I want to thank you so much here
while I am exploring a few things recently and see what i can discover ,I found that some have shared ,they are very nice and very kind , without look to age ,just shared nice and professional (prospective) that help to grow
Thank you so much and I am so grateful
God bless you ,bless your family ,bless your friends ,give all happiness and joy in life
Getting Socialble
Thank God for the blessing of being Here and having a chance to be with very nice and good people
It is awesome to get to know people and find people to go out with
to Get it ,you got to ask ,you gotta to find the chance for asking .
This is the plan in simple words
Thank you
Update on June 12
What do you think have happened after that ?
I am going to be busy in rebuild something I have started and I will strength it (With full respect to everyone )
SO We will see
A sense of mutual respect? Feeling a strong sense of connection? Truly trusting another human being?
Being in a healthy relationship is all of the above—and so much more. A healthy relationship is a connection based on trust and respect for one another. What’s more, evidence points to the fact that positive relationships are those that support our health, empowering us to thrive and possibly live longer with fewer negative emotional and physical challenges.
Of note, there are hundreds of studies that prove that healthy relationships increase our physical health. According to the National Institutes of Health, social support is linked to lower blood pressure, better heart rate measures and fewer stress hormones. True, genetics play a role in health and even longevity. But research shows that other factors matter, including experiences and relationships. When people feel supported by their family or peers, they tend to be happier, or more fulfilled. Science shows that greater happiness, in turn, can help support our immune systems, mental wellbeing and many other aspects of our health.
There’s a lot that goes into building healthy relationships and keeping them stable and strong. In fact, this is something we talk a lot about with patients when they’re visiting One Community Health’s Behavioral Health Department.
1. Respect. While the word “respect” can be subject to interpretation and mean different things to different people and/or cultures, generally speaking, respect is an awareness of who someone is while also having an appreciation for that person and what makes that individual unique. In healthy relationships, you both have an understanding of what respect is, and you both can also relate within the context of that understanding. What’s more, in healthy relationships, you can respectfully ask the other person what he or she needs or wants from you, as well as what that individual likes about you without fear of building walls or other lines of defense. In these partnerships or friendships, it’s easy to find out what they respect about you and how they want to be treated by you. Importantly, the more you respect someone, the more likely you are to trust that person.
2. Open Communication. Transparency, or being able to safely speak your truth, is necessary in cultivating and sustaining positive relationships. It allows you and another person to have a deeper understanding of each other. It also helps build mutual respect and supports more effective conflict-resolution. When you have open communication with someone, you are able to share thoughts and feelings freely. You can listen without interrupting or criticizing the other person, as well as be heard without fear of being criticized.
3. Boundaries. Another key factor in healthy relationships is setting and maintaining boundaries. Boundaries are the limits and rules we set for ourselves within relationships. Setting boundaries teaches our partner how to treat us. Safe, healthy boundaries let others know what feels comfortable and what doesn’t. For example, time can be a big source of stress for many couples. Being clear with your partner on how much time you would like to spend together and how much time you would like to spend on your own hobbies, interests and self-care can eliminate confusion, disappointment and resentment. Setting boundaries builds trust, respect and safety
Dear Sir / Madam
I hope you are doing well
(I believe building a trust is one of basics that we learn while we grow inside the family and then in school and (then the door is open)
I found these topics are vary valuable (I will do my best in detailing it and I will focus on it )
I hope you like it
Please visit the source for full topic
The point of building trust is for others to believe what you say. Keep in mind, however, that building trust requires not only keeping the promises you make but also not making promises you’re unable to keep.
Keeping your word shows others what you expect from them, and in turn, they’ll be more likely to treat you with respect, developing further trust in the process.
Poor communication is a major reason why relationships break down. Good communication includes being clear about what you have or have not committed to and what has been agreed upon.
Building trust is not without risk. It involves allowing both you and others taking risks to prove trustworthiness. To navigate this, effective communication is key. Without it, you may find the messages you’ve intended to send aren’t the messages that are received.
Building trust is a daily commitment. Don’t make the mistake of expecting too much too soon. In order to build trust, first take small steps and take on small commitments and then, as trust grows, you will be more at ease with making and accepting bigger commitments. Put trust in, and you will generally get trust in return.
Only make commitments that you are happy to agree to. Have the courage to say “no,” even when it disappoints someone. If you agree to something and can’t follow through, everyone involved is worse off.
Be clear about what you have on your plate, and keep track of your commitments. Being organized is a necessary part of building trust with family, friends, and colleagues. It enables you to make a clear decision as to whether to agree to requests of your time and energy.
Trust often results from consistency. We tend to have the most trust in people who are there for us consistently through good times and bad. Regularly showing someone that you’re there for them is an effective way to build trust.
