Healing Anti-Blackness Begins With Us: A Virtual Workshop for Non-Black People of Color

Jul 14, 20203 min read

Updated: Jul 23, 2020

Visit this page to register and/or donate to support the August 25th virtual workshop.

Over the past few months, I've been seeking a safe and brave space for Non-Black People of Color to share about our experiences with racism and confront our own anti-Blackness. These spaces are too few and far between so with the goal of offering my passion for facilitation and organizing community around a shared purpose, I took many deep breaths and put the word out there on social media. I am grateful for my support team, which includes my ancestors, teachers known and unknown, my therapist who helps me work through my imposter syndrome, my partner who unconditionally supports all of my endeavors, and my loved ones who help me see my light and remind me that the world becomes brighter when we share our light with one another.

Keep reading to learn more about our workshop goals, my reflections, and takeaways from the gifts of feedback I received.

Our Workshop Goals

explore acknowledging and sitting with our emotions, thoughts, and sensations as we dialogue about anti-Blackness,
write counter-narratives to combat anti-Blackness that bring us closer to taking action aligned to our core values, and
commit to transformational solidarity (e.g., I am not free until Black people are free) instead of transactional solidarity (e.g., the Black community fought for me so I must fight for them).

My Reflections and Takeaways

I was blown away by the number of people who registered, attended, and/or donated to the first virtual workshop on June 30th. I felt so aligned throughout the process. From preparing the optional pre-reflection resources and questions to the moment I opened the virtual waiting room and saw so many old friends and new-to-me Non-Black People of Color who are also committed to undoing our anti-Blackness, I felt so grounded and grateful for the safe and brave space we co-created.

Feedback is a gift that I welcome to support my growth as a facilitator. I appreciate the words of affirmation and constructive feedback I received to continue learning and growing my facilitation practice.

Feedback Gift #1: Offering diverse modes of participation & breakout rooms

"Having many options for participation was responsive to diverse processing and learning modalities - so helpful!"

"The breakout rooms were too large."
"It would have been helpful to have a facilitator to guide our convo in the breakout rooms."

The breakout rooms was a technical mistake on my part. I apologize if this experience did not meet your expectations and/or you were unable to share given the large size of the groups. I mistakenly anticipated only a handful of folks would plan to join breakout rooms so I manually created 3 rooms and wasn't able to quickly add additional rooms to account for the 20 folks who wanted to join a breakout room. For the next workshop I will:

make more rooms available to ensure 3-4 members per group
suggest roles for each group member (e.g., timekeeper, facilitator, sharer) and a sharing protocol
perhaps: offer breakout rooms by specific topic

Feedback Gift #2: Be more intentional about acknowledging our uniqueness and intersections as Non-Black People of Color

"It was helpful to hear that we weren’t alone in our experiences but I wish we had more time to dive deeper into where we learned anti-Blackness.”
"I wish that we had time to share about for our similarities and differences as non-Black People of Color."

These are helpful suggestions to consider integrating into future workshops. Thank you for sharing them! Next time, I will:

Invite folks to name and unpack the sources of anti-Black narratives - perhaps in a breakout room.
Acknowledge and invite folx to share more about our unique experiences as Non-Black People of Color who are also Latinx, Asian, Indigenous, Multiracial, and Multiethnic

I am grateful for all of the ways each of us contribute to the collective and am looking forward to continuing the work toward transformative solidarity together.