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BY ROSARIO PAZ

In print | Published April 10, 2008

Recently, White Women Confronting Racism (WWCR), a group of self-identified white women who work towards raising awareness about concepts such as white privilege and racism, wrote an op-ed to The Phoenix introducing their group’s objectives to the campus community.

WWCR, which was formed last semester by Claire Galpern ’10 and Sarah Apt ’10, is a group that holds weekly discussions during which they talk about racism, white privilege, and other relevant topics in a constructive and collaborative manner some group members have found to have been missing in previous discussions on racism they have attended.

According to Galpern, discussions she has attended on the topic of racism at the college were usually disappointing since white student participants would sometimes direct the discussion towards self-affirming issues, such as white guilt, perhaps due to a lack of reflection on how racism affects those under its assailment.

“We were having a lot of conversations about how when there would be conversations about racism at Swat, in classes or events, that white people were part of, because white students mostly hadn’t been thinking about racism and their white privilege, it often turns into everyone having to teach the white students, with white students co-opting the discussion to make it all about our own identity process,” she said.

Topics of discussion for the group range from what role the media may play in one’s conception of white people and racism to addressing issues of racism within their own families and groups of friends.

“We had one [discussion topic] about racism in our families’ histories and about … how you can start conversations with your white family members or friends about racism and white privilege,” Galpern said.

“We have a couple people in the group with little sisters and so [we worked on] how to talk to them,” Erika Slaymaker ’10, a WWCR member, said.

Although the group’s discussion meetings are only open to those who self-identify as white women, the group originally started off as an open group last semester and had ongoing discussions as to whether the group should remain closed or open.

According to Slaymaker, there were a few self-identified people of color that had attended last semester’s open meetings, but there was a mutual recognition that the group’s purpose was to discuss how white people can be better allies to people of color, and that such discussion in a white-dominated setting may cause others who don’t self-identify as white women to feel uncomfortable.

“[These are] conversations about racism we’ve internalized and how to deal with that. It was not a comfortable space for them … It just seemed really unfair to have the meetings be open and then not have it be a safe space,” she said.

Additionally, reasons for why the group has become a white women’s group, as opposed to a group for all white people, has included group members’ wishes to discuss topics such as white feminism which might not be appropriate or ideal discussion topics in a mixed-gender group.

According to Galpern, one of the group’s intentions is "to think specifically about women’s issues and feminism and how white women’s feminism [has] been shaped by racism in a lot of ways and how to challenge that.

“There’s lot of things we could address about white women’s racism that we felt we could really delve into if it was a women’s group,” she said.

Currently, the group hopes to expand its outreach by holding several events. In the past, it held a movie screening of the movie “Mirrors of Privilege: Making Whiteness Visible” and a fireside chat with Peace and Conflict Studies Professor George Lakey.

At the fireside chat event, Lakey spoke from his own experiences as an ally to people of color, both from his personal experience coming from an interracial family and other work-related experiences.

“His teaching tool is telling stories about himself and really going through the steps of trying to understand his story,” Slaymaker said. “He’s really modeling that self-reflective behavior … I think the goal is for other people to see his thought process and maybe reflect on their own experiences.”

One story that Lakey talked about is to be included in an upcoming book of his. The story, “A Reluctant Awareness”, speaks about Lakey’s experience as a participant in a Worldwork human relations workshop in Mumbai, India in 1998.

During a leadership initiative component of the workshop, Lakey had made a comment that advocated Satish, a member of his small group, as a potential leader, during which he said “I wanted to give a vote of confidence in Satish. We’re in his country, after all, and he’s such a bright and articulate young man. I wanted him to lead.”

It was only after receiving several comments from other workshop participants that Lakey became aware of how his comment could have been interpreted and reflected on India’s colonized history during which white colonialists would arrive to the country and have the power to delegate who of the natives would act as leaders.

“I spent the rest of the night confronting this layer of racism within me, venting my sadness and despair that I’ve been conditioned so deeply, and praying for the strength to learn to be a better ally,” Lakey says in the book.

Lakey also spoke about the position of authority that one has in giving critique to another individual and the implications of such an exchange if the person in the position of authority is a white person.

“George Lakey was talking about how … when someone offers criticism from the position of authority how that can be a problem … because you, the person as an authority, wouldn’t make that mistake from the position of authority. Someone [at the event] was saying that if you give someone this criticism, … trusting them to change their mindset without ordering them to,” Lucy Warrington ’10, a WWCR member and a student who attended the event, said.

The group is now working on recruiting students to participate in a Whites Confronting Racism Training to be led by Training for Change, a Philadelphia-based general training organization. The training will be held next Saturday.

“We’re bringing one of [the specialized trainers] to campus to give white people who are interested a really strong foundation about how to start challenging racism, or keep challenging racism,” Galpern said. “There’s been a lot of interest in the group, so hopefully this will be a way to dig deeper into the questions they’ve been grappling with…”

WWCR’s weekly discussions are held on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. in Kohlberg 328. They also hold weekly planning meetings, during which they prepare weekly discussion topics and discuss any potential events the group may want to hold. Self-identified white women who are interested in the group should contact cgalper1 or sapt1.

“We’re trying to do this work of challenging our own racism, but it is really important to us to be as transparent as possible and to get feedback and concerns from people on campus. We had an open forum about a month ago to talk about the group, and we’re hoping to keep doing that,” Galpern said.

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