Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future

1. Intro: a. Before this event make sure the invitation is clear and open. Something like this: Come share in learning about racism, identity, and the engagement with a future distance from our past. Refusal to come does not cost your membership or seat at the table. We only lose our seat when we do not honor our word. But coming means you are willing to participate in self-assessment and deep questions about friendship, heritage, and community. One outcome of the event will be a group project that every household member will contribute to, so I hope youll join us. But this is not a forced march. Let me know if you do not want to attend and we can discuss an alternative project and will catch you up to speed on the project after the retreat. b. Ground Rules on the retreat: i. Leave open space for introverts to ponder their responses internally (without constant pressure to always speak out) ii. Invite (and gently remind) extroverts to speak with knowledge that we are listening for wisdom from the collective whole. iii. Listen for the future (not download, but look for what youll collectively know and do like it is goodnews coming toward you, in the mist). look through a glass dimly iv. The future is brought into the present when citizens engage each other through questions of possibility, commitment, dissent, and gifts. Questions open the door to the future and are more powerful than answers in that they demand engagement. Engagement is what creates accountability [to the whole]. How we frame the questions is decisive. -Peter Block i c. Overview the day: sessions, breaks, bathrooms, agree on meal times, permission to get up and walk around if necessary. d. Assign small groups (groups of 4-6 are most effective so split into as many groups as necessary to keep small groups size down). Because youre designing a project, these groups should have their ministry site in common. 2. Our stories and intentions a. In small group name your background: i. Share an early memory of growing up within your family and culture ii. Share what you know of your familys ethnic heritage iii. Share an early memory of recognizing racial difference b. Personal vision: Share one hope for you for this year and one for your intentional community c. Now Share your intention (answer one or two of the following questions) i. How valuable an experience (or project, or community) do you plan for this to be? ii. How much risk are you willing to take? iii. How participative do you plan to be? iv. To what extent are you invested in the well-being of this group of participants today? d. Let the diversity of commitment level be a strength to the group and not a pressure for everyone to rise to. Refusal to promise does not cost us our

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future
membership or seat at the table. We only lose our seat when we do not honor our word. 3. The Body of Christ a. (as a large group) A Body Prayer of body of Christ (appendix) b. (small group) Whether one views oneself as beautiful or not beautiful or desirable or not desirable has deep consequences in terms of ones feelings of self-worth and ones capacity to be a political agent. Cornel West, Breaking Bread: Insurgent Black Intellectual Life i. Answer one of the following questions: 1. How would you describe your gifts? What is one story of a way you have been a gift to community? 2. Think of a previous faith community or activist organization that you have belonged to. What is one time that felt most alive and a part of that group. What did you contribute at that time? c. in large group: Share with the larger group one thing that another has shared in your group so far. Do not re-share your own information or ideas, but step forward to share about the other members of your group. d. BREAK 4. Unpacking Whiteness and economic privilege a. The Nap Sack Test: i. In advance, copy sheets from the appendix, and cut each number into an individual one. In your small groups take numbers 1-51 read through them ii. Then invite each member to choose 5 of the slips that would be willing to share with others in your group, that you identify with (either as something youve known as normative in your life or something you have never experienced). iii. The facts of racism, power, and economics often combine to mask the other. For the purpose of illustration, try organizing these thoughts into two groups: privilege and advantage. Put the 51 sheets back together and one at a time ask if these are positive experiences that everyone should know (priveleges) or if they are advantages that require winners and losers, majority or minority cultures (advantages). b. Whiteness is clouded by American Povery and The Great Meritocracy Myth: These types of advantages are implicit in our culture and impossible to completely separate ourselves from. Two exampled of this is are poverty and the myth of equality. Read the following two quotes and open the floor for two people in your group to offer an example of one or the other. i. Cornell West writes, Every historic effort to forge a democratic project has been undermined by two fundamental realities: poverty and paranoia. The persistence of poverty generates levels of despair that deepen social conflict the escalation of paranoia produces levels of distrust that reinforce cultural division. Race is the most explosive issue in American life precisely because it forces us to confront the tragic facts of poverty and paranoia despair, and distrust. In short, a candid

