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Building Bridges Across Differences to Meet Social Action Goals: Being and Creating Allies Among People of Color
Author(s) -
Suyemoto Karen L.,
Fox Tree Claudia A.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
american journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.113
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1573-2770
pISSN - 0091-0562
DOI - 10.1007/s10464-006-9048-1
Subject(s) - privilege (computing) , white (mutation) , sociology , race (biology) , health psychology , action (physics) , social psychology , ethnic group , people of color , racism , minority group , white privilege , african american , public relations , gender studies , psychology , political science , public health , medicine , law , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , nursing , quantum mechanics , anthropology , gene , ethnology
Although challenges of anti‐racist work are most commonly framed in relation to White people and People of Color, there are significant challenges involved in creating allies across minority racial groups. This article describes our experiences within a community organization aimed at training anti‐racist culturally sensitive K‐12 educators. As Asian American and Native American facilitators within a group of facilitators of color who were predominantly Black, we describe our experiences of relative marginalization and our (mostly failed) attempts to create change within the organization to be more inclusive of the perspectives, experiences, and needs of non‐Black people/students of color. We contextualize these experienced conflicts in relation to race hierarchies, the “divide and conquer strategy” and the maintenance of White privilege. We offer reflections for how racial minorities engaged in anti‐racist education could be better allies and how organizations might better foster environments that contribute to the creation of these alliances.