BUILDING THE WORLD WE DREAM ABOUT
A Tapestry of Faith Program for Adults
WORKSHOP 9: IGNORE-ANCE OF WHITE IDENTITY
BY MARK HICKS. GAIL FORSYTH-VAIL, DEVELOPMENTAL EDITOR.
© Copyright 2010 Unitarian Universalist Association.
Published to the Web on 9/29/2014 10:34:14 PM PST.
This program and additional resources are available on the UUA.org web site at
www.uua.org/religiouseducation/curricula/tapestryfaith.
WORKSHOP OVERVIEW
INTRODUCTION
To consider "Whiteness" . . . is not an attack on people, whatever their
skin color. Instead, (it) is an attempt to think critically about how white skin
preference has operated systematically, structurally and sometimes
unconsciously as a dominant force in American—and indeed in global
society and culture. — Dr. Gregory Jay, contemporary author and
educator
This workshop continues the examination of White privilege and its relationship to
White identity. The readings, activities and discussions in this workshop may well lead
to emotional reactions such as defensiveness, guilt, or shame from participants,
particularly participants who identify as White or of European ancestry. Some
participants may want to emphasize the importance of being "color blind" as the
solution to racism. Others may use ethnic identity such as being Irish-, Italian, or PolishAmerican to separate themselves from the burden of White identity. Invite and
encourage participants to consider the ways in which White identity is imposed by the
larger society. Ask: how does White privilege apply even for White people who don't
think of themselves as White?
Before leading this workshop, review the accessibility guidelines in the program
Introduction under Integrating All Participants.
GOALS
This workshop will:

Introduce the concepts of White identity and "Whiteness"

Provide a variety of activities and conversations that deepen participants'
understanding of Whiteness and its impact on their day-to-day lives.
LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Participants will:

Define Whiteness and White identity

Gain knowledge and understanding of how Whiteness is normalized in their dayto-day lives and in the culture at large.
WORKSHOP-AT-A-GLANCE
Activity
Minutes
Welcoming and Entering
0
Opening
10
Activity 1: Putting "White" on the Table
15
Activity 2: Discovering Whiteness
35
Activity 3: Whiteness Defined
15
Activity 4: Serial Testimony
35
Closing
10
Alternate Activity 1: Exploring Race in Film 20
SPIRITUAL PREPARATION
If you are a White person, meditate or journal about how you discovered your
"whiteness." What role has Whiteness played in your life?
If you are a Person of Color or from a group marginalized by race or ethnicity, how did
you learn about "Whiteness?" How has Whiteness impacted your life?
WORKSHOP PLAN
WELCOMING AND ENTERING
Materials for Activity

Sign-in sheet and pen or pencil

Name tags for participants (durable or single-use) and bold markers

Optional: Music and player

Optional: Snacks and beverages
Preparation for Activity

Arrange chairs in a circle and set out name tags and markers on a table.

Optional: Play music softly in the background.

Optional: Set out snacks and beverages.
Description of Activity
Greet participants as they arrive.
OPENING (10 MINUTES)
Preparation for Activity

Practice reading the chalice lighting aloud.

Review participant evaluations from the previous workshop. Discuss with your
co-facilitators any patterns or concerns that have emerged. Prepare to briefly
share feedback with the group, while keeping confidentiality.
Description of Activity
Light the chalice or invite a participant to light it while you read these words from Harlon
Dalton:
Why do most White people not see themselves as having a race? In part,
race obliviousness is the natural consequence of being in the driver's
seat. We are all much more likely to disregard attributes that seldom
produce a ripple than we are those that subject us to discomfort. For
example, a Reform Jewish family living in, say, Nacogdoches, Texas, will
be more acutely aware of its religious/ethnic heritage than will the Baptist
family next door. On the other hand, if that same family moved to the
Upper West Side of Manhattan, its Jewishness would probably be worn
more comfortably. For most Whites, race—or more precisely, their own
race—is simply part of the unseen, unproblematic background.
Share feedback from the previous workshop evaluations. Acknowledge shared patterns
and observations to give participants a sense of how people in the group are thinking
and feeling about the program. Be conscientious about maintaining confidentiality. One
technique is to say, "Some people felt... .," rather than saying "One of you felt... .". If
time allows, invite participants to share one-minute observations or new insights they
may have gained since the last workshop.
Remind participants of the spirit of their covenant.
Share the goals of this workshop.
ACTIVITY 1: PUTTING "WHITE" ON THE TABLE (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity

