Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Fighting structural racism in the Rochester area

Randy Gorbman
/
WXXI

Building a more inclusive community is one of the goals behind Stand Against Racism. The fourth annual breakfast session held in downtown Rochester on Friday was organized by the YWCA of Rochester and  Monroe County.

The organization’s president, Jean Carroll, says dealing with structural racism, in areas like housing and education, are the kinds of issues the local community needs to pay attention to.

“All of those things are so embedded that we don’t even see them, we’re like, these folks, they just need to go out and pull themselves up by their bootstraps and its a whole different ballgame, depending upon where you live," she told WXXI News.

One of the panelists at the event, Desmond Jackson, who is an administrator at Rochester Regional Health, says that one thing he’s noticed is that a lot of people of color are mainly in support services types of jobs in the health care field, and they may need some help to reach their full potential.

“Helping to identify those in our health system as existing staff,  as potential candidates who have the ability and just need the additional support whether it be mentoring programs, tuition reimbursement, school-work programs.”

One of the other panelists, Daan  Braveman, who is the president of Nazareth College,  talked about a minority student who was having trouble company up with the money for a law school admission test.

“And the poorer students, many of whom happen to be people of color,  can’t do that.  And right there you see how structural racism works, it’s just a perfect example; nobody’s intending to discriminate but because of a variety of structures in our system this woman’s going to be disadvantaged.”

Braveman also noted that several years ago, Nazareth stopped requiring SAT tests for admission. And he says since that time, they have created a more diverse student body.

Stand against racism was a month-long event where organizations encouraged people to sign up and take part in the awareness campaign.

Randy Gorbman is WXXI's director of news and public affairs. Randy manages the day-to-day operations of WXXI News on radio, television, and online.