Overview

The Understanding & Healing White Supremacy topic offers participants the opportunity to develop their understanding of what racism, white supremacy, and white privilege are, and how they are embedded in our society, Quaker meetings, and lives.  Friends will gain knowledge of historical and current realities of racial oppression in the United States and explore how Quaker faith and practice can provide grounding, tools, and fire for our work against racial injustice.  You will explore how Spirit is calling you to action for racial justice while gaining tools for identifying and disrupting racism, white privilege, and white supremacy.

The Understanding & Healing White Supremacy activities and materials are rooted in the following premises:

  • We live in a country built on white supremacy. White supremacy is the operating system in the US.
  • We are here to push against systemic, institutional, and individual racism.
  • White fragility is a tool of white supremacy and we are here to push against it, not comfort and protect it.
  • If you are white, the strategies we are sharing during our conversations will push against white fragility and racism. Pay attention to your reactions and be aware of your body. You might be uncomfortable. That’s okay.

Credits

Content Collaboration: Gillian Burlingham (NPYM), Claire M.Cohen (LEYM), Anne Collins (SCYM), Anastacia Ebi (IMYM/ BYM), Lena Glickman(QVS), Lisa Graustein (NEYM), Jeff Hitchcock (NYYM), Liz Oppenheimer (Iowa YM Conservative)
Content Development: Olivia Pandolfi (FGC), Rachel Ernst Stahlhut (FGC), Regina Renee Nyegbeh (IMYM), Polly Washburn (IMYM)

Search Exercises

Browse Exercises

Grounding

Introduction to the Topic

Introduction & Definitions

Defining racism, white supremacy, intersectionality, and other key terms that will ground our work toward Understanding & Healing White Supremacy. 

Practicing

Experiential Activities

Addressing White Supremacy in Our Organizations

To become truly transformed, we must look at our structures, our decision-making processes, our policies and procedures, our use of resources, and our commitment to each other.
  • Duration: 30 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

Action Tools for Antiracist Individuals

What can we do today to interrupt racism and white supremacy as individuals living within this broken system?
  • Duration: 30 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

Starting the Conversation in Your Meeting

Taking responsibility is not accepting blame. It is empowering. Do we accept the gift of our responsibility for positive change and racial justice?
  • Duration: 30 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

Seeing the Whole Picture

Take a step toward recognizing how white supremacy and racism show up in your meeting’s culture, space, and practices.
  • Duration: 30 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

What am I learning?

Spend some time in contemplation around these queries and perhaps keep a journal while you explore the topic of Understanding & Healing White Supremacy.
  • Duration: 30 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

Cultivating Courage

We must be courageous against this death culture and breathe into a life-affirming, Black Lives Matter, collective liberation movement.
  • Duration: 30 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

A World Free of Oppression

Reflect on what a world free of oppression might look like.
  • Duration: 30 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

My Spirituality and Antiracism

How can your spirituality guide you on this journey?
  • Duration: 30 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

Reflecting on My Racial Identity

Find some space in your day to sit in prayer and reflect on your own racial identity.
  • Duration: 30 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

Sharing

Conversation Starters

Listening to Friends of Color

Honor the stories from Friends of Color about their experiences of racism and white supremacy in Quaker meetings
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

Adopting an Intersectional Lens

“A moral witness is always a fusion witness, it is a witness that challenges injustices in all its forms.”
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

Facing White Privilege

White privilege is the ability to be without second guessing.
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

What is Implicit Bias?

Even well-meaning people operate with implicit bias – stereotypes and attitudes we are not fully aware of that nonetheless shape our behavior towards people of color.
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

Understanding Systemic Racism

How do our social structures perpetuate racial inequity and discrimination against people of color?
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

Transformation & Liberation

Explore the spiritual and practical tools we can call upon to transform, interrupt, and heal white supremacy in ourselves, our meetings, and in the world
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

Racial Justice in Our Meetings

What can your meeting learn from the efforts of other Friends?
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

Recognizing Patterns Among Quakers

We need to be honest about the presence of racism and the perpetuation of injustice within our meetings and wider Quaker bodies today.
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

Internalized Dominance & Oppression

The true focus of revolutionary change is never merely the oppressive situations that we seek to escape, but that piece of the oppressor which is planted deep within each of us.” – Audre Lorde
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

Racial Identity & Transformation

Our lives and identities are shaped by the systems of racism and privilege that surround us.  
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up

What Does the Lord Require?

Anti-racism work is a spiritual endeavor, not just a justice issue
  • Duration: 45 minutes
  • Age Range: High School and Up
Translate »