When you take an active role in a team and make contributions, people are more likely to respect and trust you. It’s also imperative when building trust in a team to show your willingness to trust others.
Being open and willing to make contributions and to engage demonstrates this. In other words, take what others say into consideration, show that you are listening actively, suggest your thoughts and feedback in a respectful way, and demonstrate that you are willing to be part of the team.
The message you convey should always, always be the truth. If you are caught telling a lie, no matter how small, your trustworthiness will be diminished.
Helping another person, even if it provides no benefit to you, builds trust. Authentic kindness helps to build trust.
Being open about your emotions is often an effective way to build trust. Furthermore, if people know that you care, they are more likely to trust you.
Emotional intelligence plays a role in building trust. Acknowledging your feelings, learning the lessons that prevail, and taking productive action means that you won’t deny reality—this is the key to building trust.
Acknowledgment and appreciation play an important role in building trust and maintaining good relationships. Recognizing and appreciating the efforts of others shows your talent for leadership and teamwork and increases the trust others have in you.
On the other hand, if people don’t demonstrate appreciation for a good deed, they appear selfish. Selfishness destroys trust.
Doing something purely for approval means sacrificing your own values and beliefs. This decreases trust in yourself, your values, and your beliefs. Always doing what you believe is right, even when others disagree, will lead others to respect your honesty.
Interestingly, when building trust, you must be willing to upset others on occasion. People tend not to trust those who simply say whatever they think others want to hear.
When you attempt to hide your mistakes, people know that you are being dishonest. By being open, you show your vulnerable side, and this helps build trust with other people.
This is because they perceive you to be more like them—everyone makes mistakes. If you pretend that you never make mistakes, you’ll make it difficult for others to trust you because you have created an unnecessary difference between the two of you. When all that a person sees is the “perfection” you project, they likely won’t trust you.
Andrea Bonior, a licensed clinical psychologist, professor, and author, shares the following advice for building trust with a partner in a marriage or relationship. Bonior suggests that trust is necessary for emotional intimacy and that it’s necessary for a healthy, close relationship (2018). It’s much easier and faster to lose trust than it is to build it up.
To develop trust with your partner, Bonior suggests you “say what you mean and mean what you say” (2018).
As young children, we quickly learn to tell if someone is being untruthful. It may be that someone doesn’t follow through with their promises, or a parent makes threats they don’t follow through on. This form of self-protection evolved to help us survive, so nearly all of us are able to notice the “proverbial boy crying wolf” (Bonior, 2018).
As we grow older, we finetune our expectations and behavior by learning not to trust an untruthful person, which helps protect ourselves from being let down again. So, when trying to develop trust in a relationship, don’t say things that you won’t follow through with.
It’s also important not to say things that don’t accurately reflect how you feel. Consistently telling lies, even if they feel small or inconsequential, will result in the other person no longer trusting what you say (Bonior, 2018).
Another aspect of building trust is to become increasingly vulnerable in the relationship as it develops. People feel trust when they rely on one another. In the relationships we have, we build trust through vulnerability (Bonior, 2018). Part of this will happen automatically over time through our daily interactions—such as feeling assured that our partner will be there if they have offered to pick us up from work (Bonior, 2018).
It is also important to be emotionally vulnerable (Bonior, 2018). Building trust requires you to open yourself up to the potential risk of being hurt. This could be revealing things that scare you or exposing aspects of yourself that you don’t consider attractive (Bonior, 2018). In other words, trust is developed when our partners have the chance to let us down or hurt us, but they don’t.
Respect plays an important role in trust. One of the most emotionally enduring ways we can be harmed by our partners is if they belittle us or look at us with condescension or contempt, because a lack of respect destroys trust (Bonior, 2018).
Any relationship, even that between a sales assistant and customer, involves a basic level of trust, and thus respect (Bonior, 2018). But maintaining that basic level of respect becomes even more important the more emotionally intimate the relationship is (Bonior, 2018).
Unfortunately, we occasionally show our partners our worst qualities. We may be more prone to lash out at people we are close to than we would at a stranger. We lose sight of the fact that respect is even more significant to those we love due to the harm that lack of respect over time will cause (Bonior, 2018).
It’s not necessary to be perfectly polite all the time with your partner. However, remember that every time you treat your partner in a way that breaches a basic level of respect, you will damage the connection you have. Plus, it will make it more challenging for your partner to trust you over time (Bonior, 2018).
Additionally, to build trust with your partner, be prepared to give him or her the benefit of the doubt. For this idea, Bonior gives the example of a patient and his doctor, who he’s been seeing for ten years and who he trusts and respects (2018).
Bonior describes the difference between how the patient feels about the trusted doctor’s opinion and the opinion of a doctor whom the patient has never seen before. While the patient may be prepared to have confidence in the new doctor because of her medical qualifications, it is likely that he will feel a lot more comfortable with the doctor with whom he has developed trust.
