the whiteness conversation: an intimate exploration of white complicity, privilege, culpability and possibility in the context of our multi-cultural reality. with kent Shell and kim irwin.

White solidarity is more than showing up at marches. It’s about doing anti-racist organizing work in white communities. Black people don’t need white people to save us. We need white people to save themselves.
–Nyle Fort

I don’t like the word ‘ally.’ I prefer ‘accomplice.’ Accomplices risk something. Accomplices are prepared to go down with you.
–Darnell L. Moore

Every white person has a lens through which he or she experiences the fact of being white, and at this event we invite you to actively reflect on your lens with us. Tonight we’ll open the door to an exploration of complicity, privilege, culpability and possibility. We’re all experts in our own experience, and we ask participants to each bring their own particular expertise to bear on the thorny legacy of the prejudices and assumptions that weave through life in the United States.

Please join us for The Whiteness Conversation, an outgrowth of January’s Brooklyn Cottage event After Ferguson: Where Do We Go From Here? Comments by two of that evening’s presenters, activists Nyle Fort and Darnell L. Moore, inspired participants Kent Shell and Kim Irwin to add their voices to this vital inquiry–and to ask you to add yours as well.

Kent was a witness to the casual racism of life as a boy in the Southwest and in the South, and Kim’s experience has been informed by having been part of a long-term interracial couple. They’ll share some of their own thoughts, and will invite participants, through directed writing and conversation, to explore their own. It will be a challenging, and rewarding, conversation. Bring a pen and a notebook; bring a desire to share part of your story (even if you don’t think you have one). Animated by courage and trust, and open hearts, we’ll give life to the idea that the questions to which we address ourselves are as meaningful as the answers.

Date: Thursday, March 19th

Time: 7:00-8:30 p.m.

Participant limit: Thirty

Cost: Free
(but advance registration required)