Facing Race: A National Conference in St. Louis, MO β€” November 20-22, 2024

Fiona Kanagasingam

Co-founder of BIPoC project | The BIPoC project
Fiona Kanagasingam has experience facilitating change at the individual, organizational and community level across multiple geographies, cultures, and industries. She has particular expertise working at the intersection of human development and social justice; facilitating dialogue with diverse stakeholders from activists and social workers. She leads her organization's Diversity, Inclusion and Equity practice. She is the co-founder of the BIPoC Project, a collective for people of color devoted to healing practices and dismantling racism and anti-blackness. Fiona received her BA from Columbia University and her Masters in Counseling from Monash University in Australia.

Presentations from Facing Race 2018

For 'Colored Folks' Who Consider Their Mutual Liberation Enough

β€œIt is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” audre lorde

Our session aims to disrupt the ways white supremacy shows up in communities of color organizing. Through interactive exercises, dialogue and practice, we will share a multi-racial framework for building authentic solidarity among Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPoC) to advance racial equity by dismantling white supremacy and anti-blackness. We will identify ways to build BIPoC solidarity for effective organizing, examine cultural and historical disconnection that impede authentic relationships and strategies to be accountable to one another in movement work.

As a result of participation in this session folks will:
-Understand how to de-center white people to enable BIPoC to unearth how internalized white supremacy and anti-blackness impede our efforts to collaborate across difference and forge lasting solidarity.
-Intentionally reframe the black/white binary to cultivate an anti-racist frame and practice to disrupt current paradigms for racial justice work.
-Name and begin to disrupt dynamics of power that shape differences, in order to center BIPoC most at the margins in our movements.
-Explore strategies to build inter-group BIPoC relationships to facilitate more effective organizing in teams, organizations, and movements.

Speakers: Merle Mcgee, Fiona Kanagasingam