Leader Resource 1, Putting "White" on the Table (included in this document)
Preparation for Activity

Print Leader Resource 1 and familiarize yourself with it.
Description of Activity
Read the statements in Leader Resource 1, pairing the statement in the left-hand
column with the statement in the right-hand column. Invite participants to monitor their
feelings and thoughts as they listen to the statements.
Lead a large group discussion with these questions:

What feelings emerged for you as you heard the list?

Why do you think the mention of "Whiteness" changed the sentence?

How would your reaction be different if the word "Asian" or "Latino/a" were
substituted for "White" in the sentences"?
ACTIVITY 2: DISCOVERING WHITENESS (35 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity

Handout 1, Discovering Whiteness (included in this document)

Newsprint, markers, and tape
Preparation for Activity

Copy Handout 1 for all participants.
Description of Activity
Distribute and read aloud Handout 1, explaining that it is a first person narrative. Invite
comments, insights, and observations. Lead a discussion, using these questions as
guides:

What elements of Gary Howard's story help you get a better understanding of a
"White identity"?

How might Gary Howard's experiences, which took place in the 1950s, be
different today? How might they be the same?
Post a piece of newsprint and title it "White Identity." Invite participants to brainstorm
answers to the question, How would you describe a "White identity"? Explain that in a
brainstorm, all suggestions and ideas voiced are captured on newsprint with
commentary or discussion.
ACTIVITY 3: WHITENESS DEFINED (15 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity

Handout 2, Whiteness Defined (included in this document)

Brainstorming list from Activity 2

Newsprint, markers, and tape
Preparation for Activity

Copy Handout 2 for all participants.

Post brainstorm list from Activity 2.
Description of Activity
Distribute and read aloud Handout 2. Return to earlier definitions of "Whiteness" and
tease out any new insights or discoveries, adding them to the brainstorm list.
ACTIVITY 4: SERIAL TESTIMONY (35 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity

Workshop 2, Leader Resource 2, Serial Testimony Protocol (at
www.uua.org/re/tapestry/adults/btwwda/workshop2/workshopplan/leaderresourc
es/166044.shtml)

Newsprint, markers, and tape
Preparation for Activity

Review Workshop 2, Leader Resource 2.

Review the reflection group assignments you established for Workshop 2 and
make changes as needed.

Arrange for appropriate spaces for reflection groups to meet. If possible, groups
should meet in different rooms so as to avoid the natural tendency to eavesdrop
on other conversations.

Write on newsprint, and post:
o
What role has "Whiteness" played in your life? What came up for you?
o
Can you recall a time when awareness of "Whiteness" impacted you or
someone close to you?
o
How does the system of "Whiteness" operate in your congregation and
local community?
Description of Activity
Review Workshop 2, Leader Resource 2 with participants. Invite participants to move
into reflection groups you have determined in advance. Assign each group a space to
meet. Explain directions for the reflection groups, using these or similar words:
Choose a facilitator, a timekeeper, and a recorder. You have 30 minutes
for this discussion. Divide the time evenly by the number of participants in
your group. To foster a sense of inclusion, be sure that each participant
has the opportunity to speak and that every person keeps to the time
allotted for their "testimony." Begin with a quick round of introductions
(sharing first names) and then ask each person in turn to respond to the
posted questions. Be aware that people who are White, People of Color,
and people from racially or ethnically marginalized groups bring very
different perspectives to the notion of "Whiteness."
After 30 minutes, have the large group reconvene.
CLOSING (10 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity

Lined paper and pens/pencils

Taking It Home

Leader Resource 2, Instructions for the Journey (included in this document)
Preparation for Activity


Write this prompt on newsprint, and post:
o
What ideas were most interesting or challenging to you?
o
What powerful ideas, concerns, or puzzlements are you holding as a
result of this session?
Copy Taking It Home for all participants.
Description of Activity
Invite participants to spend five minutes writing feedback in response to the question
you have posted on newsprint.
Distribute Taking It Home and invite participants to do the suggested activities before
the next meeting. Read the instructions aloud and invite participants to ask questions.
Offer Leader Resource 2 as a closing and extinguish the chalice.
Gather participants' written feedback.
Including All Participants
Prepare a large-print version of Taking It Home.
LEADER REFLECTION AND PLANNING
Take a few moments right after the workshop to ask each other:

What went well?

