What Should White People Do?
update: our next call series will take place in the fall. Exact dates TBD. Register below to stay informed.
Register for our Conversation Series.
Four 90-minute interactive sessions.
Each session will take place on a Wednesday night at 8:00pm ET
Exact Dates TBD/Fall 2020
Program Cost: $125
We are launching our 3rd Round of “What Should White People Do?”
The 4-week class is our effort to meet this moment of uprising and transformation. The first two rounds were a resounding success. And we are pleased to announce that we are doing it again.
Our next conversation series will take place in the Fall of 2020. It will take place on four consecutive Wednesdays, from 8pm-9:30pm EST. Exact dates TBD. Sign up to receive more information.
Register Above
We are hosting four sessions for white people who are active or aspiring anti-racists. We will learn, connect and commit to a life of action.
The feedback has been overwhelmingly positive.
Here is the arc of our inquiry:
Understand that this is your life
(it’s not a moment or a stage)
July 22, 8p-9:30pET
Learn to Hold
(yourself and others, a diversity of others)
July 29, 8p-9:30pET
See it, Name it, Change it
August 5, 8p-9:30pET
Show Up & Keep Going
August 12 , 8p-9:30pET
Please do share this link with people who are interested in doing the work.
Our original invitation is below.
And here is our list of things white people should do right now:
Understand that anti-blackness is systemic. It defines whiteness. You were born into it. Learn, learn and keep on learning.
Listen to what black people are saying (and don’t expect all black people to say the same thing!)
Talk to other white people (don’t become intolerable)
Find out what your black friends need
Commit (don’t collapse, and don’t self-flagellate either)
Move Your Money (consider giving to “Hood Healing,” this is deep, transformative work for people of color that the two of us are facilitating)
Share Your Connections (there is wealth in networks)
It is heartening to see so many white people taking part in this uprising. It is good to see people wake up. Want to learn. Stand in solidarity. And take responsibility.
I want to help.
I have long been frustrated with the way we have been holding the racial justice conversation. As a facilitator, I am painfully familiar with the places in which it always gets stuck. I have been wanting to try something else. Something different. More open. More likely to move.
This week I was heartened when my friend and close collaborator, Dr. Kelly Jennings, called with a nudge. She had been listening to her community. And she called to encourage Tuesday Ryan-Hart and I to step into the conversation. She knows of our spiritual commitment to the truth of non-separation. And she understands our unwavering commitment to the quest for justice.
The three of us came together to hold a beautiful Vigil for Our Nation with our friends on Wednesday night. We tuned in. Brought hearts together. Welcomed the anger, the hope and the grief.
And now we are ready to hold a conversation about race. A conversation geared towards white people who want to learn, to take responsibility and to do something.
It’s an experiment.
We’ll give it a moon cycle.
Four evening sessions.
From Wednesday, June 10 to Wednesday, July 1.
8PM to 9:30PM ET
$125.00
What would it look like to have this conversation from a place of wholeness?
Can we take radical responsibility without so much blame and shame?
Can we be more open and less self-righteous?
Can we turn towards the hard parts without freezing, hiding or falling apart?
How much more compassion can we bring to this space?
How do we make room for not knowing?
This is not for you if you have been in the conversation for a long time. If you are very familiar with anti-racist work. But take a moment to consider the people you know. The ones who are paying attention. The folks who want to do something. And want to learn.
Send them our way
Our commitment is to steward a conversation that will be challenging. At times devastating. And to do so with great compassion, clarity and care.
We want to catalyze action.
And we want this to be a prayer. A prayer of wholeness, healing and atonement.
This is work of the heart.
Before I let you go…
I want to point you to the website of The Movement for Black Lives. The most important resource I’ve been turning to #inthesetimes.
I also want to point to two opinion pieces that I have found important, concise, clear and meaningful:
Philip V. McHarris and Thenjiwe McHarris wrote No More Money for the Police. They are clear about the fact that our “go to” solutions are not working. Not even the ones that seemed extremely progressive 5 years ago (like trainings for implicit bias and de-escalation, body cameras and systems to flag problematic officers). And they are very specific about what we can do instead.
The solution to ending police violence and cultivating a safer country lies in reducing the power of the police and their contact with the public. We can do that by reinvesting the $100 billion spent on policing nationwide in alternative emergency response programs, as protesters in Minneapolis have called for.
In Call It What It is: Anti-Blackness kihana miraya ross makes a most important distinction between racism and anti-blackness. While racism is a catch-all phrase that can be used to describe the full range of descrimination experienced by anyone that is not white, anti-blackness is the explicit violence endured by black people because of the inability to recognize their humanity.
… Anti-blackness covers the fact that society’s hatred of blackness, and also its gratuitous violence against black people, is complicated by its need for our existence. For example, for white people, the abject inhumanity of the black reinforces their whiteness, their humanness, their power, and their privilege, whether they’re aware of it or not.
The only way to contend with reality is by turning towards it. We must look at horror in the face. We must question our core assumptions. We must aim for something else.
Thank you for your care. Thank you for coming together in this time of grief, rage and uprising. Deep gratitude to those out there putting your bodies on the line. And many thanks to those of you who are supporting, teaching, welcoming, praying, demanding, wanting and longing for something new.
This is our time.