Confronting White Grievance Symposium 2024

Saturday May 18th, 2024 10am - 3pm EST
Via Zoom

Join us to understand more about the history of white grievance, how it is showing up today, and what we can do about it.

At the core of the racial backlash that has been brewing in the United States—especially after the election of Donald J. Trump as president in 2016—is white grievance.

Certainly, white supremacy culture and whiteness play a vital part in creating the conditions that have revealed how much of our seeming racial progress was more an illusion than a reality. But it is the examined and unexamined grievances that are deeply held by a number of white Americans that led them to support a wholly unqualified man for our nation’s highest office. It is those deeply held white grievances that form the backbone of the Make America Great Again movement and have led to a rematch in 2024 between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

The inability to address white grievances directly not only impacts people of color but all people, as we see the language of our current racial justice movements co-opted by the racist right wing.

This year's symposium will go deep into the heart of unearthing white grievance with a keynote by Hajar Yazdhia, Ph.D., whose groundbreaking work in The Struggle for the People's King reveals that the modern-day roots of this current iteration of white grievance started in the Reagan years and progressed.

Our plenary includes longtime anti-racist stalwarts Tim Wise, Debby Irving, Chris Crass and Paul Marcus, who will address how white grievances show up in their work with white people, as well as offer real-time strategies for confronting white grievances in our communities.

This year's workshops will be focused on takeaways that can be used immediately as well as ideas on relational building in our communities as we work to weaken white grievances. Workshop offerings will be announced May 1, 2024.

For safety and accessibility reasons, this spring’s symposium will be held virtually on May 18, 2024. The keynote and plenary session will be recorded for registrants who aren’t able to attend.

Keynote Speaker

Hajar Yazdiha

Hajar Yazdiha is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Southern California and faculty affiliate of the USC Equity Research Institute. Hajar is an expert on the racialized politics of inclusion and exclusion, examining the forces that bring us together and keep us apart as we work to forge collective futures. She is author of the book, The Struggle for the People’s King: How Politics Transforms the Memory of the Civil Rights Movement with Princeton University Press. She is also a public scholar whose writing and research has been featured in outlets including The New York Times, Time Magazine, LA Times, NPR, The Hill, and The Grio.

Plenary Speakers

Tim Wise

Tim Wise is among the most prominent anti-racist writers and educators in the United States. He has spent the past 25 years speaking to audiences in all 50 states, on over 1500 college and high school campuses, at hundreds of professional and academic conferences, and to community groups across the country.

Wise has also trained corporate, government, entertainment, media, law enforcement, military, and medical industry professionals on methods for dismantling racial inequity in their institutions, and has provided anti-racism training to educators and administrators nationwide and internationally, in Canada and Bermuda.

Wise is the author of nine books, including his latest, Dispatches from the Race War (City Lights Books). Other books include Under the Affluence, Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority and Colorblind (all from City Lights Books); his highly-acclaimed memoir, White Like Me: Reflections on Race from a Privileged Son, (recently updated and re-released by Soft Skull Press); Affirmative Action: Racial Preference in Black and White; Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections From an Angry White Male; and Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama.

Named one of “25 Visionaries Who are Changing Your World,” by Utne Reader, Wise has contributed chapters or essays to over 25 additional books and his writings are taught in colleges and universities across the nation. His essays have appeared on Alternet, Salon, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, The Root, Black Commentator, BK Nation and Z Magazine among other popular, professional and scholarly journals.

From 1999-2003, Wise was an advisor to the Fisk University Race Relations Institute, in Nashville, and in the early ’90s he was Youth Coordinator and Associate Director of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism: the largest of the many groups organized for the purpose of defeating neo-Nazi political candidate, David Duke.

Wise has been featured in several documentaries, including two from the Media Education Foundation. “White Like Me: Race, Racism and White Privilege in America,” which he co-wrote and co-produced, has been called “A phenomenal educational tool in the struggle against racism,” and “One of the best films made on the unfinished quest for racial justice,” by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva of Duke University, and Robert Jensen of the University of Texas, respectively. "The Great White Hoax: Donald Trump & the Politics of Race & Class in America" features Wise explores how American political leaders of both parties have been tapping into white anxiety, stoking white grievance, and scapegoating people of color for decades to divide and conquer working class voters and shore up political support.

