Facilitators: James A. White, Sr. and Suzanne Roberts
Organizational cultures are prime to bring greater awareness and understanding about the reality and impact of how a dominant social system keeps racism alive and effects marginalized communities. Bringing a Safe Conversation About Race to an organization and Executives makes sense to support a shift in building healthy cultural diversity and social equity. There is a need to increase multi-cultural competency in order to ensure that implicit bias and unconsciousness does not limit leadership potential and/or the vibrancy of any organizational culture.
People are often unconscious about how racism and marginalized communities are impacted. Privilege is blinding, and it requires education and discomfort to grow and become more aware and better human beings.
There is an opportunity to provide training that will help leaders understand the impact of colonization in developing social systems and how they are currently played out today, especially in our country around racism. There is a need to become more culturally conscious and competent to improve all aspects of any organization. Our work elucidates how to interrupt these inherited, sometimes invisible forces, that limit human, organizational, and social potential. The need to become more conscious in our language and behavior will be addressed, as well as providing simple next step actions.
The Safe Conversation About Race will include a unrehearsed conversation between Jim and Suzanne with a moderator on the agreed upon topics. The vulnerable, honest, and meaningful dialogue provides a living example how people can talk across difference to bridge understanding and increase our capacity to stay with discomfort for positive change . Included is a brief historical overview about how we got here, how slavery played a role in the economic gain of our country while dehumanizing and harming a group of people, and how that is replicated today in our organizational structures. We provide an experience for participants to have a chance to dialogue with each other, after having a living example of seeing Jim and Suzanne dialogue safely about a very difficult and uncomfortable topic: racism.
We provide a business size card that provides steps for how to have a safe conversation about race. We believe having these conversations promotes humanizing across difference, and helps build safe multi-cultural organizations where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
