OverComing Race
About
Overcoming Race is a new organization founded by the creators of Black Leaders and Allies Collaborative (BLAAC). One year after closing BLAAC as a nonprofit, the founders launched "Overcoming Race" to continue—and expand—the work of helping people and communities move from awareness to meaningful action.
OCR is dedicated to promoting racial equality and deepening understanding across communities. Through thoughtfully designed coursework, OCR organizes race education events that support honest dialogue, practical learning, and shared responsibility. OCR exists to educate the public, promote equity, strengthen community relationships, and advocate for justice—so individuals and institutions can grow in knowledge, courage, and impact.
At its core, OCR believes that lasting change happens when people are equipped with clear learning pathways, supportive spaces to engage difficult topics, and tools that translate education into everyday practice. OCR’s work is grounded in the conviction that stronger, more equitable communities are possible—and that it is OUR responsibility to build them together.
Dirrick Williams, Sr.
Founder and former Executive Director
Black Leaders and Allies Collaborative
Manifesto: Beyond Race
Race.
What has it provided?
How is it serving?
What will it produce?
We begin with the questions most people avoid—because the answers demand change.
Race is not a truth written into our biology, nor a sacred boundary etched into the human spirit.
Race is a social construct: a manufactured category that has been treated like destiny. It carries no relational or scientific merit, yet it has been granted authority over opportunity, belonging, safety, and worth.
We name it plainly: race is a concept of no intrinsic value—an idea inflated into identity, used to sort, rank, and divide. It is a collapsing spirit failing all of humanity, because it teaches us to fear one another, to reduce one another, and to live inside fear and inherited assumptions rather than from imagination and intrinsic values.
Race through cognitive insecurities has encapsulated our souls—human beings compressed into labels. It has hindered possibility: in exchange for quiet anxieties that arise when we are taught that difference equals danger, that power must be protected, and that dignity is something to be distributed rather than recognized.
We refuse to be governed by illusions.
We refuse to accept division as normal.
We refuse to inherit harm and call it tradition.
We choose a better path.
We will speak truth without cruelty, and listen without defense.
We will examine the stories we’ve been told—and the stories we tell ourselves.
We will confront the systems that benefit from separation, and the habits that keep it alive.
We will replace performance with practice—education that leads to action, and action that sustains justice.
We believe equity is not charity—it is repair, responsibility, and the creation of conditions where everyone thrives.
We believe community is not proximity—it is relationship, accountability, and shared well-being.
We believe justice is not a slogan—it is the daily work of honoring humanity in policy, culture, and conduct.
This is our commitment:
To educate the public with clarity and courage.
To promote equity with intention and integrity.
To build strong communities through honest relationship.
To advocate justice until it is ordinary—not exceptional.
Race.
What will it produce?
Not our future.
Our future will be produced by what we build beyond it: a liberated mind, a restored relationship, and a shared human dignity that needs no labels to be real.
We are done being divided.
We are ready to become whole.