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future
examination of race matters takes us to the core of the crisis of American democracy (p. 107 Race Matters). ii. Peggy McIntosh describes the myth of meritocracy as the belief that democratic choice is equally available to all. She writes, We might at least start by distinguishing between positive advantages, which we can work to spread, and negative types of advantage, which unless rejected will always reinforce our present hierarchies. For example, the feeling that one belongs within the human circle, as Native Americans say, should not be seen as privilege for a few. Ideally it is an unearned entitlement. At present, since only a few have it, it is an unearned advantage for them. The power that I originally [saw] as attendant on being a human being in the United States consisted in unearned advantage and conferred dominance. In this case white privilege is the wrong word b/c that would assume its something to seek. But it truly is dominance- something that must be exposed, confronted, before a fair future free from dominance is accessible. ii iii. In everything from roommates, to neighbors, to life-partnerships economics can confuse relationships. How can you imagine economics affecting the intentional community that you are a part of? iv. v. c. Jubilee and Oppression: In the Hebrew Scriptures of the old Testament YHWH teaches Israel about the severity of just equitable living. Choose a passage to read and list the words that stick out to you. i. Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land. Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labour. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. The Egyptians became ruthless in imposing tasks on the Israelites, and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in every kind of field labour. They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them. After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery, and cried out. Out of the slavery their cry for help rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them. ii. God word to the people of Israel according to the writings of the prophet Amos, "Because of the three great sins of Israel make that fourI'm not putting up with them any longer.

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future
They buy and sell upstanding people. People for them are only thingsways of making money. They'd sell a poor man for a pair of shoes. They'd sell their own grandmother! They grind the penniless into the dirt, shove the luckless into the ditch. Everyone and his brother sleeps with the 'sacred whore' a sacrilege against my Holy Name. Stuff they've extorted from the poor is piled up at the shrine of their god, While they sit around drinking wine they've conned from their victims. Amos 2:6-8 iii. In the book of Leviticus, God gives the young nation of Israel a vision for living differently among semitic people. While slavery and economic debt is spoken of, YHWH commands that the children of Israel live by a deeper law than profit. YHWH institutes a law called Jubilee by which croplands are allowed to rest every seven years, and when the land returns to the earliest tribal owners and even slaves and debtors are freed every 50th year: GOD spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai: "Speak to the People of Israel. Tell them, When you enter the land which I am going to give you, the land will observe a Sabbath to GOD. Sow your fields, prune your vineyards, and take in your harvests for six years. But the seventh year the land will take a Sabbath of complete and total rest, a Sabbath to GOD; you will not sow your fields or prune your vineyards. Don't reap what grows of itself; don't harvest the grapes of your untended vines. The land gets a year of complete and total rest. But you can eat from what the land volunteers during the Sabbath yearyou and your men and women servants, your hired hands, and the foreigners who live in the country, and, of course, also your livestock and the wild animals in the land can eat from it. Whatever the land volunteers of itself can be eaten 8-12 "Count off seven Sabbaths of yearsseven times seven years: Seven Sabbaths of years adds up to forty-nine years... Sanctify the fiftieth year; make it a holy year. Proclaim freedom all over the land to everyone who lives in ita Jubilee for you: Each person will go back to his family's property and reunite with his extended family. The fiftieth year is your Jubilee year: Don't sow; don't reap what volunteers itself in the fields; don't harvest the untended vines because it's the Jubilee and a holy year for you. You're permitted to eat from whatever volunteers itself in the fields. 13 "In this year of Jubilee everyone returns home to his family property. 14-17 "If you sell or buy property from one of your countrymen, don't cheat him 23-24 "The land cannot be sold permanently because the land is mine and you are foreignersyou're my tenants. You must provide for the right of redemption for any of the land that you own.

