Girl Gang's Anti-Racism Book Club #2: White Fragility

Educating ourselves and providing a forum for discussion and reflection is a key part of our ongoing commitment to our community and increasing our role as activists. Girl Gang's Manchester, Sheffield and Leeds are pleased to launch our monthly Anti Racism Book Group, taking place online (for now!) on the last Thursday of the month.

It is long overdue that the focus and responsibility of anti-racist work was shifted away from black labour and onto white people. With this in mind, the purpose of this space is for white people, (who often view themselves as raceless, or exempt from the structures of white supremacy), to discuss and explore racism, white supremacy and actively anti racist work, honestly and openly- starting with themselves.

Whilst this is an inclusive space for all who want to attend, the goal is to remove black labour and minimise exposure to white people "catching up or expressing anxieties in their own personal journey. This group is open to all who wish to be there or feel the space would be beneficial to them, we just want to be open about what that might entail in terms of emotional labour for people of colour as we are aware some attendees may well be doing this work for the first time. 

 A book that reflects this for our second month is Robin DiAngelo's "White Fragility".

Anger. Fear. Guilt. Denial. Silence. These are the ways in which ordinary white people react when it is pointed out to them that they have done or said something that has - unintentionally - caused racial offence or hurt. But these reactions only serve to silence people of colour, who cannot give honest feedback to 'liberal' white people lest they provoke a dangerous emotional reaction.

Robin DiAngelo coined the term 'White Fragility' in 2011 to describe this process and is here to show us how it serves to uphold the system of white supremacy. Using knowledge and insight gained over decades of running racial awareness workshops and working on this idea as a Professor of Whiteness Studies, she shows us how we can start having more honest conversations, listen to each other better and react to feedback with grace and humility. It is not enough to simply hold abstract progressive views and condemn the obvious racists on social media - change starts with us all at a practical, granular level, and it is time for all white people to take responsibility for relinquishing their own racial supremacy.

The facilitator for this session will be Megan Marie Griffith. Sessions are discussion based led by people on their own educative journeys too rather than experts. 

We encourage people to engage in a critical reading of this specific book so we can discuss the potentials and possible problems of the concept.  Form your own opinion and then see what other people have had to say. A starting point could be to think about the fact that the book was written by a white author and whether this presents a problem or an opportunity. 

Many of the authors of the books concerning racism and racial justice which are selling extremely well have expressed a discomfort at profiting from tragedy at this current time. Whilst it it useful to have a copy of the book to annotate and come back to, you could borrow, buy second hand or listen to one book for free when signing up to an audible trial and donate the money you would have spent on the book instead. 

Book club is free to attend with an optional £2.50 donation (to support the work of Girl Gang (paying overheads and facilitators) and optional charity donation of an amount of your choosing. 

Each month we will use the event to raise money for a different racial justice charity in line with the content of the book. This months charity is Colours Youth Network, a network, event series and festival run by LGBT youth workers of colour to support QTIPOC to explore and celebrate who they are. 

Please book your tickets either way so we can send you the Zoom log in! The charity donation button allows you to select how much you would like to donate as we realise everyone will have different means.  

Open to people of all genders/races/sexualities/classes/disability inclusive - please let us know if you have any specific needs so we can try and make this space as positive as possible for all who wish to attend.

We can't wait to get stuck into this on the 30th of July at 8pm via Zoom.

Image by: Katie O'Rourke

We love to know who's in our gang! When people book tickets with us we ask some identity related questions so we can see who is attending our events. Knowing about all our differences and similarities helps us feel more informed when striving to create events and content which is more relevant to our audience. Collecting data serves a few functions for us:
1: We can keep an eye on who's in the room to brief facilitators if anyone has additional requirements or to ensure the session they are planning is relevant.
2: So we can be aware of underrepresentation and try to counter balance this where possible, (resources dependent as we are volunteer led.)

3: We can potentially use the data for future funding bids, which are some times catered to specific area's and/or audiences

This data is only stored on Tickettailor which is password protected and only used by one of our team. If you do not feel comfortable sharing this information with us, please simply write N/A in the boxes.