What didn't? Why?

What do you think was the best moment of the workshop? Why?

Did anything surprise you?

Do we need to make changes in the way we work together?
TAKING IT HOME
To consider "Whiteness" . . . is not an attack on people, whatever their
skin color. Instead, (it) is an attempt to think critically about how white skin
preference has operated systematically, structurally and sometimes
unconsciously as a dominant force in American—and indeed in global
society and culture. — Dr. Gregory Jay, contemporary author and
educator
As you go about your everyday life, make note of the impact of White identity in your
surroundings. In which environments is Whiteness assumed to be the norm? Notice
manifestations of Whiteness in your congregation, your place of work or school, your
grocery store, beauty salon, neighborhood activities, and so forth. Record your
observations in your journal and/or compare notes with another workshop participant.
Obtain and watch the series What Is Race? (at
www.pbs.org/race/001_WhatIsRace/001_00-home.htm) on the PBS website. You can
purchase Race — The Power of an Illusion from California Newsreel website (at
newsreel.org/main.asp) (which also has a study guide and resources) or borrow it from
the UUA Video and DVD loan library (at
www.uua.org/documents/congservices/araomc/videoloanlist.pdf) or your public library.
ALTERNATE ACTIVITY 1: EXPLORING RACE IN FILM (20 MINUTES)
Materials for Activity

Film clips that show White privilege at work.

Computer or DVD player or projector
Preparation for Activity

Obtain movies from which to select clips. Possibilities include:
o
Crash (Don Cheadle, Matt Dillon, Sandra Bullock; Lions Gate Films; DVD
release September 2005)
o
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? (Spencer Tracy, Sidney Poitier,
Katharine Hepburn; Sony Pictures; DVD release February 2008)
o
Grand Canyon (Danny Glover, Kevin Kline, Mary-Louise Parker, 1991;
20th Century Fox; DVD release 2001)

