The White Noise Collective has been developing curriculum over the last ten years through numerous workshops and dialogues. While we are an all volunteer collective, and cannot say yes to every request, please reach out! We would love to talk more and potentially tailor a workshop for your group. Contact us for more information at whitenoisecollective [at] gmail [dot] com. All workshops are primarily designed for people who at some point in their lives have identified as experiencing both gender(ed) oppression and white skin privilege, but participation is open to everyone (see our FAQ section for more on this).
Here are the primary workshops we facilitate, which we offer both online and in the SF Bay Area, as well as at conferences and by invitation:
Solidarity or Savior Complex
How do we better understand the ways in which white supremacy culture is embedded into the legal system? What is the difference between solidarity and the charity/savior complex when working in court, legislative and/or community advocacy work? How can we strengthen our ability to recognize ways that power and privilege can play out destructively in our work through the savior complex, and how do we address the impact of these dynamics on the ways marginalized people are involved in their own protection and liberation? How do we move towards solidarity without compromising the urgency with which we need to fight unconstitutional laws, protect marginalized communities, and pursue freedom, justice and equal opportunities for all? In this interactive workshop, we will examine the framework of both concepts, work through examples, engage with guiding questions we can use to elevate solidarity in our own organizing work, and walk away with resources and new commitments.
Understanding the Intersection of Whiteness and Femaleness
INTRODUCTION
This is a “102-level” workshop designed to support those newer to conversations of racism and sexism in understanding the patterns of interaction between the two. It is open to all, but specifically developed to support people who are exploring the ways they have benefited from white privilege while also experiencing gender(ed) oppression. We will create shared definitions and use writing, art and group discussion to support each of us in a deeper exploration of the complexities of our intersecting and unique layers of socialization, current and historical survival strategies, costs of maintaining the system as it is, and ways we can commit to interrupting systems of oppression and subverting the ways we have been conditioned to behave.
EXPLORING PATTERNS AND MYTHOLOGIES
Drawing our inspiration from generations of anti-racist white women, we explore how internalized sexism and white supremacy impact our work for racial justice. This is an intermediate-level workshop for participants who have some working knowledge of systems of privilege and oppression. Through dialogue, interactive exercises, presentation, and Theater of the Oppressed activities, we collectively investigate patterns common among people socialized as both white and female, and how they may show up or limit the potential of our anti-racist work. We use critical media analysis and discussion to look at the historic and current mythologies of white women as virtuous victims that are used to justify violence against people of color, and co-create strategies for countering them.
Difficult Conversations
How do we approach the challenging conversations in our lives, whether it’s about confederate flags, cultural appropriation, Palestine/Israel, or racism and racial justice in general? At the end of every year, the White Noise Collective has offered a difficult conversations dialogue to support people who will be reuniting with family, old friends and different communities for the winter holidays. And there is never enough time to fully practice.
This workshop is an opportunity to dive in much deeper with structured time to practice a range of difficult conversations around highly charged racial issues. We share some basic skill-building tools in how to approach conversations, and explore scenarios relevant to the lives of participants. This includes examination of some of the ways that internalized sexism can impact our courageous speaking capacities. Small group work, role-plays, and Theater of the Oppressed techniques support seeing tough communication blocks in a new light. We’ll try out what feels challenging, in a relatively low-stakes and supportive environment, allowing ourselves time to debrief, reflect, and learn from each other.
White Women and Helping Professions in the Buffer Zone: Maintaining and Challenging the System
In this intermediate-level, interactive workshop, the White Noise Collective leads a guided exploration of what Paul Kivel terms “the buffer zone”, a range of jobs and occupations that structurally serve to maintain the wealth and power of the ruling class by acting as a buffer between those at the top of the pyramid and those at the bottom. With a focus on how people socialized as white and female have occupied and represented this terrain, we dynamically interweave examination of systemic analysis, historical patterns, iconic images, and our individual participation and insight. Drawing from Kivel’s analysis, the buffer zone serves a threefold function: taking care of people, keeping hope alive, and controlling people. How are white women socialized to fit into helping and caretaking professions that maintain the status quo, and what potentials and models exist for subversion within the buffer zone to shake the system towards greater equity and justice? This workshop includes dialogue, Theater of the Oppressed exercises, mini-lecture, and experiential activities to bring this structural analysis alive.
White Women in Food Justice: Maintaining or Challenging the System?
Are you passionate about food justice? Do you work at, volunteer at, or otherwise support a food justice organization in your neighborhood or community? Do you sometimes question if the food justice work you are involved in is only a band-aid solution to deeper, more systemic problems? In this interactive workshop, the White Noise Collective leads a guided exploration of what Paul Kivel terms “ the buffer zone”, a range of jobs and occupations that structurally serve to maintain the wealth and power of the ruling class by acting as a buffer between those at the top of the pyramid and those at the bottom. The buffer zone serves a threefold function: taking care of people, keeping hope alive, and controlling people.
