In a season when the language of diversity has become a political target, a Memphis forum on racial healing insisted the work still starts the same way it always has — with truth, relationships and people willing to show up for each other.
Hosted recently at First Baptist Church-Broad, the “National Day of Racial Healing” discussion was presented by the NAACP Memphis Branch and the NAACP Tennessee State Conference, drawing faith leaders, advocates and community members for a wide-ranging conversation about what healing looks like in a polarized climate.
“We want to explore and listen and learn from each other as we seek common ground toward racial healing in our community, in our state, and hopefully in our nation,” moderator Otis Sanford told the audience. The goal, he added, was not to “blame anyone or belittle anyone,” but to engage in respectful dialogue — rooted in what he repeatedly framed as “truth telling.”
The panel included Pastor Keith Norman of First Baptist Church-Broad; Gloria Sweet-Love, president of the NAACP Tennessee State Conference; Rachel Shankman, founding director of the Memphis office of Facing History and Ourselves; Mauricio Calvo, president and CEO of Latino Memphis; and Bishop Marvin F. Thomas Sr., a member of the NAACP national board.
From the outset, Norman pushed back against the temptation to treat racial progress as a settled question.
“There is still a very prevalent problem of racism,” he said. “It’s worse today than it was because the expectation of being better and the tools that we have to improve it are far greater — and we’ve done less with more.”
But the most pointed moments of the evening came when the discussion shifted from abstract values to what solidarity demands in real time — especially between communities often described together as “black and brown.”
Calvo spoke candidly about what he called a hard truth in the Latino community: a tendency not to show up consistently for Black-led causes, even when Black leaders are advocating for immigrants and Latinos.
“It’s not a point of pride,” Calvo said. “It’s something that I’m personally ashamed for — that my community … is oftentimes not showing up for the Black community.” Healing, he said, requires more than sympathy. “If you want to have a friend,” Calvo added, “you also have to be a friend.”
Norman underscored that principle with an account from his own church campus. He said ICE agents entered the church parking lot less than a week earlier and detained people — a moment he described as a moral test, not a political one.
“One of the agents said to me, ‘What are you so upset about?’” Norman recalled, as if the incident did not involve him. “But the idea that injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere has to mean that we stand up for everybody.”
He pushed the point further with a line that became a refrain for the room: “The issue is the issue. Injustice is the issue.”
Sweet-Love echoed the same theme through the lens of lived memory — how the mistreatment of Latino workers can trigger recognition in Black communities because the dynamics are familiar.
“When I see Latinos being mistreated and given the lowest of jobs and not getting their pay on time, it takes me back to what my daddy said and what I saw as a child,” she said. “So we got to stand up. We must stand up.”
Thomas described the work as communal discipline — not just personal goodwill — and said racial healing is possible only when people in institutions are willing to admit the problem and commit to change.
“One of the starting places is being willing to tell the truth that we do have a problem,” he said, adding that healing cannot happen if society tries to “erase people’s history and stories, diminish them and dismiss them.”
Shankman, whose work in education is built around teaching history honestly, argued that the word “community” is often used without being defined — and that in a polarized era, defining it matters.
“Do we see the humanity in each other even when we disagree?” she asked. “It’s a time to have humility … to enter into conversations with curiosity.”
Quoting a definition she credited to Suzanne Goldsmith of City Year, Shankman said community is not made up of people who like each other, but people who believe they are part of something larger than themselves. In that spirit, she challenged the idea that difference should be feared or managed away.
“Difference is not deficiency,” Shankman said. “Difference is dignity.”
As the discussion turned to politics, Calvo warned against outsourcing moral change to elected officials or limiting civic engagement to election season.
“If it’s going to be possible, it’s going to be up to us,” he said. “It’s almost like they’re counting on us not showing up.” The work, he said, includes voting, but also the unglamorous labor of pushing leaders year-round. “You have to do that all the time,” he said, describing regular engagement with local decision-makers as a necessary form of accountability.
Sanford connected those themes to a local flashpoint: the closing of the University of Memphis Office of Multicultural Affairs at the start of the fall semester. He said the debate over diversity and inclusion has become distorted, treated as a threat rather than a civic good, and asked why institutions comply so quickly with anti-DEI pressure.
“For businesses and law firms and even universities,” Sanford said, “it is about the money.”
The panelists did not pretend there was a single strategy for pushing back. But they agreed the response must include a willingness to stand publicly, not just privately agree.
Sweet-Love, known for her blunt organizing style, called for “good old letter writing and emailing and phone calls,” along with op-eds and sustained public pressure. “We can talk all day,” she said. “But if you don’t vote, you don’t count.”
Norman urged creativity and, when needed, defiance. He described receiving a cease-and-desist letter challenging a “Black Men in White Coats” initiative he helps sponsor and said the answer was not retreat, but building alternate support.
“We have to learn when to be defiant,” he said, “and learn how to create solutions … and quit taking the easy way out.”
At the close, Sanford asked for brief takeaways, and the answers sounded less like slogans than marching orders.
“Show up for each other,” Calvo said. “Do not be afraid.”
Shankman offered a final moral reminder borrowed from what she called “one of our sages.”
“Do justly now. Love mercifully now. Walk humbly now … You’re not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”
