{"id":13189,"date":"2024-02-21T10:00:55","date_gmt":"2024-02-21T15:00:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/positiveexperience.org\/?p=13189"},"modified":"2025-12-18T13:13:51","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T18:13:51","slug":"black-history-month-and-hope-as-an-anti-racist-framework","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/positiveexperience.org\/blog\/black-history-month-and-hope-as-an-anti-racist-framework\/","title":{"rendered":"Black History Month and HOPE as an anti-racist Framework"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The HOPE National Resource Center celebrates Black voices<\/h2>\n

At the HOPE National Resource Center, we lift up the achievements of Black people in the fields of public health, education, and child welfare. As a team, we feel it is inauthentic to celebrate Black History Month without some personal accountability on our part to help advance an antiracist framework, the HOPE framework, in the world. We need to not only celebrate Black voices this month (and every month) but also honor and build on the work that Black individuals have done throughout history to dismantle systemic racism.<\/p>\n

Activists produce power and policy change<\/h2>\n

I used to think of myself as an activist because I was against racism. I would attend protests and find myself engaging in intense, heated debates with family members about race. I thought I was doing my part. But like everything else in life, as we know better, we can do better. Author and activist Ibram X. Kendi<\/a> says in his book,\u00a0How to Be an Antiracist<\/a><\/em>, \u201cCritiquing racism is not activism. Changing minds is not activism. An activist produces power and policy change, not mental change. If a person has no record of power or policy change, that person is not an activist.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sit with that for a moment. \u201cAn activist produces power and policy change, not mental change.\u201d<\/p>\n

By that definition, are you an activist? I certainly wasn\u2019t. My actions, while decrying racism, were not actively seeking to upend racist practices and advance anti-racist solutions. The realization hit that being against racism wasn\u2019t enough. I had to actively work to dismantle it by learning from Black individuals around me. Hearing their voices, listening, and learning from the work of Black individuals is critical to shaping the anti-racist work that any of us will do moving forward.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not as overwhelming as it sounds. In fact, I believe if you really wanted to, you could start proposing anti-racist alternatives to racism where you work today. Do I have your attention? Bear with me while I break this down.<\/p>\n

Promoting anti-racism through the HOPE framework<\/h2>\n

Instead of focusing on a family\u2019s weaknesses or deficits, the HOPE framework encourages providers and professionals to see the whole child and family in front of them. The framework inspires professionals to seek out strengths and note the resiliency in families who are often, on a daily basis, faced with personal, institutional, and systemic racism. Instead of pathologizing families for the ways racist systems manifest in their lives, the HOPE framework urges professionals to find, honor, and promote families\u2019 inherent strengths, as well as the expertise they have of their own lives. HOPE-Informed professionals form partnerships with families to help promote resiliency in their children by bolstering and co-practicing access to the Four Building Blocks of HOPE<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"Four<\/p>\n