Building an Interracial Community

Issue: BUILDING AN INTERRACIAL COMMUNITY

Your Role: Please Consider JOINING THE BAHA'IS IN BUILDING AN INTERRACIAL COMMUNITY

Following Louis G. Gregory's example, and study with the Baha'is how America can form an interracial community. In neighborhoods across the country, Baha’is and their friends are engaged in a community building process that cultivates love and translates it into action.

Tensions and divisions surface every day, reminding us that the stains of injustice and racial prejudice are set deeply in the fabric of our society. Baha’is are committed to reshaping society around principles of oneness – such as love, inclusivity and reciprocity. We hope to join hands with the countless like-minded Americans working for these same goals, and invite everyone to take a look at our approach.

Simple, profound, and revolutionary, THIS INTERRACIAL COMMUNITY BUILDING PROCESS:

• links personal growth with social transformation

• rekindles the soul’s connection to its Creator

• fosters friendship and intimacy beyond barriers of race and class

• weakens prejudice

• inspires neighbors to think about each other’s needs and earnestly search for solutions to shared problems

We invite you TO DO THIS VITAL WORK WITH US IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD.

Join us on the 2nd floor of the Museum from 5pm-7pm Monday-Friday, or with the Baha'is in whatever city you are visiting from (call 1-800-22-UNITE), in forging a new model of community life where spiritual conversation and service to others go hand-in-hand. Each of our core community building activities aims to foster inner transformation and create wider circles of inclusion. Together, neighbors cultivate a sense of collective ownership for the spiritual, social and economic well-being of their community.

Baha’is welcome any degree of association that a person would like to maintain, great or small.

LOUIS G. GREGORY'S EXAMPLE: DECLARED HIS FAITH IN BAHA'U'LLAH IN 1909

His most dramatic action for racial amity, was his decision, after 18 months of careful study, on July 23, 1909 to adopt the Bahai Faith, a Faith which pivots humanity to  the oneness of humankind. 

His belief its teachings would help bring race amity to this Nation seem vindicated by his experience with it, as he writes 34 years later to E B DuBois:

”When a person accepts the Faith he must abandon all prejudices… the Bahai Faith’s mysterious power is indicated by its ability to transform people whose views are diametrically opposed to its ideals and to give them new minds and new hearts. It is here in the South uniting the races as nothing else has ever done or can do. It is creating the bond that is permanent, not the ephemeral bond of the old order."

BACKGROUND: SUNDAY IS THE MOST SEGREGATED TIME IN AMERICA

With many of our most heart felt moments of community and family being the most segregated times in America, how do we build an interracial community? How do we now approach these discussions?