kokoro

Themes for Racism in Real Time for self-identified BIPOC 

 

In order for white and BIPOC’s (Black, Indigenous, People of colour) bodies to step into the racial wound together, whilst further wounding is inevitable, a certain amount of unnecessary pain can be avoided if both groups have done enough work within the relative safety of their own cultures first. 

 

This is why we are first offering two separate groups with the aim of bringing white, black indigenous and brown bodies together in a third group to further deepen the work of healing the racial wound.  We will go as far as you are willing and able to go. 

 

For BIPOC people we will explore:

Your internalized white racist: How it was “taught” to you and how it operates when your BIPOC’s body comes into a white space.

 

White Fragility:  An exploration of behaviours - defensive moves that keep white people in the power position and denies BIPOC space to breathe freely or to exist as equals.

 

Microaggression: What is it?  Attitudes and actions, unconscious or deliberate and often subtly expressed, that reinforce white privilege and undermine a culture of inclusion.

 

Deepening your understanding of your experience in a white dominated society: Explore your physical, emotional and mental responses as your understanding and awareness develops.

 

Your own subjective experience of how you are placed within a social and economic system dominated by white, male supremacy:  Where and how do you collude with the white system because of your fear of challenging power or because of the benefits it offers you?  

 

Developing an awareness of your inherited BIPOC wounding:  How the history of slavery, as well as its manifestation in modern forms, affects your sense of humanity and your relationship to yourself.  This will include looking at your own learned attitude towards white authority – fear, obedience, rebellion, respect, contempt, the need to scapegoat the ‘other’ to protect yourself. 

 

Transgenerational trauma and your family:   An exploration of your family dynamics and how that may influence your response to race, racism, and the politics of being a racialised body.

 

Denial of the BIPOC’s reality:  Working with your internal defences that arise when you feel attacked, gaslighted and shamed for expressing yourself (unconscious or otherwise).  We will also explore how the BIPOC’s reality gets distorted, softened, changed or denied to fit in with the white reality that dominates our society.  

 

How to address racism: Looking at how your clients, students, work colleagues and/or family members experience you as a BIPOC therapist, professor, boss etc. Encouraging a more open acknowledgement and exploration of what this means and how it affects your relationship together. 

 

This work is not for the faint-hearted and it is with compassion that we wish to facilitate this most painful of endeavours, including its mess, anger and deep suffering.  This is not to negate or patch up the racial wound, but to hold it with love whilst we navigate its raging seas. 

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What will I have learned by the end of this course?

 

• You will have a greater understanding for your learned and inherited racism that hurts your own BIPOC bodies as well as the white body.

 

• A greater appreciation of how your internal racist functions in your daily life and how and where you might start to shift some of your inherited attitudes and behaviours regarding racism. 

 

• A better understanding of white fragility and defences.

 

• A palpable appreciation of the physical, emotional, psychological and even the intangible soul/spiritual pain of how white society shapes our understanding of power and human rights.

 

• A deeper insight and greater compassion for your experience in a white society.

 

• Whilst we will touch on a framework of the history of transgenerational roots of racism and the impact of modern slavery in order to bring our personal experiences, thus far, into a shared context, this is not an educational course.  We have put together a comprehensive reading list that you are welcome to use to support the embodied learning this training provides.  You could consider the ten weeks of group work as part of your personal decision to begin (or continue) your journey to understand, challenge and heal the racial wounding that is suffered by all humanity.   

 

• After this course you may feel inspired to further this work in some way, be it in the form of yet more personal development in this area, the will and confidence to challenge racist white power when you meet it in your every-day life or you may simply have a more actively compassionate awareness and appreciation of your fellow indigenous, black and brown friends and white allies.

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The Next Challenge

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Once you have completed this training you might want to consider continuing on into our mixed group for white and BIPOC. Something for you to think about later. Until then, stay open, breathe into existence with compassion. We are all in this together.

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