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Dana Orr
FOUNDER
I, as a Black woman, think it’s important to have the conversations about dismantling racism and to support the work of white women in community.
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Mary Delgado
FOUNDER
We, White people, need to change the racism in ourselves first before we can be transformed into anti-racist people.
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Althea Washington
FOUNDER
This moment we’re living in calls for deep internal search, honest reckoning, and meaningful relationships with other women who are willing to fight injustice to unleash freedom in this broken world.
How we got here..
Mary Delgado was 25 years old in the 1960’s when she read James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. His thoughts and the words he wrote to express those thoughts haunted her for the many years that she taught in diverse schools and lived in diverse neighborhoods in Chicago and Milwaukee. All this time she kept asking herself, “What could I do with Baldwin’s ideas?”
At age 75 she was given the time and the chance to answer this question. Weekly chemo treatments for breast cancer from January to March 2019 forced her to hibernate in her home.
These months were a time of deep soul searching. Mary continued to think about and meditate on all of the many authors writing about racism in the US that she had read over the years. And hoped that something tangible would come out of this reading.
During March, 2019, her prayers were answered. The vision and outline of this program came together. She shared her vision with Althea Washington and Dana Orr; the curriculum was created; groups of women were organized. And here we are…
We all have a story to tell of how we got to where we are today. All of our stories need to be told and will be reverenced, validated, and affirmed as we get to know each other as people and as we help each other go through the difficult process of change we are all embarking on together.
Objectives
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To identify your internal racism. How does it shape your life/decisions? Facing it is the first step to beautiful change.
To recognize societal patterns of racism. Where is racism invisibly embedded in our culture?
To decenter whiteness. Adopt a perspective that recognizes the full beauty of BIPOC as essential to this world.
To use your platform (relationships, voice, money, influence) to dismantle racism everywhere you see it.
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To be seen and not be invisible because of the color of my skin.
To be identified as a woman of equal value and worth.
To acknowledge the dehumanizing effects of racism.
To listen to, understand, and lend a voice to issues that affect my community.
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Mind-Bending and Conscious-Raising Objectives
1. To explore and examine the fact that we, white women, were constructed as “white” and, in the process, people of color were constructed as “not white”.
2. To investigate how the construct of “whiteness” benefited people who perceive themselves as “white” to the denigration and detriment of people of color.
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Soul-Changing and Life-Altering Objectives
1. To grasp the historical import of the privilege, power and protection white people possess to discern how we play these out in our daily lives.
2. To accept the fact that we, white women of the 21st Century, benefit from the historical construct of “whiteness”.
3. To go through the frustration and disorientation it takes for us to change our thoughts, feelings and perceptions of people of color.
4. To call out and challenge any and all forms of racism we encounter in our daily lives.
Call to Action
We cannot be anti-racist if we cannot see, believe, and want to do something to get rid of our white privilege.
White privilege is the feeling of white people that tells them they are superior to people who are not white.
We cannot do anything about white privilege until we can do more than define it.
We need a GUT response to our white privilege.
Not just in our heads.
We need to take time (lots of it) and listen to and read Black voices to DIG OUT and GET RID OF where and how we feel/practice privilege.