It may even be easier for him to hear difficult or surprising medical news from his regular doctor because he will be prepared to give the doctor the benefit of the doubt because of the trust and history they share (Bonior, 2018).
One more way to build trust in a relationship is to express your feelings in a functional, helpful way (Bonior, 2018). An important component of emotional intimacy is being able to talk about one’s feelings without shouting, verbally attacking, or shutting down the conversation (Bonior, 2018).
Therefore, in order to build trust, develop ways of discussing difficult feelings that are collaborative and respectful. To build trust, you need to give him or her the chance to connect with the “real” you—which includes your emotional complexity (Bonior, 2018).
Finally, to build trust with your partner in a marriage or relationship, it is important to consider reciprocity (Bonior, 2018). In other words, be willing to give as well as receive. It is necessary for both partners to feel comfortable with the levels of giving and receiving.
Picked Another Part
The fact of the matter is that you can never count on another person 100% of the time. However, there is one person we know that we can count on: ourselves. As Johann Wolfgang von Goethe said,
Self-trust is an important concept, as possessing it enables you to protect your own needs and safety (Tartakovsky, 2018). It allows you to have faith that you will make it through challenging situations and allows you to practice kindness toward yourself rather than pursuing perfection.
Self-trust includes having an awareness of your thoughts and feelings and being able to express them (Tartakovsky, 2018). To gain self-trust, honor your emotions and avoid relying on the opinions of others (Fahkry, 2016). This allows you to develop trust in your own ability to handle whatever arises. Self-trust is acquired by nurturing our deepest thoughts (Fahkry, 2016).
Self-trust also includes living according to your own standards and ethics and knowing when to put your own needs firsts. Having self-trust requires knowing that you can endure mistakes. Self-trust also enables you to pursue what it is that you want.
Avoid people who undermine your self-trust. Often, these people use you, and don’t want you to succeed (Tartakovsky, 2018). Although as children we often cannot control the negative people we have in our lives, as adults, we can certainly consider whether people support us and whether we actually want them in our lives (Tartakovsky, 2018).
Keep promises to yourself. Honor the commitments you make yourself, whether it be pursuing goals you set or following your dreams (Fahkry, 2016). An important part of this is making promises to yourself and keeping them (Tartakovsky, 2018).
One example of such a commitment is creating and sustaining a personal boundary. Or, go to bed earlier, or visit the doctor for a check-up (Tartakovsky, 2018). Building self-trust also includes becoming your own best friend.
Speak kindly to yourself. Everyone has a harsh inner critic, which sometimes takes the voice of a parent or a teacher from your past who made you think you weren’t good enough. However, you can reduce or eliminate the habit of listening to your inner critic. Try being more kind to yourself.
For example, if you make a mistake, you may immediately think, “I’m so stupid!” Instead, try saying to yourself, “That’s okay. It was just a minor error.” Showing yourself compassion when you make a mistake enables you to show a greater understanding of others when they make mistakes (Tartakovsky, 2018).
Self-trust is not about perfection—you must have faith in your own capacity to overcome a slip-up or failure. Self-trust is nurtured through us connecting with our emotional well-being and paying attention to any disturbances we may notice (Fahkry, 2016).
Check in with yourself. Ask yourself, “How am I doing?” Find out what is going on inside yourself rather than simply dismissing an emotional disturbance (Fahkry, 2016).
In other words, be mindful of your inner experiences (Fahkry, 2016). Self-trust develops when we honor our whole selves, regardless of whether or not we approve of certain aspects of ourselves
Picked also this part
Qautes
There are even more quotes on trust and trust issues that are available from Quote Ambition (n.d.). Here are a few:
Trust but verify.
Ronald Reagan
To be trusted is a greater compliment than being loved.
George MacDonald
Trust starts with truth and ends with truth.
Santosh Kalwar
The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.
Ernest Hemingway
Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.
Albert Einstein
Trust has to be earned, and should come only after the passage of time.
Arthur Ashe
Only trust someone who can see these three things in you: the sorrow behind your smile, the love behind your anger, and the reason behind your silence.
Over and over again in my clinical practice and in my advice column, I often hear from people wanting to build — or rebuild — trustin a significant relationship, whether it’s a sexual relationship or a relationship with a friend or family member. Trust is one of the most crucial building blocks of becoming emotionally intimate with someone; it’s absolutely fundamental for a healthy, close relationship. And yet it is far easier, and takes a lot less time, to lose trust than to build it back up. The rebuilding of trust takes time, patience, and work, just as it does to establish it in the first place. But it can be done if both people are motivated. Are you willing to put in the effort for the significant potential payoff? If so, here are some steps to take.
