The Smithsonian Institution has lately been at the forefront of events and conversations that bring issues relating to African-American artists and other minorities to the front burner of initiatives to advocate for economic and social equity.

Recently, the Bank of America awarded a $25 million grant to the institution which they have put to use in the form of a two-year initiative plan to tackle America's big elephant in the room: race and racial justice.

The initiative titled "Our Shared Future: Reckoning with the Racial Past" was conceived by the museum last year in the wake of George Floyd's murder and the worldwide protests against racial injustice that the extrajudicial killing sprang. 

“This initiative is our first attempt to foster an understanding of race and racism in the United States,” said Lonnie G. Bunch III, the organization’s leader, who participated in an early segment of the program. “It is important to examine unvarnished history, even when it’s complicated and especially when it challenges our preconceived ideas.”

Last Thursday, September 26, the first event of the initiative, an online forum to discuss the topic of race, was held by the museum.

Through the initiative, the institution's officials hope to create a space where participants can join the conversation about race’s role in shaping American history. 

"Conversations about race have changed over the past few years,” said Sabrina Lynn Motley, the forum’s host, who also serves as director of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. “We are considering race and equity far beyond black and white. Race is a social construct that has a real impact on our lives, and racism is a real device used to fuel systems of inequity and limit equal access to resources and power.”

“Our Shared Future” is also an opportunity for researchers to directly address the museum field’s complicity in upholding racism, which activists have been calling on institutions like the Smithsonian to do for years.

“What museums traditionally have done is that they have supported notions of eugenics,” Bunch said during the program. “And in essence, the challenge for museums is to recognize that those notions have been countered and that museums need to take the other stance.”

“This is a really good step forward,” corroborated Kelli Morgan, a curator and diversity consultant. “Museums have been the quintessential spaces of racial constructions for Europeans and Americans. I think museums are therefore the spaces where these conversations need to start.”

In addition to the other points noted, the museum insiders also view the initiative as an opportunity to help Americans examine social inequities, with plans in place to conduct oral histories to capture how event participants experience race today.

“We want to meet people in their racial justice journey,” explained Ariana Curtis, the program’s director of content and a curator for the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Although some original plans for events have been either postponed or canceled due to the pandemic, the Smithsonian still hopes to bring town halls, conferences, and pop events to regions across the country as the years roll on.