How does race matter? The Dialogue Project

As part of our efforts as an anti-racist organization, YAC is teaming up with Leda Cooks and Demetria Shabazz of the Communications Department at UMass Amherst to continue to dialogue about how race matters in society today.

Here is an overview of the project:

On the heels of an historic presidential election, many politicians and pundits want to proclaim the U.S. as a "transracial" nation, a nation beyond the need to identify skin color as a significant marker of difference. Indeed, it seems the current wisdom is that the less we talk about race the more quickly it will disappear. However, as media and community events continually attest, it is not the quantity but the quality of our talk that poses the greatest challenge to eliminating the racial barriers that divide us. This project represents a small step in the investigation of what is a more complex problem within this nation: our goal is to begin a dialogue to examine locally how we construct ethnic and racial identities and consequences for race relations in the Pioneer Valley.

The dialogue project aims to engage people of all races/ethnicities in dialogue about the idea of race and racial identification as embedded in power relations based on skin color that remain very much in existence in the current cultural climate. We will conduct three sequential dialogues with YAC in small groups. Each group will discuss the impact of racial identity on their lives and on the groups with which they identify. We will also look at the ways all groups participate (whether voluntarily or coerced) in whiteness as they struggle to gain footing in a racially stratified society.

There will be a series of three, two-hour dialogues open to all YAC members. The dates are:

• Friday March 26, 4-6pm
• Friday April 9, 4-6pm
• Friday April 30, 4-6pm

Those who participate in the dialogues will then have the option to train as facilitators to bring the dialogue project to other groups, including area high schools.

For more information, please contact Hannah at Youth Action Coalition.