1. Say what you mean, and mean what you say.
Even as young children, we pick up very quickly on the clues that someone is saying things that aren’t really true. The parent who always threatens to make us leave the restaurant, but we know will never actually follow through; the sister who always promises to share her cookie, but invariably eats the whole thing anyway — we start not to buy what they’re claiming anymore. Our instincts for self-protection, honed evolutionarily for survival over thousands of years, typically will take note of the proverbial boy crying wolf. And we will adjust our behavior and expectations accordingly — learning not to trust the person quite as much the next time, in order to not be let down. So if you are looking to increase trust within your relationship, it’s imperative that you stop saying things that you won’t follow through on, or that don’t represent your actual feelings. Even what seem like minor lies, when chronic, will tell the other person that they should no longer trust the things that come out of your mouth.
2. Be vulnerable — gradually.
Two distant coworkers who spend 20 years just chatting about the weather and not ever working closely together on projects never need to rely on each other for anything other than idle small talk or a returned “Good morning” when passing each other in the hallway. But what about two coworkers who have only worked together for six months, but are constantly in the trenches with each other, coming to need each other desperately for that 9 p.m. email to be returned, or to look over each other’s work, or stand up for each other against a difficult boss? They have developed a bond with each other that is much tighter than decades of small talk, and it’s because they have to be vulnerable with each other — relying on each other to come through or else facing real danger. In relationships that we choose in our personal lives, we also build trust through vulnerability. Some of this comes automatically with time and daily interactions, like knowing that if our partner said they’d pick us up at the airport, they’ll be there, or feeling safe that if we eat a dinner they’ve prepared, it won’t contain the allergen they know will send us into anaphylaxis. But emotional vulnerability is important as well. Building trust takes a willingness to open yourself up to the potential risk of hurt — talking about something embarrassing from your past, letting them in on what scares you in the here and now, showing parts of yourself that you don’t think are “attractive” enough for a first-date reveal. Trust is built when our partners have the opportunity to let us down or hurt us — but do not. And in order for them to pass the test and build that trust, we must make ourselves vulnerable to that letdown. Gradually is best, of course, to protect ourselves along the way.
3. Remember the role of respect.
One of the most emotionally lasting ways that our partners can damage us — and our trust — is by belittling us, making us feel less-than, or viewing us with condescension or contempt rather than respect. Think of a basic level of respect as the common denominator in any relationship, whether between a cashier and customer or a mother and son. And the more emotionally intimate your relationship, the more important that keeping up that basic level of respect becomes, not less.Unfortunately, when we are tightly intertwined with someone, we sometimes show them our worst — which can be positive in terms of being vulnerable to them, but it also may involve treating them badly. Ironically, we may lash out at our mother or child or partner in ways that we never would at a cashier — and we forget that respect is even more important with our loved ones because of the damage the lack of it can do over time. This does not mean that you must be formal or perfectly polite always with your partner. But it does mean that you must remember that every time you treat them in a way that demeans them or violates that basic minimum of dignity and respect, you harm your connection a bit — and make it more difficult for them to trust you over time.
4. Give the benefit of the doubt.
Let’s say you’ve had a doctor for 10 years that you really respect and have grown to trust. Now compare how you feel about that doctor’s opinion, versus the opinion of a doctor that you’ve never seen before. While you may be willing to rely on the medical credentials of both, chances are, you’ll feel far more comfortable with the one you’ve developed trust with. And in fact, that doctor may make some difficult or surprising medical news easier for you to swallow, because you are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt given your trust and history together. The same is true in personal relationships. What goes hand in hand with trust is setting aside your doubts — even if temporarily — and letting the person come through for you. Now in relationships where trust has been broken, and you are trying to rebuild, it may not be wise to set aside all doubt all at once, like in the case of infidelity or substance abuse. “Once bitten, twice shy” may apply in those cases, as you may still need a certain level of checking up on someone to protect yourself from further harm. But over time, if you ever hope to truly rebuild trust, you must be willing to string together some moments of letting the doubt go — or at least suspending it — and seeing if they come through for you. (If they don’t, of course, then it is them who is sabotaging the trust-building.)
5. Express your feelings functionally, especially when it’s tough.
Emotional intimacy comes in part from knowing that you can express your feelings to someone, and that they will still care about you, that they will not dismiss you out of hand — that they will be willing to listen. It means that you know they will make time to understand your viewpoint, not to shut it down. This entails the maturity of being able to talk about feelings without escalating into shouting, verbally attacking, or closing down the conversation. Of course, it is very easy to have a non-emotionally intimate relationship where everyone pretends that everything is fine, and neither person lets the other person in, because neither person truly trusts the other enough to handle their difficult or awkward feelings or thoughts. But if that’s what you wanted, you wouldn’t be reading this! Work on ways to talk about difficult feelings that feel collaborative, helpful, and respectful. Learn to discuss challenging emotions in ways that don’t automatically jump to feeling threatened or starting a conflict. Many of us have taken cues from our parents about how to talk — or not talk — about tough things, and sometimes those patterns can stunt us. But if you truly want to build trust with someone, you’ve got to give them the opportunity to make the connection to the real you, including who you are emotionally.
