Our January meeting with be next week, January 10th, 2017,  at the Park Hill United Methodist Church at Montview Blvd and Glencoe St. in Denver. The meeting will start at 7 PM.

Again this month we will be having our meeting downstairs in the youth lounge.

Doubling Down on Whiteness

The beginning of 2017 seems to find the country openly struggling with what many thought was the inevitable progress of moving toward a multicultural and multiracial democracy.  This is not a new thing.  America has long had a pattern of resistance to minority progress and rolling it back.  As Reconstruction was being dismantled after the Civil War, the cry was “We came to redeem America.”  Today we hear, “We must make America great again.”

How do we prepare for this next period?  What must be done to pull together a broken culture?  Is it possible?  Please take a look at the essay Toni Morrison wrote for The New Yorker in November, “Making America White Again.”

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/21/making-america-white-again

Octavia Butler, an African American science fiction writer, once said that that the two things that worried her about the future of humanity were the tendency to think hierarchically, and the tendency to place ourselves higher on the hierarchy than others.  We need to find ways to counteract these urges.

Our December meeting with be next week, December 13th,  at the Park Hill United Methodist Church at Montview Blvd and Glencoe St. in Denver. The meeting will start at 7 PM.

Again this month we will be having our meeting downstairs in the youth lounge.

Internalized Racism

There are several levels of Racism.  One of the most enduring forms is Internalized Racism. There are also other oppressions (sexism, heterosexism, classism, etc) and they each have several levels too, including internalized oppressions. The discussion in December will look at how we internalize the ideological ideas of oppressions and the impact they have on maintaining the cycle of Racism.

Please review the attached document, “The Four I’s of Oppression,” and think about any reflections you would like to share in a fishbowl exercise. The paper is about the four levels of oppressions and how those levels interact to reinforce their own and each others oppressons.

We will use a series of fishbowl discussions to explore how internalized oppression show up in our lives and what ideas we have to deal with it. We are hoping for practical ways to support each other and face the rapidly shifting attitudes in the culture. We plan to explore these ideas with a serires of fishbowl exercises, with different groups in the bowl.

the_four_is_of_oppression-chinook-adaptions-3

This year the regular Second Tuesday Race Forum meeting date falls on the national election day.  Last month there was overwhelming support to reschedule the meeting to be on the third Tuesday, November 15^th.  This will give everyone time to process the results and then come to discuss it.

No matter who wins the Presidential race, there will be a great need for healing.  This election has revealed the depth of the growing divide in our society.  We hope to unpack the significance of this divide and look for strategies to deal with the realities of a world in transition.

Don’t forget: NO Meeting on November 8, but we WILL MEET on November 15, 2016.

America’s Strange Breed

The Long Legacy of White Trash

Generally, class is included in discussions about race and gender. Low-income is synonymous with Black and Brown communities. The Regan Administration defined Black women as welfare queens. Yet, statistically, White women are the welfare majority. In the 20^th century, poverty became both racialized and gendered. Unfortunately, a key facet of poverty is absent in contemporary discussions – the plight of poor White people. We assume that all White people are rich (or at least middle class) and all Black and Brown people are poor (or struggling to get to the middle class).

Our next Tuesday night gathering focuses on “American’s Strange Breed: The Long Legacy of White Trash.” This is the Epilogue from the book White Trash. According to Nancy Isenberg, the book's author, “class separation is and has always been at the center of our political debates, despite every attempt to hide social reality with deceptive rhetoric.”

Please join us for a lively discussion about class, power and democracy.

In case you did not get it or if you lost it, I am attaching here a link to the reading for this meeting -- the epilogue to While Trash:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bx-lK4EO8vRhVlhRMlNEUlRmNlhQZVlkZzAxa0o5MDQyVmRF/view

 

How Does a Country Inspire Meaningful Patriotism?

The last time we discussed patriotism Barak Obama was running for his first term as President in 2008.  This summer has presented many opportunities for Americans to express their love of country with July 4th celebrations, the Olympics in Rio, a heated campaign, the fifteenth anniversary of 911, as well as ongoing protests by many who want to make America better.  The September discussion will invite us to explore how our personal ideas of patriotism have evolved.  What does leadership look like to sustain a civil society?  To make any country “great”?  Does a deep dive into history help or hurt?  How are we dealing with our cherished delusions?  As an exercise, you are invited to discover where the following words come from:

“No refuge could save the hireling and slave

From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave”

 

The connecting theme for Second Tuesday Race Forum discussions this season will be “Radical Inclusion.”  We often talk about creating a more inclusive society.  The term “radical” is used to refer to going to the root or source; to seek fundamental changes in current practices, conditions, or institutions.  We hope to inspire profoundly new ways to think about inclusion.  Our topics will look at a number of ways racism intersects with numerous aspects of our culture.

• Race and Class and Poor Whites
• Race and Women’s Suffrage
• Racism and Native Americans
• Blacks and Jews and Palestine
• Race and LGTBQ rights

To give you a head start on preparing for the October discussion, please read the attached Epilogue excerpt from the recently published book White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, by Nancy Isenberg.