Showing What We Tell: Facilitating Antiracist Education in Cross-Racial Teams

Abstract

Antiracist education seeks to interrupt relations of racial inequality by educating people to identify, name, and challenge the norms, patterns, traditions, structures, and institutions that keep racism and white supremacy in place. One norm and tradition of racism that antiracist practice seeks to interrupt is unilateral white leadership. This paper is based on an interactive workshop in which participants explore a training approach that both models and deepens antiracism work: facilitating in cross-racial teams. We offer a rationale for cross-racial facilitation and explore common challenges and how to work with them. These challenges include racial pitfalls for white facilitators and facilitators of color. Using an example from our work leading together cross-racially, we illustrate many of the dynamics that a cross-racial team must navigate. We discuss the pre- and postwork that is necessary for successful cross-racial leading from an antiracist perspective and offer tools and techniques for working together as a team and with your group.