Our Approach to Building Racial Resilience
The Racial Resilience anti-racism training seminars consist of five movements. Each movement comprises one of the components necessary for embodying awareness of our own racialization, cultivating compassion for ourselves and others, and engaging the practice of anti-racism. The movements are introduced sequentially and, like good jazz, build upon previous themes as new ones are introduced. Collectively, they comprise a process for people to name, own, and explore their racial identities and the self-care that is crucial to sustain transformative anti-racist efforts.
First Movement
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Anti-racist actions require us to be standing on solid ground, in a non-reactive state. Thus the first movement asks us to be grounded in the realities of race and racism. We introduce important sociological and critical race theory themes to help participants learn how the realities of race and racism shape the everyday experience of all people and how they harm Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color (BIPOC). This learning and unlearning begins to transform how we see the world, and its transformative capacity is enhanced when we are in a grounded non-reactive state
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Second Movement
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Anti-racist actions require a deep awareness of how we live and move within a racist society. Building on themes from the first movement, this second movement fosters critical self-reflection of racial experience and identity. Through the lens of self-compassion, we ask participants to reflect on our own racialized assumptions and how these assumptions have shaped, and continue to shape our worlds. The contemplative capacities honed in the first movement are expanded and deepened to provide participants with the necessary tools to explore the impact of race and racism on their minds and our bodies.
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Third Movement
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Racism, as a way of thinking, is built upon a foundation that seeks to normalize the dehumanization of racial "others." Functionally it is designed to deny opportunities for expressing compassion and developing authentic relationships across racial difference. The third movement fosters curiosity, openness, and compassion toward other people’s experience of the world as racialized. Through intentionally structured multi-media from multiple racialized perspectives, participants practice cultivating compassion for others by deeply listening to them, seeing them as fully human, and developing an awareness of how societal well-being is deeply interconnected.
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Fourth Movement
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Compassion begs for embodiment. In this way, anti-racism practiced through the framework of compassion is an invitation to a new way of being in the world. The fourth movement emphasizes the engagement of our growing awareness and embodiment of race for compassionate, liberative, anti-racist action. Flowing from this transformation, we provide a framework for discerning anti-racist compassionate action on both an individual and structural/institutional level. We then actively invite and help participants to discern and name their own invitation toward living a compassion-infused and justice-oriented anti-racist life.
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Fifth Movement
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Our actions, however well-conceived, will not be enough to end racialized thinking within ourselves or racism within our institutions because racialized thinking and structural racism are built into the foundation of America. As such, the fifth movement emphasizes the importance of reassessment as solving one problem can often expose others that we had not considered. Anti-racist actions must be reassessed from the perspective of those whom you sought to aid to effectively evaluate their success and discern areas for growth and opportunity.
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Our Difference
We created Racial Resilience because many anti-racism training programs ask participants to set aside the complex feelings that arise when we talk about race and racism. Left unattended, these feelings and emotions create the conditions for racial stressors such as racial anxiety, stereotype threat, and racial weathering. Rather than dismiss these emotions as unhelpful, we view them as effective guideposts in our journey toward anti-racism. Our emotional reactions reveal what within ourselves we must attend too if we are to sustainably practice anti-racism.
Why we created Racial Resilience
There were three primary driving forces behind the creation of Racial Resilience. The first was to help those who are Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) who do racial justice work develop methods of self-care that could make their work sustainable. The second was to help white people who long to become anti-racist allies tend to the ideological and emotional hurdles that hinder and stifle their cultivation toward an anti-racist conscience. Third, we were and are committed to an interracial approach to anti-racism. Interracial relationships of substance provide opportunities for transformation and humanizing not available in other contexts.
1) Self-care and compassion for BIPOC
As a Black man, I [Christopher] felt as though anti-racist work both nourished my soul and left me depleted. Growing up, I learned how to navigate the everydayness of racism from my family and friends. While not always successful, I had developed tools to help myself cope and work through the inevitable anger that I felt about the structural inequalities of American life. It wasn’t until I started teaching about race, racism, and anti-racism in graduate school that I realized that the tools I learned were not going to be enough to make teaching a sustainable career path. Consistently having to re-live my own experiences of racism combined with explaining the historical development and events of American racism was taking its toll on my health and my family. I needed to find a way to acknowledge and tend to these wounds or else I was going to burn out.
I re-discovered the Compassion Practice when I was going through a difficult period of my life. Groundedness and self-compassion gave me permission to acknowledge, tend, and learn from the inner stirrings that awaken every time I talk about race and racism. Racial Resilience seeks to create a compassionate space for the intellectual and emotional labor that anti-racist teaching and activism has on BIPOC. The cultivation of this space is essential if we are to lead our communities in the cultivation of an anti-racist conscience.
