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white privilege conference
Friday’s online appearance by Co-Moderator Elona Street-Stewart gave the Presbytery of East Iowa the chance to hear from one of the PC(USA)’s top leaders and to share some of the antiracism work going on in churches around the presbytery.
Looking ahead to the April 22-23 meeting of the Presbyterian Mission Agency Board, the board’s Coordinating Committee on Friday also looked back to last month’s deadly violence against members of the Asian American Pacific Islander community in and around Atlanta.
Synod of Lakes and Prairies is home to 16 presbyteries and nearly 800 churches, all of them in the upper Midwest. One of its presbyteries, Dakota Presbytery, is considered non-geographical but is the oldest presbytery west of the Mississippi River.
Historically, Presbyterians have contributed to white supremacy culture. But they’ve also done plenty of reparative work in recent years, three Presbyterian officials said during a Friday workshop at the White Privilege Conference.
Dr. Ivory Toldson knows BS when he sees it.To Toldson, one of three Friday keynoters during last week’s White Privilege Conference, BS stands for “bad statistics.” One such statistic that received widespread circulation was the claim there are more black men in prison than in college. That statistic, said Toldson, a professor of counseling psychology at Howard University and president and CEO of the QEM (Quality Education for Minorities) Network, was wrong, even if those who made the claim were “making a legitimate point.”
Thirteen hundred people are gathered in this Eastern Iowa community through Saturday for the 20th White Privilege Conference. Attendees were treated Thursday to a pair of thoughtful keynote addresses and the first of what will be their choice of more than 100 workshops.
Dr. Stephen Nelson, a pediatric hematologist at Children’s Hospital of Minnesota, had some alarming statistics for those attending his Thursday workshop “The Healer’s Power: How Whiteness Kills” at the White Privilege Conference.
