Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training

The workshops encourage white people to acknowledge how they have allegedly “engaged in racist behavior” and claim that white people “benefit from institutional and systemic racism” that minorities “struggle with and die because of.” ⁴ Crossroads’ workshops are grounded in the premise that “US society has a cultural arrangement with intersecting systems of subordination.” ⁵

Crossroads was founded by left-wing ⁶ Lutheran minister Joseph Barndt in 1986. ⁷ Barndt has produced “some of the most revolutionary anti-racism work of the day,” ⁸ is a “strong socialist and strong opponent of the capitalist system,” ⁸ and believes all white people in the U.S. are “automatically racist.” ⁸

Robette Ann Dias is Crossroads’ executive director. ⁹ She has said that Crossroads teaches that “white supremacy is the ideological basis upon which the laws and culture of U.S. society have been built.” ¹⁰

History and Leadership

Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training was founded as Crossroads Ministry in 1986 ⁷ by Lutheran pastor ⁸ Joseph Barndt and Susan Birkel to address perceived “structural racism” in institutions. ⁷

The Chicago Reporter wrote that Barndt has produced “what some consider some of the most revolutionary anti-racism work of the day.” In the interview, Barndt characterized himself as a “strong socialist and strong opponent of the capitalist system.” ⁸

Barndt has said “whites are trapped in the prison of racism,” ⁸ believes all white people in the U.S. are “automatically racist,” ⁸ that “no minority could ever be” racist, ⁸ and that “white supremacy has dominated U.S. society for more than 500 years.” ¹¹

He left Crossroads in 2004 to be a core organizer for the left-wing critical race theory-aligned People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond (PISAB). ¹²

Robette Ann Dias is Crossroads’ executive director. ⁹ She has said Crossroads believes “white supremacy is the ideological basis upon which the laws and culture of U.S. society have been built.” ¹⁰ In her personal capacity, Dias has said the United States was originally constructed as an “apartheid country,” “policing developed in the milieu of white supremacy,” and securing the Mexican border has not been done to maintain American sovereignty but to “to intimidate immigrants to suppress wages for agricultural and other manual laborers.” ¹³

Activities and Funding

Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training produces critical race theory-inspired workshops and “antiracism/equity and inclusion” consulting, organizes bias-based “strategic interventions,” and advises its clients how to “intervene most effectively to interrupt practices, policies, etc. that uphold white supremacy.” ¹⁴

As a part of its programming, Crossroads produces “radically inclusive” power analysis that links colonialism and neocolonialism to the experience of each racial minority group in the United States, ¹⁰ produces 9 to 12 month-long “race equity audits” to build an “intersectional analysis of systemic oppression in the United States and its institutions, ¹⁵ and builds “antiracism teams” to guide “long-term transformation with a vision 20 to 30 years in the future.” ¹⁶

The group uses a chart in its programming which categorizes either/or thinking, a “scarcity worldview,” distribution of information on a need-to-know basis, and individual achievement as “values shaping white institutions and creating discomfort and disfunction as a by-product of embedded oppression.” ¹⁷

Crossroads has local chapters in Kalamazoo, Michigan; ¹⁸ Chicago, Illinois; ¹⁹ Springfield, Missouri; ²⁰ and St. Louis, Missouri. ²¹ The group has worked with municipal governments, ¹⁶ K-12 schools and universities, ⁷ and left-of-center and liberal religious organizations including multiple synods of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, conferences of the United Methodist Church, the Archdiocese of Chicago, multiple dioceses of the Episcopal Church, Pax Christi USA, Call to Action, several communities of Women Religious, and the Unitarian Universalist Association. ⁷

Critical Race Theory-Inspired Workshops

Crossroads operates critical race theory-inspired workshops for educators at all levels ranging from early childhood education to the university-level at public, private, and parochial schools. ³ These workshops organize a so-called “courageous space” where white people can acknowledge how they have supposedly “engaged in racist behavior.” The workshops claim that white people “benefit from institutional and systemic racism” that minorities struggle with and die because of. ⁴ One staffer is in charge of watching participants’ reactions to the discussions. ²²

These critical race theory-inspired workshops were developed with far-left educator and author ²³ Louise Derman-Sparks, ²⁴ who has said that President Donald Trump wanted to create a “white nationalist America.” ²⁵ The National Association for the Education of Young Children identified the four goals of these critical race theory-inspired “anti-bias education workshops” as identity, diversity, justice, and activism. ²⁶

Crossroads offers three introductory-level critical race theory-inspired workshops: ²

• Introduction to Anti-bias/Antiracist Education (ABAR), which is designed for educators working with children and introduces teachers to the 4 Goals of Anti-Bias Education;
• Critical Cultural Competency, which is grounded in the premise that “US society has a cultural arrangement with intersecting systems of subordination” based on race and class; and
• Introduction to Systemic Racism, which is designed to teach stakeholders that racism is a “systemic, institutional problem of power which requires structural intervention to dismantle.” ⁵

Crossroads also offers two critical race theory-inspired in-depth workshops: ⁵

• Understanding and Analyzing Systemic Racism, which talks about critical race theory-inspired institutions, analyzes racism, explores the belief that institutional racism exists in the United States, and aims to equip organizations to work towards “antiracist transformation of the organization” ⁵ and
• Antiracism Pedagogy across Curriculum (ARPAC), which is still in development as of early October 2021. ⁵

Crossroads also operates a critical race theory-inspired webinar series tailored to religious groups like the Presbytery of San Francisco. Questions and topics of discussion in this webinar included: ²⁷

• What is systemic racism?
• What is white supremacy and what are its values?
• How does the church uphold white dominant values that undermine social justice?
• Why must Christians be equipped to speak against white supremacy?
• What is antiracism and what does it require of Christians? and
• Why must Christians invest in the cultivation of values that challenge white supremacy? ²⁷

Funding

As of 2019, Crossroads Antiracism Organizing and Training receives all its revenue from program services. Crossroads reported annual revenue worth $1,812,006, ²⁸ in 2019; $1,364,011 in 2018; ²⁹ and $1,074,423 in 2017. ³⁰