6. Take a risk together.
Being vulnerable with each other can also be a mutual endeavor, and it doesn’t just involve revealing parts of yourself. It can also involve a joint effort toward something rewarding — an adventurous experience on a vacation, a joint lifestyle change toward healthier habits, an attempt to expand your mutual social circle, or even just expanding your minds together with new ideas in the form of thought-provoking books or movies. This puts you both outside of your comfort zone with the possibility of reward in the form of increased trust — like two comrades who were in the trenches together. And if it’s a romantic relationship you’re looking to increase your connection within, there’s an added bonus: A bit of fear-induced arousal can actually increase your sexual attraction, as the now-classic 1973 study by Dutton and Aron showed.
7. Be willing to give as well as receive.
The friendship research bears out just how important reciprocity is to a solid relationship. And it’s not necessarily that each person is giving exactly as much as they are receiving, but rather that both partners are comfortable with the levels, and they feel relatively equal. Of course, in a truly close emotional partnership, it is expected and understood that this balance may shift once in a while — one person leans on the other when it is most needed, and there’s no bean-counting necessary. And that’s because there is trust, and you know that you won’t end up giving, giving, giving without the other person ever coming through for you in return. So, a significant component of building trust is to let this process happen. Virtually everyone understands that they’re not supposed to always take more than they give, but what happens when you don’t let your partner give? You deny them part of this balance. Take the big picture, and let both processes happen, being willing to both give and receive. Of course, if you’re willing to give just a little bit more, and your partner is as well, then you create a comfortable, caring cushion for you both and a safeguard against feeling chronically undervalued or unappreciated.
Comment(shared)
I hope you like it
All MY Best wishes for you (and also you should wish all the same way )
if you would like to give a hand, you are very welcome
her is the task that I work in and I am gonna finish it in the next 2 weeks
1- Laws that protect against discrimination
2-reports Shows Number of hatred crimes and discrimination
on local county
on state range
Amnisty (UN Reports)
3- Some remarks and good responses from The White House and Congress
4(Efforts) Cancel Culture and (sort presecutions) How We can lok into this issue and make it work
Civil rights activists, known for their fight against social injustice and their lasting impact on the lives of all oppressed people, include Martin Luther King Jr., Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Rosa Parks, W.E.B. Du Bois and Malcolm X.
READ MORE: Martin Luther King Jr. and 8 Black Activists Who Led the Civil Rights Movement
this one of the best website I found for civil rights leaders
I hope you like it
The civil rights movement is remembered as a heroic struggle against injustice led by charismatic men. That is not the whole story.
King’s soaring rhetoric and Malcolm’s unflinching social critiques have supplanted recollection of the significant work performed by legions of local leaders, whose grassroots organizational style more closely resembled the efforts of Black Lives Matter activists and other contemporary social justice groups to build movements full of leaders.
The iconic images of 1950s and 1960s Black protesters marching, kneeling and being arrested while dressed in their “Sunday best” illustrated the respectability politics of the day.
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These efforts, designed to cultivate white sympathy for civil rights activists, relied on conformity with patriarchal gender roles that elevated men to positions of visible leadership, confined women to the background and banished LGBTQ individuals to the closet.
Yet the movement could not have happened without the extraordinary leadership of Black women like veteran organizer Ella Baker. Baker’s model of grassroots activism and empowerment for young and marginalized people became the driving force of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, known as SNCC, and other nonviolent protest organizations, past and present.
The decentralized structure of the current movement builds on this history of grassroots activism while working to avoid replicating the entrenched sexism and homophobia of an earlier era.
SNCC transformed lives by recognizing talent and empowering marginalized people. As Joe Martin, one of the organizers of a student walkout in McComb, Mississippi, recalled, “If you had a good idea it was accepted regardless of what your social status was.”
Endesha Ida Mae Holland, a teenage prostitute, found purpose as a SNCC field secretary, organizing and leading marches in Greenwood, Mississippi. Facing down Police Chief Curtis Lary “made me feel so proud,” she recalled, and “people start looking up into my face, into my eyes” with respect. Holland went on to become an award-winning playwright and distinguished university professor.
Black Lives Matter co-founders Alicia Garza and Patrisse Cullors also encourage strategies that place marginalized voices at the center.
