Decolonizing Whiteness:
A Paradox Worth Diving Into
A GATHERING FOR WHITE DESCENDANTS OF EUROPEAN SETTLERS
BIRTHED FROM THE DECOLONIZE RACE PROJECT
Images by Kristin Zimmerman
How have our approaches to racial justice movements been leading to breakdowns in relationships, within and across race?
What ancestral wounds have we been carrying that interfere with our ability to show up?
What might be possible if we approach efforts toward reparations and land rematriation from a place of wholeness?
Four years ago, we (Roan and Jen) began a deeply illuminating and stretchy journey with a multiracial group of brilliant comrades at Decolonize Race. As a pair, we began asking big questions about ourselves and the branch of humanity we now call ‘white.’ In 2021, we held a series of gatherings for 15 white/European Americans from around the U.S., extending these questions and holding space for a collective deepening and inquiry. There was brave vulnerability, deep love, heavy tears, laughter and joy, and meaningful breakthroughs around what is required to do the work of anti-racism today.
We are delighted to be offering a second round of our experiment Spring 2024, in its new iteration.
what is the decolonize race project?
After years of experiencing how our movement struggles, involving issues of race, often led to breakdowns in relationships and an exodus from the movements we love, Decolonize Race grew out of a question of: how can we do it differently? These struggles are often framed as processes of reckoning, making the invisible visible, and having those with power and privilege take responsibility. This approach often leads people to re-enact habits of oppression and recycle trauma instead of radically transforming relationships across race. We wanted to find a different way. What if the starting point and endgame of our work was to cultivate wholeness and repair relationships within and between the branches of humanity?
Starting from a place of deep love, the multiracial Decolonize Race Project formed with the goal of tackling racism by centering healing and transformation at the individual, group and movement levels, while creating tools that could be used by movement leaders locally and internationally. Decolonize Race envisions a world where all people co-exist, lifting up each other’s humanity. A world where racism and exploitation are a story of the past and now all humans live dignified lives. In this new reality, every human being is valued, and we collectively value other living beings on the planet. Collectively, we thrive. (Learn more about the Decolonize Race background and vision.)
After two years of undertaking our own decolonizing race journey as a team, each “branch” of the project — Native, Black, Interracial/Multiracial/ Mixed Race, Latinx, Arab & SWANA, Asian American Native Hawai’ian Pacific Islander, and white/European American — planned a gathering or project for their people in 2021. When each project was complete, we came together to share our learnings. More about our projects and learnings can be found here.
WHAT IS THIS GATHERING? WHY DECOLONIZE WHITENESS?
We white folks cannot think, read, analyze or shame our way out of this mess that we have inherited; and yet, far too often we replicate the very thing we aim to dismantle while trying to achieve liberation. While so many of us deeply believe in and are dedicated to the work of racial justice, we continue to hit up against familiar barriers and patterns: getting stuck in trauma responses; disconnection from the body, from land and spirit; using shame or ‘shoulds’ as motivators; a disembodied over-emphasis on how we’re perceived; policing and externalizing our traumas onto each other; and so many more. The embedded conditions of colonization may change shape, but they are not truly transformed. We need a new way.
In this gathering, we aim to bring together a group of around 20 white-identified individuals to do a deep-dive into the roots of colonization among our peoples, and what is needed to heal and transform patterns of harm and imagine a future of thriving. Together we will explore nuanced, stretchy and risky questions, including:
How have we been harming ourselves and each other in the name of ‘anti-racism’ work? How are dominant movement cultures setting us up to fail at accountability?
What does ‘decolonizing whiteness’ mean? What are our peoples’ relationships to colonization and settler colonialism, and how does this live in our bodies today?
How do we hold, grieve and take responsibility for the violence that Europeans and their descendents have inflicted for the last five centuries and continue to perpetrate across the globe, while also tending to our own wounds, which both caused and were caused by this same violence? Knowing that ‘hurt people, hurt people,’ how can we tend to our own ancestral traumas in ways that are accountable and interrupt generational cycles of violence?
What are our relationships to indigeneity, as people with European ancestries? When were our ancestors last indigenous? What caused them to abandon their indigeneity, and/or how was it severed? What impact has this had?
What ancestral traditions, cultures, and spiritual practices were lost when our ancestors became ‘white’? What is the role of spirit in ending white supremacy? How can we cultivate/reclaim ancestral spiritual practices in ways that are not appropriative?
What becomes possible as we shift our relationship to power? How do we differentiate — within our own bodies and spirits — between the kind of ‘power over’ we’ve been conditioned to hold through our whiteness, and the kind of ‘power within’ that we’re taught to fear but which could set us free?
How can we approach efforts toward reparations and land rematriation from a place of wholeness? When and how are we leading with fears of scarcity, and how have these fears been shaped/conditioned? What can we learn from reparations and land rematriation efforts already underway?
What would a future look like in which all of our descendents are thriving?
WHO IS THIS FOR?
Our hope is to curate a group that includes a vibrant mix of:
Healers, artists, activists, organizers, facilitators, community members and more
Gender identities and sexualities
European lineages, cultures and ethnicities
Religious/spiritual backgrounds and practices
Class backgrounds
Roots in regions across North America (*Regions beyond this are welcome, though our focus will be on the colonial history of North America)
This could be a great fit for you if you’ve been on an antiracism journey for a while and if you’re eager to explore the questions above, while also willing to be in the unknown. The point of this gathering is not to come away with clear cut-and-dry answers or solutions, but rather to practice being in the questions together and deepening our capacity for being in relationship — with ourselves, with each other, and with this work. This is not an anti-racism seminar, workshop, conference or training; instead it is a place to gather and reflect on deep questions, to learn and grow together, and to practice embodying new and emergent ways of being.
