The CSPP Diversity & Inclusion Work Group
Announces a New Workshop in our series
Through An/Other Lens: Multicultural Perspectives
Uncomfortable conversations: a Discussion of
Robin DiAngelo’s “White Fragility"
led by Rita McCleary, Ellen Nasper, and
Susan Nathiel
Saturday February 4, 2017, 1-3 PM
Last February, CSPP speaker Melanie Suchet engaged us in exploring “racism from the inside,” hoping “to facilitate a way to investigate race as it lives in all of us.” Her talk enlivened many in the audience, including the CSPP Diversity Committee.
Since its inception three years ago, the CSPP Diversity Committee has sponsored workshops on prejudice and privilege, working with clients for whom English is a second language and other issues of multi-culturalism, and the challenges to Black adolescent development, among others. Within itself, the committee has engaged in deep and often painful self-examinations. Those of us who would like to be “white allies against racism” have had to recognize the ways we have internalized many assumptions of our racist culture. All members of the committee have come to see our small, multi-ethnic group as a microcosm of our culture at large.
Last summer we read and discussed Robin DiAngelo's, White Fragility. For many of the white committee members, this article was transformative; for members of color, it was a masterful articulation of what they had been saying with some frustration for a long time. The article at first divided us, then opened a way for bringing us together with a deeper understanding and appreciation of our experiences with each other.
For this workshop, we invite interested members of CSPP to join us in a continuing conversation about the issues so well described in "White Fragility" (see below for a link to the article). After meeting briefly as a large group, we will break into small groups, each led by one of the co-facilitators, to explore our thoughts and responses to the article. We are committed to balancing the inevitable discomfort of conversations about race with equal valuing of and respect for everyone's opinions and experiences. Our hope is to create a more inclusive environment in which we can all grow in understanding one another.
Please understand that when you sign up for the workshop you are agreeing to read the article, since the purpose of the meeting is to discuss not just general issues regarding racism, but the particular arguments (or points or issues) presented by DiAngelo.
The workshop will be held on Saturday February 4, 2017 at Rita McCleary’s home 926 Ridge Road, Hamden (ph: 203-988-3746). Please contact Ellen Nasper at enasper@aol.com by Sunday, January 29th if you want to attend. The workshop, which is free, is limited to the first 15 CSPP members who register. Light refreshments will be served.
Click here to read: "White Fragility"