Elevating “Black trans people, Black queer people, Black immigrants, Black incarcerated people and formerly incarcerated people, Black millennials, Black women, low income Black people, and Black people with disabilities” to leadership roles, they wrote, “allows for leadership to emerge from our intersecting identities, rather than to be organized around one notion of Blackness.”
Black women and teens have played a critical role in organizing, leading and maintaining the momentum of recent protests.
Kimberly Jones captured the nation’s attention with an impassioned takedown of institutional racism and debates over appropriate forms of protest. After repeatedly breaking the social contract to keep wealth and opportunity out of reach for black communities, Jones concludes, white Americans “are lucky that what black people are looking for is equality and not revenge.”
Women have organized family-friendly demonstrations, including the “Black Mamas March” in Charlotte, North Carolina, and a “Black Kids Matter” protest in Hartford, Connecticut.
Six young women, aged 14 to 16, organized a peaceful protest attracting more than 10,000 people in Nashville, Tennessee, while 17-year-old Tiana Day led a march on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.
The adaptive “low ego/high impact” leadership model, in which leaders serve as coaches helping groups build their own solutions, has become popular among current social justice organizations, but it is not new.
Baker encouraged civil rights organizations to “develop individuals” and provide “an opportunity for them to grow.” She praised SNCC for “working with indigenous people, not working for them.”
“You don’t have to worry about where your leaders are,” former SNCC organizer Robert Moses reflected. “If you go out and work with your people, then the leadership will emerge.”
Campaigns are exhausting and external recognition as a “leader” can take a heavy toll. Spreading leadership around helps to protect any one person from becoming a target for retaliation while advancing a stream of talent to rise as individual energy wanes.
Returning from a citizenship training program in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1963, Fannie Lou Hamer was arrested and severely beaten, leaving her with permanent injuries. Holland’s mother died when their house in Greenwood, Mississippi, was bombed in 1965 in retaliation for her activism.
Civil rights worker Anne Moody recounted how the physical and psychological toll of constant harassment by white supremacists in 1963 forced her to leave a voter registration drive in Canton, Mississippi, saying “I was on the verge of a breakdown” and “would have died from lack of sleep and nervousness” had she stayed “another week.”
In a 2017 interview, Erica Garner, who became a tireless campaigner against police brutality after her father, Eric Garner, died from a New York police officer’s chokehold in 2014, echoed Moody’s comments.
“I’m struggling right now with the stress and everything. … The system beats you down to where you can’t win,” she said. Just three weeks after that interview, Erica Garner died of a heart attack at the age of 27.
Comparisons to the romanticized cultural memory of charismatic leadership in the Civil Rights Movement devalues the hard work of today’s activists – as well as those who worked hard outside of the limelight in the earlier movement. Social change – then and now – derives from a critical mass of local work throughout the nation. Those who cannot find leaders in this movement are not looking hard enough.
by Alan Jenkins
What is the state of civil and human rights today? We’ve made a huge amount of progress but we still have a long way to go. There’s very little of the kind of formal bigotry and segregation that we saw in Eyes on the Prize, but there’s still a lot of discrimination in our society, unfortunately.
Addressing Inequities Today
The modern civil rights movement is working to address the less visible but very important inequities in our society. Opportunity in America should mean everyone has a fair chance to achieve his or her full potential. Our country hasn’t yet fulfilled that promise.
Hurricane Katrina provides a good example. What it revealed is that there’s still significant racial inequality and desperate poverty in America. A lot of that springs from discrimination from long ago that concentrated black people in the poorest neighborhoods — the neighborhoods that were most vulnerable to flooding, that are farthest from good jobs, schools and hospitals, and the hardest to get out of with transportation in an emergency. So those were the people who were hardest hit when Katrina struck. African American communities were not thought of by our government in the same way as more affluent or white communities.
The modern civil rights movement focuses on expanding opportunity so that kind of thing doesn’t happen again. It’s important to determine what’s different now compared to the Eyes era. We’ve got to eradicate the more subtle manifestations of racial bias in our society that go back to those earlier times.
The Movement’s Impact
The African American civil rights movement has inspired a lot of other groups that have suffered injustices. One example that we saw recently was the immigrant rights demonstrations around the country. Immigrants’ assertion that “we too are America” was inspiring, and very much in the spirit of the civil rights movement. In addition, there’s been, since the late Sixties, a powerful Latino civil rights movement, that included the farm workers’ movement, and includes organizations like the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund, patterned on the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund. The women’s rights movement was inspired in part by the African American civil rights movement. Certainly the immigrant rights movement, and the gay rights movement as well. Those are just a few examples. Dynamic people in those communities have led the movements, but the African American civil rights movement provides a powerful template for activism.
