Fostering the Roots of Cross-Racial Competence – Available via Zoom

Fostering the Roots of Cross-Racial Competence (Roots) is a multi-day workshop that provides a strong grounding in the foundational concepts necessary in understanding how systems of privilege are created, perpetuated and resisted. It also provides a framework for building competency and fluency in individuals that is necessary for impactful action towards strategic diversity and inclusion goals.

Customized to the audience, Roots is a 18.5-hour curriculum that covers foundational information surrounding power, privilege and oppression.  Through the in-depth analysis of race, participants engage in personal transformation.  

The Roots curriculum intentionally utilizes the vehicle of race and addresses the system of racism while still recognizing the interconnectedness of all oppression. Workshop outcomes are intended to provide learners with a framework for thoughtfully considering personal responsibilities in confronting discrimination of all forms.

Participant Experience:

• Exposure to the basic aspects of dominant and subordinate behaviors, power and privilege necessary to begin seeing the world in a more inclusive and expansive way.
• Stimulating content and recommendations for further independent exploration.
• Powerful cognitive engagement of participants – naming and challenging often unacknowledged social narratives and implicit beliefs.
• Dynamic videos, activities and discussions that deepen the understanding of key concepts. Participants critique, apply, and synthesize rather than simply absorb content.
• Ongoing opportunities for clarification, questions and sharing perspectives leading to peer enhanced learning.
• Shared sense of personal trust and commitment with presenters and within the cohort.
• Opportunity to hear first-hand about experiences of oppression experienced within our communities.

Participant Outcomes:

• • Connect to own sense of values that aligns with working for greater inclusivity in their work and life settings.
  • Acquire both the language and some experience discussing issues of diversity.
  • Increase awareness of how the key concepts manifest in their own public and personal settings.
  • Create a personal action plan for contributing to organizational and systemic change.
  • Obtain skills while observing and experiencing equitable relationships across difference.