My new anti-racism community
I went through a lot of books, and had accumulated a lot of theoretical knowledge of racism and anti-racism work. But I knew I wouldn’t get any further on my own, that I would need to put myself into more of a teaching situation. I needed to have someone who could point out mistakes and challenges in myself and my actions that I wasn’t seeing, and who would follow that with corrective guidance. Basically, I didn’t want to step out into active anti-racism work before I had someone give me the once over, not just for readiness, but for safety of the people of color I’d be working for and with.
The George Floyd murder accelerated my work, as it did for so many, and I got lucky on the first venture: I found Lace on Race on Facebook. Lace Watkins is a Black activist and social worker whose strategy to “lessen and mitigate harm endured by black and brown people, perpetuated by white people” is to work with white people (overwhelmingly women) to deconstruct and recondition themselves so they will be safe and effective anti-racists. She created LoR in 2018 as a community where that work could happen.
Lace on Race characterizes itself as a “safe-ish” community. That means that the participants are supposed to exhibit safe behavior at all times, while the issues, prompts, conversations will almost certainly be provoking, even triggering. The ethos of LoR is “kind candor”, with all conversations based in love and solidarity. The community expects of each walker regular and thoughtful engagement with the 1-4 posts presented each day. There is an concurrent onboarding for newcomers of almost 50 articles, starting with the essential guidelines and proceeding to topics like relational ethics and white women and oppression. Finally, the space is also “free-ish”; financial support is not required, but all members are strongly encouraged to self-determine an appropriate contribution to support leadership and maintain the community.
As you can see, Lace on Race is not a place for casual connections and actions. It’s not a page to “follow” and then react to with like/love/angry emojis. (In fact, reacting to posts is the only prohibition.) It’s a place for resolute and reliable work and growth, both within the community and out in the world. I’ve grown more in a week at LoR than I did in a year of reading (I read hundreds of books a year so that’s not small potatoes). If you think that’s a match for you, please join me at Lace on Race. You can also read many of the articles at www.laceonrace.com.