About United to End Racism
United to End Racism (UER) is a group of people of all ages and backgrounds, in many different countries, who are dedicated to eliminating racism in the world. We understand that eliminating racism is necessary for humankind to progress. We are committed to ending racism, and we support the efforts of other groups to accomplish this goal.
The main work of UER is to illuminate the damage done to individuals by racism and to undo this damage on an individual basis, using the resources and process of Re-evaluation Counseling. As people do this work, they become better able:
- to interrupt racism in their daily lives,
- to free themselves from all of racism's effects,
- to take leadership,
- to form deep relationships across racial lines,
- to remove racism from our societies' institutions, and
- to support the work of other individuals and organizations in ending racism.
UER also examines the racism in many of our societies' institutions and encourages its members to become actively aware of it and to find new ways of combating it. UER offers both an ongoing system of support that assists people to sustain their efforts to eliminate racism, and effective tools for eliminating racism that can be taught and used on a one-to-one basis.
Through its work, UER has developed a new and important understanding of racism and the relationships between racism and other oppressions. This understanding includes how racism and other oppressions are inflicted upon people, how they damage people, how this damage is passed from generation to generation, how people can resist such damage, and how people can recover from it. Our understanding is that racism is unintentionally internalized by those who have been targeted, operating within the targeted group to make that group's work to end racism more difficult. UER has also developed an understanding of the effects of racism on members of oppressor groups and how racist attitudes are installed on and persist in them.
Using this understanding of racism, UER has developed methods for undoing its damage. The work to recover from the damage of racism is done, in different ways, both by people who are members of groups targeted by racism and by people who are members of groups that play oppressive, racist roles.
UER was organized in 2001 as a non-governmental organization (NGO) in order to participated in the UN World Conference Against Racism (WCAR), in Durban, South Africa, in August 2001. UER sent a delegation of 50 RC leaders who led workshops, panel speakouts, and support groups throughout the conference.
In preparation for and supportive to UER’s work in Durban, local RC Communities engaged in hundreds of projects in twenty countries to communicate about our work on ending racism. These projects included: workshops, house parties, public forums, film showings followed by discussions about racism, introductions to RC and UER, listening projects, report-backs from the UN World Conference Against Racism, and presentations at workshops and conferences held by other organizations.
Since 2001, UER has carried out hundreds of local events, done introductory workshops in a number of countries, and participated in several large projects, including World Social Forums, U.S. Social Forums, and the European Social Forum. UER has also been a key participant at several conferences including the White Privilege Conference, the Tule Lake Pilgrimage, and the Gandhi-King Conference. UER's work continues to play an important role in introducing RC and the role of discharge in ending racism.