The impact of the civil rights movement has spread throughout the world. I’ve met with people in India — Dalits, who are the former “untouchable” caste. What’s exciting is that Martin Luther Kinglearned nonviolent strategies from Indian leader Mahatma Gandhi, so it’s kind of a full circle. When I traveled to India I met activists who were singing “We Shall Overcome” — the touchstone song of the American civil rights movement — in Hindi, and talked about how they had gotten inspiration from the American civil rights movement for their own struggle to achieve rights in Indian society. And there are many more examples worldwide.
Improving Our Own Communities
The first thing that people can do to improve things around them is to make sure that we live up to the promise of opportunity in our own lives. That means treating each other fairly and trying to examine our own biases. We all carry around biases and stereotypes in our heads, and that’s a part of being human. But we all have an opportunity to step outside of them and make sure we’re treating people the way we want to be treated.
The second thing is to be part of making our society more equal. That could mean calling up your local TV station and either complementing reporting they’re doing, or asking them why they aren’t doing more to expose inequality and highlight solutions. Write letters to the editor — including writing to your school newspaper — about how issues of opportunity are playing out in your community and what you can do about it.
The Implicit Association Test on race is an online test that you can take on Harvard University’s Web site. It’s a fascinating way to see biases you might unknowingly have. The test flashes up images of people from a variety of racial groups, and pairs them with negative and positive words. It’s designed to demonstrate that everyone carries around implicit biases to some degree. It’s a very interesting test. Of course, there is a difference between the Bull Connors — the hateful racists — and the rest of us, who are people of good will, but we don’t always recognize the stereotypes we carry around with us.
What does implicit or subconscious bias mean for police officers who have a split second to make a decision? What does it mean for school admissions officers or others making a decision that affects someone’s direction in life? The question for people to ask themselves is, if this person looked different, would I make the same decision?
Civil Rights Today
I think we’re at a crossroads now for opportunity. There are some areas where we’ve made great progress. For example, African American women have made the most progress of any group in college attendance — a remarkable success story. But in many other areas America is in real trouble. Great inequality and discrimination still exist in our school systems, our criminal justice system, and other aspects of our lives. Research shows, for example, the need to address the employment and housing discrimination that still exist. Nearly one out of every four African Americans seeking housing experience discrimination. That’s happening today. And yet there’s very little written about it — people are really unaware that that’s the case. We find similar levels of discrimination in employment statistics.
People interested in finding out more can read a report on our web site called The State of Opportunity in America. It explores how we’re doing as a nation in achieving opportunity for all, in terms of equality, economic security, and more.
It’s a very important time now for America to reinvest in that struggle for overcoming inequality and discrimination. They are really contrary to our values as a country.
Source: Jenkins, Alan. Interview by Maria Daniels, WGBH Boston, July 2006.
is the executive director and co-founder of The Opportunity Agenda, an organization that works to expand opportunity in America through research, communications, and advocacy. His career has taken him to the Ford Foundation as Director of Human Rights; to the U.S. Department of Justice as Assistant to the Solicitor General; and to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund as Associate Counsel. In his current role he works with a range of social justice groups to expand opportunity in America.
ew issues in American life have been as intransigent as race. In every century, race has presented the nation its greatest paradoxes, challenges, and opportunities, calling into question time and again the principle of equality on which it was founded.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the golden era of civil rights activism, the civil rights movement mobilized the nation’s collective consciousness around issues of racial equity. The U.S. Supreme Court officially ended legal school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas in 1954. Congress passed the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Black political participation increased dramatically. In 1964, only 5 blacks served in the U.S. Congress. By 1998, the number had grown to 39.
But the victories of the movement, however decisive they seemed at the time, did not bring the long-term parity that activists and policymakers hoped for. Bread-and-butter issues such as unemployment, substandard housing, inferior education, unsafe streets, escalating child poverty, and homelessness supplanted the right to vote, eat at a lunch counter, and attend desegregated schools. As new issues arose, appearing and intensifying in ways that fell beyond the scope of the legislation and social reforms, the old civil rights model—one that relied mostly on judicial and protest remedies—seemed less and less effective in dealing with them.
Contributions of the Movement
The civil rights movement made lasting contributions to the nation. Above all, it helped eliminate the legal apartheid that had dogged the United States since its earliest days. It also created a national expectation that individuals and groups had the right to petition their government to right legal wrongs affecting them. In its wake there developed a broad base of constituent interest groups—women, the elderly, children’s rights advocates, the handicapped, homosexuals, environmentalists—that emphasize the rights of affected parties to be a critical part of the decisions affecting their interests.
Ironically, the emergence of those constituent groups, each with its own divergent interests, made it much more difficult to sustain the old civil rights coalition of members of labor, the faith communities, and sympathetic whites and blacks to advance the new issues of post-civil rights America. Indeed, the dominant ethos of the sixties, racial integration and equality, has given way to an implicit but insidious assumption by many whites and blacks today that voluntary racial isolation and segregation are acceptable even among those whose fundamental interests are similar.
