Hard Conversations: A Deep Dive into Racism and its Undoing

Submitted by the Event Organizer

HARD CONVERSATIONS: A DEEP DIVE INTO RACISM AND ITS UNDOING
Brought to you by the Radical Resilience Institute and the School of Inclusion + Activism

Guided by Victor Lee Lewis and Patti Digh
A 5-week intensive online course, starting Weds, October 27, 3:00-4:30 pm EST. See links below to register for the upcoming cohort. You may still register until November 3rd, if you miss the first session.

REGISTER HERE: http://www.pattidigh.com/racism/

The year 2020, amidst the pervasive collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic, was a year of shattering racial violence, including the murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd. It was also a year of unprecedented mobilization in the BLM movement and allied movements against racist violence. All over the U.S., everyday people can see that something in the fabric of American culture is broken, and a lot of people want to help mend it. We yearn for new, more fruitful ways of confronting the American dilemma of race.

Hard Conversations: A Deep Dive into Racism and its Undoing is a crash course on what we need to know and remember to make sense of the racialized social tensions that are rocking society right now.

Victor Lee Lewis and Patti Digh invite you to join their 5-week intensive course. Together, they guide and facilitate an online learning community to develop the knowledge and skills for understanding and undoing racism. We explore how to shift from reacting to social crises to creating positive social change, and how and why to enjoy it, much of the time.

More than 5,000 people on 5 continents, from diverse race, class and cultural backgrounds have joined our learning communities. They include activists, educators, clergy, high school students, retirees, commissioned military officers, college professors, doctors and nurses, and other everyday people who have taken these intensive learning journeys with us, since Patti called the first Hard Conversations cohort in response to the Charleston Church Massacre of 2015. Over this time we have continually updated and refined the courses to deliver a learning experience that is intellectually challenging, deeply collaborative, socially supportive, fiercely honest, and inspiring.

TOPICS:
*Week 1: Introduction, Creating our Learning Community
*Week 2: Institutional and Structural Racism: Myths and Facts
*Week 3: On White Privilege and “White Fragility”: The use and misuse of these ideas
*Week 4: On Color Blindness, Microaggressions, and Cultural Appropriation
*Week 5: On Being an Ally: What Will I Do Next to Help Make Everybody Free?

The heart of every Hard Conversations course is the 7.5 hours of expertly guided conversation with Patti and Victor on our live calls. On top of that, every week, you also get three big content updates in our online classroom, which you can unpack to your heart’s content, all in managed online forums set up just for the people in your cohort. You will get a wide range of informative and provocative videos, readings, audio presentations, discussion questions, and activities, all to further and deepen your learning. And everything is yours to continue working with, at least 3 months after the final live call. Your learning on the calls is greatly enriched by your having 24/7 access to the course content and learning community.

These courses provide an opportunity to work with a supportive community of like-minded people to deepen our knowledge and wisdom in these times of profound and stressful social change. Each course brings together regular people from many life walks, committed to making a personal and social difference. Whether you are white, black, or brown, if you seek company in moving forward in your own anti-racist life, consider taking some of your next steps with us.

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ORGANIZATIONAL AND GROUP REGISTRATIONS:
In this period of continued lockdowns, our established online learning approach can be a good solution for professional, civic, activist, or academic groups to take together. We have guided groups of mental health workers, doctors-in-training, faith groups, neighborhood groups, theater-makers, teachers, and trauma clinician trainers. For more information on registering your group for these events or custom training, Groups of 10+ will be registered at a contribution of $100 per participant. Concurrent support groups, facilitation, and consultations are available and tailored to your requirements. For details, contact us at info@hardconversations.com.
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REGISTER HERE: http://www.pattidigh.com/racism/

This is Community-Supported Education, with universal financial accessibility. Tuition options for our courses are based on a modified gift economy model, in an effort to align our economics with our deeper values. We rely upon generous voluntary contributions of our allies (“accomplices” enabling our deeds, co-conspirators, “breathing with us”?). Our enemies and detractors will not support our work or keep us in business. We are asking that course participants support our efforts at the highest level that is affordable for you. Your gift contribution from $50-$500 keeps us alive and teaching. Please also consider a contribution to our GoFundMe campaign to raise scholarships for those who cannot afford to pay tuition: https://gofund.me/1dc808b8

To give back to our communities, we tithe 10% of each participant’s fee to charitable organizations working for racial justice.

MEET YOUR GUIDES:

VICTOR LEE LEWIS, MA, is the Director, Chaplain-at-large, at the Radical Resilience Institute. Victor is a nationally recognized social justice educator, speaker, consultant, trainer, and occasional writer. Victor has conducted seminars, workshops, keynote speeches, and “train the trainer” programs in most of the 50 United States, as well as in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Germany. They are well-known for their inspiring leadership role in The Color of Fear, the classic race relations documentary. Victor is co-author, with Hugh Vasquez, of Beyond the Color of Fear, a 4-volume multimedia curriculum for use in classrooms and training programs. Victor has also written a training manual utilizing the Hollywood film, Get Out!, The Get Out Movie Teacher’s Companion, as an on-ramp for classroom reflection on the issues of race. Victor is a Neurolinguistic Programming Health Certified Master Practitioner and Trainer, Clinical EFT Expert/Trainer, a certified hypnotherapist, and Third Year Student in the Practitioner Training at the Somatic Experiencing Training Institute. www.radicalresilience.com

PATTI DIGH, is the author of eight books on global workforce diversity and living mindfully, including a Fortune magazine “best business book” for the year 2000 and one of five finalists for the “Books for a Better Life” national award in 2008. She recently served on the Executive Committee of the ACLU-NC Board of Directors and has served in advising roles on diversity, equity, and inclusion to corporate and nonprofit organization clients such as PepsiCo, Boeing, PBS, the U.S. Postal Service, the American Society of Association Executives, and many others. She was the first-ever Vice President of International and Diversity Programs at the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), the world’s largest association of human resources professionals. More information is available on her website: www.pattidigh.com

Disclaimer: Please double check event information with the event organizer as events can be canceled, details can change after they are added to our calendar, and errors do occur.