NOTE: space is limited to 20 participants
gathering dates
This gathering will take place virtually over Zoom, for a total of six 3-hour sessions. Sessions will be held in pairs, each one building on the last and drawing wisdom and inspiration from the season in which they’re held. While a structure for each session is planned, we will very much be participating with you, and there will be space for emergence and co-creation.
Movement One: March 20 and 21 (11:30am-2:30pm EST / 8:30-11:30am PST on both days)
Movement Two: April 9 and 10 (11:30am-2:30pm EST / 8:30-11:30am PST on both days)
Movement Three: April 30 and May 1 (11:30am-2:30pm EST / 8:30-11:30am PST on both days)
hopes and intentions
Through these gatherings, we will:
Drop into an experiential exploration of what it means to decolonize whiteness — as individuals, as a group, and collectively.
Practice interrupting — within our bodies, our emotions, our relationships, and our minds — habits of white supremacy and (settler) colonialism.
Inquire into, learn about, and share the histories of our ancestors before, during, and after whiteness, identifying unhealed points of trauma and colonization that interfere with our abilities to show up in our wholeness today.
Remember, dream and conjure old/new ways of being that create liberation and thriving for all of our peoples — both future generations and ancestors.
Foster a greater felt sense of nourishment, wholeness and humanity that we each bring to our work to end white supremacy.
Form new and deepened connections with other white people, rooted in a practice of love.
Facilitators
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Jen (she/her) is an Atlanta-based and western New York-raised queer mama, garment sewist, quilter, and dreamer of a future beyond white supremacy. She has been honing her craft of antiracist facilitation for nearly 20 years, apprenticing with elder practitioners before launching her independent practice in 2018. Her awakening to what whiteness has meant for the last ~400 years (and in her own life) began as a young activist in San Francisco in the Challenging White Supremacy Workshop (now known as the Anne Braden Program) in the early '00s. Since then, Jen has slowly and intentionally built the skills and relationships required to do antiracist facilitation in a deeply embodied and wise way, as a cisgender white woman. Jen is a facilitator of multiracial organizational transformation at Liberatory Power Consulting Group, a student of what decolonization means for white antiracists at the Decolonize Race Project, and a coach/facilitator for white leaders who are committed to showing up as strong, reliable, trustworthy white antiracists.
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Roan (they/them) is a writer, facilitator, coach and healing artist hailing from New York and Atlanta. With a background in somatics and social justice organizing, their work weaves together ancestral healing, embodied practice, and the liberatory power of desire. As a queer and nonbinary sex educator, they center the importance of pleasure, desire, and reclamation of the body as essential practices toward healing and liberation. They work specifically with white folks in North America around ancestral healing and co-creating white anti-racist culture and practices. Among other things, they’re a facilitant of global YES! Jams, a writer for the international feminist organization VOICE, and a member of the visionary Decolonize Race Project. They’re a forever nerd and are currently studying herbalism, Scottish Gaelic, linguistics, and Celtic mythology and folklore.
cost of attenting
For this particular gathering of white folks, we are experimenting with the idea that money can facilitate our collective process and can be one way we practice decolonization. Money is not the reason we are here, and it can be a tool that either holds us accountable to our commitments, or makes our participation possible. Our experiment and invitation is this: as a participant, you'll have an opportunity to make a financial contribution that goes toward covering the production costs of this offering and that enables our group to redistribute financial resources to at least one Indigenous rematriation effort.
In 2021, our inaugural white cohort was able to collectively raise $16,750 for redistribution to Black land reparations and Indigenous rematriation efforts. As a result, the multiracial Decolonize Race team decided to gift $6,700 to BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity) as they acquired maroon land in central Georgia, $6,700 to Ekvn-Yefolecv, and $3,350 to Sogorea Te' Land Trust. In 2021, production costs for this gathering were covered by a generous grant that supported the entire multiracial team and multi-year Decolonize Race Project. Now in 2023, although that grant has ended, Roan and Jen are compelled to convene a second white cohort, not knowing how much of our labor and our production costs we will be able to compensate, or how much financial redistribution we will be able to gift.
We are operating this gathering loosely based on the principle of a gift economy. (For more information on a gift economy, read here.) Rather than setting a tuition amount, we ask you to choose an amount that feels like a meaningful and significant investment and commitment into this process and experience. We recognize that participants come from a range of class and economic backgrounds; for example, $50 might feel significant to some, while $10,000 might feel meaningful to another. $675 per participant, on average, is what we have calculated will allow us to cover production costs and a significant redistribution.
While this of course varies at the individual level, white people in this country have historically held a great deal of economic and financial privilege compared to Black, Indigenous and folks of color. In the spirit of reparations, 30-50% of participant contributions will go directly toward supporting BIPOC-led decolonization, reparations, and/or rematriation projects.
We invite you to deeply reflect on your financial reality and decide what would be a stretch FOR YOU — what feels most aligned to you, to a trust in communal abundance, and to the vision of the world you wish to build.
“Through the practice of stepping back, I came to appreciate that decentering does not necessarily mean nonparticipation. Instead, it means another kind of belonging, a belonging not conditioned on my centrality, yet nonetheless a deeply connected belonging contingent on a practice of accountability to the work of transforming, rather than reproducing, deeply entrenched power relations.”
“The possessive investment in whiteness can’t be rectified by learning ‘how to be more antiracist.’ It requires a radical divestment in the project of whiteness and a redistribution of wealth and resources. It requires abolition, the abolition of the carceral world, the abolition of capitalism.”
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word ‘love’ here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.”
