Racial Equity Learning Series

NAS, in partnership with Enrich Chicago, a nonprofit dedicated to racial equity in the arts, is proud to introduce a three-part series on racial equity which provides tools to advance your understanding of incorporating equitable approaches on a personal, group and organizational level.

This series seeks to provide a systemic context for the dynamics of race and racism in arts and culture through:

  • Advancing a shared understanding, vocabulary, and analysis for exploring race and issues of systemic oppression;
  • Engaging you in applying a power analysis and building an understanding of the dynamics of dominant culture within institutions;
  • Building an understanding of institutions as sites of resistance and oppression, beginning to build structures for accountability, and catalyzing leadership practices and institutional change efforts.

You are also welcome to share this learning series with colleagues in your own organization. We ask that you not share them beyond that or post them on social media, but rather direct friends to the Enrich Chicago organization directly for inquiries about training and resources.

The questions and frameworks presented in this series are are relevant in a variety of equity contexts, however Enrich Chicago’s expertise and focus lies in racial equity and how it intersects with other aspects of identity, such as gender. NAS is exploring the addition of tools on disability and equity in order to offer a more comprehensive series.

When Do We Applaud?: Composing Race

“The function of art is to do more than tell it like it is– it’s to imagine what is possible.”
― bell hooks

Gaining a shared vocabulary to talk about race and systemic racism is an important prerequisite to joining the sector-wide movement in support of racial equity in arts and culture. In this first module, you will explore an introductory analysis of the historical construction of race and racism and begin to discern how this framework has shaped their lived experiences and their work in the arts.

Featured Videos:

  1. Welcome and Opening
  2. Acknowledgement & When Do We Applaud?: Composing Race
  3. Why Do We Lead with Race?
  4. What is Race?
  5. What is Racism? What is Anti-Racism?

Additional Resources:

  1. Race Matters
  2. Not Just Money
  3. PBS. “Race: The Power of an Illusion.” Los Angeles, California NewsReel. 2005. Episode Three: The House We Live In.”

Broad Strokes: Understanding Our Creative Context

El otro Mexico
― Gloria Anzaldúa

Using Tema Okun’s seminal text From Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Group and Gloria Anzaldúa’s The Borderlands/La Frontera: The Making of the New Mestiza as prerequisites, this module introduces the ideology of white supremacy – the ideology that produces and reproduces the structures that sustain systemic racism and oppression. You will also be introduced to one tool for understanding power and applying a power analysis. Focusing on an individual application, topics of discussion include internalization of racial superiority and inferiority, manifestations of white supremacy in our everyday cultural norms, and their impact on our self-concept. Visual artifacts will support the application of these tools and frameworks.

Featured Videos:

  1. Welcome and Opening
  2. What is the Ideology of White Supremacy?
  3. Who is Centered? Who is Marginalized?
  4. What is a Culture of White Supremacy?

Additional Resources:

  1. Tema Okun- White Supremacy Culture
  2. Barbara J. Love, Developing a Liberatory Consciousness
  3. Gloria Anzaldúa, The Borderlands/La Frontera: The Making of the New Mestiza
  4. Guante – “How to Explain White Supremacy to a White Supremacist”

(Re)visioning the Center: Toward Anti-Racist Institutional Leadership

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
― Alice Walker

Re-engage with the center/borderlands power analysis to conduct an institutional analysis and assessment of your institutional life, policies, and practices. Leveraging Enrich Chicago’s institutional assessment rubric for deeper reflection, you will work to identify institutional stakeholders and uncover areas of strength and opportunity for your institutional change efforts. Ultimately, you will start with your own leadership practices to produce a set of top-line priorities for organizational change before self-organizing into an accountability community for sustained, long-term support.

Featured Videos:

  1. TED Talk: Titus Kephar
  2. Welcome and Opening
  3. Center/Borderlands & the Role of Institutions
  4. Conducting a Power Analysis & Racial Equity Audit
  5. Racial Equity Audit

Recommended Resources:

  1. Equity in the Center, Awake to Woke to Work
  2. Dismantling Racism Workbook

Would you like to support Enrich Chicago’s mission to irrevocably change the racist systems in the art so that African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, and Native American (ALAANA) arts, ALAANA arts organizations, and ALAANA people thrive? Make a contribution.