Workshop Series on Racial Ally Building to be Held at the Baha’i Center

Baha’i Community Center
of New York City
Press Release – 06 January 1998

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Valerie Rutstein (212) 312-3796

Released: January 6, 1998

Title: Workshop Series on Racial Ally Building to be Held at the Baha’i Center. 

A workshop series offered by Healing Racism, Inc. will be held at the New York Baha’i Center on February 6-8, 1998. Through readings, videos, lectures, discussions and group activities the 12 sessions will examine the root causes of racism and analyze its public manifestations.

Mrs. Betty Turko, the workshop facilitator, explains that this program takes the approach that people are not inherently racist. Racism and prejudice are things that we are taught and therefore can be untaught. Mrs. Turko is a trained facilitator of Healing Racism, Inc. and also heads an organization called Getting Interracial/Cultural Families Together (GIFT) in Lakewood, N.J.  She is African-American, and her husband is Caucasian.

Session topics are as follows:

Part A: How good people are conditioned to participate in the mistreatment of others

Class 1- Exploring the concept of inferior/superior races
Class 2- Racial prejudice versus racism– understanding the difference.
Class 3- Keys to perpetuating oppression- the cycle of racial conditioning.
Class 4- The disempowerment of male children–the cycle of conditioning male children to participate in oppression.

Part B: How the disease of racism is manifested

Class 5- Stereotypes and unconscious racism–how they shape our thinking and emotional reactions.
Class 6- Acting out– what happens when people act out racial conditioning.
Class 7- Institutionalized racism–making one’s racial prejudices law.
Class 8- Internalized oppression.

Part C: Healing racism: a beginning

Class 9- Reclaiming our cultural heritage–a pathway to oneness.
Class 10-The oneness of humanity– unity in diversity.
Class 11- Ally-building as a way to heal.
Class 12- The imperative of dismantling racism.

Healing Racism, Inc. is a national not-for-profit organization unaffiliated with any religious organization whose mission is to promote the recognition and the internalization of the reality of the oneness of humanity by developing a national network to educate citizens to recognize racism and the internalized oppression of racism; to heal the disease and the wounds of racism

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