About the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation at UC
Established in 2020, the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & TransformationTM (TRHT) at UC was created to address social injustice through research and community dialogue. The TRHT joins a national network of such centers in partnership with the Association of American Colleges and Universities. Designed to develop a new generation of thinkers and strategists and break down racial barriers, the center is funded in part by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Newman’s Own Foundation, and The Papa John’s Foundation.
The center is housed in the School of Public and International Affairs of the University of Cincinnati, and facilitates related research and discourse in the community. The center’s mission and vision reflect UC’s strategic direction Next Lives Here, of which inclusive excellence is a cornerstone.
The University of Cincinnati’s Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation (TRHT) engages in work that ends harm caused by racial injustice. This is done through authentic, sustained, and collaborative efforts that actively and mindfully facilitate the difficult, complex, yet necessary work, of transformation and healing, on- and off-campus.
The TRHT envisions a community that:
- Centers the lived experiences of individuals and communities that have traditionally been forced into societal margins;
- Recognizes that racism is systemic and institutional, and not just an occasional or random act or belief adopted by individuals;
- Explicitly, consciously, and tirelessly endeavors to be (and invite others to be) anti-racist;
- Collectively understands how the domination of white supremacy operates to cause harm to individuals with underrepresented and marginalized identities.
Further, TRHT envisions a community where the humanity and dignity of ALL people are realized. By acknowledging and reconciling the presence and role of white supremacy and settler colonialism, TRHT reimagines a new society and campus community, in the absence of racial hierarchy, that has processed the rage of those impacted by oppression and marginalization and has enacted reparations, in its various forms.
The Center for Truth, Racial Healing, & Transformation (TRHT) uses research, learning, and action to provide space for healing the harm caused by the matrices of oppression, including but not limited to white supremacy, systemic racism, patriarchy, and heteronormativity. By affirming all of our common humanity, TRHT works to mindfully dismantle white supremacy and redress the harms caused by systemic racism and racial injustice in the greater Cincinnati community.
To achieve the Center’s mission, the work and people of the Center for Truth, Racial Healing & Transformation are guided by the following principles:
- This is a space designed for and inclusive of all people with marginalized identities. This includes, but is not limited to individuals who are: Black, Indigenous, and people of color, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ), disabled, undocumented, gender queer and/or gender non-conforming, immigrants, and those at the intersections of these, and other, identities.
- We actively and intently recognize the lived experiences and voices of those impacted by racial hierarchy.
- We do not take comfort in our own privilege(s) but will leverage them in such a way that aims to shift power to those with traditionally marginalized identities.
- We recognize that racism has been the rule - manifested in policy, practice and custom - since the birth of this nation - and is systemic and institutional, not just an occasional or random act or belief adopted by individuals.