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future
"If one of your brothers becomes indigent and cannot support himself, help him, the same as you would a foreigner or a guest so that he can continue to live in your neighborhood. Don't gouge him with interest charges; out of reverence for your God help your brother to continue to live with you in the neighborhood. Don't take advantage of his plight by running up big interest charges on his loans, and don't give him food for profit. I am your GOD who brought you out of Egypt to give you the land of Canaan and to be your God. 39-43 "If one of your brothers becomes indigent and has to sell himself to you, don't make him work as a slave. Treat him as a hired hand or a guest among you. He will work for you until the [fifty year] Jubilee, after which he and his children are set free to go back to his clan and his ancestral land. Because the People of Israel are my servants whom I brought out of Egypt, they must never be sold as slaves. Don't tyrannize them; fear your God. (Leviticus 25, The Message) 5. Reflections: a. Share in your group words or phrases that stuck out to you from these stories. b. Compare the ways that profit, privilege, and people are interchanged in these stories. 6. The Heart of Whiteness a. In 1903 W.E.B. DuBois wrote in The Souls of Black Folks, that the question whites wanted to ask him was: How does it feel to be a problem? In The Heart of Whiteness, Robert Jensen writes that it is time for white people in America to self-consciously reverse the direction of that question and to fully acknowledge that in the racial arena, they are the problem. He suggests that white people need less guilt, less fear, and more anger (p58.) b. Guilt: i. Guilt for the past or a system keeps whites in abstracts, not accountable for actions ii. Guilt is paralyzing, and it takes up the emotional space that could lead toward uncomfortable changing encounters with self and society c. Fear i. Fear that what weve been given is not by merit ii. Fear of losing something that gives us an advantage iii. Fear of becoming the minority in a society that privileges majority iv. Fear of being seen through, by non-white people because of our cultural upbringings, well eventually manifest culture, that vulnerability is scary d. Anger: i. That does not get in the way of critical self evaluation ii. Anger that fuels work for justice iii. Anger that does not consume us e. Mutuality: Guilt, Fear and Anger are not all processed at the same speed or in an all-or-nothing way. We need safe relationships for this sort of health to course through community. Remember, as the body of Christ various
35-38

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future
relationships between organs such as the lymphatic system, endocrine system, and nervous system administer health in varied ways. The following quotes describe how Christian community members or their intentional systems offer this kind of health to one another. Read the following quotes and choose the one that speaks most to you. Share with your group why you connect with it: i. If we do not know we are the beloved sons and daughters of God, we're going to expect someone in the community to make us feel that way. They cannot. We'll expect someone to give us that perfect, unconditional love. But community is not loneliness grabbing onto loneliness: "I'm so lonely, and you're so lonely." It's solitude grabbing onto solitude: "I am the beloved; you are the beloved; together we can build a home." Sometimes you are close, and that's wonderful. Sometimes you don't feel much love, and that's hard. But we can be faithful. We can build a home together and create space for God and for the children of God. Within the discipline of community are the disciplines of forgiveness and celebration. -Henri Nouwen iii ii. For many ... strategies for involvement in the community are based on a volunteer or charity mentality. Our ... concept of charity is one of the main stumbling blocks to real community development. This is because ... charity can blind people to reality and substitute cheap action for expensive action. And when I say this to my white brothers and sisters they get very uncomfortable. But charity blinds us and keeps us from seeing that our whole system works methodically against the development of certain people--economically, educationally, spiritually and socially. - John Perkins iv iii. There are certain things we can say about this method that seeks justice without violence. It does not seek to defeat or humiliate the opponent but to win his friendship and understanding. I think that this is one of the points, one of the basic points, one of the basic distinguishing points between violence and non-violence. The ultimate end of violence is to defeat the opponent. The ultimate end of non-violence is to win the friendship of the opponent. It is necessary to boycott sometimes but the non-violent resister realized that boycott is never an end within itself, but merely a means to awaken a sense of shame within the oppressor; that the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption. And so the aftermath of violence is bitterness; the aftermath of non-violence is the creation of the beloved community; the aftermath of non-violence is redemption and reconciliation. This is a method that seeks to transform and to redeem, and win the friendship of the opponent, and make it possible for men to live together as brothers in a community, and not continually live with bitterness and friction. v Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 7. LUNCH 8. Telling your own story a. In the following story from the Cherokee Native Tribe you may find references of privilege, identity, and community. Folk stories of this type defy the

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future
moralism of euro-german fable or closure of epic narratives. They are designed to open conversations, to introduce you to alternative characters in your own drama. And often they leave you more confused than self-assured. Read this story twice as a large group, a different reader each time. Resist quick comparisons to your group or the content weve shared so far. Just enjoy the story as a piece of our American folk identity. b. In this story we'll talk about Thunder-Lightning and the Eagle. They say that Thunder and the Eagle are fast friends. Long ago, Thunder spoke to every wild creatureeverything that flew or everything with four legsand, to the Eagle he said, "I appoint you Ruler. You must have a meeting with all wild creatures, and you must answer all their requests. If you think they (the creatures) should be a certain way, you make them that way. You must ask them what they want to be," said Thunder. The Eagle called a meeting. All kinds of birds came to it. When they arrived, the meeting was called to order. He (the Eagle) asked each of them what he wanted to be able to do. The Quail, who was very selfish when asked about anything, immediately arose and went and stood beside the Eagle. "Couldn't you give me power so that when a man sees me fly, he will instantly die of fright?" the Quail asked the Eagle. No," said the Eagle. "You are entirely too small. I could not give you that kind of power. But I can go this far: I can let you fly, and when a man hears you fly, he will become frightened," said the Eagle to the Quail. The Quail said, "All right." That's the reason why when we hear one [a quail] flying, we become frightened because he makes a whirring noise. That's all the power he was allowed. Next came the Terrapin that crawls on land. "I would like to be able to produce a poison that kills people. Allow me that kind of power," he said to the Eagle. "No," said the Eagle. "You are entirely too slow and too small." Thunder and the Eagle had a conference. (Thunder was the Ruler of all the Earth and Heaven. Thats why he appointed his best friend as Ruler of the Earth.) The thing I remember about the doings of the Eagle is that he gave a power to the Chickadee. He (the Chickadee) was given the power to be something like a fortuneteller among people in that he could go where people were, and if they were going to have visitors, he could inform them ahead of time. This could be done by flying to a tree near them and singing a joyous song.

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future

"Would you give me that kind of power?" asked the Chickadee. So he was given that power. That's why the Cherokees say when they see a chickadee fly into a tree, "The Chickadee says somebody is coming." That's the power that was given to him, they say. Then the Redbird, the beautifully singing bird, came up: "Let people have faith in me. I want to be able to sing joyful songs when it is going to rain." So he was given that power. That's why the old Cherokees all believe that when they see this bird singing atop a tree, it will rain. That's all the power he was given. The Shrike came up and said, "All I want is to be an expert dance-caller." And so he was given that power. Said the people long ago: the Eagle was the Ruler of the Earth, but Thunder was the Ruler of the whole Universe, and they got together to decide if all of their distributed powers were going to be satisfactory. So said the people of long ago. Thats all I know. vi 9. Before we get to todays final exercise you will collectively need to clarify the story of your own group. a. Why do you think issues of economics, privilege and race would help you in you process as a group, and in your process with your neighborhood? b. Did you notice how the Cherokee story is most about role and potential and less about problems to solve or limiting the possibilities? c. Community process facilitator, Peter Block, writes this about our limiting stories: i. we need to distinguish between the stories that give meaning to our lives and help us find our voice, and those that limit our possibility ii. the stories that are useful and fulfilling are the ones that are metaphors, signposts, parables, and inspiration for the fullest expression of our humanity. iii. Limiting stories are rehearsed and they make the point that the future will only be a slightly modified continuation of the past out of which the story arose. iv. Limiting stories place us as victims of events or even fate. v. Limiting stories present themselves as if they were true, and they operate with an army of facts and statistics. vi. Even limiting stories of violence let those events define who we are as a community- such as whether it is safe to go downtown, whether we need new leaders, whether people in this place are friendly, whether we are headed up or down. While violence may have occurred, the story we tell about that violence limits the future possibilities. vii d. Healing begins by taking responsibility for the story we tell to maintain our identity. Look at the following questions and choose one that you may want to answer

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future
i. What is the story about this community or organization that you hear yourself most often telling? The one you are wedded to and maybe even take your identity from? ii. What are the payoffs you receive from holding on to this story? iii. What is your attachment to this story costing you?

10. BREAK 11. For our last section youll plan together one simple project. The goal of the project is to engage the passions/gifts of each member of your intentional community and to interact with neighbors learning across an ethnic, cultural, or socio-economic difference. a. Begin by reviewing the steps youve gone through in todays retreat. On your own, write on post-it notes ideas for a project you could do in the context of your intentional community. List as many ideas as possible. This is the time to be far-flung and imaginative. Here are some trigger ideas based on the steps weve covered today: i. invitation: create an event where you throw a party that people are open to attend ii. appreciative inquiry: make it a habit to start asking your neighbors how they feel most alive, where their gifts made a difference. Consider mapping the skills of the neighborhood and presenting the map as a gift to the neighborhood. iii. diversity appreciation: look for opportunities for other ethnic cultures to lead in teaching about their own heritage. iv. telling your story: note your limiting stories and learn about futures that are emerging in your community. What can you do to encourage these stories? b. Now combine your notes as houses and narrow it down to one project that can go on the front burner for the purpose of this exercise. You can save the other postits as back burners for future opportunities. i. start by grouping the postits by similarity ii. give the each idea-group a name (no need to wordsmith, just give it a category or title) iii. determine which idea-group is the best place to start 1. each small-group member has 6 small colored dot-stickers 2. each puts 3 on the one they think is best 3. 2 points on the second best and third best 4. 1 on the third best iv. Now with the idea-group that has the most votes: refine the idea by listing the materials needed and the steps involved in researching, planning, executing, and evaluating this first project v. be realistic about the requirements and narrow your project further by choosing something that can be an easy win, a first successful project of many to come. vi. then like a play script or athletic roster write out the roles of your team specific to the project vii. next assign a date to each role, until you have a timeline for the project viii. plan a date to celebrate and asses the project afterward ix. remember be realistic, theres no reason you cant come back later and repeat the project with more complications.

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future
12. This retreat is different than most because youll continue to be an intentional community. You should already have some sort of rhythm to checking in with each other so we will not build in undue process in todays event. However, it is always helpful to bring the whole large group together at the end to review the day and observe the difficult, enjoyable and generative outcomes of the time together. Its also helpful to end with some silence. a. in the large group begin, when everyone is back together, thank everyone for bringing themselves. Acknowledge again the difficulty of discussions on race and privilege, and the long journey of becoming aware of whiteness and the myth of meritocracy. Then invite them to examine the last five hours together with five minutes of silence considering the following questions: i. What is the gift you still hold in exile? ii. What is something about you that no one knows? iii. What gratitude do you hold that has been gone unexpressed? iv. What have others in this room done, in this gathering, that has

