Racial Healing Workshop: How to Facilitate Affinity Groups at Retreat Centers
On November 8, Amy Burtaine and Michelle C. Johnson led a racial healing workshop on facilitating affinity groups at retreat centers. This Community Call explored hands-on best practices and how to apply those practices in a retreat center context.
Through the Racial Healing Initiative, the RCC is working alongside retreat centers to build capacity across the sector toward racial equity. Affinity groups are part of the RCC’s commitment to disrupt systems of oppression and catalyze our collective healing and liberation.
In order to preserve the intimate and vulnerable space of this Community Call, the workshop was not recorded; but we invite you to review the call notes and explore additional resources available directly from our guest facilitators.
About Amy Burtaine
Amy Burtaine is an equity trainer with over 20 years of experience leading training, workshops and facilitated dialogues on equity, inclusion, and social justice. She works with trainers, organizers and community and institutional leaders across the U.S. to educate, activate, and promote organizational change. Amy is committed to exploring how power and systems of oppression have kept us from organizing for justice and engaging in the work of collective liberation. She is the co-author of The Facilitator's Guide For White Affinity Groups.
About Michelle C. Johnson
Michelle Cassandra Johnson is an activist, social justice warrior, author, anti-racism consultant and trainer, intuitive healer, and yoga teacher and practitioner. She has led dismantling racism work in many settings for over two decades and has a background and two decades of practice as a clinical social worker. Michelle’s work centers on healing from individual and collective trauma, coming back into wholeness and aligning the mind, body, spirit, and heart. Learn more at https://www.michellecjohnson.com/race-equity
Being Present in the Body
Michelle opened the space by inviting us to go into our breathing, to touch base with our bodies, and notice how we were feeling. She asked us to check in with ourselves and to set aside analysis—to simply let ourselves be present and fully embodied in the moment.
Several invitations she shared with us during this time:
Let your body breathe deeply. Come back to your breath. Take the time to really connect with your breath.
Notice how you are and where you are.
Notice your spirit, however you imagine or know it to be. How is it?
Focus on a question you have about holding affinity spaces, or a question you have about racial healing and justice. Once you have a hold of your question, set an intention for the meeting.
What gifts do you want to receive from this time together? Bring a prayer, wish, hope, or desire into your awareness and uplift it.
Racism is rooted in the body, so the body needs to be part of the healing process.
Settling the nervous system is an integral part of affinity group work.
What Is an Affinity Group?
In an affinity group, people who share the same racial identity meet on a regular basis to address the challenges specific to their group. While racial affinity groups temporarily separate us, the ultimate goal is to build the skills and perspectives needed to bridge racial separation; to unify in antiracist purpose rather than be divided by racism. Affinity groups are an invaluable tool for consciousness-raising, healing from racialized socialization, and ongoing skill-building.
The Importance of Affinity Spaces
BIPOC people and white people have different work to do when it comes to racial healing, dismantling systems, and fighting oppression—which is why affinity groups are useful. Affinity groups are temporary containers where participants can have space to breathe and engage openly and authentically—without perpetuating harm.
But affinity spaces should not be isolated, they must be connected to a larger purpose or goal.
Ask yourself why you want to host an affinity group. Your retreat center’s desire to form an affinity group needs to be tethered to broader shared values or a shared vision.
Anchor the “why” to an intention. For example: Do you want to engage in a transformative justice process? Do you want to respond to white supremacy? Do you want to contribute to harm reduction? What is your primary focus and what does success look like?
BIPOC Affinity Spaces
In affinity spaces, BIPOC people have a place where they don’t have to hold space for white-bodied people or their emotions. BIPOC people have their own space to heal, express, and do their own work.
Affinity spaces help BIPOC people understand their role in dismantling racism/racist systems.
The experience is like a deep exhale—tears, laughter, and conflict may all come up.
BIPOC people have internalized the effects of racist systems, organizations, and history. These effects show up even within BIPOC spaces.
The affinity group is a place of safety. BIPOC people may need extended time in their affinity group to share, process, feel, and simply be.
White Affinity Spaces
The “well-meaning white person” never talks about race, never engages in self-reflection on internalized racism, white supremacy, or internalized superiority. White-bodied people need to engage in race analysis, root-cause analysis, understanding historical factors, systems, and structures. There’s a need for white people to do this racial healing work, but not to do the work in front of BIPOC folks or at the expense of BIPOC folks.
Affinity groups help white-bodied people learn how to create community with each other.
Engaging in the process is a journey, not a cure.
White affinity groups need to be a brave space—a space to make mistakes, learn compassion, and call each other in. A space where mistakes won’t harm BIPOC folks.
White affinity spaces are complex—don’t throw a novice into facilitation.
There are specific patterns you can expect to show up in a white affinity group:
Someone is likely to play victim.
Someone is likely to try to redirect the focus (what about sexism, poverty, etc.).
Someone is likely to focus on action steps—asking, “What do I do?” as opposed to engaging in the deep inner work.
History is full of white-bodied people in closed rooms making decisions for others, and we need to break that cycle. White affinity groups should tell people about the work they’re doing.
Coming Back Together
After separating into affinity groups, how do you come back together into a shared space?
Start with a deep breath, a centering moment. Ground people in their bodies.
Then invite people to speak about what they experienced. Facilitators may also choose to take the lead in coming back together, to speak about larger themes that emerged.
For white people, there needs to be an emphasis on honoring the transition between spaces. White-bodied people are often eager to do an immediate check-in (prompted by anxiety or fear), and this can create a burden for BIPOC folks.
Consider what the group needs. A prompt can help direct the flow, but be open to holding the space without need for an agenda. Does the group need to laugh, storytell, reflect, process? Be open to the “unfolding” of the space.
Takeaways from Community Responses
Relationship is an antidote to the dominant culture. Affinity spaces are meant to be transformative, not transactional.
Open your affinity group spaces to stories and storytelling. Relationship-building is an important part of building trust.
When creating affinity groups for staff: How do organizations roll that out, and should it be mandatory or volunteer?
It’s culture-shift work. Some people will align with the shift, and some will not.
If your staff feels resentful about being there, it can make the work harder.
Think about the risk of having people opt out and explain to your employees why it’s important to attend. Make it about humanity. There will be resistance, but think about how you meet that. State the intention, the purpose, the commitment and devotion to it.
Dealing with big emotions in white affinity groups: It’s not that white people can’t have emotions, but coach people to communicate through them. Don’t pull focus from BIPOC people who also need to express themselves in that space.
Sometimes white people don’t see inner work/listening as an action step, but it is. If we have more capacity for internal reflection, that benefits our external, everyday interactions.
Resources
Michelle C. Johnson’s book A Space For Us offers guidance for structuring affinity group spaces for BIPOC people. It will be available for purchase in August 2023. Amy Burtaine’s book The Facilitator's Guide For White Affinity Groups offers guidance for structuring affinity group spaces for white people. It’s available for purchase now through Indiebound.
Notes
Follow the link below to access additional call notes and materials.
