YWCA Public Service Announcements

Click on the links below to view our Public Service Announcements

Background on the Public Service Announcements

Our YWCA is part of a national organization that has been a leader in advocating for racial justice and equality for 150 years. The YWCA believes that without eliminating racism, we will never be able to fully achieve our mission of empowering women, children and their families.

We elected to distribute these PSAs as a way to open up community dialogue. It’s an opportunity for all of us to increase our awareness regarding how racism is embedded in our lives and our society. By nearly every indicator – education, employment, income, health and even life expectancy, there remains a disturbing trend that white people are advantaged and people of color are disadvantaged.  

We define racism as a system of oppression based on race. In using this definition we are neither calling individual white people racist nor excusing any white people from working to end racism.

Since racism continues to be ingrained in our nation’s systems and institutions, many individuals learn unconscious behaviors and biases as a result. The purpose of these commercials is to provoke dialogue and thinking, and inspire people to work to become allies in the fight against racism. As the first step to becoming an ally, we encourage everyone to explore racism and the way it shapes each of our lives. Eliminating racism involves everyone in the community actively working to educate themselves and others. This is the way we can create positive systemic change.

As a group of predominantly white people working in a predominantly white community, we see that our inquiry is not whether racism exists, for the answer to that is clearly yes. Rather as a first step in working toward change, we seek to explore racism for ourselves, to understand the ways in which it has shaped our lives.  As long as racism continues, we are missing out on the full intelligence, creativity, friendship, humor and leadership people of color in our community contribute. The work of ending racism requires everyone’s efforts, and white people have a unique role in working toward change. We invite you to join us in this inquiry as we move our community toward greater inclusion and equality.

We appreciate your comments, questions and thoughts as we continue to grow and learn together in making Boulder County a better place for us all.

If you would like to learn more or express your views, please direct your feedback to jennifer@ywcaboulder.org.

PSA Credit:  These PSAs were originally created by the YWCA in Missoula, Montana. They were produced by Doug Jacobson, KECI Television.