In this workshop, we invite participants to engage with us on the challenging and necessary topics of race and racism. This workshop covers several concepts, including what race is, how it is constructed, how racism persists, power and privilege, liberation, colonialism, intergenerational trauma, and more. Participants will learn how to talk about race as both a social construct and a real experience. They will engage with material centred on unpacking racial identities and deconstructing whiteness.
By diving into the ongoing nature of racism, we collaborate with participants to examine systems, bias, micro-aggressions, privilege and power. We encourage a newfound, more in-depth understanding of systemic oppression, how it forms over centuries, police brutality, and why reverse racism can’t be real. We hold space for productive discussions about power and privilege related to race.
So, what does “going forward” look like? Knowledge is power, but informed action is better.
We collaborate with the group to contextualize the issues while encouraging participants to examine their privilege by thinking about ways one’s behaviour can be harmful. Additionally, we help participants differentiate feelings of shame and guilt and develop constructive responses to “call-ins” and “call-outs.” We examine four essential solutions to ending racism in the community: decolonization, co-conspiracy, conscious upgrading, and cultural exclamation.