In this workshop, we question to what extent our involvement in the food justice movement (in all its forms: food security, food justice, and food sovereignty) exists in the buffer zone. We focus on how people socialized as white and female have occupied and represented the buffer zone, especially in food justice work. We dynamically interweave examination of systemic analysis, historical patterns, and our individual participation and insight. How are those of us in the food justice movement maintaining the status quo, and what potentials and models exist for subversion within the buffer zone to shake the system towards greater equity and justice?
Spirituality and Cultural Appropriation
When white people practice yoga, Native American ceremonies, Buddhist meditation, West African drumming, or other spiritual practices from non-European cultures, what are the impacts? As Jarune Uwujaren points out in The Difference Between Cultural Exchange and Cultural Appropriation, “we have a responsibility to listen to people of marginalized cultures, understand as much as possible the blatant and subtle ways in which their cultures have been appropriated and exploited, and educate ourselves enough to make informed choices when it comes to engaging with people of other cultures.”
This workshop is offered to develop a shared understanding of cultural appropriation and its diverse impacts, directly informed by voices from BIPOC communities. We explore common patterns, effects on the community/culture of origin and why this topic is so highly charged with meaning. Through dialogue, engagement with written and video pieces, and creative activities, participants will be invited to consider our own histories and the meaning of cultural material in our personal spiritual paths, as well as how relationships, power and historical context can inform this critical conversation. We’ll end with some tools and questions to guide and support more ethical relationships with other cultures’ spiritual traditions and to develop intervention strategies to reduce harm on both individual and collective levels.
The Role of “White Womanhood” within Systems of Violence
#BlackLivesMatter has generated a movement moment that is visibilizing the destruction that state and police violence have on communities of color and is articulating how white silence and white complicity maintain these systems of violence. In this workshop with the White Noise Collective, we will explore specifically the narrative of white womanhood in upholding systems of violence–including the roles and complicities of white women in these systems. We will also examine the ways that white female socialization coupled with personal experiences of violence and trauma create barriers for white women to dismantle systems of violence. This workshop is designed from our experiences in this movement, and situated within a longer historical context. This workshop is offered at a more intermediate level, assuming that participants have a working understanding of systemic privilege, oppression, and socialization.
Both days use large and small group dialogue, individual journaling, video clips, and movement-based activities. In Day 1, we explore together the socialization of white women in society, and the ways that these expectations live in and through us (no matter how we negotiate our relationship with this identity). We will create space to explore our own experiences with common patterns of white female socialization that uphold systems of violence, including the virtuous vs. deserving victim narratives, the white savior complex, white women’s tears, cooptation by white women in restorative justice movements, and the centering of whiteness in the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Day 2 will be focused on developing subversion strategies, through a lens on both internal and external efforts.
Antidotes to White Fragility
What skills, tools and approaches are useful in encouraging white people to sustain balanced engagement with anti-racism/racial justice education and work? How can we cultivate resilience (as opposed to white fragility) in ourselves, our communities, and our movements?
White Fragility is defined by Robin DiAngelo as “A state in which even a minimum amount of racial stress becomes intolerable, triggering a range of defensive moves. These moves include the outward display of emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt, and behaviors such as argumentation, silence, and leaving the stress-inducing situation (2011).” Resilience is, in part, defined as:
1. Staying with the conversation
2. Giving and receiving information and feedback from facilitators and peers without becoming highly defensive, reactive, or shut down/dissociated for long period of time
3. Managing the guilt and shame that can arise in learning about the history and current reality of race and racism in the US.
This workshop explores the role of the body, community, spirituality, intellectual knowledge and other themes that you bring from your experience. We cover basic information about how the nervous system responds to perceived threats, and explore how to work with this toward greater resilience in moments of challenge.
This curriculum was developed as part of the MSW thesis research of White Noise Collective member Kat Roubos. Check out their website to learn more about their work, and read their thesis “Cultivating resilience: antidotes to white fragility in racial justice education” if you are interested!
Exploring & Transforming Internalized Messages of White Privilege and Gendered Oppression
A day-long Theatre of the Oppressed (and “Theatre of the Oppressor”) workshop to unpack experiences of internalized white privilege and gendered oppression. Our purpose is to address the many complicated conscious + unconscious barriers to working effectively for racial justice common among people socialized as both white and as female.
This intersectional dilemma:
For many of us existing or socialized at this intersection, it can be confusing to know when and how to “move up” or “move back” as racial justice allies and accomplices. Internalized messages from white privilege often “tell” us to take up space, that our ideas matter and are worthy, that we are right and entitled to time, leadership, attention and energy. Internalized messages from gendered oppression often tell us to become invisible, that our ideas are bad or worthless, that we are wrong and undeserving of time, leadership, attention and energy. As we become politicized and develop counter voices to these internalized voices of systemic privilege and oppression, we learn to share space and move back (to subvert white supremacy), or move up and assert ourselves (to subvert patriarchy). How do we know if we are acting from or relating to our internalized voices of privilege and oppression, or the counter voices we’ve worked to develop?
Theater of the Oppressed:
Using practices of Theater of the Oppressed, and adaptations called “Theatre of the Oppressor”; we will work with the specific TO tools: Body Demechanization, Image Theatre and Cop in the Head, to explore, embody, shake up and transform internalized voices of privilege and oppression.