In the spirit of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a group of Wayne State University racial justice leaders collaborate every January to host the National Day of Healing from Racism. This day-long event — free to attend and open to all — is focused on learning how to talk about racism’s impact and how to use practices to guide people on their journey of healing from racism. This year’s event is on Tuesday, January 17, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Wayne State University’s Student Center Ballroom, with doors opening at 9:50 a.m. The Detroit Equity Action Lab (DEAL), an initiative of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at the Law School, will host this year’s event in collaboration with the WSU Office of Multicultural Student Engagement and the WSU Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  

Racial justice leaders are hosting a day-long event at Wayne State University on Tuesday designed to help people heal from racism. The National Day of Healing from Racism, held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Student Center Ballroom, is focused on learning how to discuss racism’s impact and how to heal from it. The event is hosted by the Detroit Equity Action Lab (DEAL), an initiative of the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at the Law School, in collaboration with the WSU Office of Multicultural Student Engagement and the WSU Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. “We are thrilled to be back in person for this year’s event after successfully pivoting to a virtual format in 2021 and 2022," DEAL Director Asandi Conner said in a statement Wednesday. “We have a dynamic roster of practitioners, facilitators, faculty, and staff contributing to our collective effort to acknowledge and heal from racism’s wounds.”  

Last month, Wayne State University announced its plan to create the Detroit Center for Black Studies as part of its efforts to prioritize faculty and research centered on the Black experience. The university will recruit and hire 30 new humanities faculty, made possible by a $6 million grant from the Mellon Foundation. Dr. M. Roy Wilson is the president of Wayne State University. He says one of the goals in opening the Detroit Center for Black Studies is to connect the breadth of scholars who work in African American and African diaspora from all the universities in southeast Michigan. “The goal is an inclusive center that brings together the breadth of scholars who work in African American, African and African Diaspora Studies, and the interconnections with us and global histories, culture, economic, legal and health systems,” says President Wilson. 

The Michigan Chronicle spoke to Marquita Chamblee, Wayne State University’s (WSU) first associate provost for diversity and inclusion and a member of the president’s cabinet as the chief diversity officer.  “We certainly, like so many institutions and organizations, had a kind of resurgence of our efforts after George Floyd was murdered in 2020. But that wasn’t the genesis of the work that we began, that’s a much older history,” said Chamblee. “We’ve done a lot of DEI work more broadly and racial justice has probably been more in the central university, but the Damon Keith Center for Civil Rights has done a lot of racial equity work over the last several years as part of the university.” Chamblee said much credit goes to WSU President Dr. M. Roy Wilson who immediately put out a statement after the murder of Floyd and the protests had erupted, in support of the systemic change and brought staff together to make tangible changes in the university.  Her work involves responding to requests for training, workshops or an intervention around DEI that needs to be responded to in the department. The officer hired an intercultural training director to hone in on creating and expanding staff training and education programs. Conversations focus on identifying and implementing understandings of implicit bias, microaggressions and learning how to challenge yourself based on your identity to be more intentional about navigating other people around you. “We, each of us, need to look at our own implicit biases and what to do about them. The workshop on this is probably the one I get the most requests for. I think it’s because microaggressions are happening and people are aware that they’re happening and, whether it’s in a given department or generally at the university, people want to bring it awareness. What is the microaggression? What does it look like and how do we interrupt it?” In June 2020, a working group at Wayne State University came together as the Social Justice Action Committee (SJAC). The committee was tasked with first, examining internal policies, procedures and practices to identify bias on campus that may disproportionately disadvantage historically marginalized people. Chamblee said hiring more diverse staff and faculty is one of her priorities to ensure those working at the university reflect the diverse demographics of students. The university was awarded a $6 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to support the equitable hiring and the construction of a Center for Black Studies on campus. The infrastructure is still a work in progress and will likely materialize over the next couple of years.  “The diversity, equity and inclusion of our campus community is beneficial to everyone,” said Chamblee. “That is what we continue to support, people’s process to buy-in [to] the conversations we are having…the procedures and practices we have, we need to institutionalize them so we don’t need to keep reinventing the wheel.”