Karen Buys leading; 11 participants at the Flemington Presbyterian Church
There was no reading required for this first meeting of the new year. A schedule was handed out.
All meetings are on Wednesdays from 10:00 AM to 11:30 AM, and readings are from “White Fragility” by Robin DiAngelo
January 15 FPC No readings
January 22 FJCC Foreword, Introduction, Chapter 1
January 29 FPC Chapters 2 - 4
February 5 FJCC Chapters 5 - 7
February 12 FPC Chapters 8 - 10
February 19 FJCC Chapters 11 - 12
February 26 FPC TBA
March 4 FJCC TBA
March 11 FPC TBA
March 18 FJCC TBA
FPC: Flemington Presbyterian Church Parish House, 10 E Main St.
FJCC: Flemington Jewish Community Center library, 5 Sergeantsville Rd.
This first meeting was to review and reflect on our previous discussions and what we had thought about over our hiatus. What had struck us a meaningful or challenging over the interim.
Karen mentioned an interesting thought; I can’t find a reference for it, but when I googled it, I was corrected.
“White men think people was to hear what they think; white women think people want to hear what they feel.”
I would recommend that anyone interested google the phrase; you will see many articles of interest; here’s the top one:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/17/magazine/white-men-privilege.html
After our meeting, Karen sent out a summary of what we did during the meeting, and I can’t think of a way to improve on it, so I’ll just include it here.
This is a quick rundown of what we discussed yesterday for those who missed the class and a link to the implicit bias test we talked about.
We spent some time talking over last fall’s class, and what stood out for us, and how the class helped us. A number of people talked about seeing what was around them with new eyes, being more aware of the inequalities and racism and paying more attention to that.
We watched the 6th of the Levar Burton short videos (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hwW1nSlZVJA) which brought up a discussion of how minorities feel isolated in groups of white people. It also brought up the issues of not speaking up when witnessing a racist attack and how that affects the victim. We neglected to talk about the effect of not speaking up on the bystanders - how that impacts their humanity.
We watched a 15 minute video on the history of housing discrimination in the US (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_sCS2E8k5g), with particular emphasis on the FHA/VA loans, and how that has affected the racial wealth gap. If you did not get to see this, I would highly recommend it as it discussing what has been affirmative action for whites for decades by the government.
Finally, here is the link to the implicit bias test - https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/. It can be surprising to see how you score on the various tests, and it can be very helpful in making you more aware of what your unconscious brain is doing to your decisions and actions.
Next Week: “White Fragility"
Peace,
— Duncan Taylor
