Racial Literacy Reading Groups

Over the course of the last year, I have enjoyed leading two reading group discussions among our Haverford faculty, the first being during the winter and spring of 2020 on Robin DiAngelo's White Fragility, and the second during the summer of 2020 on Ibram X. Kendi's How to be an Anti-Racist. In the summer of 2019, our DEI Director Brendon Jobs approached me with the idea and I immediately agreed. I had just attended a Race Institute Summer Workshop and had read White Fragility the spring before as part of a Race Institute alumni group organization. We felt at the time that White Fragility delivered the message of our community needed to reflect on and grapple with the most after a number of known racist incidents had occurred on our campus in recent years and our community's continuing challenge to meaningfully engage with race despite the excellent programming, speakers and opportunities members of our community were organizing. I was very nervous to help lead a reading of the text, but in my first reading, I found the messages the book directed toward its white audience regarding why it is so difficult for white people to talk about race so compelling, that I wanted to share it with others and work together to understand how white fragility manifested itself in our Haverford community. Our conversations were so productively challenging and appreciated by all the faculty and staff participants in the reading group that Brendon and I resolved to form another group, this time for X. Kendi's How to be an Anti-Racist. Brian Long, who had participated in the White Fragility conversations, was excited to join me in planning our discussion sessions and we set to work forming the basis for this group. The murder of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and the subsequent nationwide protests generated even more resolve amongst our teaching and staff community to engage with each other in how we can implement anti-racist practices and policies at Haverford and I hope that our discussions this summer lay the groundwork for meaningful anti-racist work in the fall. The plans are being made to continue our reading groups into the fall as well as establish a Haverford version of a BARWE (Building Anti Racist White Educators) chapter at our school.