At the point in the conference, I'm reeling from all these these new terms I've learned as well as finding that I'm making revelations and connections every few minutes and at this point in most conferences, I'm feeling tired and ready to take off, but I'm now just completely fired up and ready to take on more! I choose my next session called, "How to Mobilize Privilege for the Benefit for All: From Shame and Powerlessness to Vision and Action." I see the words, "How to Mobilize" and being such a person of action, I want to know, "WHAT CAN I DO?!?!?!" As I know now, what I went in for is not what I came out with.
First of all, we sat in a big circle and the facilitators were soft spoken that Bay Area crunchiness. Of all my sessions, this one was most about feelings. Six people were chosen to speak to share why they were there at the conference and why they chose this session. Two of those six cried in their introductions. This certainly set the tone in the room. But the theme in the room from those introductions was that there was "paralysis and fear." People want so much to take action and affect change, but they don't know where to start. There was this sense that there is this great fear in doing it wrong. At this point, the facilitators stated that "getting it right" is an act of patriarchy, which lead to that revolutionary change and self-transformation can't be separated. We then broke up into pairs to answer "what is hard about being here?" Then we clumped into groups of six and answered another question. I don't remember what exactly they were, but I do remember that we had moved from a very academic way of looking at privilege to identifying what it means to each of us individually. Here are some nuggets:
• Privilege is a substance for needs
• Things you need, they are finite
• Only in recent history has there by the accumulation of things in the hands of a few, and the capitalist system was created to explain that
• Showing vulnerability is powerful. Shame is telling you what NOT to do
• There is no need to wait any longer to change who you are.
And you can read below, what the essence of this session was about....although I didn't really get it in the moment.
To conclude these posts about the WPC, I wanted to end on Sunday afternoon with a session titled, "The Brilliance of White Supremacy and White Privilege" which advertised itself as a discussion on
First of all, we sat in a big circle and the facilitators were soft spoken that Bay Area crunchiness. Of all my sessions, this one was most about feelings. Six people were chosen to speak to share why they were there at the conference and why they chose this session. Two of those six cried in their introductions. This certainly set the tone in the room. But the theme in the room from those introductions was that there was "paralysis and fear." People want so much to take action and affect change, but they don't know where to start. There was this sense that there is this great fear in doing it wrong. At this point, the facilitators stated that "getting it right" is an act of patriarchy, which lead to that revolutionary change and self-transformation can't be separated. We then broke up into pairs to answer "what is hard about being here?" Then we clumped into groups of six and answered another question. I don't remember what exactly they were, but I do remember that we had moved from a very academic way of looking at privilege to identifying what it means to each of us individually. Here are some nuggets:
• Privilege is a substance for needs
• Things you need, they are finite
• Only in recent history has there by the accumulation of things in the hands of a few, and the capitalist system was created to explain that
• Showing vulnerability is powerful. Shame is telling you what NOT to do
• There is no need to wait any longer to change who you are.
And you can read below, what the essence of this session was about....although I didn't really get it in the moment.
To conclude these posts about the WPC, I wanted to end on Sunday afternoon with a session titled, "The Brilliance of White Supremacy and White Privilege" which advertised itself as a discussion on
"The premise of the brilliance of white supremacy and white privilege and its intentional and unintentional creation to render African Americans dependent on the power and privilege of WHite American's to create "equality.""
I was ready to double down on theory and discussion for the last few hours of the conference, but the session was cancelled. I wandered around and found myself in a session titled, "Toxic Whiteness." In short, the facilitator highlighted the fact that those white people who believe and understand white privilege and supremacy need to know that it is important to grieve about how much pain they are in. In general, humans are taught to deny feelings, especially those that are painful. The facilitator stated that we live where we run from pain and if there are so many places in our lives that are painful we end up with nowhere to run, or stuck in a very small part of our lives. We have to notice when we are in pain and accept it, to grieve it and by acknowledging it, we will be released from that pain. Once that is accessed, that loss can be addressed and healed. I must have missed the introduction about how there is toxicity in whiteness, but these visual of running from pain did resonate.
And that was the end of the conference. I'm finishing these posts a few weeks after the conference is over and I see applications of what I've learned and noticed how white supremacy shows up in so many places in life. This was the most valuable professional development experience I've ever had. I can't necessarily say that it will directly affect my teaching....yet, but I know it's changed the way I see the world! I'm kind of still reeling from how much I learned and experienced in just a few short days. I didn't make any personal connections, like I usually do, but the learning and awareness that I now have is tremendous...and scary to think about how easily I have bought into this world of norms and privilege. But it's also daunting to realize how much I still take for granted and the things I do to strengthen these privileges. Mind blown..and still being blown.....
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