Sangha Is All
An embodied awareness community
Personal Racialization Conversations
Born in 1960 in a small Illinois town with a population of about 6,700 people, my earliest experiences of racialization were similar to the vast majority of racialized as white (RAW) people at that time; they were based upon existence in a community made up almost exclusively of other RAW people.
In 1968, my parents carefully sought out an integrated neighborhood in Chicago to relocate our family to, and they succeeded. For about a year. Two school photos from my elementary years have survived. During my first year in Chicago, my 3rd grade class photo includes 18 RAW, 2 Hispanic heritage, 1 Asian heritage, and 12 Black students. Just three years later, my 6th grade class photo reflects 1 RAW student (me), 1 Asian heritage student, 1 Hispanic heritage student, and 25 Black students. Redlining and white flight had rapidly changed neighborhood racial diversity and by 1972 I was effectively a racial minority in my community. These circumstances were my first conscious and explicit experience with racialization.
While communities across the US are changing, most RAW people have not had the kind of experiences with race my circumstances created. In 1973, my Iowa cousin took me to a Donny Osmond concert at the Iowa State Fair. That same year back at home, we were listening to Eddie Kendrick and the Chi-Lights.
I’ve come to believe that the structural racism we live with today evolved into being not because Black or any other people of color exist, but because laws were created in colonial America to enact privilege for a specific group of persons who were then, for the first time, described in law as “white.” At that time, “white” meant a person of English heritage but, over time, “white” has simply come to mean person to whom privilege is conferred upon. The US Census Bureau currently defines “white” as “A person having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa. It includes people who indicate their race as "White" or report entries such as Irish, German, Italian, Lebanese, Arab, Moroccan, or Caucasian.” This definition of “white” flies in the face of the US Code definition of “race” as “a set of individuals whose identity as such is distinctive in terms of physical characteristics or biological descent.”
RAW people are accustomed to examining questions of race and racism in terms of the inequities imposed upon people of color. Self-examination is significantly absent from this examination. Self-examination is not the same as self-flagellation. Personal Racialization Conversations are an invitation to explore how racialization has occurred in us RAW folks as unique individuals with a belief that greater awareness and self-understanding expands compassion, imagination, and energy for the type of positive action that unites rather than divides.
These are not political conversations. Using a standard set of questions, I engage with RAW people from anywhere in the US, inviting memories, thoughts, feelings, and new questions to arise in both myself and the folks doing the personal investigation. Because these conversations can be lengthy, they are recorded for completeness and accuracy. The results of these conversations are confidentially compiled and reformulated for sharing on this website and through other media consistent with permissions obtained from those interviewed.
Exploring the content of your personal racialization can be transformative.
To schedule a Personal Racialization Conversation with me, or to learn more, click here.