Report to the EE Community on Anti-Racism Initiatives (2021.05.03)

As a community dedicated to living and supporting the values of the EE workshop, the EE graduate community strives to create safe places that welcome and include everyone in their personal growth journey.

It was painful for us to learn last summer that our efforts were insufficient and that graduates of color did not feel safe or welcome. In response, those of us in leadership committed ourselves to step up and create places of safety for all people. We are committed to going through the turbulence at the boundaries to get there.

  • As a predominantly white community, we must recognize our privilege. This is not a matter of shame or guilt; rather, we come from a place of humility and recognize how often we do not know how things look to people of color – the global majority.
  • We are committed to educate ourselves, to learn how to make changes in ourselves, our systems and our processes with the goal of making a safe and welcoming community.
  • We are committed to use whatever privilege we have to help overcome racial hierarchy and create a community that belongs to all of us and in which all of us belong.

In the workshop, we learn to value giving and receiving feedback. In the community, we continue to build and learn these skills. One way racial hierarchy (as well as other intersecting forms of privilege and domination) sustains itself is in silence. Therefore, we need to find ways to speak, discuss, learn and live out-loud even when it’s uncomfortable. Especially when it’s uncomfortable.

To form a truly inclusive and diverse community, we acknowledge the reality of racial privilege and subordination and ally with the struggle for justice. We search for what we have in common that allows us to bridge our differences. As in the workshop, we work to create safe spaces where people can be real, challenge themselves and practice growth into new ways of being with each other.

Two groups have been formed to support our commitments. They are providing a space to be accountable for personal education and taking action in our personal and public lives to ally with the anti-racist struggle. Everyone in the community is invited to take part in these groups.

Anti-Racism Study Group

Led by Eric Hoffman, a dozen regular attendees and a dozen more drop-ins have discussed four books (“How to Be an Anti-Racist,” by Ibram Kendi, “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson, “My Grandmother’s Hands” by Resmaa Menakem, and currently “The Sum of Us” by Heather McGhee). The group has also discussed films, including “Good Trouble” (about John Lewis), “Between the World and Me,” based on the book by Ta-Nehisi Coates and “One Night in Miami.” In the course of discussing these materials, participants have shared their own journeys of awareness.

Anti-Racism Action Group

Led by Kylin Mettler, almost 20 members of the EE community have gathered around practical initiatives in support of anti-racism.

Specifically, the group set two targets. Here is a short progress report:

  • Propose to the wider EE Community opportunities to learn, share and reflect together to be more welcoming, inclusive and diverse.
    1. We have planned a free graduate workshop on Sunday May 16 (10am to 1pm via Zoom) to learn from the Braver Angels experience of fostering civil dialogue and welcoming a diversity of opinions via their proven teachings around “Depolarizing Within.”
    2. We are researching additional graduate workshop(s) and training opportunities to become a more inclusive community.
  • Identify a couple of areas for practical action beyond the Community. Out of many options we chose to focus on:
    1. Voting fairness: In addition to circulating “register/how to vote” information, we are connecting with national and local advocacy groups to support a simpler and fairer electoral process, such as “re-mapping” electoral districts.
    2. Police Reform: We shared the success of programs saving lives by putting mental health professionals in police situations with key stakeholders in the Philadelphia area, now being supported by “Project Zero.”
    3. Education: We will support current anti-racism initiatives in Philadelphia and suburban school districts when in-person classes and gatherings resume.

These anti-racism efforts express EE values of growth, inclusion and mutual support. They help create a community more welcoming to people of color.

Some community members have expressed discomfort with initiatives they see as “political” and hence at odds with the “personal” work of EE. Our efforts support neither parties nor candidates. They are “political” only in the broadest sense of seeking to embed our welcoming EE community into a larger welcoming US and world community. Others have suggested that anti-racism efforts are themselves “racist” in calling attention to the ultimately insignificant and unreal factor of race. We share the sentiment that race is ultimately insignificant. We also understand from history and social analysis that it has been, and is being, used systemically in our country to divide and create real and enduring differences in opportunity and outcome. These differences need to be addressed and healed before race can be ignored.

Respectful, open dialogue about all these matters, and whatever other doubts may be expressed, is part of our commitment to including all members of the EE community in growing and belonging together.

Key contacts:

Action Group:  Kylin Mettler, Marcey Szablya, Francois Girin

Study Group:  Eric Hoffman