The following set of resources have been curated to provide further insight into theoretical frameworks around racial reconciliation as well as highlight models that have been implemented. These resources should be used to support the City of Minneapolis’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and provide helpful insights into how and if such a process should be implemented. Please note: because the idea of racial reconciliation is so heavily associated with the church, some of the resources are faith based in nature. The purpose in sharing these are to share the theories and frameworks that abound, not to promote one particular faith expression over another.
1.) The William Winters Institute for Racial Reconciliation at the University of Mississippi contextualizes this process as: "Reconciliation involves three ideas. First, it recognizes that racism in America is both systemic and institutionalized, with far-reaching effects on both political engagement and economic opportunities for minorities. Second, reconciliation is engendered by empowering local communities through relationship- building and truth-telling. Lastly, justice is the essential component of the conciliatory process-justice that is best termed as restorative rather than retributive, while still maintaining its vital punitive character."
Frameworks on Racial Reconciliation:
2.) List of Truth and Reconciliation Commissions. The following is a non-exhaustive list of truth and reconciliation commissions globally.
3.) Rethinking Truth and Reconciliation Commissions, Lessons for Sierra Leone (PDF)
- Before a truth commission or TRC is initiated in a particular setting, it is important to establish whether such an exercise has popular support—not only among local NGOs but also among ordinary survivors.
- Truth commission reports can provide crucial frameworks for debates about violence and repression, and can foster the development of stable national institutions. Sierra Leone’s Truth and Reconciliation Report offers this framework. But where there is no popular support for a truth commission, we need to find alternative ways of producing such reports.
- Where a truth commission or TRC is initiated, it will be more effective if it builds upon established practices of healing and social coexistence. If we discount or ignore such processes, we may jeopardize any form of social recovery.
4.) Until All of Us Are Free: How Racial Reconciliation Fails Black Women (video)
This lecture from Dr. Chanequa Walker Barnes talks about how common conceptions around racial reconciliation come out of the Evangelical Church, an institution that not only overwhelmingly support white supremacy but also privileges male patriarchy and hegemony. Walker Barnes discusses that main assumptions of this movement are that all racial categories are equally sinful thus Blackness is as problematic as whiteness and the solution is for all people to see themselves as Christian, which is achieved through social contact. In this analysis, Black women are largely missing and their experiences ignored, and success is seen as Black men and other men of color attaining same privileges of white men.
5.) Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) – South Africa South Africa’s TRC is one of the most cited examples of a government undertaking a process for victims of violence to share their experiences and for perpetrators to confess their offenses. The TRC was a crucial component of the transition to full and free democracy in South Africa. The following collection of resources shares their process and how effective it has been.
- Collection of TRC’s reports
- South Africa’s Imperfect Process, 20 Years After the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
6.) Is It Time for Truth and Reconciliation in the US
This article in Yes Magazine discusses whether or not it is time for a TRC process in the United States. Drawing on Canada’s TRC process, which addressed the suffering of First Nations children in the residential school system, the article talks about the success of grassroots approaches in pursuing reconciliation. It also states that commissions that take place in the United States are most successful when they also take the grassroots driven approach.
7.) Why I Stopped Talking About Racial Reconciliation and Started Talking About White Supremacy
An article by scholar and theologian Christena Cleveland discusses why she shifted her focus from racial reconciliation to white supremacy in her efforts to address racism inside of the church and other institutions. From the article: “When I first learned the term racial reconciliation in the early nineties, I found it very helpful and exciting. I was passionate about issues of race and justice, but had never heard those things discussed in Christian circles. Suddenly there was a Biblical basis and communal energy towards this value. When I came on staff with a Christian non-profit I was taught that racial reconciliation consisted of a three strand rope- ethnic identity, inter personal relationships, and systemic injustice. Though the focus was almost always on the first two. Beginning with the not guilty verdict of George Zimmerman and gaining momentum with the murder of Michael Brown Jr. in the fall of 2014, Black Lives Matter revealed the limits of the racial reconciliation model espoused by many evangelical organizations in nineties.”
9.) H.R.8420 - Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policy Act