UPDATE: This program has been fully booked! However, if you are interested in attending and were not able to secure a space, feel free to email education@cooshistory.org to be placed on the waiting list. 

Working on Our Whiteness: White People Helping Each Other to Understand and Interrupt Racism with Emily M. Drew from Oregon Humanities.

This Special Edition Tuesday Talk is free and will be held on June 14th from 7:00 PM – 8:30 PM at the Coos History Museum for in person attendance only. Doors to the museum will open at 6:30 PM.

*Registration is required and offered both online through this event page and in person at the museum. Registration is limited to 25 people, so please register at your earliest convenience and no later than June 13th at 5:00 PM. If registration reaches capacity and you would like to be placed on our waiting list, please email education@cooshistory.org. Please note that registrants’ email addresses will be shared with Oregon Humanities and we will also ask you to fill out their survey after you have participated in the program.

Please Read: This Special Edition Tuesday Talk is offered in partnership with the Oregon Humanities Conversation Project. Different from our traditional First Tuesday Talk programs, this talk is a discussion for and amongst community members, facilitated by Emily Drew. All are welcome, and we ask that those who register are prepared to actively participate in the community discussion.

This program will provide a space for open and honest dialogue where we will welcome and encourage all to listen to each other as well as discuss with each other the topic(s) at hand while following the lead of facilitator Emily Drew.

Facilitator: Emily M. Drew is an associate professor of sociology at Willamette University, where she teaches courses about racism, race and ethnicity, immigration, and social change. Her primary areas of research involve understanding how race and racism operate inside of institutions. She earned her PhD from Loyola University Chicago and publishes her research on institutionalized racism in academic journals. Drew’s work is driven by a long-term commitment to social justice struggles. She has been actively engaged in anti-racism organizing and activism for more than twenty years, and serves as a co-trainer of “Understanding Institutional Racism” workshops for Crossroads Anti-Racism Organizing and Training. She works as a strategic planner with public school districts, universities, and community-based organizations across the country to develop and implement long-term commitments to multicultural diversity.

Program Description: Amid today’s social uprisings, many white people have become acutely aware that racism shapes our communities in Oregon and beyond. Many of us have also begun realizing how poorly our experiences have equipped us to make sense of these times, and we have many questions. Join Emily Drew in a conversation that asks, How can we who are white show up as more effective and less damaging participants in struggles to interrupt racism in our community? How can white people engage in efforts to dismantle racism in ways that do not reproduce or place unfair burdens upon people of color to be our teachers? This conversation is for white people to reflect together on what it means to “do our work” as white people, which includes taking responsibility for one another, educating ourselves, and coming to view other white people as our partners—not competition—in developing antiracist identity.

If you’d like to learn more about Oregon Humanities and the Conversation Project, please click here: Oregon Humanities: The Conversation Project

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All events subject to change.