White Allies Working Group – Part 4

Part 4 – Sunday November 15th, 12noon-1:30pm

Please RSVP to lilysunmft@gmail.com, Zoom link will be sent out closer to date

We hope this Autumn finds you all well! This will be the final meeting of the year for our inaugural White Allies Working Group, which has spent this year working to build a greater understanding of how the concept of whiteness was created and constructed, and how its history makes impact on our society today. We have been listening to Seeing White, the Peabody-nominated podcast series hosted by John Biewen in collaboration with Chenjerai Kumanyika, and using the included questions as prompts to center our discussion. The series is part of the larger Scene on Radio podcast which comes from the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University: https://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/.

Earlier in October we held our third meeting via Zoom, and will continue to do so for our last meeting of the year. We had a very engaging discussion of Parts 9-12 of the podcast, which covered topics from police brutality to interracial violence, immigration and citizenship that mirror the social and racial issues we are dealing with today.

Even if you have not been able to make our first three meetings, we welcome you to listen at your own pace and catch up on Parts 1-12, and join us in November to discuss Parts 13-14 for our last meeting of the year. We will also be spending time discussing more broadly what we’ve learned from the podcast series as a whole, and planning as a group for next year. We would very much appreciate all of your input to help decide how to continue the White Allies Working Group into next year.

Please find below the discussion questions for Parts 13-14 which we will be using for the upcoming meeting, and for you to consider as you listen. These questions were created by the podcast hosts to accompany each segment and can be found online at: http://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/seeing-white-study-guide/

1. Considering all racial and ethnic groups – white, black, Latino, Native American, Asian – which group has benefitted the most from government programs and largesse throughout American history? [Part 13]
2. In doing antiracist work, what is the difference between actions taken by individuals and those made by the society as a whole, through the federal government – and why might the latter be appropriate and necessary? [Part 14]

We look forward to seeing all of you in November for this discussion. If you have any further questions about this group, feel free to contact either Lily Sun at lilysunmft@gmail.com or Camille Campbell at camille.campbell@gmail.com.