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“If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time; But if you've come because your liberation is bound up with mine, Then let us work together."
Lilla Watson, Aboriginal Activist
Diversity, generally understood and embraced, is not casual liberal tolerance of anything and everything not yourself. It is not polite accommodation. Instead, diversity is, in action, the sometimes painful awareness that other people, other races, other voices, other habits of mind, have as much integrity of being, as much claim on the world as you do.... And I urge you, amid all the differences present to the eye and mind, to reach out to create the bond that... will protect us all. We are meant to be here together."
William M. Chase, "The Language of Action"
Julian Barr | Brandon Dermon | Jonathan Mayer |Andrew Romero | Suzanne Withers |
Diversity Workshop I: Directions for Change
~ a conversation to disrupt the current cycle of socialization
Tuesday March 10 3:30 to 5:30 pm HUB Room 332
What is oppression? What is liberation? How is each produced and re-produced? How are we, as individuals and groups, both agents and targets of socialization that can lead to oppression? And how can community help us to move toward liberation?
The first diversity and inclusivity workshop of the year provides the opportunity for us to engage these questions together. As a group, we have been impressed by social justice scholar-educator Bobbie Harro, who conceives of oppression and liberation as cycles: the “cycle of socialization” and the “cycle of liberation.” Following a simple ‘icebreaking’ group activity, we will learn about these cycles in this workshop. We will engage in activity that should allow us to identify our own perceptions of where we are on these cycles. We will break into small groups to talk about our experiences. We will, through further exercises and discussion, build skills and create safe spaces for introspection and reflection, to facilitate liberating change, for ourselves, in Geography and beyond.
Agenda: Introductions | Safe Spaces Covenant | Collective Shout Out | The Cycle of Socialization | The Cycle of Liberation
This workshop is based on writings by Bobbie Harro:
Harro, B (2013) The cycle of socialization, in Adams et al. (eds.) Readings for diversity and social justice, 45-52.
Harro, B (2013) The cycle of liberation, in Adams et al. (eds.) Readings for diversity and social justice, 618-624.
Related website: The cycle of liberation, reflections on social justice.
Diversity Workshop II: microaggressions
~ a facilitated interactive workshop
Friday May 29 3:30 to 5:30 pm Ethnic Cultural Center Room 308
Mircoaggressions are brief and commonplace daily verbal, behavioral, and environmental indignities, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative slights and insults to the target person or group.
"All of us are socialized into the society, and it really is the height of arrogance or naïveté, to think that any of us are immune from inheriting biases that are deeply embedded in this society and culture. They come out in ways that we're not aware of." Sue, KUOW, April 2015.
Agenda: Introductions | Interactive theater with CTL | Learning from the voices and experience of CORE |
Additional readings on microaggression:
Microaggressions: Power, Privilege, and Everyday life: public blog project founded in 2010.
Derald Wing Sue (2010). Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation. Wiley.