Dismantling Racism- “Perfectionism”
The reFORM staff has been examining how racism, Whiteness, and supremacy live in ourselves, our bodies, and our work. Part of that effort has been to slowly examine how we embody, experience, and uphold characteristics of White supremacy culture.
We are using Dismantling Racism: A Workbook for Social Change Groups, by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun, ChangeWork, 2001, as a guide in this process (you can find the document we’re working with here). We have taken the “antidotes” to each characteristic as articulated by Jones and Okun, and morphed them to be more specific to the work we do. We are then taking a month or more to work with each White supremacy culture characteristic by incorporating those statements into our teaching, learning, and thinking.
- We practice appreciation, for ourselves and our bodies, our colleagues and their bodies, our clients and their bodies
- We make sure that work and efforts are appreciated, we recognize effort and attention over results
- We are about learning, we practice acknowledging that we are learning as teachers, and we practice reminding clients that this is a forever learning process
- We expect that everyone will make mistakes and those mistakes offer opportunities for learning
- We recognize that “mistakes” sometimes lead to positive results, how can we learn from the wisdom of our mistakes?
- When offering feedback, we aim to always speak to the things that went well before offering correction