La June Montgomery Tabron believes many Americans have a desire for racial healing. They just don’t recognize how to commence.
“It may sound mysterious or challenging,” said Montgomery Tabron, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s first woman and first Black CEO. “But it’s actually quite straightforward.”
It starts, she says, with a exchange — with the sharing of stories between people of different backgrounds so they can better comprehend each other. So when Montgomery Tabron set out to explain the foundation’s “Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation” work and its creation of the annual National Day of Racial Healing, set for Jan. 21 this year, she realized she should do it by sharing her own narrative.
That’s what she does in a pair of books released earlier this month —“How We Heal: A trip Toward Truth, Racial Healing and throng Transformation from the Inside Out,” a memoir tracing the steps from her Detroit childhood to leading one of philanthropy’s most prestigious foundations, and “Our Differences Make Us Stronger,” a children’s book about connecting with others outside our comfort zones.
“I wanted to use the methodology of healing that we use, which is through storytelling,” she said. “I ponder people relate through stories. And this became a book of very interconnected stories.”
The Associated Press recently spoke with Montgomery Tabron about her books and the Kellogg Foundation’s racial healing work. The interview was edited for clarity and length.
Yes. There were several places across our holdings where we had the same reaction: Had it not been for the healing work, a circumstance could have escalated, particularly in Buffalo. Not only was that work about connecting people, it also was about affirming everyone as part of the procedure, affirming everyone’s worth. They felt it was a instant to display up in a very different way that honors healing. It was about the grounding in their humanity and using those principles of depend and mutual regard and shared understanding as a way to express their own grief and healing in that instant.
It was a procedure. In many ways, it was cathartic because my own healing trip happened also during the writing of the book. I touched on moments in my life that I had not totally processed or really fully healed from. There’s nothing like going through the healing trip that you’re writing about. I ponder it brings a level of authenticity to the writing itself.
It was, but that made it even more significant for me to do so. I aspiration I had such a book at that stage of my life, so I’m telling the narrative. But more importantly, I’m sharing the power of healing with a very youthful spectators that I depend will assist them navigate the country and the globe.
Teaching youthful people how to communicate across differences and showing them that it can outcome in powerful relationships and shared understanding is the beginning of the work. It’s work that, for those who habit, can navigator to making connections and building powerful and trusting relationships. I aspiration we also discover that we (adults) can do it as well. It’s not too late to have these conversations, and, particularly in this instant, is imperative that we have them.
I ponder it is calling for this more than ever. When I ponder about the attacks on DEI, I attribute the attacks to a lack of understanding, a lack of shared purpose and an empathy gap. And what the book speaks about is exactly how those types of disagreements require to be reconciled and can be reconciled through a healing procedure and healing exchange. I depend that through exchange we can arrive closer to understanding why there would be such an attack and have a exchange about whether there is shared belief underneath that would align us and receive us to a different place, where you resolve the issue. So I look at that particular issue and declare it needs a healing framework just as much as many of the most significant conversations we’re having in this country correct now.
What we’ve always hoped is for people to receive action. And we aspiration that both books can be used as tools to display what action looks like. We desire people to commence to not only listen and comprehend my narrative but view their narrative in the book and comprehend that part of this procedure is telling your narrative and having comfort in telling your truth, regardless of whether it may or may not align with someone else’s narrative. We then desire them to receive collective action. What can we do together within our household, within our throng, within our organization, across our partner groups? What can we do to assist others and join in to assist others view through exchange and exchange that there are other pathways that maybe they haven’t envisioned themselves?
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