I have this really cool opportunity to spend some time tomorrow workshopping our message with Rob Bell. I’ve been a fan of his for years and he is offering, for a fee, small group sessions where you spend time working on your communications. In order to maximize the time, Meg and I have been working on figuring out what the thesis statement for our “brand” or whatever you want to call what we are doing. I wrote up a 2 minute version of that thesis statement. Here is a first attempt at a 30 second version.
Segregation is the most socially accepted form of racism that still exists in America. Most of us think the right thing to do is move to a quaint, “safe” neighborhood for raising a family outside of the city. We do so with little regard for social justice issues. In fact, paint color and flooring type are often more important that the positive or negative affects of our decisions to orient ourselves based on our financial access into certain neighborhoods, towns, and cities. Over the last 14 years we have learned to love living in the inner city because we see so much of ourselves in our neighbors. Our only negative experiences have been witnessing the detrimental affects of the cycles of poverty our neighbors are held in because of systemic racism which is played out through the generally accepted practice of moving away from the poor.
Ok, so it seems like the term segregation has to be flushed out a little. I don’t think there is as strong of a connection to socio economic segregation and racial segregation and how those two are often the same thing (net worth disparity between whites and blacks). That should probably be added or modified.