Wrestling with whiteness

outline

  • In this training series we will seek to create a shared understanding of white supremacy culture, reflect on how it lives in us and shapes our lives, and utilize the gifts of Ignatian spirituality to prayerfully consider how we free ourselves to think and act outside of the dictates of white dominant culture.  Participants will learn to articulate their own story of whiteness, opportunity and privilege and analyze how their work is impacted by implicit bias and white supremacy.  Participants will get equipped with tactics of resistance to train, organize and move other white people in the work of dismantling white supremacy.  

  • The training is based on a curriculum developed by Faith in Action, a Jesuit founded multi-racial multi-religious grassroots faith-based organizing network working across the US on racial and economic justice.  It was created by white-identifying organizers in Faith in Action who wanted to take responsibility for organizing themselves and their volunteer leaders to wrestle with white supremacy culture and implicit bias.  Over the course of a year, they consulted with clergy, organizers and trainers of color across the nation to develop this four part online curriculum.  We are adapting the curriculum to utilize Ignatian spirituality as a key method for helping us discern our relationship to whiteness and our call as white folks.  

    The sessions will be led by Annie Fox, the Jesuits West Provincial Assistant for Social Ministry Organizing.

Zoom Link
Breakout Rooms List

Prep for Session 1

In session 1, we aim to understand racism as America’s original sin and to understand spiritual freedom as freedom from white supremacy culture. We are all sinners beloved by God.

Skills-  Whiteness and White Supremacy: What is it and how does it show up?  Take a deeper dive into the history of whiteness and understanding our role in it and begin to explore the concept of an “opportunity story”.  

Before the first training session, please:


Optional Reflections and further reading from Session 1

The slides from the first session can be found here for your reference. 




Prep for Session 2

In Session 2, we aim to contemplate on racism within our own personal narratives and lived experiences.

Skills: Implicit Bias, Stereotype Threat and Racial Anxiety: How they show up in our lives and work and how do we free ourselves from invisible habits and instincts we don't even know we have?  What does it mean to enter into this work believing we are loved by G-d, complicity in the sin of racism, and do the spiritual work we need to get free to love? The slides from the second session can be found here for your reference.  

Please complete the following homework before your next session:




Prep for Session 3:

In Session 3, we aim to understand union with the divine as a commitment to beloved community.  The slides for Session 3 are here.

Skills: Calling in and Relational 1-1s on Race: How do we invite more white folks into this work, challenge our white peers in their relationship to race, and how do we build meaningful relationships with people of color.  How do we have spiritual conversations on race?

Please complete the following homework before our next session:

Prepare to share the name of the Native Peoples who historically guarded the land you currently occupy.  You can find information about Territory Acknowledgement and look up the land where you reside here.  Please have the name written down on a piece of paper.

Read: 

Watch:







Prep for Session 4:

For our last session, we aim to understand union with the divine as a commitment to action.   The slides are here.

Skills:  Seeing white supremacy culture in our organizations and making plans for moving forward.

Please complete the following homework before our next session:

Please use this form to state a change you want to make in your relationship to whiteness moving forward.  You might consider one of the antidotes from Godsil's article.  We will then email these back to you in a month, 3 months and 6 months as a form of self-accountability.

Read: 

Optional: Take the implicit bias test  

 For those interested in further reading on race and disinvestment in social services consider reading Dog Whistle Politics by  Ian Haney Lopez. This podcast on the history of the "welfare queen" may also be helpful.  For a focus on the disinvestment in mental health services and into criminalization, I suggest The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.




Prep for Session 5

In session 5, we aim to understand racism in the context of our nation's and Church's colonial history and to utilize Ignatian imagination to look to the future.

Skills: grasping the history of colonialism and new terms such as Christian hegemony, seeing ways in which we are the colonizer, creating a decolonial imagination. The slides are here.

Read:

Watch:




Continuing the work

before wrapping up your time with us, please: