Culturally Informed Facilitation Training Part I: Reflections on Power and Privilege

This session was an opportunity to look back at past reconciliation sessions and reflect on how our own understandings of reconciliation have perhaps shifted and what that’s meant for us, personally and professionally.

Many of our past sessions have looked outwards and focused on learning from the world around us. This session was an opportunity to look inward and think about the power and privilege that we hold as facilitators. Given this power and privilege, how can we facilitate conversations across differences in a way that both keeps everyone safe and leaves space for learning? As homework for the session, we all explored the website https://www.whitesupremacyculture.info/# which was developed by Tema Okun alongside various collaborators as an extension to the original article on White Supremacy Culture written by Tema Okun in 1999.

We had a rich and honest conversation guided by three questions: what resonates? What makes you feel uncomfortable? How do you feel yourself reacting? While Tema Okun’s work originated in the southern United States, there are many parallels to the dynamics we may see within ourselves and in our own work with diverse groups.

This discussion offered a chance to reflect on race, identify, power and privilege, and antidotes to white supremacy culture.

Image from White Supremacy Culture | by Tema Okun