Orange County Government Announces New Racial Equity Plan

0


[ad_1]

Orange County will hold a public hearing on Wednesday for community members to share their thoughts on the district’s new racial equity plan soon to be implemented.

The meeting will take place at 7.15pm on Zoom. The equity plan aims to dismantle racial disparities in the community by uncovering and addressing the prejudices implicit in major institutions.

The initiative uses a division of sub-committees to achieve their goals, such as those for training, accountability and community engagement. Each committee serves a different purpose – from racial equity training for government employees and business partners to acquiring data on local disparities.

Training and education topics include race history, implicit and explicit biases, institutional and structural racism, and how to use and apply racial equity tools.

UNC freshman Ben Neill said he’s happy to see a shift in the narrative surrounding power structures and hopes it opens people’s eyes to injustice.

“If you can’t recognize a problem, you can’t fix it,” Neill said. “Once we get past that, we can talk about real solutions.”

What stands out most for Chapel Hill City Council member Hongbin Gu is the new process that government officials will follow in meetings and community outreach efforts.

Gu said that while she thinks these processes are good, she wants tangible change because results and quantifiable impact are long overdue. She added that healthcare, education, housing and entrepreneurship are recognizable issues that community leaders in Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough have known about for over 30 years.

“I think the change has come too slowly, but the pandemic has forced a new urgency to address this issue,” Gu said.

The racial equity plan follows a framework of comprehensive questions that include more data and focus on disparities between marginalized groups, meaning that decisions are likely to be more representative of the general population.

The objective of the plan is to help under-represented groups by helping citizens to become aware of the disparities of the territory and to fight against inequalities. It focuses its efforts on elected officials, managers / supervisors, non-managers, advisory board members, community / business partners and the general public.

Although this plan was only recently unveiled, it has been under wraps since October 2019, when lawmakers began gathering support and filing progress reports to predict the outcome of the new approach.

Skills training, community investment and mentoring are steps Gu hopes to see implemented next. The next step for Orange County is for its county council of commissioners to continue to monitor the impacts of the policy by submitting progress reports by elected officials and engaged stakeholders and including their comments in the context of the plan.

The inclusion of organizations like the Northern Orange Branch of the NAACP, the Refugee Support Center, the Local Reentry Council and the Orange County Community Remembrance Coalition is vital as they are better resourced and specialized.

Righteous Keitt, a junior at UNC, said the school used to abuse minorities and supported the plan.

“This is the first step – recognizing the inequity,” Keitt said. “A step that few governments have been comfortable taking. They don’t want to be seen as allowing or working in a broken system.

@dthcitystate | [email protected]

To receive the news and headlines of the day in your inbox every morning, subscribe to our email newsletters.


[ad_2]

Share.

Leave A Reply