I Can't Believe We're Still Workshopping this Shit: Race and Privilege at Bryn Mawr

When we began planning our final projects and knew it was some combination of activism with an element of presentation to the Bryn Mawr community, I immediately thought of a workshop.  Though it was tricky to come up with all the activities, create discussion in multiple ways so that people were comfortable, plan for all the logistical elements, relate everything back to our classes, and be wrapped up in one hour, I was lucky enough to work with four other really enthusiastic, creative, and intelligent group members.
We began our workshop with a really brief introduction and guidelines.  We wanted to mention some of the topics we learned in class to plant seeds about what we would be discussing as well as create some structure.  Many of our audience members may have been familiar with similar guidelines, but we thought it would be a good idea to have people listen for a couple minutes to settle down after the intermission.  For people who hadn’t been to a workshop or event like this before, we wanted to put into practice Delpit’s ideas about being explicit about codes.  We also asked 360 members to removed their name tags to remove the barrier/wall between us and our guests.
Our ice breaker, which involved pairing up with a stranger and assuming why they were there, was about verbalizing the assumptions we make about people (based on race, clothing, etc) without actually knowing them.  This related back to some of our journal prompts in the Cannery about identity and how we see ourselves, how others see us, and the impact this has on us.  Though some people said the activity was uncomfortable for them, most people did not offer up any wrong assumptions made.  I know in my trio both my partners were somewhat racially ambiguous and I found myself assuming that students of color there were probably from affinity groups, while white students were probably friends of 360 students.  Even though I, as a white person, am interested in talking about race, I often assume other white people aren’t, that they must have some other reason for wanting to come.  However, it did turn out that both of my partners did identify as white and were friends of 360 students.  Voice was an important aspect of this activity because we need to voice our assumptions (whether privately to ourselves or to others) before we can begin to challenge them.
Our next activity, trivia, was to briefly educate people in a fun way that didn’t make people feel embarrassed.  The idea of making things “fun” and being very strategic about our tone in all our activities stemmed from an article Sdane sent us about how to talk to people about privilege, without making them mad or defensive (article link:mhttp://everydayfeminism.com/2012/12/how-to-talk-to-someone-about-privilege/). We genuinely thought that our trivia questions were pretty tough, but in retrospect I should not have been surprised to recognize that generally one or two people from each group knew at least one of the answers through their experiences either as someone who works in admissions, or studies Bryn Mawr history, or if they had just been very observant to other aspects of the presentation.  We had originally hoped to incorporate more questions about Bryn Mawr’s history, but because of time constraints we decided to cut some questions in hopes that people would get the information from the timeline (created by Jomaira, Sasha, and I for Jody’s class) just outside of the teaching theater.  We wanted to include questions about Bryn Mawr’s history, because as we learned in Barb’s class from reading The New Jim Crow, racism has evolved throughout America’s history, so even though some may think Bryn Mawr or the US is “post-racial”, we wanted to draw connections between the past and now to show the implications of racism today.
In the step forward activity, we wanted to move people from an energetic fun group activity to a more reflective activity while still having the full group participate.  It was a little more crowded than we anticipated, but we switched up the format so that instead of having one line, we would have two lines of people facing each other (we didn’t want to put one line behind another, because then everyone in the front line would have to turn around to see the movement in the back line).  Because I was nervous and excited, it was hard for me to let silence sit after each statement, to give people a chance to process and look around, but I tried my best to leave that space.  That was one component of the workshop we tried to be very cognisant of: even though we had all these great ideas and only an hour, we wanted to make sure there was some silence (or at least quiet) to give people time to think and process.  We tried to have a range of step forward statements to demonstrate how complex and widespread privilege is, and also wanted to have statements that connected back to our classes in broad ways.  For example, the statement about having a place you feel comfortable on campus was influenced by the theme of niches, and the statements directly about school and books were intended to demonstrate that education is a privilege.  As a group, in our planning, we discussed the school to prison pipeline and how prison is a very unlikely reality for Bryn Mawr students, or students at other elite schools, though many of us have done things that could have resulted in jail time.  We decided it would take too much time to explicitly explain/discuss the school to prison pipeline in our workshop, but thought that naming education as a privilege was a good first step.
The next activity was a silent discussion with the following prompts: The racial climate at Bryn Mawr is..., In regards to Perry I have questions about…, I’m privileged at Bryn Mawr because or I’m not privileged at Bryn Mawr because..., The most important parts of my identity are... .   We felt the prompt about racial climate was a good topic because this discussion is often silenced at Bryn Mawr, or had behind closed doors.  The prompt about Perry House was intended for people to ask questions about this “walled” space on campus, without being completely accountable (there is some level of anonymity with silent discussions) for questions which they may be scared to ask aloud.  A silent discussion includes an overarching theme of all our classes: silence, because the activity is completed in silence, voice, because people are expressing their thoughts and questions, and vision, because people are literally using their eyes to have these conversations.  After the silent discussion we broke into small groups in hopes of that structure being less intimidating and giving a chance to speak for people who wouldn’t speak in the full group.  Once we brought things back to the full group the conversation was really rich and could have gone on for much longer, but hopefully in cutting it short we motivated people to keep talking outside of the workshop.
Our closing activity, where everyone went around the room and said “I am now ready to...” was intended to create a feeling of forward motion.  Although the workshop ended, these conversations should still continue.  It was so great to hear people say they were ready to do concrete things like talk to their friends at home about race, or suggest this type of activity to the customs committee, or to document Bryn Mawr’s history.  Although talking about things doesn’t always get results, it’s definitely always a great starting place.  In my work in the dorms as a CDA (Community Diversity Assistant), many students have asked for a space to talk about race, and in this workshop we provided that space and possibly an example of how to continue these conversations.  It may seem small, but sometimes “taking meaningful action” into the world just requires exactly what we did: come up with a topic and structure, bring a diverse group of people together, and have them share ideas.  We definitely did work hard on this project, but it was enjoyable and I can see more workshops or presentations like this occurring in my future. Right now, (as a few people said yesterday) I’m ready to take a break, but I know next semester these topics will resurface and I will be one of many people to rejoin these conversations.