Racial Equity Statement and Commitment
Racism is a public health crisis and a root cause of community violence. In collaboration with hospital-based violence intervention programs, hospital systems, and communities, the HAVI works to end community violence and dismantle structural racism and white supremacy culture. We center credible messengers and people with lived experiences to advocate for and deliver comprehensive, trauma-informed care to people injured by violence. We strive for equity, anti-racism, and collective liberation.
We operationalize this statement by:
Acknowledging and rectifying the historical and present-day inequitable distribution of resources that disproportionately harms communities of color and privileges white communities.
Transforming health systems to be equitable and holding them accountable to provide a high standard of care for violently injured patients and support for the Violence Prevention Professionals who serve patients and communities impacted by violence.
Enacting policies and practices that advance equity, eliminate structural racism, and return power and resources to people of color.
Examining and interrogating our own biases through cultural humility.
Amplifying that people who are the closest to the violence hold the solutions.
Leading with race explicitly with an understanding of intersectionality: that when conditions and systems become more equitable for people of color, all people benefit.
Attending to the impact of racism in our work and developing restorative practices that support relationship- and coalition-building.
Inviting and valuing feedback to improve and course-correct when we make mistakes or when our intentions are misaligned with their impact.
We center racial equity in our work in all the divisions and departments of our organization, including Capacity Building, Communities of Practice, Communications and Narrative Change, Frontline Support and CVI Integration, Organizational Growth and Equity, Peer Learning, Policy and Advocacy, Research and Evaluation, Training and Technical Assistance and the Kaiser Permanente Center for Gun Violence Research and Education. We recognize that intention without clear actions is insufficient. The HAVI maintains a work plan for racial equity which includes active engagement and contributions from all staff.
We work toward racial equity internally in developing our organization. As we aspire to live our values every day, we approach this with humility. We invite your feedback about how we can continue to grow, learn, and embody racial equity. We will review our statement biannually and revise as needed to deepen our equity work.
HAVI Racial Equity Statement and Commitment
The FREE (Forging a Racial Equity Ecosystem) Task Force—comprised of HAVI staff, board members, and staff of HAVI member programs—provides input, feedback, and guidance around the HAVI’s organizational efforts to address pervasive structural and systemic racism and work toward equitable healing and collective liberation. Learn more about our FREE Task Force below:
GLOSSARY
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“Racism is a system of structuring opportunity and assigning value based on phenotype (“race”), that unfairly disadvantages some individuals and communities, unfairly advantages other individuals and communities, and saps the strength of the whole society through the waste of human resources.” - Dr. Camara Jones, health equity expert.
Racism can operate at different levels: structural, institutional, interpersonal, and internalized.
Source: https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/ama-aamc-equity-guide.pdf
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“Public health promotes and protects the health of people and the communities where they live, learn, work and play.
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Community Violence is exposure to intentional acts of interpersonal violence committed in public areas by individuals who are not intimately related to the victim. Common types of community violence that affect youth include individual and group conflicts. Although people can anticipate some types of traumatic events, community violence can happen suddenly and without warning. Consequently, youth and families who live with community violence often have heightened fears that harm could come at any time and experience the world as unsafe and terrifying.
Source: Community Violence | The National Child Traumatic Stress Network
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Hospital-based violence intervention programs (HVIPs) are multidisciplinary programs that identify patients at risk of repeat violent injury and link them with hospital- and community-based resources aimed at addressing underlying risk factors for violence.
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Structural racism “refers to the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination through mutually reinforcing systems of housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice. These patterns and practices in turn reinforce discriminatory beliefs, values, and distribution of resources.” (Zinzi Bailey, et. al., health equity expert)
Structural racism results in systemic variation in opportunity according to race or ethnic background—including differentials in access to health care based on race. It is a deep-seated and core form of social injustice and oppression seen across society, perpetuating cumulative advantage for whites throughout life.
Source: https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/ama-aamc-equity-guide.pdf
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Historically based, institutionally perpetuated system of exploitation and oppression of continents, nations, and people of color by white people and nations of European descent for the purpose of maintaining and defending a system of wealth, power, and privilege.
“White supremacy is not only…associated with…extreme political movements [but] is seen to relate to the operation of forces that saturate the everyday, mundane actions and policies that shape the world in the interests of white people.”
White supremacy, constantly adapting to legal and cultural changes, persists in part by the way many whites ignore their whiteness to the point of invisibility, their role in a racial hierarchy, and the privilege it gives them. A myth of innocence, an assumption of objectivity and other rationalizing devices, supports an unwillingness to recognize or reckon with racial injustice. It furthers a refusal to recognize their complicity in affirming and normalizing the structure of racist domination. Social codes, “othering” people who are not white, and the threat of violence or its anticipation play a role in supporting white supremacy.
Source: https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/ama-aamc-equity-guide.pdf
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Trusted support people who make a critical difference in the lives of violently injured individuals. Credible messengers are often people who have first-hand knowledge, exposure, and experiences of violence in their communities. Due to their own healing journeys, they hold wisdom and perspectives that are helpful in assisting violently injured individuals. Credible messengers build mutually respectful relationships and serve as mentors and role models. In HVIPs, Violence Prevention Professionals are credible messengers.
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“One who is supporting an antiracist policy through their actions or expressing an antiracist idea. An antiracist idea is any idea that suggests the racial groups are equals in all their apparent differences—that there is nothing right or wrong with any racial group. Antiracist ideas argue that racist policies are the cause of racial inequities. We can knowingly strive to be an antiracist. Like fighting an addiction, being an antiracist requires persistent self-awareness, constant self-criticism, and regular self-examination.”
Excerpt from How to be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi, Activist and Scholar
Source: https://www.penguin.co.uk/articles/2020/06/ibram-x-kendi-definition-of-antiracist
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Collective liberation acknowledges that multiple oppressions exist, and that we work in solidarity to undo oppression in ourselves, our families, communities, and institutions, to achieve a truly free world. We work collectively because we recognize that each of us has a stake in ending white supremacy and all related systems of oppression. Collective liberation requires that we center the voices and lived experiences of those who have been most marginalized. Collective liberation is found in community and relationship building, and in the sharing of our stories, including our sorrow and our joy. Collective liberation depends on our communities to build shared power and accountability that foster a just and transformed world.
Source: https://centerracialjustice.org/mission-vision-values/
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“A personal lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique whereby the individual not only learns about another's culture, but one starts with an examination of her/his own beliefs and cultural identities.”
Source: https://inclusion.uoregon.edu/what-cultural-humility-basics
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Intersectionality (or intersectional theory) is a term first coined in 1989 by American civil rights advocate and leading scholar of critical race theory, Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw. It is the study of overlapping or intersecting social identities and related systems of oppression, domination, or discrimination.
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People who are the closest to the violence have lived and living experience, and the closest proximity to community and gun violence. People who have been directly impacted hold wisdom and healing. They are best positioned to develop solutions, and implement them when they have the resources they need to do so.