The American citizenry is also divided over whether the unfinished civil rights agenda has its origins in race or social class, and even whether government reforms such as affirmative action should address the lingering problems. The compelling evidence of African-American progress found in the burgeoning middle class helps explain why opponents of a race-based agenda feel the way they do. Meanwhile poverty in a large and intractable black underclass reaches deep into inner cities and rural communities nationwide and decisively constricts the life chances for affected parties, particularly children.
The Unfinished Civil Rights Agenda
Two issues remain on the civil rights agenda. The first is addressing the persistence of racial disparities. The second is redefining the agenda to fit a vastly changing American demographic profile.
Black-white inequality persists in income, education, health, housing, technology access, and safe communities. The national media increasingly report on racial profiling in what has come to be euphemistically referred to as “driving while black,” in the denial of equal access to rent or purchase housing, and in disparities in arrests and sentencing in the criminal justice system.
Many still view government intervention as the most effective means to provide the leadership to eliminate the disparities. But others argue that the responsibility for solving these problems rests neither entirely with government, nor with the voluntary, private, sector, but with a coalition of government, civil society, business, and individual initiatives. They see an invigorated role for faith-based groups, particularly those serving African Americans, and also a stronger role for industry in hiring and training the most indigent and least prepared.
The second issue on the civil rights agenda involves the rapid growth in the immigrant population since 1965. Individuals of Hispanic origin now outnumber African Americans. By 2050, the majority-minority population paradigm on which race and ethnic relations have traditionally rested in this society may be a thing of the past. As a nation, we have already moved away from the traditional white-black model of race relations to one that reflects the nation’s broad diversity—in race, ethnicity, gender, and lifestyle.
The increase in interracial and interethnic marriages is already changing the historical perceptions of what it is to be a member of the “white” or “black” race. High-profile individuals like golf professional Tiger Woods represent a generation of Americans who are redefining race by embracing their ethnic and racial diversity and its broader societal implications.
It is conceivable that at mid-century, Americans will view race in fluid rather than fixed and precise terms, not unlike the way Brazilians see their multiracial population.
The Need for New Models
One of the shortcomings of the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s was its failure to envision the need for a fluid model of action to address new civil rights issues in the years ahead. And still the search goes on. Indeed, the issue today is how to develop flexible remedies to black-white disparity, the nation’s changing racial and ethnic diversity, and white poverty. One way is to rebuild the black voluntary sector that was for a time supplanted by the black electorate. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition was a step in the direction of pitching a huge tent under whose shelter new and old minorities and the poor could find common issues and agendas. Martin Luther King’s proposed Poor People’s campaign in 1967 also recognized that a civil rights coalition based entirely on race would not be sufficient to address the problem of white poverty.
A new generation of civil rights leaders now focuses its work on eliminating social and economic disparities, particularly for the indigent. Using some of the sixties strategies for community organizing around advocacy and service delivery, these leaders are bringing technical proficiency to such complex problems as economic development, improvement of schools, and the organization of community development corporations whose missions range from building housing to creating mini-industries.
The most effective of these leaders are people like Bob Moses, a key voting rights activist in the South in the sixties, who now teaches math literacy to prepare poor children for the technology-driven job market; Eugene Rivers, a founder of Boston’s 10-Point Coalition to disarm gangs and rehabilitate young lives; Hattie Dorsey, whose Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership helps rebuild decaying neighborhoods; and Robert Woodson, head of the National Neighborhood Enterprise Center, who brokered a truce among the District of Columbia’s most violent gangs and placed its members in paying jobs.
Most of the successful leaders in the post-civil rights movement operate in the nonprofit sector, primarily in community-based groups. They know how to reinvent themselves and their strategies by developing cross-cultural alliances and partnerships based on technical competence as much as on common goals; build public and private resource bases; and navigate the bureaucratic governmental maze for funding. And they are actively training a new generation of young leaders to succeed them. The skills they bring to the job include expertise in planning, finance, technology, and government. They know how to design programs that are appropriate for the complex, multi-layered issues inherent in their work and how to garner the resources to rebuild decaying infrastructures and overhaul human services to make them more efficient and less costly, even while pushing constituents to practice self-sufficiency.
In conclusion, two questions stand out. First, can diverse cultural communities (such as Puerto Ricans in New York City, Central Americans or Ethiopians in Washington, D.C., Asians and Latinos in Los Angeles) and nonprofit groups in civil society coalesce with elected officials and with one another to address the post-civil rights agenda? Second, as they face increased costs along with demands for both enhanced services and fiscal accountability, how can cities (including economically and institutionally recovering venues of reinvention like Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia) support all their citizens?
