poverty”… and remember, we voted for this (insert wink here)
Gee, thanks Joe!
Signed,
The low income and impoverished who bought your bag of lies.
How about the challenge to take pre-natal vitamins? Or the challenge to raise children one sires?
Gas up another .10 cents… from $1.99 to $2.79 in just two months of the Dementia Joe Biden Sadministration and NaziCrat control. That’ll sure help the low income and impoverished population y”all care soooo much about, right? Oh wait… if we actually get jobs, improve our income, and get out of poverty… you won’t have a base of hate to exploit. So.. just stick to our damaging internet education, socialist indoctrination, weed, and gaming to our obesity puts us in the hands of the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex. Now I get it; never mind.
Gee, thanks Joe!
Signed,
We poor and ignorant folks who believed yours and the Media PAC lies, and voted for you… you know, ‘cause that orange guy said some mean things that hurt our feelings and all.
I wish this group would spend half as much time talking about the good things happening in our community!
What did I just read???
Hear, Hear POC!
You nailed dead-nuts-on. And as a “person of color”, I truly appreciate and completely agree with your perspective on this issue. In their lust for money and power, these race pimps have jumped the shark with their exploitation and irresponsible misuse of the race card. So much so that it now has a “boy who cried wolf” connotation, resulting in true acts of racism being dismissed and overlooked.
Irony can be pretty ironic sometimes.
What a completely useless and despicable organization. Totally designed to perpetuate the division of all race hustlers. Occasionally I was called racial slurs while in my little middle school and high school. But that’s what stupid kids do. Be awful to one another. I never used it as a crutch to keep from bettering myself. In no way did it reflect any of the “systemic” racism that these race hustlers keep pushing. In fact, the only real systemic racism is what they are bringing to the “conversation.” Their bullying tactics to shake local businesses down is probably the only real issue here.
“For me, the more we get out of our comfort zones and open our minds and hearts to want to learn someone else’s perspective, the more we’re going to learn what makes all of us valuable,” Knight said. Here’s an idea for both Knight and Commissioner Williams-Cox, get out of your comfort zone of seeing a racist around every corner and learn from my perspective. Everyone is a unique individual, judge them on the content of the individual’s character and not the color of their skin. I seem to recall someone who preached that and was sadly murdered for preaching that. Sad times today indeed.
And proud Curtis is front and center perpetuating this nonsense once again. Curtis is a genius at perpetuating nonsense… unfortunately, it doesn’t bode well for humanity.
Curtis benefits politically and monetarily from this deception.
“Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Luke 23:24
“a group committed to starting the difficult conversations surrounding implicit bias and racism in Leon County.” …………….. Let me guess…….. those conversations were like… “How can we blame Whitey for OUR Racism?”……how close am I? A good start to decline racism would be to END Affirmative Action.
Ah yes… the government sponsored taxpayer funded perpetuation of division and hate. Amazing how the NaziCrats call themselves “progressives” but haven’t been able to progress beyond their manufactured hatred and self-declared victimhood. People who never were slaves continuing to slander and persecute people who never owned slaves. Starting with President Obama, the NaziCrats have set race relations back 60-years… by design. There is profit in race pimping don’t ya know.
It’s also quite interesting how in the most culturally diverse country on the planet, we can only see black and white racism… and more specifically, declare that only white against black racism exists. I guess you all missed the recent story of the racist “hate” crime in Seattle, whereby a “black” man assaulted an “Asian” woman… you know, ‘cause she looked different from him and all. And I know you all completely ignore the black-on-black and black-on-white racism and hate that is pervasive in NaziCrat-run cities throughout the country.
Pull the blank from you eye first… then we’ll discuss whether there is a speck of dust in mine.