WHO WE ARE:
Formed in 2019, the Anti-Racist Working Group is a community of accountability that interrogates how racism is institutionalized and internalized. The group is composed of students and alumni from the Department of Dance who seek to: first, examine their own role as institutional gatekeepers within an educational system that has historically subjugated marginalized populations; second, confront how structural racism shapes dance history, curricula, and pedagogy; and, third, cultivate conscious-raising spaces that build resilience through self- and collective-care.
WHAT WE DO:
We bring embodied practices and lived experience into conversation with anti-racist thought and action to imagine new models for institutional change-making that challenge White patriarchal hegemony. The Anti-Racist Working Group operates through joint governance and programs based on the community’s needs.
The collective engages in mixed model programming, which has included educational workshops alongside small group dialogue spaces where participants gather around viewings, readings, and audio to discuss how the content translates to our experiences inside of dance classrooms within and beyond the University setting.
In addition to our ongoing educational workshop series, we invest our efforts in:
- Celebrating Black students, alumni, professors, guest scholars and artists connected to the OSU dance community through our social media solidarity platform #OSUDancers4BlackLives.
- Creating and maintaining organizational materials and resource lists (books, audio, video, trainings, etc.) to support learning.
- Activating new ways of working, teaching, and learning that are informed by anti-racist theory and practices.
- Establishing Affinity Groups where people come together in the community to learn around an identity commonality.
- Implementing collective governance models.
OUR COMMUNITY AGREEMENTS:
Community agreements help establish group expectations for dialogue and participation. Below are community agreements that the Anti-Racist Working Group has found meaningful in previous workshop environments, specifically UBW Summer Leadership Institute, Intergroup Dialogue, and The People’s Institute:
- Learned here leaves here, but what is said here stays here:
carry what you are learning forward but avoid retelling experiences that are not your own. Bring the learning, but leave the stories here.
- One Singer, One Mic:
Respect one speaker at a time. Please hold off on using the chat function while the presentation and activities are underway. write down your questions and comments as they arise and we will pause periodically to turn our attention to the chat together. If you are experiencing something that needs to immediately be addressed, feel free to send one of us a private message.
- Move Forward, Move Back / Share the Air:
We want to create spaces for all voices to be heard that would like to be heard. If you are hearing your own voice a lot, consider stepping back and listening for awhile.
- Listen for understanding, not debate:
We’re here to engage in a dialogue and seek to practice compassionate, active listening for understanding
- Assume nothing, ask questions:
Do not assume someone’s intent, background, or experience. Ask questions instead, to clarify. - Address impact regardless of intent:
If someone checks you on something you say, take responsibility to address the impact of what you say, rather than clarifying your intention
- Focus on Racism, Live in the discomfort:
This means not comparing and not side stepping. While the impact of, for example, misogyny, is important, profound, and intersectional, we are here today to talk about race.
- Don’t change the conversation because of discomfort:
If you’re uncomfortable, that is okay and in fact, it might mean that you are being challenged in a way that is ultimately useful. We ask you please to stick to the topic at hand. - The liberated zone is wobbly, call out uncertainty:
This might feel like shaky ground and that is okay. It is a useful step to acknowledge your own uncertainty.
- Reserve the right to change your mind & permit others to do the same:
Change is what we are after. - Challenge by choice:
means we may ask questions or provoke conversations that might be difficult or uncomfortable for you to have, and we hope that you will consider challenging yourself by engaging with them, while still considering your own wellbeing. Yes, it is important to have difficult conversations, but self preservation is also very important. - Challenge ideas, not people:
if someone says something that you think needs to be called out, call out what the person said, not who the person is.
We invite you to attend meetings with additions to the Community Agreements.