The Transformative Power of UNtraining
By AV Board Member Janet Howley
In January 2021, I had the privilege of participating in the first phase of a six-month course —
UNtraining White Liberal Racism — offered by The UNtraining organization co-founded by Rita Shimmin, Ashby Village’s consultant on our DEI plan. The mission of the course is to provide white people with tools and practices to bring awareness to their white supremacist conditioning. This course, along with the news of 2021, was a life-changing experience for me.
The course normally meets in person, but with COVID, the 10 students in our group met on Zoom. Even on Zoom, we all became friends and supporters of each other. We were challenged to engage in educating ourselves about our whiteness and to practice having different kinds of conversations about when we learn. Our leaders – two capable women – made us feel safe, not judged, and helped us to work on our guilt as we went through the exercises and coursework. The work was both challenging and empowering, and it integrated a Multi-dimensional Consciousness practice. This practice helped us to open our hearts to the space of basic goodness (a term meaning the quality of belonging and love that we heard throughout the course) and to seek the basic goodness in our world. We were asked to engage in a multi-dimensionality practice 10 minutes a day, and this practice was critical for me to be able to do this work without guilt, with an open heart and mind, and to appreciate how America has come to be the place it is. We were also asked to keep a journal and to write what came up for us around white conditioning, racism, and our reactions and emotions.
We read one book, which I highly recommend,
Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in The Cafeteria? by Beverley Daniel Tatum. It is a tremendous resource in understanding racism in America and the impact it has on people of color. Other readings and the coursework helped us to understand the ways in which we as white people are institutionally separated by invisible structures and policies -- even learning different versions of history and about the lives of people of color – with no natural way to get to know each other and our cultures more genuinely. We came to understand that racism is not just how black and white people interact, nor is racism just about misconceptions that white people hold about the treatment of African Americans, but that racism also includes different perceptions and experiences among African Americans and people from different ethnicities and races.
We learned how to lean into our awareness, appreciating each other, and that we can hold the pain of racism and the core issue within basic goodness to challenge the isolation of white conditioning. We were challenged to bring the conversation of racism back to ourselves rather than talking about racism as “out there”. We were warned that we would feel resistance, which I certainly did, but practicing multi-dimensionality helped me as I sought to find the goodness in all of us – something that is not easy for me!
I realize now that white people have been shielded and, for the most part, have not recognized the extent of our white privilege, the lived experiences of people of color, and what racism has done to the culture of America. I highly recommend this course and the work that goes along with it. Read more about the course at
www.untraining.org.
Janet Howley has been on the Board of Ashby Village for nearly four years, serving as Treasurer. Since 1987, she has worked in the field of Affordable Housing in the Bay Area. Janet also serves on the Board of Lifelong Medical Care, a federally qualified health care agency that provides high quality health, dental, and social services to underserved people of all ages.
Published February 1, 2022