These are my notes for the morning workshop on Weds., July 24 at the Guided Pathways: Designing for Equity – Rendezvous 2018 conference with Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr. and Nicole Rios-Gunn.
White Privilege 101: Getting in on the Conversations
From the schedule: Participants will engage in activities, large and small group discussions and goal setting activities to enhance their understanding of white privilege and how they can work to dismantle it in their institution.
This is the catalyst – why he keeps reiterating that there has to be some kind of written plan. We would have a plan for debt, why can’t we have a plan for the equality deficit. Everyone has work to do. Do your “doggone work.” Good people do jacked up stuff all the time. It is not enough to be a good person – we have to address the structure of our institutions. Our institutions are designed to reproduce inequality. The first 50 years of our institutions shaped how those institutions worked. You can’t change a structure if you do not understand its design.
We The People Exercise
We are looking at the community college as if it were America. We start with a mission/vision. All organizations have a starting point. We then measure it over time – is it doing what it said it would do? He then polled the room about how much we have met the goals of the constitution. Sometimes we have to conceal how we really feel in our institutions. He asked us to give a percentage about how we are doing with the mission.
Skills: Understanding, respecting, connecting
Can we constructively be in disagreement?
I thought we were at 50%, I used the fact that we no longer hang Quakers, but most in the room had the perspective that if there is one person in America being oppressed that we are at 0%. Dr. Moore said that we should not be rewarded for doing the things we should do. My question is “Where did your expectations of what we SHOULD be doing come from?”
We could put some of this online as workshops.
White supremacy dominates the culture and perpetuates inequality.
We are talking about diversity but we are producing white supremacy gaps. Our behaviors produce white supremacy even if we do not identify ourselves as white supremacists.
We saw the video “The way you see the world.” When white people saw a white teen stealing a bike they did not call the police. When they saw a black teen taking the bike, they confronted the teen and called the police.
How does white supremacy and white male cultural dominance impact our:
- Behavior and attitudes
- Social Spaces/Places
- Learning/Teaching/Parenting/ Coaching Style
- Leadership Style
- Decision Making
- Emotional Responses
- Relationships/Friendships
- Awareness & Access
- Providing Services/Overall Care
If we are stuck in traffic, we can: change our route, stop and think, go somewhere else.
This is not knowledge for the sake of knowledge but knowledge for the sake of action.
Action Planning…
White Supremacy/Whiteness in our Orgs, Univ, and or/Communities:
Notice.Feel.Interrupt