I re-discovered the Compassion Practice when I was going through a difficult period of my life. Groundedness and self-compassion gave me permission to acknowledge, tend, and learn from the inner stirrings that awaken every time I talk about race and racism. Racial Resilience seeks to create a compassionate space for the intellectual and emotional labor that anti-racist teaching and activism has on BIPOC. The cultivation of this space is essential if we are to lead our communities in the cultivation of an anti-racist conscience.
2) The emotions of whiteness
I [Seth] was frustrated that the resources I came across were giving helpful information until emotions were named, if they were given any attention at all. When the importance of emotions was named the advice given was some version of “You have to find ways to deal with your own difficult emotions yourself.” While I agree that my emotions are my responsibility, I didn’t know how to deal with the emotions I felt when talking and thinking about race. Turns out, neither do most white people. I thought, if this is the sticking point where most white people (myself included) succumb to the lure of whiteness and stray from the path of anti-racism, then this is an important problem that needs a better solution than “deal with it yourself.” If anti-racism trainings can’t teach the relevant skills to address this unmet need, then white people will rarely have a chance of making it out of the anti-racist starting blocks. We need compassion in our racial journeys. With this problem in mind, Chris and I set out to develop skills and tools to deal with shame and other difficult emotions in the context of race and racism.
Our research led to the conclusion that these emotions are not an aberrant problem of individual white people. They are part of the normative functioning of white racialization within the racialized social structure of the United States. That is, the privileges imparted by whiteness, among other things, prohibit the emotional and intellectual resiliency needed to question our whiteness. For white people, since dealing with our difficult emotions around race and racism is a barrier toward becoming anti-racist, anti-racism trainings must provide the tools for overcoming it. Racial Resilience provides those tools.
Our research led to the conclusion that these emotions are not an aberrant problem of individual white people. They are part of the normative functioning of white racialization within the racialized social structure of the United States. That is, the privileges imparted by whiteness, among other things, prohibit the emotional and intellectual resiliency needed to question our whiteness. For white people, since dealing with our difficult emotions around race and racism is a barrier toward becoming anti-racist, anti-racism trainings must provide the tools for overcoming it. Racial Resilience provides those tools.
3) On not burdening friends of color
Our friendship also influences our commitment to an interracial approach to anti-racism. In my journey (Seth) toward anti-racism, Chris has been a spiritual companion. As our friendship grew, I began asking Chris about his experiences with racism. When Chris would share stories, I felt a need to be present and listen. I could feel the weight of his experiences and wanted to honor his willingness to trust me with them. His stories would often stick with me for days, and I felt as if a door were opening that could not be closed. His willingness to share began to wake me up to the reality of racism and precipitated a transformation that set me on the path toward anti-racism.
When Seth began asking me [Christopher] questions about race, I was a little surprised, to say the least. But I was impressed by his genuine curiosity and, most importantly, I continued having conversations with him because he believed me when I told him stories about my encounters with racist white people. The second most important reason why we could continue having these conversations was that Seth was learning a lot about race and racism on his own—doing his own research and reading. In this way, I was more of a sounding board than a sage or guide. He was trying to make sense of his new knowledge, and as his friend, I wanted to give him my thoughts about what he was learning. These two factors, trust and a commitment to self-education, laid the foundation for the Racial Resilience process that we ultimately developed.
We affirm that white people burdening BIPOC with their problems around race is an issue. However, inspired by Howard Thurman, we also understand the kind of interracial sharing we have described is a vital component in our interracial approach. The context for this kind of sharing requires trust, authenticity, compassion, and a commitment to anti-racism. In short, it requires deep and abiding friendship.
When Seth began asking me [Christopher] questions about race, I was a little surprised, to say the least. But I was impressed by his genuine curiosity and, most importantly, I continued having conversations with him because he believed me when I told him stories about my encounters with racist white people. The second most important reason why we could continue having these conversations was that Seth was learning a lot about race and racism on his own—doing his own research and reading. In this way, I was more of a sounding board than a sage or guide. He was trying to make sense of his new knowledge, and as his friend, I wanted to give him my thoughts about what he was learning. These two factors, trust and a commitment to self-education, laid the foundation for the Racial Resilience process that we ultimately developed.
We affirm that white people burdening BIPOC with their problems around race is an issue. However, inspired by Howard Thurman, we also understand the kind of interracial sharing we have described is a vital component in our interracial approach. The context for this kind of sharing requires trust, authenticity, compassion, and a commitment to anti-racism. In short, it requires deep and abiding friendship.