Talking, just having an open-ended conversation, can be a useful strategy. Simply print out and fold “table tents” with the above or similar images and put them on tables during a group mealtime.
“Let’s Talk” is a PDF resource created by Teaching Tolerance that shares with educators strategies to facilitate difficult conversations about race and racism.
What if reading this is the catalyst
to wake you to your potential
latent responsibility as the One?
to hatch or birth a new way of being
Our soul’s purpose
bringing Peace
beauty, joy, the Word
no racism, no power over, no “other”
To engage each other only in Love and Respect
Today, here and now
One simple and effective action is to print out relevant quotes and put them up in and around any appropriate space where people gather. If you use heavy-weight paper or card stock, the quotes make a stronger statement; if you can laminate them, even better. The quotes also can be left on tables or put into plexiglass stands.
0ne of my friends…, a white male journalist, told me that I was trying to “shut down white voices.” Towards the end of our exchange, … he admitted he was worried he was eventually going to lose his job to a person of colour… His views sound extreme, especially for someone who works for a mainstream media organization. But he’s not alone. It seems the more we talk about racism, the stronger another narrative becomes—one that paints white people as the ones who are truly oppressed.
Much has been written about how white women perpetuate and/or support racism and include behaviors such as using our white fragility and tears as as weapons of oppression or calling the police on POC for ordinary things like having a picnic. Historic reasons include, and go beyond, white privilege and supremacy.
Daisy Douglass Barr served as the Imperial Empress of the Queens of the Golden Mask, the women’s auxiliary of the powerful Indiana Klan. Her role in the Invisible Empire was so important that she worked directly with D.C. Stephenson to organize women’s branches.