Colorizing Restorative Justice

Twenty restorative practitioners and scholars of color share their experiences around race, racism, and colonization in the restorative justice movement. They expose how white body supremacy manifests in their everyday work and profession, where they are often the only person of color. The authors are deeply committed to restorative justice and the movement’s potential to be a liberatory force in people's lives. At the same time, they name how the larger frame of white supremacy impacts the restorative movement, just as it impacts every facet of life. For the authors, restorative justice has the muscle as a philosophy and practice to disrupt and dismantle habits of systemic oppression, freeing both practitioners and the movement to fulfill the healing, liberatory, transformative potential that is the promise of restorative justice. Colorizing Restorative Justice is a much anticipated and mighty act of truth-telling! These stories arise from the lived experiences of a broad range of seasoned, loving restorative justice practitioners of color, mostly women, who fiercely unearth realities about the devastation caused by white practitioners who unthinkingly work without a racial or social justice consciousness. Required reading, Colorizing is a wake-up call for European-descended restorative justice practitioners. It is validating for Indigenous practitioners and practitioners of color and enlightening for anyone wishing to explore the intersections of indigeneity, racial justice, and restorative justice. —Fania E. Davis, African-descended, PhD, JD, author of The Little Book of Race and Restorative Justice, founding director of Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth (RJOY), and a leading national voice on the intersection of racial and restorative justice This book in many ways represents a journey. The journey of the modern RJ movement, now decades old, sadly, as a collective, has for the most part missed, watered down with romanticism, and in many cases intentionally