ONLINE: White Folx Decentering Whiteness

Please email Susan Schulman for the Zoom link: susanschulman60@gmail.com.

Any Kehilla connected folks who identify as white, we’d love to have you, whether you’ve ever been to these meetings before or not! We work on de-centering whiteness at Kehilla — so that Kehilla is a more welcoming synagogue for people of color — and on becoming more aware of our own racism in order to dismantle it. At our meetings, we share feelings, build skills through experiential exercises and discuss actions. We also discuss homework articles and videos, which are encouraged-but-not-mandatory, to sharpen our understanding and analysis. These activities help us learn, grow, and build community together, in our work to uproot white supremacy.

Homework for July 28 below: highly encouraged but not mandatory.

Note that we are taking a brief summer break and not meeting in August. Our next meeting after July will be Wednesday, September 14, 6:30-8:30pm.

Why did our group vote to change our name? People of Color on Kehilla’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) Team brought to our attention that our previous name — “Folks with White Privilege” – doesn’t fully define what our group is doing: that we are working towards dismantling white privilege and decentering whiteness, so our name needs to reflect what our group actually represents. Please welcome our new name: White Folx Decentering Whiteness!

1. Article (not video): California’s Unprecedented Reparations Report Details 150 years of Anti-Black Harm, by P.R. Lockhart, 6/1/22, NBC News, 10 min. 
2. Video and transcript: “Policing the Womb”: Law Professor Michele Goodwin on SCOTUS, Anti-Abortion Laws & the Jane Crow, Democracy Now, 5/30/22, 20 min. (interview after leaked SCOTUS ruling but before final announcement, she knew what was coming).
3. Podcast: “When You Overhear Microaggressions”, Episode 87/Jewish Talk Racial Justice with April and Tracie, 5/5/22, 23min.Thanks to Gabriella Hensheimer for sending this.
4. American Racism and the Buffalo Shooting, by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, 5/15/22, New Yorker, 11 min.
5. The Lethal Logic of White Supremacist Violence, Retracing the descent of replacement theory into racial terror,  by Anthony Conwright, 5/19/22, African American Policy Forum, 13 min.
6. We Need Racial Solidarity to Restore Abortion Rights by Loretta June Ross, 6/28/22, YES Magazine, (4 min.) We Need Racial Solidarity to Restore Abortion Rights – YES! Magazine (yesmagazine.org)