Open Society Institute – Baltimore
Open Society Institute (OSI) – Baltimore : Audacious Thinking For Lasting Change
Every day, countless black men wake up in Baltimore and do their part to strengthen their communities. They run small businesses, mentor youth, volunteer at religious institutions, and raise their families. They are artists, coaches, students, fathers—regular guys from all walks of life—who contribute to their neighborhoods and change them for the better.
December always brings an accounting. In the last month of the calendar year we sum our various categories of crime and we look for meaning in the numbers. We look to have the numbers speak for themselves. Policymakers, journalists, advocates, and law enforcement will point to the numbers to make their various arguments for what […]
We lack a basic racial literacy in this country that would give us each a knowledge base to have intelligent and productive conversations with each other about race. We are not practiced in learning from one another across racial lines, or asking each other intelligent and well-informed questions about each others’ race-related experiences.
As an Indian-American woman who finds it important to regularly talk about the impact of race in our daily lives, Baltimore City fits me well. Yet, in a city where race pervades all discussions about improving Baltimore, when will Asian and Latino voices be welcomed into the fold? When provided space, our voices are relegated to “special forums,” perpetuating the foreignness of Asian and Latino experiences.
If you’re like me, you were taught that slavery ended with Emancipation Proclamation. Then Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus and the Civil Rights Movement began.
It wasn’t until adulthood when I realized that I had only a vague understanding of a large part of our history, and that what I was taught regarding slavery in this country was only a part of the story.
In 1926, when Carter G. Woodson first advocated for “Black History Week,” not only were the contributions of African descendants ignored, but American history was deliberately whitewashed (pun intended). Those responsible for writing what we now accept as the popular history of this country whitewashed the contributions of people of color, whitewashed the white-supremacist aspect […]
Editor’s note: At Monday’s Talking About Race event “Can we talk about how race affects our classrooms?” with Beverly Daniel Tatum and David Hornbeck, we received an unprecedented number of questions from the audience. It was clear that audience members wanted to continue the conversation. Towards that end, we’re posting some of those questions here […]
The inauguration of the first black president of the United States capped off a year of national attention to race. From the contentious South Carolina Primary to then–candidate Obama’s historic race speech at the National Constitution Center in March 2008, the year was filled with moments when were focused on the racial significance of the events […]
One in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34 incarcerated in the United States?1 “Yet you have turned into venom the process of law and justice itself into poison.”2 As the Pew Center for the States released its report at the end of February, the numbers sent me reeling. Again. The astounding […]
OSI-Baltimore has permanently closed. It has been our honor and privilege to partner with and serve the Baltimore community for the past 25 years.
This website is available for historical purposes. It is no longer being updated.