Crossroads facilitates an intensive process to develop a new anti-racism training model aimed toward institutional transformation. The model was developed through an action and reflection process that included development of experimental projects in seven settings in Chicago and throughout the United States. Now, along with a variety of other approaches, programs and resources, this model is being implemented locally and nationally to help institutions recognize their enormous potential to dismantle systemic racism and to build a new racial justice agenda in the United States. Crossroads understands racism as more than personal prejudice and bigotry, and it cannot be eliminated simply through programs of prejudice reduction and multicultural diversity. Racism is defined as the systemic enforcement of radical prejudice.
Racism is a systemic issue with individual, institutional and cultural manifestations.
Each of these manifestations needs to be examined, and strategies for their elimination need to be developed in the context of a specific institution or community. In addition to a social and institutional analysis of racism, Crossroads also explores racism's underlying cultural and spiritual roots.