Disrupting Our Practice: Understanding Whiteness

A 9-week program for white-identified coaches, consultants, facilitators, and trainers who want to learn to see and interrupt how we unwittingly perpetuate racism, oppression, and harm.

Mondays | Sep 11 - Nov 13, 2023 | 3:00p - 5:00p PT

"We will not end white-body supremacy — or any form of human evil — by trying to tear it to pieces. Instead, we can offer people better ways to belong and better things to belong to." ~ Resmaa Menakem in My Grandmother’s Hands

AS A WHITE-IDENTIFIED PERSON WHO HOLDS SPACE, ARE YOU:

• Concerned you’ll freeze when the topic of race makes itself known/seen?

• Worried you’ll cause harm—even unwittingly—during a meeting, workshop, retreat, or training?

• Curious about how your very presence in a room with People of the Global Majority is felt and what the impact might be?

• Wondering how your approaches, frameworks, meeting designs, and other tools of your practice might be unwittingly supporting and centering privilege and power?

• Not sure of where you can go to talk through the most uncomfortable aspects of race conversations at work?

• Interested in building the awareness and skills - i.e. capacities - that support your ability to navigate interactions charged with race and oppression in ways that reduce harm and center the needs of People of the Global Majority rather than white comfort?

• Wanting to hear other’s experiences and be in a supportive learning community with other consultants, coaches, facilitators, and “space holders” striving to be anti-racist?

Then this program is for you.

PROGRAM PURPOSE

There is the potential for us in leadership and organizational development to have a tremendous ripple effect -- for good or ill. Many of us have access to C-Suites and the people and resources in them. Our impact can touch all levels of an organization.

Let’s do all that we can to use our access for good and to help reduce the burden and labor our POC colleagues have been doing for decades.

This program is all about building our capacity, individually and collectively, to continually look for and dismantle the racism and oppression that permeates us, our practices, and the client systems we work with as leadership and organizational development practitioners.

For the last 6 years, we have been actively exploring the questions listed above - and others like them. As white-identified CIS heterosexual people, we finally realized we were missing a lot of what was happening in the rooms we were in, including the ways in which we were perpetuating oppression and harm.

Grappling with these questions has been core to our learning journey. So has being in a learning community with other white-identified people.

We have been in learning community in various ways with Aaron Johnson, Porsha Beed, Dylan Wilder-Quinn, and Jennie Pearl from Holistic Resistance. Through it we have learned how to develop the awareness, emotional capacity, and skills we need to reduce the racism and oppression we unwittingly bring into our coaching, consulting, and facilitation practice.

It’s a learning journey we are committed to for the rest of our lives. Because despite our best intentions, despite all of the articles and books we’ve read, despite the workshops we’ve attended, despite all of the therapy we’ve done — our conditioning runs deep. We will forever be learning and unlearning.

It’s a journey we want to support you, our colleagues, in. We share a bit more about why in this 12 min. video.

PROGRAM BENEFITS

Through this program, you’ll build your capacity to:

• Notice and disrupt the patterns of white dominant culture in yourself and in your interactions with others.

• Understand and navigate your emotional reactions when the charge of race is present

• Support relating to the hearts and humanity of those around you.

• Recognize habits of discounting BIPOC experiences, realities, stories, and culture.

• Center BIPOC in a room even when they are not present. 

• Build your awareness and capacity to stay settled in your body AND stay present to another’s experience when we are in the charge of race and oppression.

• Analyze what is happening around you through a social and racial justice lens so that you are better able to respond in ways that do not center whiteness or perpetuate white supremacy.

Join this 9-week program to jumpstart or deepen your understanding of culture-building, to lifelong anti-racism relationships, and expanding your “self-as-instrument” practice to include a more historical and collective lens.

PROGRAM TOPICS

Understanding these topics is essential if we want to see and disrupt how racism and oppression move through us into our practices. They will be woven throughout the program in whatever order based on the needs of the cohort.

• Positionality: How our individual identities shape the way we see the world in relation to those we interact with 

• Gender: How white men and women (and those socialized as men and women) perpetuate racism and oppression

• Capacity building: How to reach for and relate with one another in the charge of race

• Trauma stories: How our personal and shared wounding shows up in the room with us and the impact it can have

• Control: The ways that control is embedded in our practices, from how we design meetings to how we react when we perceive things aren’t going well

• The shadow side of self-as-instrument: How positionality is a missing a piece of self-as-instrument and what that makes us miss as a result

• Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture: The beliefs and systems that collectively enable white people to maintain power show up in us and our practice

• Tracking: How our positionality influences what we pay attention to (or not) in the rooms we are in, and how that creates the conditions for more or less harm

• 4 levels of racism: How internalized racism, interpersonal racism, institutional racism, and structural racism interact and reinforce one another 

• Examining the Tools of OD: How our tools, processes, and frameworks are not neutral or benevolent

Feel drawn to the program yet also unsure? Schedule a complimentary 20-minute call with one of us.

Program Approach & Structure

This program is different from other programs you may have attended -- it is designed to be an experience of disruption. That means it is:

• Not didactic. The program will be delivered in ways that likely won’t meet the expectations you hold for how trainings or programs should be delivered or facilitated. For example, the topics outlined below will be covered in the order that are dictated by the needs of the cohort.

• Less about content delivery and more about building capacity. The program will help you develop the skills to relate to yourself and each other differently when confronted with the charge of race and oppression. 

