Beyond Diversity 101 Workshop

FGC’s Committee for Ministry on Racism, in cooperation with Quaker training consultant Niyonu Spann, held a "Beyond Diversity 101" workshop for forty-three Friends at a retreat center near Pittsburgh on January 16-20, 2003. The invited participants included two Friends selected by most of the fourteen yearly meetings affiliated with Friends General Conference, the clerks of most FGC committees and all of the members of the Committee for Ministry on Racism.

This proved to be a very powerful experiential training workshop on understanding and challenging racism within our Religious Society of Friends. Fifteen of the forty-three participants were Friends of Color; the remainder were "white" Friends. The five-day training involved many activities and discussions in the full group, support groups of three or four, discussions in single-race groupings, films, "games," music, and "body work" by Niyonu’s colleague, Rebecca De Bus.

Niyonu suggested that we all "co-create" our realities, including the reality of the racist institutions and behaviors in the United States and Canada. As we searched ourselves, each other, and our religious society to better understand how we individually and corporately contribute to a racist system, we went to some hard places and did some painful work. Yet many of the participants spoke of the love and the community that we felt as a group of Friends united in our concern and committed to challenging racism and contributing to a more racially diverse organization and North American Quaker world.

As Niyonu Spann stressed throughout our time together, this is "heart work." Through "Beyond Diversity 101," we learned a lot, but we also grew in love in the truest sense of the word.

For more informaiton, read the article Beyond Diversity 101: Toward Living, True Community by Niyonu Spann, from the winter issue of FGConnections.