Stories from the Journey

"White people who are doing this work need to make their stories known to serve as guides for others." - Beverly Daniel Tatum

Here we are, the Community Resource Center, at least two years into having an active commitment to inclusiveness. Yet, at Monday's staff meeting, those who were involved for this entire process (including myself) were baffled as to how to get everyone on the same page considering the influx of new staff. There was talk about needing to start over, considering the amount of new CRC blood.

I am creating this document in an effort to chart the course we have taken) to this point (and more specifically, my personal journey. I believe there has been a substantial amount of progress made and to say that we need to "start over," only discounts that progress.

What have I learned with regard to inclusiveness and how it affects my everyday life and when did I learn it?

This starts in late 2006 when CRC brought in Denise Materre as our first "inclusiveness trainer" Denise came to work with our entire staff around this topic. She first gave us all the Myers-Briggs personality test because, as she put it, "we cannot include everyone outside the office until we learn to include everyone inside the office." By looking at all of the combinations that come together in the staff that is CRC, we are able to see what differences exist and manage those appropriate to one's personality and not have one blanket approach to how the organization is run.

Once we looked at our internal inclusive practices through a non-racial lens, we then turned to our inclusiveness mission statement to see how we could effectively practice that statement in our work. We looked into current/recent events such as the Don Imus commentary on the Rutgers' women's basketball team within that context and read an article that white anti-racist, Tim Wise, wrote entitled "What Kind of Card is Race?"

It was just after the trainings with Denise that I seem to recall CRC implementing the "take a person of color to lunch" budget. Granted, this was not the intention of the money that was made available to all of us, but that is how it felt to me. The intention was that we could get to make more solid connections with leaders of color at various organizations around the state.

I had pushed back on this directive by stating that it seemed to be exactly what we did not want to do, i.e., identify people of color and interact with them only because of the color of their skin. I don't know if my personality makes it so difficult for me to take action on this directive. I continue to struggle with this problem and am committed to making this the next step in my process to try and become the most effective anti-racist I can be.

I know that CRC I collaboration with The Denver Foundation hosted a couple of inclusiveness conferences. I was not at the first year's event at the Pepsi Center, but did attend the second year's event. This conference was a bit "over my head" since I participated in sessions that seemed to mostly target leaders of organizations. But it was still very uplifting to see so many people taking action by coming out and getting more education on the topic of inclusiveness.

I was subsequently able to attend the White Privilege Conference in Colorado Springs in April of 2007. I initially was going to go on my own since Tim Wise was speaking and he was one of the only white anti-racist writers and speakers I knew of. Then I found out that other CRCers were going to take part in the conference so I was able to share in the experience with co-workers, which I found to be a great experience. I still remember the first workshop I participated in which was facilitated by a black woman and a white man. The sense of empowerment I got from seeing someone like myself taking positive action around the issues of racism and privilege was significant.

I don't know when the budget was created at CRC to enable staffers to go out and acquire literature and other resources that addressed issues of inclusiveness, but I know that once I found out about it I started to make use of it. The first book I remember purchasing was Tim Wise's White Like Me. After reading that book, I picked up Silent Racism by Barbara Trepagnier, which hit on the issue of the racism of well-meaning white people as well as the issue of the term "racism" and how it does apply to most whites, the same whites who do not recognize themselves as being racist.

I got the message loud and clear, that I was a racist and could do nothing to get around that fact, but given what I had learned growing up, being a racist is one of the worst things that you can be labeled so I felt incredibly guilty and very angry at those who gave me that label in the organization where I was volunteering. I don't know how exactly I came to be alright with having that label, but it was probably about the same time that I realized that I had (and continue to have) a lot of prejudice that needs to be acknowledged and examined, instead of pushed back and ignored for the sake of "saving face." After all, I wasn't really saving face with everyone - my prejudice is easily seen by many people. Reading that book helped me think about racism and how to address it with folks who are at the point that I was at previously (and sometimes come back to).

Another couple of books I picked up at the local bookstore were written by Michael Eric Dyson, someone who I had seen on multiple TV programs regarding the topic of race and wanted to find some of his books. One was on the topic of hip-hop and the other was on Martin Luther King Jr. The first chapter in the MLK book was really interesting and yet again pointed to the sad fact that yes, mostly all white people in this society are racists, and this was a conclusion that King had come to later in his life. To read this perspective of someone we can all agree has been lifted up as an American hero really jarred me.

The other book entitled Do You Know What I Mean? approached the topic of the art form that is hip-hop. I must say, this was something that is a personal interest of mine since I love hip-hop, so to read a book dedicated to its defense in the face of critics who use it as a scapegoat for society's ills really made me smile and re-enforced my belief that I can learn about what happens in communities via their art even though I am not a member of those communities.

I'm not sure when exactly we started deciding to convene as a staff to take part in Courageous Conversations. This format of getting together over lunch to have a "courageous conversation" was brought to life via a book by the same title. We decided to rotate facilitators in the spirit of collaboration that we have at CRC. The topics have varied, as can be expected, with everyone presenting on the topic of their interest within the larger topic of inclusiveness. For me, some conversations have been really good and thought provoking, and others have left me wanting more. I feel that for myself, the level of a lot of the topics presented are at a level I have already contemplated so I hope I am able to be an asset with my thoughts on the topics to others, but I don't feel myself progressing and learning as much in that format as I do with the other ways in which I try to inform my "inclusiveness lens" through which I see the world. (See an example of another organization that uses the strategy of Courageous Conversation.)

In February of 2008 CRC started with another outside inclusiveness training organization called The SUM. This group promised to have an evaluation system with regard to where we all stood on intercultural proficiency and that was the reason we contracted with them. We all took the IDI exam and got the results and recommendations about what we needed to work on as a group, as well as individually. From this process I learned the following:

• When being evaluated about intercultural sensitivity (either by yourself or with some outside evaluation), you have to be honest, otherwise you do yourself a disservice and get skewed results.
• It is necessary to have a positive personal racial identification, not one that you are ashamed of.
• There are stages that we all go through when dealing with intercultural proficiency. Although the stages they proposed seemed to take on a more international slant than an American focus, it made me think about the developmental stages that we go through.
• There are different ways in which, in general, particular racial groups interact in conflict and just knowing the difference allows us to be able to more effectively interact

Overall, the sessions with the SUM have been a good learning experience for me.

The (latest) book I picked up was Why are all the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? And Other Conversations on Race by Beverly Daniel Tatum. From the start of this book, I was captivated at how it cuts through a lot of the "muck" of being able to clearly define terms of racism, privilege, and oppression. As I continued reading, it went on to address racial identity in a White context. First it addressed Blackness, then Whiteness, and finally Multiracial families. It was incredibly powerful to read about the process by which we as humans develop a racial identity, specifically in the context of white dominant culture in America. But the most powerful chapter for me was the one about white identity, so I will focus on that in my summary here.

In her chapter on white racial identity development, the author was able to highlight many things I have noticed throughout not only these past couple of years at CRC, but since I was first introduced to the issue of white privilege several years ago in a social problems course in college. One thing she noted was that there is a lot of silence surrounding race in white communities but once that silence is broken the identity development process starts to unfold for white folks. As the SUM accurately pointed out, there is no endpoint, but just knowledge and an awareness of the stages.

So there it is, my brief history and reflections on my recollection of the inclusiveness process here at CRC. At this point I am only beginning to think about what we can do as a staff that will move us forward.

Ben Taylor, Community Resource Center (CRC)