HARD CONVERSATIONS: WHITENESS, RACE, and SOCIAL JUSTICE

“Until you can recognize you are living a racialized life and you’re having racialized experiences every moment of every day, you can’t actually engage people of other races around the idea of justice.” Whitney Dow, “The Whiteness Project”

About this Course

What does it mean to be White in a racist world?

We will explore this question in a four-week online course/forum co-facilitated by social justice educators and authors, Victor Lee Lewis and Patti Digh.

You will receive reading and discussion assignments in your online classroom twice weekly as well as the opportunity to participate in five 75-minute live dialogues with the co-facilitators during the course (one live dialogue per week). There will be reading assignments, videos, audios, and other types of learning materials for you in the online classroom. Your experience of the course and the learning will be greatly deepened by keeping up with online classroom assignments and engaging with others in the course in that classroom as well as on our live calls.

COHORT 43: July 20 – Aug 17 (Wednesdays)

Live Seminars via Zoom on Wednesdays from 3-4:30 pm EDT (12-1:30 pm PDT) on July 20, 27, Aug 3, 10, 17 (including an introductory call on the first day of class on July 20)

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$50

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$100

Supporter

Support our team so we can continue this work

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$200

Ally

 Support our mission to end racism and heal the world through learning

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$250-500

Accomplice

Give aid and comfort to our efforts to create antiracist learning communities.

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Pre-Requisite for the Course: 

Please have read Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Anti-Racist by the time this course begins.

New York Times Best Seller 

From the National Book Award-winning author of Stamped from the Beginning comes a “groundbreaking” (Time) approach to understanding and uprooting racism and inequality in our society – and in ourselves. 

“The most courageous book to date on the problem of race in the Western mind.” (The New York Times)

Named One of the Best Books of the Year by: The New York Times Book Review Time The Washington Post Shelf Awareness  Library Journal Publishers Weekly Kirkus Reviews

COURSE OUTLINE

Week One: The Social Construction of Race and Whiteness

Week Two: The Color of Supremacy

Week Three: The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness

Week Four: Developing a Solidarity-Based White Identity

Your Hosts

Patti Digh is the author of eight books on global workforce diversity and living mindfully, including a Fortune magazine “best business book” for the year 2000 and one of five finalists for the “Books for a Better Life” national award in 2008. She recently served on the Executive Committee of the ACLU-NC Board of Directors and has served in advising roles on diversity, equity, and inclusion to corporate and nonprofit organization clients such as PepsiCo, Boeing, PBS, the U.S. Postal Service, the American Society of Association Executives, and many others. She was formerly the Vice President of International and Diversity Programs at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the world’s largest association of human resources professionals. More information is available here.

About Victor Lee Lewis

Victor Lee Lewis, MA, is the Founder and Director of the Radical Resilience Institute, and Radical Resilience Coaching and Consulting. He is a Progressive Life Coach, trainer, speaker, and social justice educator. Victor provides individual and group life coaching, training, and keynote lectures. His work aims to support transformative change agents in improving and maximizing their emotional resilience, mental flexibility, and personal effectiveness. Victor brings a unique socially progressive vision to the work of personal growth, personal empowerment, and emotional health. This is the fruit of his 30+ years search for personal healing and social justice, and as many years developing and applying liberatory educational approaches to bring healing and justice to others. A nationally respected social justice educator, Victor has conducted seminars, workshops, keynote speeches, and “train the trainer” programs across the United States, as well as in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Germany. He is best known for his inspiring leadership role in The Color of Fear, a documentary about racism which received the Golden Apple Award for “Best Social Studies Documentary” of 1995 from the National Educational Media Association. He is co-author, with Hugh Vasquez, of Lessons from The Color of Fear, a 4-volume multimedia curriculum for use in classrooms and training programs. Lewis has served as Chaplain/Spiritual Director at the Starr King School for the Ministry (Unitarian Universalist), a seminary of the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. An ally in the struggle to end sexism, Lewis is a former member of the Leadership Council of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS). From 1993-1995 he also served as Co-Chair of this organization. Between 1990-1996, Lewis served as Director of Adult Education at the Oakland Men’s Project (OMP), one of the oldest and most respected multicultural violence prevention training programs in the nation. He is a past member of the board of A Safe Place, the battered women’s shelter program for the city of Oakland, California, and former Co-Chair of the Black Church and Domestic Violence Institute. An activist with deep environmental concern, Lewis is a founding board member of the Urban Habitat Program, and a former board member of Urban Ecology, Inc. Lewis received his Master of Arts in Culture and Spirituality in 1987 from the Institute in Culture and Creation Spirituality (ICCS) at Holy Names College in Oakland, California. He is a trainer in Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), and Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT), a certified NLP hypnotherapist and a resilient and thriving trauma survivor.

Upcoming Sessions

Upcoming Session: Cohort 43 July 6 – Aug 3

Live Seminars via Zoom on Tuesdays from 3-4:30 pm EDT (12-1:30 pm PDT) on July 6, 13, 20, 27, Aug 3 (including an introductory call on the first day of class on July 6)

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Hard Conversations: Whiteness, Race, and Social Justice

Five Weeks of Daily Lessons & Dialogue, Plus Five Live Webinars

All are welcome: To the extent you are able, please consider contributing to our work.
Discounts are available for groups of 10 registering from the same organization. Email support@pattidigh.com to inquire.

10% of all registration fees are donated to the Equal Justice Initiative.

To make our course accessible to everyone, if you need financial assistance
in order to participate, please email us at support@pattidigh.com.
Include why you want to be in the course and why you need support to attend.

Upcoming Sessions