Wayfinding Together: Building a path forward for racial equity in education in uncertain times

As we reflect on the past year and renew our commitment to advancing racial equity in education in 2025, we face a time of deep uncertainty and fear. MnEEP Executive Director Carlos Mariani Rosa shares reflections to guide our journey forward, building a path from hope to justice for Minnesota’s People of Color and Indigenous (POCI) students and shaping a shared future rooted in racial justice, community, and liberation for all people.

Dear friends of MnEEEP: 

When we were planning our Annual Event, held December 20th, we were freshly experiencing the aftermath of the national elections which affirmed the choice of a candidate for the highest office in the land who had horribly disparaged and attacked a whole class of people based on their immigration status. We had listened in horror as that candidate referred to migrants as “animals…not people” and even made absurd and denigrating claims that Haitian immigrants were eating the pets owned by their neighbors.

We recognized that many of these he horribly defamed are People of Color in our nation: Dark skinned, African and Indigenous heritage, Mexican, Venezuelan, Central American, Caribbean, East and West Africans, Chinese, Southeast Asians.

These are the students MnEEP was created to advocate for— to assist our schools, colleges, and universities to learn how to create better learning environments and practices where they can thrive and achieve their academic goals. The very students on whom our state economy and social strength depend for achieving their career ambitions.

Over the years, MnEEP and others have worked so long to create the policies and practices for cultural validation that drives access to education quality for all students, such as evolving K-12 teacher licensing for demonstrating cultural competency and opening access to post-secondary for undocumented students.

All of that progress will now likely be under huge threat by the incoming highest elected office holder of our land who has shown in word — and, when last in office, shown in deed—that he would use his newfound power to re-set our socio-political norms with formal acts of government directed at dehumanizing and rejecting these students.

We faced the sobering reality that much of the work we had done to normalize embracing the humanity and brilliance of Black, Latino, Asian, and American Indian students for mutually beneficial outcomes across race, culture, and class would now face even more powerful challenges led by someone who endorses animus towards them.

Worst, his election ushers in a sophisticated, organized set of movements hostile to inclusiveness and diversity, hostile to academic freedom by banning books about African American history, and hostile to proactive steps to eliminate barriers to post-secondary access by students of color, and more.

Now, MnEEP is a politically non-partisan non-profit organization. We exist to influence policies and practices that empower educators, students, and communities to produce racially equitable outcomes in education. We don’t exist to promote political partisan parties. And, the hostility to that agenda that seeks to perpetuate racism was heavily localized within one political party, with its major candidate for the highest office in the land.

So, the deep question for us got a little more complicated: How to navigate through a racially harmful political reality that featured prominently in one partisan political community that just gained enormous power over that agenda? And at a deeper level, how to navigate through a huge step backwards in social acceptance of equity and racial justice after having taken many good steps forward? 

 It must be a “new era”, we thought.

And indeed, there are changes set to occur from the present federal administration approach. An administration that has not reverted to dehumanizing language of our nation’s immigrant communities and has staffed its national cabinet with the most racially/culturally diverse team of professionals ever in the nation’s history. In extreme contrast, the newly elected official’s call for eliminating the U.S. Department of Education disproportionately threatens resources that go to serve students of color who are far more likely to live in poverty and are food, housing, and employment insecure.

But the more we thought about it, the less we thought we were entering into a “new era” as opposed to continuing the long, historical struggle for racial justice.

It struck us that while the immediate context of our work has been altered, that it is still the same work as before this election, before this candidate and before the electoral shift we just witnessed.

That didn’t provide us with great comfort, but it nevertheless reminded us that we are still historically making our way towards an understanding, a way of being and living, and a place that reflects our full humanity. That place will have social structures we build that end racial harm and embrace the fullness of who we truly are in all our glory.  

This “making our way” became our theme for our event – that of Way Finding.

But there is indeed something special about this time – even as we’ve been journeying all along.

As our good friend Dianne Lev of the University of Minnesota, sent us a reminder as she blessed us on the eve of our annual event —the “something special” is that we choose this time in our Way Finding to pause and to;  

“Be grounded, be bold, be trusted, be admired, be heard, and be committed to manifesting our envisioned changes in public education.”

Dianne also reminded me last night that this is what our Founder, Ron McKinley would have wanted; for us to recognize the Moment and for us to take action. 

I imagine that in days past as our ancestors crossed the vast South Pacific for the first time, moved initially out to the vast steppes of Asia, sailed across the northern Atlantic to other lands, walked across the now southwestern United States into the Valley of Mexico, or through Palestine, across the Sahara and the Gobi, the Hindu Kush, into the Rainforests of Brazil, the Congo and the Pacific Northwest, across the Alps and more – there were likely times when they paused to remind themselves who they are, why they move, and what they will build when they stop.

And as Dianne reminded me it is necessary to pause to fuel our spirit so that we can move with “heroic ferocity, tenacity and also compassion”.

That is a part of Way Finding – pausing, reminding, naming ourselves and re-fueling.

That is this time.

Yes, we have lots of work to do – even with all the good work we have done up to now.

Yes, it will require more skills as we navigate through a different political environment.

Yes, we’ve done this before – we’ve seen drought, storms, attacks, and hunger before. And we are still here. MnEEP is still here. You are still here.

So, let’s name it: we are here “Way Finding” for:

• revolutionizing MN’s education systems,
• to make pathways for critical consciousness and self-liberation,
• for opening more doors to advance learning,
• for post-secondary success,
• for securing skills and knowledge that serves humanity and provides for sustainable and healthy living. 
• For creating a strong and beloved community – inclusive of each and all.

This is what MnEEP is about.

• It is why we formed a Race Equity Training Center – and traveled to communities like Duluth, Mankato, Hopkins to provide professional development for setting racial equity goals and developing culturally validating pedagogical skills.
• It is why we held a statewide college race equity symposium this year at the University of Minnesota preceded by regional campus convenings at Concordia College In Moorhead, Bethel University in the Twin Cities, and the MinnState offices in St Paul featuring the leadership of college students of Color/Indigenous themselves for identifying better student supports.
• It is why we moved the State Legislature to create an English Language Learner Task Force to propose ways to better finance EL instruction that produces effective student outcomes.
• It is why this year we convened and facilitated a unique pre-settlement exploration between the litigants and the State involved in the high stakes Cruz-Guzman K-12 school racial segregation lawsuit.
• And it’s why we recently held the first webinar for 100 educators from across the state involving rural/urban, regular and chartered school districts in learning and planning for how to ensure safe and supportive schools for students as they face the inevitable onslaught of a new federal administration focused on deporting millions of immigrants, and why we are developing online resource tools to better equip educators to protect their students.

MnEEP believes racial justice and educational excellence are interdependent dynamics of the school systems we each and all deserve and owe to one another. As our American Indian brother and 2024 Ron McKinley awardee, Nathan Price of Duluth Schools shared, Way Finding is not just about moving through space, it is about building safe places that honor and love our students.

There are no accidents in our work. We are intentional in all of our work because, and a shoutout again to Dianne Lev who closes her emails with this quote from our American Prophet, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: 

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable…every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle– the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals.