Join us on Tuesday September 1, for Session 3 of Community Learning on Race & Discrimination, with past AWNY Co-President, Kate Lee:
Dear AWNY Community,
We invite you to join Kate Lee, past AWNY Co-President, to learn together about racism and discrimination in the US and Australia. Facilitated like a book club (over Zoom), you are invited to read designated texts for group discussion.
Our hope, over the course of these sessions, is to explore key texts and authors in the United State and Australia, and that by learning with each other, we may sharpen our insight into the current crisis, and understand more about racism and how it relates to ourselves, our families, communities and our two countries. After these three sessions we will look at the Uluru Statement (dates TBD).
(**this event is open to men and women, and while most people will dial in from the US, we also extend the invite to friends and family in Australia)
RSVP to katelee.newyork@gmail.com for Zoom and links to articles. Be sure to include which sessions you will attend.
Cost: Free
COMPLETED: Session 1. Tuesday, July 7, 6-7.30pm (EDT). (8am Sydney, Wednesday July 8)
- Read Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Case for Reparations, The Atlantic, 2014
- Read Aileen Morton-Robinson’s, chapter 1: STILL CALL AUSTRALIA HOME: Indigenous Belonging and Place in a Postcolonizing Society from The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty
- Look up the terms implicit prejudice, symbolic racism, and modern racism, and consider their definitions
- Look up the history of the implicit association test, a psychological measure that’s aim is to measure how implicitly prejudiced a person is. You can take the test here.
COMPLETED: Session 2. Tuesday, August 4, 6-7:30 pm (EDT). (8am Sydney, Wednesday August 5)
- Read White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism
- Read Aileen Morton-Robinson’s, chapter 2. THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT: Britishness and White Possession from The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty
Session 3. Tuesday, September 1, 6-7:30 pm (EDT). (8am Sydney, Wednesday September 2)
All readings are short but require time for personal reflection. Please read the below and come to the meeting with your reflections ready to share with the group
- Read Aileen Morton-Robinson’s, chapter 3. BODIES THAT MATTER ON THE BEACH from The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty
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Read Tema Okun’s ‘From White Racist to White Anti-Racist: the Life-long Journey’ and reflect on where you are in your journey and why
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Read The Characteristics of White Supremacy Culture From Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun, ChangeWork, 2001, and answer the discussion questions at the end.
Please email if you need access to Aileen Morton-Robinson’s The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty or White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism (this can be downloaded for free from the NYPL).
Working on racial bias is not easy work, but in this session we offer a space that we can grapple with these important issues and how they impact our personal, communal and public lives. We hope you will join us.
Kate Lee has worked in remote Aboriginal communities, and has written about whiteness, post-colonial tensions and culture shock in community cultural development. In New York City, she has been an arts-integrated educator in Title 1 Underserved Schools. The organization she works with is actively anti-racist. Kate has spent a lot of time considering the similarities and differences in issues of whiteness between Australia and the US. You can see more of Kate’s work here.
AWNY | Australian Women in New York 