EP 05: How can I share my experience as a person of color?
Dec 17, 2020In this session, we answer the question: How can I share my experience as a person of color?
Join us at the Inclusion 1st Project as we explore inclusion via the questions and discourse created by allyship in the Anti-racist Movement.
WHAT YOU'LL LEARN
- How you can create an open dialog with allies and share your personal experience as a person of color.
- How sharing experiences that can open people's eyes to the injustices that are happening to the people around them.
WATCH THE FULL SESSION
SESSION 05 TRANSCRIPT
Session Topic: How can I share my experience as a person of color?
Carrie: OK, so this next question is definitely related to how to engage black friends, but it's actually on the reverse. This is a person of color, so sometimes it's hard for people to relate to something because they don't know anyone who's experienced something. I'm a person of color and was thinking about talking about my own experiences with police brutality in hopes of trying to open up more conversations around police brutality. But I'm not sure if it is a good idea.
Carrie: And I would honestly say that it's absolutely a good idea. Any time that anyone wants to share an experience that happened to them in order to help other people understand and relate and connect more deeply. I think that that is super brave and super courageous work. And I totally give it all like all the thumbs up. I think that creating a safe space for yourself, doing it with trusted people, or doing it in an environment where you know that you're going to have the support that you need to have. The conversation is really important.
Carrie: So trying to set that up ahead of time. I think that this person may be in a leadership role, which means that it really is going to go even farther as a story where people can look and say, wow, that happened to this person, that happened to someone I know. I wonder how they felt about that. How does that make me feel? All of the things that you go through when you hear a story that you can connect to because of the person who's telling it. So I think that it's a great opportunity. And again, if you have an experience that you don't want to share, there's no shame or blame on that, because, again, everyone has a role and it's time to step up and to move this cause forward. And it can look so many different ways. But I think that this is a really beautiful way to help to bring people along and help people understand the impact and what it actually looks like that they can connect more deeply to it.
Kyle: Yeah, I agree, I think at the same time, Kerry said it's courageous, I think it's also a vulnerable place when you're coming to a point where you think you can be useful, but you're nervous. It's usually a good place, right?
Kyle: It's usually a place that you should keep going. And I hate to shit on you, but I pray that when you feel a place where you feel like, oh, this is something I could do to help. Right.
Kyle: I can create a shared understanding through my experience, through vulnerability breeds vulnerability. So when you share from a vulnerable, authentic place. It creates such an illustration for people to understand and to also give some other experience that might be shared. You know, the whole reason we have a story like the way we communicate is by taking the experience of anything like anyone else. Did you experience and if not, here's an example so that you can grow to be together for each other.
Kyle: I like I might have that same experience. And so it might be hard for me to understand, but it's even harder to understand if someone's not sharing that right.
Kyle: So I can understand it at all. Stepping up to share so that it is made more clear how I can empathize. So I think it's a great place if you are comfortable, when and if and how you can share that police view and don't feel like a learning tool for some people.
Carrie: Yes, I reiterate like if you feel like when you feel like you want to do how you want to, it's totally your call on this and there's no pressure to do anything. But if you feel called to do it, then do it and do it with the support of the people who you can trust that are surrounding you in that experience.
Kyle: And I want to say to whoever was asking this question, thank you for asking that question. Obviously, I've looked at all of the questions, but thank you for being vulnerable enough to even consider what it would be when you put yourself out there.
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