Facing Race award winners overcome hardships to make a difference
I’m an easy-sell for a make-a-difference story, particularly when it comes to race, education and employment.
Like the bold stunt on the national stage by Sy Stokes, an African-American student at UCLA who used spoken word, hard statistics and video last fall to chide the white majority, especially officials at the University of California Los Angeles, for the low 3.3 percent of African-American males in the school’s graduate and undergraduate programs, as well as for a lack of financial aid for these students.
“No snowflake in an avalanche ever feels responsible,’’ charged Stokes in his lyrical video, which attracted 1.9 million views and sparked discussion around the country.
Confronting race is also what the local Facing Race Ambassador Awards April 7 are about. The idea is to “lift up and celebrate” people who are striving to end racial disparities, says Carleen Rhodes, president and CEO of The St. Paul Foundation, which will honor five “anti-racism advocates” at a free event open to the public.
Receiving the highest Facing Race Ambassador Awards are two working to limit disparities in employment and education: Minnesota Award recipient Justin Terrell, Justice 4 All program manager for TakeAction Minnesota who led the effort to put job applicants with a criminal background on a level playing field, and East Metro Award recipient Jada Sherrie Mitchell, a Tartan High School senior who played a key role in developing a student-mentoring program to help reduce the academic achievement gap.
