DIVERSITY UNITED

DIVERSITY UNITED is a year-long program of outreach to people of all faiths, ethnicities, and races in Newark and the surrounding suburban communities, to discuss an anti-racist agenda and create a tangible platform to work collectively toward a just society. 

We discuss issues of social justice, including mass incarceration, education, housing, healthcare, environmental justice, poverty, Jim Crow, and public monuments, all from the viewpoint of the systemic inequalities that have resulted from 401 years of American History.

The forum is formatted as a book club, with participants viewing films and reading materials before each of the monthly meetings. The panelists, African-American leaders, who have spent their lives in the trenches battling for civil rights, equality, and justice, lead discussion.

DIVERSITY UNITED 1 (March 16, 2021): Introduction.  To watch the video click here.

DIVERSITY UNITED 2 (April 13, 2021): Mass Incarceration.  To watch the video click here.

To watch the documentary “13^th” click here

DIVERSITY UNITED 3 (May 20, 2021):  Reparations.  To watch the video click here.

To watch the video, “The Truth About the Confederacy in the United States” click here.

The read the New York Times Op-Ed, “You Want a Confederate Monument? My Body Is a Confederate Monument,” click here.

DIVERSITY UNITED 4 (June 15, 2021): Criminal Justice and Policing.  To watch the video click here. 

To watch the video, “The Untold Story of Emmett Luis Till,” by Keith Beauchamp by click here.

DIVERSITY UNTED 5 (July 20, 2021): The Disparity in Home Ownership, Between the Black and White Communities, and Its Impact On the Racial Wealth Gap.  To watch the video click here.

40 Acres: (Part II of a 4 part radio series on eviction, produced by WNYC radio’s On the Media).  The history of how these housing disparities began.  To listen click here.  

Explained| Racial Wealth Gap: Senator Cory Booker and others discuss how slavery, housing discrimination and centuries of inequality have compounded to create a racial wealth gap. To watch it on Youtube click here.  

CBS This Morning: White Americans in Lyndhurst, New Jersey Confront the Legacy of Housing Discrimination.  To watch it on Youtube click here.  

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor talks about her book, Race For Profit, at the Politics and Prose Bookstore in Washington, DC.  To watch the video on Youtube click here.   

Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.  Considered to be the essential book on housing discrimination.  To read about it click here.  

DIVERSITY UNITED 6 (August 17, 2021):  Black Churches, Black Synagogues, Religion, Community, and the Historic Role of Houses of Worship in the African American Community.  To watch the video click here.

To read “How the Black Church saved Black America,” by Henry Louis Gates, click here.

To read “We Need to Tell the Story of the Black Church,” by Henry Louis Gates, click here.

DIVERSITY UNITED 7 (September 14, 2021): The Misuse of Science and Genetics in the Discussion of Race.  To watch the video click here.

Race?: Debunking a Scientific Myth (article).  To read click here. 

Race?: Debunking a Scientific Myth (book).  To read about it click here.

Troublesome Science: The Misuse of Genetics and Genomics in Understanding Race.  To read about it click here.

Geneticist Rob DeSalle on the Biology of Race.  To read it click here.

NIH must confront the use of race in science.  To read it click here.

DIVERSITY UNITED 8 (October 19, 2021): Inequalities in the Arts:  The Great White Way and Beyond.  To watch the video click here. 

Principles for Building an Anti-Racist Theatre.  To read it click here.