05/29/2026
Last night, I attended an important conversation hosted by Wichita City Councilman Joseph Shepard on the history and lasting impacts of redlining in Wichita. I commend Joseph for creating space for this dialogue and am grateful to both him and Danielle Johnson for speaking so thoughtfully about the legacy of systemic inequities that continue to shape economic outcomes in our communities today.
As someone who studied race and ethnicity as an undergrad, I learned about redlining years ago in the classroom. But it never ceases to amaze me how few Americans were ever taught this history honestly or fully. And that matters. Because the truth matters. It matters not to assign guilt or to divide people. It matters because we cannot understand the systems we live in — or how to build something better — if we refuse to tell the truth about how we got here.
At one point during last night’s conversation, it struck me: we aren’t just talking about history, we are living through history right now.
Future generations will look back on this moment and ask difficult questions about the rollback of civil and voting rights protections, attacks on public education, the dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, and the growing attempts to erase uncomfortable truths from our national story. They’ll ask whether people had the courage to speak up while it was happening. What we do now will impact whether certain inequalities in our society continue to deepen or start to improve.
That’s why conversations like last night’s matter so much. Telling the truth about the past gives us the courage to tell the truth about the present. We need that courage now more than ever, especially in our leaders. I understand the assignment. And I am committed to amplifying the truth about our history and our present, to ensure that the long moral arc of history bends a little more toward justice.
