Between fall 2022 and fall 2024, the Southwest Conference had several groups participating in the ASDIC Dialogue Circles. Participants met for 13 weeks in the winter of 2022/23 along with several other Southwest Conference people and the ASDIC leadership team located in Minnesota. Among them were SWC clergy Donna Cavedon and Randi Walker. The dialogue moved quickly from an introduction to what author Joe Feagin calls the “white racial frame" and its connection to the structures of racism in our society, to an invitation for active, self-reflective exploration of our participation in this frame as well as introducing strategies for disrupting it. Even though we had been involved in anti-racism training and work for several years, this dialogue was extremely helpful. After it was over, Donna and Randi had an occasion to meet for lunch one day and found themselves wishing for a way to build support systems for doing this work in the Southwest Conference in a more sustained way.
The idea emerged for using the UCC framework of Communities of Practice for doing this work. Donna and Randi took the training to facilitate such a group, and the invitation went out to all the people who had participated in the ASDIC dialogue circles. Donna and Randi played dual roles, as both facilitator and participant within the Community. It was important for us to be able to continue the conversation after our participation in the ASDIC dialogue circles and not merely facilitate the conversation. This aspect continues to be of primary importance to us as we continue our own development within the Community of Practice. An important aspect of our working within this community was ensuring that the participants had also done significant work on the topic in their own lives prior to each monthly session. This significant work was a springboard for our ongoing growth, individually and collectively.
We ended up with a group of 5 people, all white folks, who wished for more sustained conversation and ways to go deeper. We also shared a desire to get better at identifying racism when we encounter it, and knowing what to say or what to do when the situation arises.
Our sessions began and ended with moments of prayer, silence, and reflection. We held each other as we began to remember and tell each other about those times when we had failed to see and respond appropriately to racism. We used those moments as case studies, played the roles and practiced different outcomes. It did not take us long to come to trust each other and hold each other as we reviewed these painful moments. We came out after 7 months more aware and more competent, though far from finished with the process. We started to practice skills the ASDIC dialogues had only briefly introduced. Some of us were able to repair broken relationships, some of us were able to better understand what had happened and how our personal roles interacted with systemic structures. Each month we ended the session by saying what we wanted to do during the next month, and the next session, we began by checking in with each other about how it had gone. Being accountable to each other was important in those moments when we wanted to shy away from something we knew we needed to do, but which would be difficult. Sometimes our plan was simply to learn something new, but
Sometimes it was to have a difficult conversation, or to make a significant change. Randi reflected that “It made a difference to me to know that a group of caring people would listen to me tell my story without judgement and make every effort to hold a space for me to figure out what to do about myself.”
As we return to the Community of Practice work in September, we welcome anyone in the conference who has already done some anti-racism training but longs to go deeper and become more competent. The group meets each month on the second Thursday 5:30-7:30 PM Arizona Time by Zoom. We also agree to pay $250 which goes to the Anti Racism work of the Southwest Conference.