by Haruo » Fri Feb 20, 2009 2:17 am
Both a little more on WRAP and the program of the Building Bridges Event can be found in the . Perhaps by looking at the Event program you can tell if it's similar to anything you have available in your Area or Region or whatever. I just sorta assumed in my insular (or is it parochial) Western Washington Way that all ABC regions or their subdivisions offered such get-togethers. As I mentioned, we used to have "Tools of the Trade" along similar lines in ABCNW (and I believe they still have it).
As far as being a bit uncomfortable with the title of WRAP, I would think something was wrong if it didn't at least raise a few red flags. I may find out differently tomorrow, but my impression going into it is not that it is meant to imply that only Whites (or "Euro folk", as we call them) need racial awareness training, but that the kinds/foci of awareness training that Whites are likely to need are quite different from the kinds Blacks, Asians, Hispanics, First Peoples, etc. etc. are likely to need. Our historical experience of the racism endemic in the culture is quite different, and we are often encouraged by the system to think that we have not been affected by racism (even if we are sensitized to how we, or our ancestors, have inflicted its effects on others). I'm quite interested to see if the training seems to me, in retrospect, to have been worth the effort of waking up early. (I'm a swing-shift worker, so getting up for a 9 am event on Friday and again for an equally early event on Saturday, on a weekend when I also have a song to sing (or three) on Sunday morning, is a lot to ask of myself, maybe more than I should. We'll see.
Haruo = Leland Bryant Ross
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