Judy Blair
People are often suspicious of racially-segregated space, with good reason. White folks don’t have a good history with regards to segregation, and many people believe no good can come from white people meeting together to discuss racism. An often-posed question about race-based caucusing is, “Doesn’t segregating by race make things worse?” The short answer: It […]
This piece is inspired by Lauren Michele Jackson’s September 4, 2019, article on Slate, What’s Missing From “White Fragility”, specifically this quotation: Writing on “whiteness qua whiteness,” to borrow from Richard Dyer’s influential 1997 book White, can so often veer toward whiteness pro whiteness—whiteness in the interest of whiteness, whiteness for whiteness’ sake, whiteness to […]
Last month I had the honor of participating in a webinar for the Adventure Nannies Summit Sessions series, a set of monthly webinars tailored for their audience of childcare providers. We talked about white cultural values, as presented by Tema Okun et al., and how those intersect with domestic work. At the end I took a few […]
Part of my work as a white person is to uplift the voices of people of color, so I’m letting you in on this not-so-secret list of great podcasts. I don’t subscribe to all of them (my weekly podcast list is long, and my podcast listening time is short), but I have listened to at […]
I was facilitating a caucus the other day, and the topic of discussion was apologizing: the pieces that need to be in place for us to make a sincere apology and how we can quell our natural instinct to defensiveness. About half way through the session, one of the participants turned to me and said, […]
Equity Matters, a Seattle-based consulting firm, has a set of ground rules they use for workshops and discussions. One of those ground rules is, “Put relationships first — Work to build community and trust with an awareness of power dynamics.” I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently and what it means to put relationships […]
I think a lot about humanity. Not in a “human race” kind of way but in a “what it means to be human” way. Being human means being flawed. Being human means doing the best with what we have in the moment. Being human means allowing ourselves and others to be who they are at […]
If being wrong is a learning opportunity, then taking negative feedback gracefully and apologizing for our mistakes also gives us an opportunity to learn and grow. With their infographics, artist and activist Lukayo Estrella has made collective wisdom around taking negative feedback available to all of us. They have also given us a roadmap of […]
In order to practice antiracism, we have to continually shift our focus from the micro to the macro and back again through four levels of racial oppression: internalized, interpersonal, institutional, and systemic. As a race-based caucus facilitator and one-on-one antiracism coach, I am constantly thinking about those different levels and how to guide people to […]
Race-based caucusing is an incredibly helpful tool, but it can be a tricky space for leadership to navigate. Having executive staff in the room while other employees discuss issues they experience in their workplace can lead to a reluctance to speak frankly. For this reason, I believe one on one antiracism coaching for upper-level management […]
Judy Blair 