Inward, Outward, Upward:
Find Your Capacity to Confront Racism
Hi. Thanks for showing up. You might find yourself here for a number of reasons. Maybe you are compelled by a recent racial justice uprising and want to understand your role in perpetuating white supremacy. Perhaps you are angry and appalled by the violence perpetrated by the very law enforcement officers who have vowed to protect their citizens. Maybe you want to learn more about how to talk to your family about becoming better allies. Or maybe you are beginning to connect the dots between your own behavioral tendencies and structural racism. Maybe someone you respect referred you to this workbook. Or perhaps you are already a student of antiracism and are curious about what I have to say. Whatever brings you here, welcome to the work.
Here you will find exercises designed to help white communities identify and discuss white supremacy and racism and our role in dismantling systems, institutions, and practices of white supremacy. It is important that we realize that we have the capacity to do this work and to facilitate meaningful change despite our busy and complicated lives. Our silence is our complicity and the cost is human lives. This workbook is a tool to help ease the anxiety of “getting started.” Use this push to find your own resiliency, endurance, and capacity to lead change. Our era is one marked by great challenges, and great challenges require courageous responses. The right time is now.
This workbook is an accountability project and the aim here is to challenge white supremacy by tapping into our own identities for the purpose of discussing and deconstructing the hang-ups of whiteness. Your role first and foremost is to amplify the voices of BBIPOC scholars and to reject white supremacy in all of its forms. Though race is a socially and historically constructed identifier, it encompasses bona fide rules and behaviors. It is necessary that white folx acknowledge our collective racial identity to illuminate the shared behaviors and privileges that we exhibit—advantages we strive to validate and protect—all while denying that those traits give us privilege. You are invited here to journey through your own fragility and history of whiteness. It is your charge to do the digging it takes to understand the historical and contemporary practices, systems, and ideologies that sustain white supremacy and to move beyond mere intellectualization of racism.
This workbook is not an authoritative guide to antiracism history, terminology, concepts, specific race content, or current events, nor is it a blueprint or “how to” for becoming antiracist. It will, however, point you in the direction of skilled BBIPOC practitioners in these areas. In the context of antiracism work, these spaces are necessary because as white folx, we must take on the emotional labor of white fragility ourselves. We need spaces to grieve, commiserate, and heal without further traumatizing people of color or demanding that other communities educate, placate, and facilitate us on this journey. These learning spaces are often called racial caucuses or racial affinity/racial identity groups and are meant to promote learning, vulnerability, and self-awareness. This type of candid and empathetic practice often prepares folx for more informed and respectful conversations in multiracial settings. This humility-building project requires us to show up and bring our receipts, and to commit to change without centering our own healing. I hope this workbook might help you facilitate your own local community of learning, inquiry, action, and change.
Antiracism work is difficult and uncomfortable. You will feel frustrated, defensive, angry, and disillusioned at times, but hang in there. These exercises were designed to break down some of the barriers we let excuse ourselves from this work; confusion over terminology and arguments, painful realizations, trouble navigating credible resources, intellectual and emotional fatigue, etc. It is my hope that by developing our capacity to recognize inequity and prioritize this work, we will choose to reject an unfair system that is tilted in our favor. This is a heavy lift and I have tried to organize these exercises in such a way that insights are scaffolded to support reader resiliency and emotional stamina. It is in the incremental changes in ourselves that we model new ways of being and begin to shift power.
BBIPOC is an acronym for Black, Brown, Indigenous, and People of Color.
Folx is a gender inclusive alternative spelling of the collective noun folks.
The right time is now.
Download your copy today.
workbook focus
Why Now?
The first section of this workbook is designed for readers to briefly situate their own antiracism journey in the present moment.
Part One: Unpacking You: Identity and Insights
Part one is a very personal examination that invites readers to survey their personal history, experiences, and identity formation.
Part Two: Examining Your Resistance
Part two asks readers to reflect on their encounters within the context of race and to analyze their behavioral patterns and personal tendencies in various situations. This section helps readers identify the motivations behind their hesitance, resistance, and inaction.
Part Three: Illuminating Social and Historical Realities
Part three asks readers to confront hard history and address the systems (and therein the social and historical practices) that inform and sustain white supremacy culture.
Part Four: Examining Resistant Encounters and Others
Part four is about digging deeper into the choice readers are making to initiate antiracism conversations in their communities. Exercises probe readers to examine their motives, comfort level, and experiences with resistant personalities.
Part Five: Dialogue Strategies
Part five includes various discussion strategies and considerations for effective dialogue. This section is intended to help readers plan educational interactions around topics they have researched and for which they have anticipated the outcomes. These framing tools are intentionally content-neutral so they might be accommodating to different situations and topics.
Part Six: Action
Part six is about putting it all together and committing to action. This section prepares
readers to be accountable by offering action items, additional planning tools, and reference materials.
Social Syllabus (Resource Page)
The resource page is a collaborative public space to share reading lists, must-listen podcasts, antiracism training resources, and other relevant tools. This page links the reader to a Google document where they can contribute or reference resources.
Works Referenced
Citations for all research materials referenced in this workbook.
Educators
For many folx, the summer of 2020 was a reawakening to deep-rooted systemic injustices. This heightened awareness has sparked crucial conversations in our classrooms, many of which have required us to engage in culturally responsive teaching practices and to adopt a trauma-informed approach that supports student well-being and healthy identity development. We’ve been especially attuned to economic disparity, healthcare inequity, institutionalized racism, racialized police violence, climate crisis, problematic voting policies, and white terrorism and our students have questions about the policies, practices, and realities impacting their lives. Our Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, Multiracial, and Students (and Colleagues) of Color are navigating oppression at the personal and academic levels. As we strive to nourish the futures of all young people, it is our role to recognize and break down these barriers by modeling and encouraging better dialogue and citizenship skills.
Youth, educators, and parents/caregivers are insisting we normalize conversations about race and it is imperative we answer this call. This work begins with inclusive and healing histories, representation and equity across academic disciplines and in the workforce, policy reform, and robust antibias/antiracism (ABAR) learning opportunities.
If you are looking for dialogue tools for your community, I offer this free workbook. This resource includes exercises designed to help white communities identify and discuss white supremacy and racism and our role in dismantling systems, institutions, and practices of white supremacy. These exercises were structured to break down some of the barriers we let excuse ourselves from this work; confusion over terminology and arguments, painful realizations, trouble navigating credible resources, intellectual and emotional fatigue, etc.
Many of the discussions, activities, and recommended resources in this workbook make excellent companions in the classroom. You may utilize these materials as presented or you may find it helpful to adapt the exercises to meet your students’ specific age-group and academic/learner needs. Educators also find this workbook is a handy reference guide for fielding race-related questions as they organically arise in classroom conversation.
Antibias/antiracism work is a lifelong practice and this workbook is about the personal journeys and realizations that lead to dialogue, action, healing, and justice. It is in the incremental changes in ourselves that we model new ways of being and begin to shift power.
Thank you for taking on this important work and for modeling equity and encouraging inquiry in your classroom.
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