White bodied people are entering the conversation about race from many different places.

What is similar is the doorway we all come to at some point.

If we walk through, we will learn the truth of how race impacts us as white bodied people.

Whether you have arrived for the first time at this doorway or come through a while ago, what you will experience in this cohort will take you to depths that are not possible in private study or a workshop.

Just as white bodied people become socially conditioned to uphold the system of white dominance over time, we must unlearn those habits - over time.

Our Foundations cohort was created as a response.

I (Rebecca) have attended countless racial equity workshops. Each of those spaces were racially diverse spaces. 

White bodied people show up to these spaces motivated by the desire to learn. We come wrapped up in a lifetime of experiences of living in a white body and we don't have a very clear vision of all of what we bring with us into those rooms.  

White bodied people are asked to listen, do the work, and get our people yet there is never much time to learn how to do any of those things very effectively.

I wanted more than anything to change. Do better. But I also didn't want to take up too much space.

Jomo had also been in these spaces. Though, as a Black West Indian male, he had a totally different experience.

One night he came home after a 3-hour training and he said to me

"I feel like I'm on the damn menu. The stories of my oppression are consumed by the white people in the room and I have no place to grieve, understand, and gather myself up except in the presence of my oppressor."

As I considered his perspective, I realized that I had heard similar sentiments expressed frequently from Black, Indigenous, and brown people in the room.

Resmaa Menakem, author of My Grandmother's Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies, says it this way:

"In the experiences that I offer, I do not slam white bodies and bodies of culture together, because it is unsafe. And we all know it. We’re hurting each other; we’re re-wounding each other. Some of the things that we go to that are 'supposed to' help and 'supposed to' heal, really are re-wounding and violent."

Jomo and I began to look for other options.

As we processed our experiences, we discovered that we shared two beliefs:

white bodied people have the greatest responsibility to dismantle the system of white dominance.

Which led us to:

white bodied people need spaces to learn, process, and practice in order to truly embody a practice of anti-racism.

As we continue to offer cohorts for white bodied people to do just this, we are more convinced than ever of the effectiveness of these spaces.

But you don't have to take our word for it...