b. Now invite folks to share their answer to one of those questions. Suggest a time frame for each person to share and model by sharing first within that allotted time. After the first couple people share, thank them and acknowledge their efforts to stick with one of the four questions and to stay within the time limit. c. A closing prayer by Mary Bethune. Born into a family of seventeen children whose parents had once been slaves, Mary McLeod Bethune became one of the most indefatigable voices for global equality and understanding in the immediate years before and after World War II. She was a self-assured educator, activist, and columnist and found in prayer one of lifes great comforts. Here she expresses her firm belief in the beauty of diversity throughout the world: Father, we call Thee Father because we love Thee. We are glad to be called Thy children, and to dedicate our lives to the service that extends through willing hearts and hands to the betterment of all mankind. We send a cry of Thanksgiving for people of all races, creeds, classes, and colors the world over, and pray that through the instrumentality of our lives the spirit of peace, joy, fellowship, and brotherhood shall circle the world. We know that this world is filled with discordant notes, but help us, Father, to so unite our efforts that we may all join in one harmonious symphony for peace and brotherhood, justice, and equality of opportunity for all men. The tasks performed today with forgiveness for all our errors, we dedicate, dear Lord, to Thee. Grant us strength and courage and faith and humility sufficient for the tasks assigned to us. ix

touched you? viii

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future Appendix: 1. Body Prayer: If you are able to stand, please do so, Keeping your feet shoulder length apart with a slight bend in your knees. Others can do these practices seated. L: breathe in the breath of God P: (to each other) breathe in the breath of God L: You are Gods works of art! God creates each of us by Christ Jesus to join him in the work he does, the good work he has gotten ready for us to do, work we had better be doing (from Ephesians 2.10) Keeping your feet shoulder length apart with a slight bend in your knees, reach up, stretching toward the sun and moon, and reflect on Gods imaginative work in forming you.

L:breathe in the breath of God P: (to each other) breathe in the breath of God L: God has carefully placed each part of Christs body right where God wanted it... (from 1 Corinthians 12:18) With your feet still rooted Reach toward those in front of you, stretching then drop your arms Turn to your right and reach your left hand across your body toward those behind you, drop your arms again and now turn left reaching the right arm towards those behind you, drop you arms a third time L:breathe in the breath of God P: (to each other) breathe in the breath of God L: Blessed is the one who is like a tree planted by streams of water bearing fruit in season, verdant leaves, bursting with life-eternal! (from Psalm 1:1-2) with your feet rooted imagine those streams sending nutrients through the souls of your feet into your ankles through the calfs and shins, the knees and hamstrings without bending over, loosely reach your arms to your waste hands facing up and fingers toward each other

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future like you were washing your self standing waste high in that stream, guide that nutritious energy of Gods living Spirit over the rest of your torso and face now return your arms gently to your sides L:breathe in the breath of God P: (to each other) breath in the breath of God L:Then the Angel showed me Water-of-Life River, crystal bright. It flowed from the Throne of God and the Lamb, right down the middle of the street. The Tree of Life was planted on each side of the River, producing twelve kinds of fruit, a ripe fruit each month. The leaves of the Tree are for healing the nations. Never again will anything be cursed. The Throne of God and of the Lamb is at the center. Gods servants will offer God service worshiping, they'll look on Gods face, their foreheads mirroring God (from Revelations 22:1-2) Rapidly rub your hands together to get them warm, then let your hands rest on your face and notice the lines around your mouth, your eyes, your sinus. Cup your hands over your ears. Standing straight, raise your hands just above the crown of your head and imagine the seeds of Gods spirit germinating within you, warmed by Gods light, watered by Gods mercies. L:breathe in the breath of God P: (to each other) breathe in the breath of God

L: Each of us is now a part of Christs resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountainhis Spiritwhere we all come to drink (from 1 Corinthians 12:13) Then close in prayer