Select short film clips that demonstrate White privilege. Possibilities from Crash
include scenes in which the White district attorney and his White wife are victims
of a carjacking or the scene where she feels unsafe while the Latino locksmith is
changing the lock. A possibility from Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? is the
scene where the father calls his editorial staff to confirm his daughter's
boyfriend's credentials. A possibility from Grand Canyon is the opening scene, in
which the White, affluent protagonist drives home after an L.A. Lakers basketball
game (objectified shots of Black athletes) along a deserted street, where Black
youths carjack him and an older man (Black) rescues him and chases the youths
away.
Description of Activity
Use this activity in place of Activity 3. Play the film clip or clips and invite discussion,
observations, and insights about ways in which the film illuminates White privilege and
White identity.
BUILDING THE WORLD WE DREAM ABOUT: WORKSHOP 9:
HANDOUT 1: DISCOVERING WHITENESS
I was born White and have been that way for more than 60 years. The first 18 of those
years can best be described as a period of "cultural encapsulation." (J. A. Banks, 1994)
Since I had never met a person who wasn't White, I had never experienced the "other";
race for me was a nonrelevant concept. In my youth, I had no conscious awareness of
anything that might be called "racial identity." Like water to a fish, or the air we breathe
(Tatum, 2003), Whiteness to me was the centerpiece of a constant and undifferentiated
milieu, unnoticed in its normalcy.
It wasn't until my senior year in high school that I discovered my Whiteness. A White
male friend, who was going out with an African American student from another school,
asked if I wanted to join them on a double date with one of her friends, also Black. This
was the first time I had ever been invited to dip my toes in the river of racial
consciousness. It was the first intrusion into to my white-washed world. I was afraid. I
was confused. I was curious.
As for most of my fellow White Americans growing up in suburbia in the 1950s, people
of color had existed only on the distant periphery of my social reality. "Amos and Andy,"
Tonto in "the Lone Ranger," and clips of civil rights activities on the evening news were
my only tenuous connections with the other America. And even those limited images
were, of course, coming through several layers of White media filtering, with all the
inevitable prejudice and racism intact.
This simple invitation to meet a new person, to go on a date with an African American
woman, shook loose one of the basic linchpins of my social isolation. It is interesting
that my initial response was fear. Fear is the classic White American reaction to any
intrusion into our cultural capsule. What will happen to me? Will I be safe? What will
other White people think of me? What will "the other" think of me? How do I act? What
do I say? Will I survive? I was overwhelmed by an emotional flood of narcissistic and
xenophobic trivia.
Reflecting back on this experience, I realize that members of the dominant group in any
society do not necessarily have to know anything about those people who are not like
them. For our survival and the carrying on of the day-to-day activities of our lives, most
White Americans do not have to engage in any meaningful personal connection with
people who are different. This privileged isolation is not a luxury available to people
who live outside of dominance and must, for their survival, understand the essential
social nuances of those in power. The luxury of ignorance reinforces and perpetuates
White isolation.
BUILDING THE WORLD WE DREAM ABOUT: WORKSHOP 9:
HANDOUT 2: WHITENESS DEFINED
By Dr. Gregory Jay, Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. March
17, 2005. Read this piece online.
"Whiteness... " is not an attack on people, whatever their skin color. Instead, [it] is an
attempt to think critically about how white skin preference has operated systematically,
structurally, and sometimes unconsciously as a dominant force in American—and
indeed in global—society and culture. Thus it ... examines how white skin preference
insinuates itself into the culture of communities of color as well, where we may find
everything from prejudice against darker skinned people within the community to
commercial practices of white-body imitation and surgery (nose jobs, skin creams, eyelid alteration, etc.).
At bottom, "whiteness" is an ideological fiction naming those properties supposedly
unique to "white people," properties used to claim that they are a "superior race" and
the "norm" by which others are judged. "Whiteness" is also—or above all else—a legal
fiction determining the distribution of wealth, power, human rights, and citizenship
among bodies denominated by this fiction. Historically, white people are an invented
"race," made up of various ethnic groups perceived to have a common ancestry in parts
of Europe and self-proclaimed to be superior biologically and culturally to other "races."
"White" was invented as a category when previous notions of national "races" (French,
German, English, Norwegian, etc.) were lumped together to create a single powerful
coalition. "White" is thus a political fiction that has been used by one social group to
harm and oppress others.
BUILDING THE WORLD WE DREAM ABOUT: WORKSHOP 9:
LEADER RESOURCE 1: PUTTING "WHITE" ON THE TABLE
Read these sentences aloud in pairs, pausing briefly between the two items in each
pair, and pausing again after each pair is read.
This is my best friend, Mandy
This is my best White friend, Mandy
I love green beans
I love green beans made by that White company,
Dole Foods
I live in the neighborhood of
Riverside
I live in the White neighborhood of Riverside
My husband is an engineer
My White husband is a White engineer
The Vice President of the United
States
The White Vice President of the White United
States
The clerk took my ticket at the
gate
The White clerk took my ticket at the gate
My son married a lovely woman
My White son married a lovely White woman
I graduated top of my class
I graduated at the top of my White class
BUILDING THE WORLD WE DREAM ABOUT: WORKSHOP 9:
LEADER RESOURCE 2: INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE JOURNEY
By Pat Schneider, from Another River: New and Selected Poems (Amherst Writers and
Artists Press, 2005). Used with permission.
The self you leave behind
is only a skin you have outgrown.
Don't grieve for it.
Look to the wet, raw, unfinished
self, the one you are becoming.
The world, too, sheds its skin:
politicians, cataclysm, ordinary days.
It is easy to lose this tenderly
unfolding moment. Look for it
as if it were the first green blade
After a long winter. Listen for it
as if it were the first clear tone
in a place where dawn is heralded by bells.
And, if all that fails,
wash your own dishes. Rinse them.
Stand in your kitchen at your sink.
Let cold water run between your fingers.
Feel it.
FIND OUT MORE
The UUA Multicultural Growth & Witness staff group offers resources, curricula,
trainings, and tools to help Unitarian Universalist congregations and leaders engage in
the work of antiracism, antioppression, and multiculturalism. Visit
www.uua.org/multicultural (at www.uua.org/multicultural) or email multicultural @
uua.org (at mailto:multicultural@uua.org) to learn more.