• Rooted in somatics. While this means that the program will include body-based practices, it also means that we will invite you to explore how the systems of power and privilege and racism and oppression that are embedded in our culture and history have come to live in you through cultural conditioning.

Program structure

• 18 Hours of Live Sessions: Nine Monday meetings 3:00-5:00 pm PT on Zoom (we will not meet Oct. 9th).

  • Sessions will include personal reflection as well as small and large group discussion.

  • We will tune into our full selves—body, hearts, and minds—to explore our experience around the charge of race.

• Supported 1:1 Connections: Structure for building capacity and relationship with others between sessions.

• 9 Weeks of Support and Connection: Google Group + Slack Channel to stay in touch and continue the discussion over the course of the program

• On-going community after the program: Greg and Shannon have on-going Understanding Whiteness groups that you can join and/or we might create an on-going practitioners group. (Meanwhile, you can join our private Linked In Disrupting Our Practice group anytime!)

  The program cohort will be small and intimate at no more than 12 participants.

This is everything described above.

Individual Cost: $1,800 or 3 payments of $600

Organizational Cost: $2,925 (discounts offered for groups of 3 or more)

Foundations+Coaching Program

Everything in the Foundations Program, plus:

Two 60-minute 1:1 coaching  sessions

one with Shannon and one with Greg

Individual Cost: $2,300 or 3 payments of $767

Organizational Cost: $3,425 (discounts offered for groups of 3 or more)

Foundations+Consulting Program:

Everything in the Foundational Program, plus:

12 hours of consulting time with Greg and Shannon to support an active project or challenge you are facing

Individual Cost: $4,800 or 3 payments of $1600

Organizational Cost: $5,925 (discounts offered for groups of 3 or more)

We will be contributing 20% of all contributions to support the work of Holistic Resistance, an African Heritage-led organization that does anti-oppression facilitation and coaching. Their work includes workshops and programs designed to engage us all in reaching for one another. Additionally, they work with young Black men and women to support them in their personal and collective healing. You can learn more here.

PREPARATION

If you register for the program, we recommend you become familiar with the following resources:

• Seeing White - Season two of the Scene on Radio podcast, a deep exploration into the history of white supremacy in the United States.

• My Grandmother’s Hands, by Resmaa Menkaem - a fantastic book about the way that race and trauma intersect and live in the body. Note: we will likely refer to this book a lot.

• So, You Want to Talk About Race, by Ijeoma Oluo - an excellent primer for conversations about race.

• How to Be an Anti-Racist, by Ibram X. Kendi - a great resource that gets into the “but what do I do about it” question.

• Me and White Supremacy, by Layla Saad - a process oriented book that can support you more in exploring how whiteness lives in and through you.

WHY CENTER WHITENESS?

When whiteness is centered, it is generally done unconsciously, and in ways that are oppressive and cause harm. However, in order to begin to work with whiteness, we must understand it. For this reason, we consciously center whiteness in order to disrupt and dismantle it. This doesn’t mean centering white people, rather it means focusing on the elements of white supremacy culture that keep oppressive structures in place, and how they play out in our lives. (Note: This language on centering whiteness is heavily influenced by the invitation we received from the hosts of Wake Up Seattle, who include queer women and non-binary folks)

ABOUT THE FACILITATORS

Invited Co-Facilitators

Aaron Johnson (he/him) is an earth builder, teacher of closeness, and activist. He graduated from the California Institute of the Arts in 2007 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. He has made a lifelong commitment to use the skills he possesses to end racism. In addition to using intimacy and closeness to blackness as a primary means to that end, the tools he frequently uses are speaking, teaching, singing, photography, filmmaking, and minimalism. Aaron leads a mentoring program called Turn It Up Now that focuses on elevating the power, talent, love, and work ethic of youth. He believes that deep connection is one of the most powerful tools one can use in dismantling racism. You can learn more about Aaron’s work with Holistic Resistance here.

You can listen to Aaron’s conversation with Greg on the podcast here.

Jennie Pearl (she/her) is a facilitator, yoga teacher, and bodyworker who leads from emotion and embodiment in liberation work. She is committed to bridging the gap between racial justice and healing work. She founded and facilitates Wake Up: a group for white-identified people who want to unlearn their racism and white supremacy culture from the inside out. She believes cultivating ongoing anti-racist relationships is a necessary aspect of the work white people must do in order to dismantle racism.

Dylan Wilder Quinn (they/them) believes closeness is necessary to dismantle oppression. Their balance of life experiences as a childhood abuse survivor and holding both oppressed (trans, queer, nonbinary, living with PTSD and chronic pain) and oppressor (white, masculine) identities drives their empathy for others, and they have committed to social justice for their life. They work with others to hold more complexity about the world and people around them. They are passionate about mentoring trans and queer people, teaching about gender and sexuality, and reaching for community with fellow white people who care about dismantling our racism. They are building a world with others that moves beyond shame and judgment and lifts each other up to grow and continue in this work.

Adam Slade (He/Him) guides partner organizations in pursuit of equitable and effective practices. He provides technical assistance to local governments engaged in process transformation work, conducts research on effective governance practices, and is particularly focused on issues of racial equity in public policy, government process improvement, financial policy formulation, public budgeting, and performance measurement.

You can listen to Adam’s conversation with Shannon and Greg on the podcast here.