Wise also appears alongside legendary scholar and activist, Angela Davis, in the 2011 documentary, “Vocabulary of Change.” In this public dialogue between the two activists, Davis and Wise discussed the connections between issues of race, class, gender, sexuality and militarism, as well as inter-generational movement building and the prospects for social change. More recently, he appeared in Chelsea Handler's Netflix documentary Hello Privilege, It’s Me Chelsea on white privilege and racism in the United States.

Wise appears regularly on CNN and MSNBC to discuss race issues and was featured in a 2007 segment on 20/20. He graduated from Tulane University in 1990 and received antiracism training from the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond, in New Orleans. He is also the host of the podcast, Speak Out with Tim Wise.

Debby Irving

Debby Irving brings to racial justice the perspective of working in non-profit organizations and education for 25 years before understanding racism as systemic or her own whiteness as an obstacle to grappling with it.

Despite attending diversity workshops and even heading a diversity committee during these years, she struggled to make sense of racial dynamics she could feel but not explain. At the age of 48, a Wheelock College graduate school course titled Racial and Cultural Identities finally gave her the answers she’d been looking for, launching her on a journey of discovery. Debby now devotes herself to working with people exploring the impact whiteness can have on perception, problem solving, system design, culture shifting, creating racially diverse work teams and communities, and individual and collective human development. Her New York Times bestseller, Waking Up White, tells the story of how she went from well-meaning to well-doing. Her book, workshops, keynotes, community dialogs, TED Talk, online videos, blog, and frequent media commentary have become staples in the national discourse on the role of “good” white people in perpetuating racism. A graduate of the Winsor School in Boston, she holds a BA in History from Kenyon College and an MBA from Simmons College.

Paul Marcus

Paul Marcus is a white anti-racist activist, educator and consultant. He served as Executive Director of Community Change, Inc. a Boston-based antiracist organization for 16 years and then worked as CCI’s lead trainer seven years.

His own journey has led him to continually examine the limitations theideological lenses he carries with him as a straight, white, male in a society that structurally privileges people with those identities. Foundational to all of his work is making visible the systemic reality of racism and other forms of oppression. You can’t challenge something if you don’t know it exists.

He co-taught and taught the “History and Development of Racism in the U.S.” at Boston College for 16 years and taught “Dynamics of Racism and Oppression” at the Simmons School of Social Work. He also coordinated the “Reading Frederick Douglass Project” for the Vermont Humanities Council. In addition, Paul co-facilitates men’s groups in a trauma resolution and education program that explores root causes of intimate partner violence, focuses on healing past trauma and developing attitudes and behavior that will support respectful intimate partner relationships in the future.

Paul has extensive experience planning and conducting workshops and trainings for wide variety organizations and communities. He has worked with organizers and educators from all across the country exploring and challenging the role of white people in perpetuating and maintaining white supremacy, racism and white privilege.

Paul lives in Concord, VT with his wife and colleague, Patricia Shine.

Chris Crass

Chris Crass is one of the leading voices in the country calling for and supporting white people to work for racial justice and men to work for feminism.

He’s a social justice educator who leads political education courses and workshops on courage for racial justice, feminism for men, class analysis, lessons from past movements, and creating healthy culture and leadership for progressive activism. He works with community groups, schools and religious/spiritual communities to develop leadership and momentum for social justice action.

He was a founder of the anti-racist movement building center, the Catalyst Project, and helped launch the national white anti-racist network, SURJ (Showing Up for Racial Justice). Rooted in his Unitarian Universalist faith, he works with religious and spiritual communities to help build the Religious Left. He is a leader in the growing national network of efforts to organize and support white men working for racial, gender and economic justice. He is the author of Towards Collective Liberation: anti-racist organizing, feminist praxis, and movement building strategy and Towards the “Other America”: Anti-Racist Resources for White People Taking Action for Black Lives Matter. He lives in Louisville, Kentucky, with his two kids. You can learn more about his work at www.chriscrass.org.

Location action-based workshops to follow. Stay tuned!

We are looking for sponsorship support for this event. If you would like to sponsor this event, please reach out to jake@communitychangeinc.org