December 4, 2020
The Howard Thurman Center for Common Ground was featured in The Daily Free Press article “Final Student-Faculty Forum of 2020 tackles effects of systemic racism.”
HTC Director Katherine Kennedy joined this forum as a panelist, sharing her experiences with racism throughout her personal and professional life:
“[Ms. Kennedy] spoke on her time as a Boston Globe reporter covering the school desegregation crisis. During the talk, she said she rode on a school bus with other Black students while parents who opposed desegregation threw stones and spewed slurs at the bus.
“I realized I had a responsibility beyond myself,” Kennedy said, “both as a journalist and as a Black person.”
Kennedy described how racism is often perceived as an abstract idea instead of the concrete reality people experience.
“We often treat racism and ethnocentrism as something that is studied and mentioned only in academia,” Kennedy said, “as opposed to something that we experience in various ways every day.”
Learn more about our Student-Faculty Forums on our website and read the full article here.