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future Appendix 2. Daily Affects of White Privilege x
1. I can if I wish arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time. 2. I can avoid spending time with people whom I was trained to mistrust and who have learned to mistrust my kind or me. 3. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area which I can afford and in which I would want to live. 4. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me. 5. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed. 6. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented. 7. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is. 8. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race. 9. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege. 10. I can be pretty sure of having my voice heard in a group in which I am the only member of my race. 11. I can be casual about whether or not to listen to another person's voice in a group in which s/he is the only member of his/her race. 12. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods which fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can cut my hair. 13. Whether I use checks, credit cards or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability. 14. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them. 15. I do not have to educate my children to be aware of systemic racism for their own daily physical protection. 16. I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future
17. I can talk with my mouth full and not have people put this down to my color. 18. I can swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not answer letters, without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty or the illiteracy of my race. 19. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial. 20. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race. 21. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group. 22. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion. 23. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider. 24. I can be pretty sure that if I ask to talk to the "person in charge", I will be facing a person of my race. 25. If a traffic cop pulls me over or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race. 26. I can easily buy posters, post-cards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys and children's magazines featuring people of my race. 27. I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out-of-place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance or feared. 28. I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her/his chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine. 29. I can be pretty sure that if I argue for the promotion of a person of another race, or a program centering on race, this is not likely to cost me heavily within my present setting, even if my colleagues disagree with me. 30. If I declare there is a racial issue at hand, or there isn't a racial issue at hand, my race will lend me more credibility for either position than a person of color will have. 31. I can choose to ignore developments in minority writing and minority activist programs, or disparage them, or learn from them, but in any case, I can find ways to be more or less protected from negative consequences of any of these choices. 32. My culture gives me little fear about ignoring the perspectives and powers of people of other races. 33. I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future
34. I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking. 35. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having my co-workers on the job suspect that I got it because of my race. 36. If my day, week or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it had racial overtones. 37. I can be pretty sure of finding people who would be willing to talk with me and advise me about my next steps, professionally. 38. I can think over many options, social, political, imaginative or professional, without asking whether a person of my race would be accepted or allowed to do what I want to do. 39. I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race. 40. I can choose public accommodation without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen. 41. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me. 42. I can arrange my activities so that I will never have to experience feelings of rejection owing to my race. 43. If I have low credibility as a leader I can be sure that my race is not the problem. 44. I can easily find academic courses and institutions which give attention only to people of my race. 45. I can expect figurative language and imagery in all of the arts to testify to experiences of my race. 46. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color and have them more or less match my skin. 47. I can travel alone or with my spouse without expecting embarrassment or hostility in those who deal with us. 48. I have no difficulty finding neighborhoods where people approve of our household. 49. My children are given texts and classes which implicitly support our kind of family unit and do not turn them against my choice of domestic partnership. 50. I will feel welcomed and "normal" in the usual walks of public life, institutional and social.

Day Long Retreat for Multiple Small Groups: Race and Belonging to a New Future

Peter Block, Community: The Structure of Belonging (Community: The Structure of Belonging (San Francisco: Barrett-Koehler Publishers, 2008). ii Peggy McIntosh is associate director of the Wellesley Collage Center for Research on Women. This essay is excerpted from Working Paper 189. "White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming To See Correspondences through Work in Women's Studies" (1988), by Peggy McIntosh; available for $4.00 from the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women, Wellesley MA 02181 The working paper contains a longer list of privileges. iii Henri Nouwen, From Solitude to Community to Ministry, Leadership, 1995. iv John Perkins, A Quiet Revolution (Pasadena, Calif. : Urban Family Publications ; Wentzville, Mo. 1990) v MLK from speech Justice Without Violence, April 3, 1957 vi from www.learningtogive.org/materials/folktales Thunder Deputizes the Eagle. Kilpatrick, Jack F. and Anna G. Kilpatrick. Friends of Thunder: Folktales of the Oklahoma Cherokee. Dallas: Southern Methodist University, 1964. pp. 136-37. vii These questions come from Peter Blocks Community: The Structure of Belonging viii These questions come from Peter Blocks Community: The Structure of Belonging ix Copyright 2008 by James P. Moore Jr. From the book THE TREASURY OF AMERICAN PRAYER by JAMES P. MOORE JR., published by Doubleday, an imprint of The Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Read more: http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Prayer/2009/01/Prayers-from-African-Americansin-History.aspx?p=6#ixzz1qf1Ft0Og x Daily effects of white privilege by Peggy Machintosh http://www.amptoons.com/blog/files/mcintosh.html