Antiracism discussions at work

[Boethius]

In some of my previous posts I have mentioned spending time struggling with Critical Race Theory. In particular, I am an academic who belonged to a racial affinity group for over a year reading a variety of books on these topics. One thing that is incredibly striking about the conversations is that the more you engage with them the "deeper" they bring you into yourself.

This is very much unlike other cultural topics -- climate change, for example, where the conversation is likely to revolve around the strong scientific consensus that change is happening, some of the political proposals for keeping global warming under control, and some relatively modest changes we can make in our lives to help do our part as individuals.

With CRT you can start at the level of interpersonal interactions between white people and POC, go down a level to internal thought processes (implicit biases), then descend into the level of emotions and unhealed trauma, push down into the level or morality and politics, and finally plunge all the way down to metaphysics and theology. In fact, as a Christian I can say that nothing has helped reconcile me to my Christian faith as thoroughly as has engagement with CRT -- if I am guilty of racial sin simply by virtue of being white, as CRT strongly leads one to believe, then from what quarter can I hope to receive any amount of redemption or salvation? My point is that discussions that take CRT as the framework can quickly spiral into incredibly sensitive territory (hence all the admonitions against "white women's tears").

I do not think that most of what I listed above are appropriate topics for the workplace, even in spite of the fact that many institutions and schools are holding these sorts of conversations among their employees. I don't think anyone at work really needs to hear about how I came to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, I don't think I need to reshare childhood wounds and traumas that have very much informed my views on race and redemption (Robin DiAngelo herself relates her brutally painful childhood to her relationship with race), and I don't see the value in hashing out my personal position on incredibly divisive political questions (like the appropriate interpretation of the slogan Defund the Police).

So seeing all of this laid out, what are some healthy boundaries for engaging with CRT at the workplace in a professional manner? I'm thinking of things like "I don't feel comfortable discussing my childhood traumas at work". In many ways, I'm asking about the situations under which it is in fact appropriate for a white person to remain *silent* about their relationship with race in order to avoid professionally inappropriate oversharing. I know that CRT explicitly says that "silence is violence" but I again think this is a divisive slogan (remaining silent when a coworker is being racially harassed is unethical but a certain level of emotional restraint and hence silence is professional). Thoughts?

[Consept]

I dont really know too much about CRT but i get the gist of it from what youre saying. If you think about it on a wider scale especially where youre from (im guessing America) there is a real issue with race, both underlying and occasionally or quite frequently it bubbles to the surface. But its carried within probably everyone in America (and most other countries) maybe just in different ways, the fact that you dont even feel comfortable talking about it is testament to that. 

So the question is how do you get past these issues? keeping quiet about them or not addressing them in healthy ways wouldnt really be a solution. i understand maybe you dont want to talk about them at work but i cant see another environment where you would go out of your way to discuss these issues. Also understand just because you want to keep silent about them, other maybe poc's may have to deal with the underlying bias' of other people in different but consistent ways. 

If you as an individual had trauma it would it would make sense to address these traumas through therapy or whatever other healthy ways, mostly involving shining a light on your fears and traumas, you of course wouldnt get passed them by staying silent and not opening up about them. This does not change when its extrapolated onto a population, the result is just more people suffer on both sides of the fence. Maybe CRT is not the best way, i dont know enough to have an opinion on it, but i think having this general conversation between all races is what will heal the ongoing trauma and progress your society. America has a lot of violence, oppression, hatred and all kinds of things in its past, it was founded on a genocide that was only a few hundred years ago, there is still hatred actively going on, on the fringes of society, it will take time and effort to heal all of this.  

[Boethius]

Maybe you're right that I should be less sceptical of these conversations, given that they have the capacity to bring healing to ridiculously complicated and painful topics. I do think we're gonna at least stumble our way through quite a bit of our history & politics via these conversations.