Anti-Racism Training

This 12-hour dialogue workshop and training is designed to help us embrace and enact the vision of Becoming Beloved Community, which is a lifelong spiritual and faith journey. KI believes change happens in the space between comfort and fear – what Eric Law has described as the Grace Margin. All of our programs are designed to follow KI’s Respectful Communication guidelines and to create space for constructive relationship building where individuals can grow.

Our process relies on creating a space for intentional dialog and reflection. Additionally, these offerings provide an exploration of historical and contextual instances of oppression and racism, in which we all participate. We use models and processes to explore bias, power, and the systems of injustice and inequality. Our discipline includes:

• Dialogue

• Noticing and wondering together

• Questioning assumptions

• Telling the truth about ourselves and our organizations

• Modeling alternatives to current patterns and problems 

We provide guided opportunities for personal reflection, group reflection, and group interaction.

Most materials for this session are provided online and include worksheets, short readings, and videos. We also administer The Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI®) as part of this course; personal results are available to review for an additional fee.

Participants will also be asked to SELECT AND READ ONE of the following books during the course:

• Living into God's Dream: Dismantling Racism in America by Catherine Meeks, ed.

• My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menachem

• Seeing My Skin by Peter Jarrett-Schell

• The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander

• Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

• Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad

• Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson

• Unsettling Truths: The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery by Mark Charles and Soong-Chan Ra

This course design is deeply connected to KI’s theory of change. We believe that change happens when…

• We are in relationship with others who ask us challenging questions

• When we explore history and share stories

• When we interrupt patterns of behavior and accepted assumptions

• When we feel safe and are offered time to change

• When we model different behavior with our actions

• When we notice what remains unchanged

• When we ask about why others may refuse to change