Facilitating Racial Affinity Spaces: Building Bridges Across Difference

Racial affinity structures have become an increasingly common strategy for working toward racial justice within schools, organizations, and collaboratives. This workshop explores the nuance and intricacy of how to establish and host these types of spaces when engaging a shared vision of equity, liberation, justice, and belonging in a multiracial/multicultural context.

Racial affinity structures support people to do their own reflection, learning, growth, and healing with others positioned similarly in systems insufficiently designed to interrupt racism, white supremacy, political polarization, marginalization, domination (and other facets of oppression). These spaces support building relationships and processing what is most needed and meaningful for a group given their identities. When affinity spaces are created alongside ongoing individual work and thoughtful support to come together across differences of identity, conditions can be strengthened for a more honest and liberated multiracial/multicultural community.

In this workshop, participants will:

• Understand how racial affinity groups can support shared goals across racial differences.
• Identify strengths, hopes & fears about leading affinity groups.
• Learn conditions and approaches that support effective facilitation of affinity spaces while creating a humanizing experience that builds positive group dynamics.
• Gain strategies and resources to facilitate racial affinity groups in your context, including how to recognize and avoid common pitfalls.
• Bridge knowledge and understanding of racial affinity and intersectionality to develop a more expansive vision of affinity beyond race.
• Build connections with other practitioners facilitating affinity spaces across their organizations/communities.

Please note that this is not a racial affinity event; it is OPEN TO ALL racial identities.

“It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” – Audre Lorde, writer and activist

This workshop will be delivered in a live, 3-hour interactive learning session conducted online in Zoom. Attend the live session with facilitators and fellow participants and gain new knowledge and skills to bring back to your own context. Participants receive electronic versions of all resources and tools.

We intentionally focus on humanizing our virtual spaces. Our agenda flow enables personal reflection, interactivity, and connection (these workshops are not webinars), frequent screen and body breaks, and attending to learning, practice, and healing in community with people from around the country. Our workshops are bite-sized nuggets of knowledge, frameworks and tools that are delivered in a highly engaging way. This offering is great for:

• Practitioners who are responsible for leading and facilitating affinity group spaces to support equity work in their contexts.
• Seasoned equity and liberation-driven leaders looking to connect with other leaders outside of their organizations.
• Teachers, school leaders, non-profit, and advocacy group staff that are interested in starting racial affinity-based groups, but need support with how to begin.

We provide an advance draft of our slide deck 24 hours before the session and enable live transcription and closed captions during the live Zoom session. Our sessions are recorded and can be accessed for up to 30 days after the course concludes, barring any technical difficulties.

Schedule: Thursday, March 13, 2025 | 9:30am–12:30pm PT | 12:30-3:30pm ET

Workshop fee: $250/registration

You will receive a password-protected Zoom link and any other pre-reads and resources prior to the event via email.

Registration by credit card on Eventbrite is our preferred method. We are a small (but mighty) organization and processing and collecting check payments for our events has a high administrative impact.

Please visit our registration page on our website for information on paying by check or purchase order and our cancellation and registration transfer policy.

Event Venue

Online