Racial equity is a vision that many people hold. But what does that term mean? For purposes of this website, we are imagining communities in which one’s race or ethnicity does not act as the most powerful predictor of how one fares.

	In a racially equitable community, for example, some children excel in school and some struggle – but race isn’t the factor that makes the difference.
	Some families are wealthy and some are poor – and there are people of every race at both ends of the wealth spectrum, and in the middle.
	Individuals and groups have racial and ethnic identities – celebrate their similarities and differences, their strengths, their unique historical circumstances and struggles – but those racial and ethnic identities do not predict with high levels of probability whether an adolescent goes to college or jail, which groups are healthiest and how long they are likely to live on average.

 

There are many groups working toward these and similar goals. This work goes on under different names including racial equity, undoing racism, eliminating white privilege, social justice, reducing disparate outcomes, building bridges, etc. In common, these groups are trying to reduce the effects of historical and current racism and other forms of privilege, oppression and disadvantage.

They are working to reduce institutional racism – the policies and practices of institutions that consistently advantage white Europeans and contribute substantially to poor outcomes for other racial/ethnic groups – and to identify and reduce structural racism.

They are responding to hate crimes or trying to prevent them. They are trying to create bridges between and within groups of color and white people to foster thriving, multi-racial and multi-ethnic communities that work for everyone who lives in them. They are supporting parent and resident leadership and helping to draw more people into community decision making – to make sure that all voices are heard, resources are directed more fairly, and power and wealth are shared.

We hope this Evaluation Tools for Racial Equity web site will contribute in some small way to the success of groups doing the hard work to make racial equity and the elimination of racism and racial privilege a reality.

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See Also» Stage 1: Getting Ready for additional tools and resources for defining anti-racism and inclusion work. Project Change’s Power of Words and Glossary for Racial Equity under Terms and Vocabulary for further discussion about the language used in this web site to describe issues of race and racism, power, oppression and privilege. Links for web sites with additional information about these issues.