It’s time to educate your cousins on racial justice

Today is National Cousins Day which celebrates the extended family members we know and love – our cousins. From family events to difficult times, many of us count on our cousins for support, for a good time, and for an honest perspective.

Today, it’s time to lean into that honest perspective. When it comes to race, our family can harbor views and beliefs that are ill-informed, ignorant, and damaging. Recent studies show that Black and white Americans are worlds away when it comes to their understandings of race. Black and Brown communities face the consequences of these views on a daily basis. For those who consider themselves allies, it’s time to stop simply scrolling by the racist Facebook posts from your cousin Jack and put yourself on the line for the people and ideas you believe in. It’s time to use your privilege to challenge and educate friends and family on topics related to race and racism.

Advancement Project National Office encourages our allies to use National Cousins Day as a time to have critical conversations about these issues. Consider calling or emailing a few of your cousins, or that one cousin – you know who – and share your perspective on race and racism in our country. Don’t know how or where to start? We’ve got you covered.

National Cousins Day for Advancement Project National Office is about leveraging your power, tapping into your networks, and getting involved. Having these conversations is one small step that can collectively spark understanding and action.

Get your cousins to re-imagine justice in communities of color the way our Justice Project is. Send them to www.advancementproject.org to learn how closing jails can put us on a path to community empowerment.

Talk to cousin Julie about getting more involved with her local school board to understand what’s really happening to our young people of color when they throw a spitball or are involved in a school altercation and join the campaign to create #PoliceFreeSchools – a major campaign of our Ending the Schoolhouse-to-Jailhouse-Track Project.

Send your cousins to wevotewecount.org to read some of the stories from people around the U.S. proving that there are, in fact, voter interference. Maybe they will want to share their own experience at the polls; we hope you do, too. And show them what our Black and Brown immigrant communities have to read up on in order to protect themselves and their families.

But wait, there’s more:

Our national partner, the Opportunity Agenda, released a guide called “Ten Lessons for Talking About Race, Racism and Racial Justice.” Watch a quick video below about the 10 steps.

If you love podcasts, check out:

• “How to Talk About Race and Racism,” an Aspen Institute conversation with The New Yorker staff writer Jelani Cobb and The New York Times op-ed contributor Wajahat Ali.

For the bookworms, these great reads are a wealth of information:

• So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo
• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?: And Other Conversations About Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum
• Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race by Reni Eddo-Lodge

Another easy way to take action, take the money you’d use to buy a coffee or a latte and use it to strengthen the movement for racial justice. Encourage your cousins to do the same. Your donation goes towards Advancement Project National Office’s work building power in communities of color, in partnership with grassroots organizations throughout the country.

We wish you a Happy #NationalCousinsDay! Follow us on social media for more information and updates on the fight for racial justice.

Additional Resources:

• “The 8 R’s of Talking About Race: How to Have Meaningful Conversations”
• “We can talk about race without fighting or getting defensive, if we’re willing to learn how”