2024 Program:
White Anti-Racists
Thursday November 21
We will explore the critical role of psychological safety in enabling everyone – especially those most marginalized – to thrive. Through personal reflection and group discussion, we'll identify what psychological safety looks like and name institutional barriers to achieving it.
In particular, we'll discuss the influence of white supremacy culture as an impediment to psychological safety. We will define white supremacy culture and its implications. As Tema Okun tells us, “White supremacy culture trains us all to internalize attitudes and behaviors that do not serve any of us.”
We will explore these common attitudes and behaviors (e.g., perfectionism, either/or thinking, defensiveness) – how they show up in organizational culture and how we can interrupt them. Participants will leave with a greater understanding of these terms and will feel more empowered to build a more psychologically safe environment in their own institutional context.
How can committed white women in leadership roles meaningfully contribute to and be accountable in service of antiracist organizational impact? And how do white women move from the act of individual learning/unlearning the ways we individually perpetuate racism to active participants in institutional antiracist change? Using stories and other data collected from work with dozens of white or cross racially led organizations, and an applied a root cause centered tool, this session will explore the journey of moving white women past the midpoint of our journeys - where disequilibrium, unraveling and fear of loss become off ramps to inaction. All conference participants are welcome to join this session, but people identified as white women may participate in a fishbowl exercise using root cause analysis to understand the root causes of our own inaction and develop accountable strategies. As well, all participants will learn to use this tool to engage people with in their own organizations for accountable, antiracist strategy design. The session will be led by Equity and Results, a multi-racial, majority BIPOC national cooperative doing antiracist impact work across the country. It will be facilitated by two white women, Erika Bernabei and Elodie Baquerot Lavery who have been doing antiracist organizing and teaching for decades within multiple organizational contexts - they are facilitators, practitioners and are self-implicated in the design and presentation!
This session examines the intersections of the American legal, economic, and religious institutions of racialized rape (arranged and aimed primarily against Black women, girls, boys, and in some cases men), pedophilia, human sex trafficking, and enslavement. This experiential and interactive course content, delivered in an explicit and provocative fashion, examines the ways in which pedophilia and rape were infused into White legal, moral, political, economic, and governmental systems, and highlights the emergence of Black rage and anger as the result of White terror. One focal point is amplifying and elevating anti-Blackness as the underlying principle for these institutions and operations, rather than focusing on enslaved Black persons – as free Black persons, free Indians (as they were referred to in laws) were terrorized in many ways that are defined within the same contexts.
This session explores the teaching and reinforcing of Whiteness and anti-Blackness to White, Indigenous, and Black people, and others, during this period and beyond. It also explores the ways in which White solidarity and White benefits (mentally, emotionally, and spiritually) indoctrinated, enabled, and incentivized White people to normalize complicity in anti-Black terror and subjugation. This session examines deeply the premise of anti-Blackness/anti-Black racism as psychopathic and sociopathic.
A kaleidoscope is a tube of mirrors reflecting colored glass pieces, with the angle of the mirrors shaping what we see. Drawing inspiration from Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu, who transforms images from magazines that fail to represent her culture into powerful art that creates presence from absence, this workshop invites you to create a collage that addresses and challenges your own sense of invisibility. Together, we’ll explore how to assert visibility, take control of your place in media narratives, and dismantle imposed hierarchies to make room for your authentic story. Join us in this creative journey to discover how you can commit to being seen and redefine the space you occupy in the world.