Unfiltering the Fury: A Workshop for White Managers on Reducing Racial Harm

Anti-Oppression facilitator Yejin Lee (she/they) is bringing back this 2021 workshop at the request of their community members - over 500 people attended this 3-hour workshop!

Disclaimer to white managers: this event description is intentionally comprehensive and long. If you are genuinely interested in the topic of this workshop, it would be wise to take the time to thoroughly read the whole page in order to assess whether this is the right space for you.

For decades (centuries, even), people of color have had to bear the weight of racist people, policies, systems, institutions, and cultures. With COVID-19, the rebellions following the M**der of George Floyd, and the multiple escalating colonial genocides, institutions have been in the midst of a kind of reckoning. But drafting and posting statements of solidarity and hiring a DEI staffer/consultant is not nearly enough to identify and shift the way racial power moves through people and systems within an organization. And it’s certainly not enough to protect your staff of color from internal, interpersonal, and organizzational experiences of racism.

Many white people who manage staff of color are making things worse for their team members without knowing it. In order to prioritize the need for immediate reduction of harm experienced by POC staff, Yejin Lee (she/they), an anti-oppression coach and facilitator, has put together a 3-hour workshop for white managers who need support on how to operationally stop themselves from causing or compounding racial harm in the workplace.

Yejin expects organizations to cover the cost using Professional Development funds. Yejin has an individual ticket type for those who do have to pay out of pocket, and will can offer a promo code for 30% - 50% off depending on the registrant's economic realities. If your organization refuses to cover the cost of this workshop and you'd like to request a discount, please email Yejin at [email protected] with "Promo for Unfiltering the Fury" as the subject title!

The workshop will not be very interactive: Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions through the Q&A feature in Zoom Webinar, and to submit questions in advance through the registration form, but there will be no small group sessions, and no opportunities to be visible/unmuted. Yejin will also create moments for guided solo reflection. Folks may use the chat to find community in one another, and to express confusion. But defensiveness and gaslighting of what Yejin shares will not be tolerated.

Participants will experience Yejin’s full range of emotions: Yejin will be intentionally expressing their fury, despair, impatience, sadness, and many other feelings as they move folks through the workshop. White managers need to get used to holding space for messy expressions of staff of color who keep accumulating experiences of racial harm. During this 3 hour workshop, participants will have the opportunity to sit with and reflect on their discomfort in response to Yejin's full expression of emotions. This workshop will serve as a safe practice space for participants to get used to contending with tension and discomfort without the risk of hurting anyone (including the facilitator).

Participants will receive lots of tips, but following the advice that is shared is not even the beginning of becoming an aspiring anti-racist: The work of anti-racism is forever work that Yejin is not doing for or with you. They are sharing critical perspectives and advice that white managers often miss, and therefore continue to cause pain upon their employees. Anyone who treats this work as a check-list is doing it incorrectly.

What this workshop is: This is a workshop to support white managers in immediately reducing the amount of pain they are unknowingly causing to members of their team. Yejin’s target audience is almost never white. But at the behest of her community, she is using her passion and skills and ability to concretely identify the operational ways in which racial power moves to hopefully help people of color move through their days a bit easier.

What this workshop is not: This is not a workshop to instruct white managers on how to deeply commit to a life of anti-racism. This is not a workshop to make space for white managers to process their feelings of defensiveness, shame, anger, or frustration. This is not a workshop where white managers can debate the realities of racism experienced by people of color.

Backup Date: The backup date for this workshop is Friday, December 20th. Yejin always utilizes backup dates to make space for the realities of being a human person who may experience illness, technical difficulties, personal emergencies, etc.

One of Yejin’s operating philosophies is that she does not have to be for everyone. This space is best suited for white managers who:

• Believe that white supremacy culture exists
• Want to commit to anti-racism but acknowledge they don’t always know how
• Can approach the workshop with some humility
• Want to learn how to hold space for expressions of rage from people of color
• Feel they’ve reached a plateau in how they can tangibly support staff of color
• Can identify some ways in which they have caused or compounded racial harm
• Understand that while this is a workshop for white people, it will center people of color in approach, format, and content

ABOUT YEJIN

Yejin Lee (she/they) is a queer, genderfluid, neurodivergent, and second generation Corean anti-oppression facilitator and coach who supports individuals and institutions in proactively choosing and materially committing to long-term transformation towards liberatory praxis. Yejin draws from their professional experiences in nonprofit community organizing, fundraising, governance, strategy, and operations, and also from her informal roles as staff advocate and generative nuisance. Presently, Yejin’s practice includes: (1) 1:1 coaching for multiply-marginalized sweeties who could use support in navigating patterns of hurt and oppressive harm in the workplace and beyond; (2) 1:1 leadership accountability coaching for those with positional power who wish to bridge the gap between their espoused values and their everyday actions; (3) organizational consulting & capacity-building services for organizations looking to take responsibility for the human choices and institutional codification required to steward meaningful equity & justice work; and (4) facilitation of generative conflict with an equity-based framework that accounts for power differentials.Yejin is a lifelong student of abolition, anti-colonialism, anti-imperialism, disability justice, and anti-fascism. She is passionate about integrating care, wholeness, and directness into all spaces, and invites softness, lightness, and play when needed and appropriate!

Event Venue

Online