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Annotation to Previous Conversations
Dec. 8th, 2020 10:03 pmA while back, I posted about circling and there was a discussion of encounter groups in the comments. Specifically, that encounter groups aren't around so much anymore because putting a bunch of people in a room to have feelings at each other with inadequate facilitation tends to end badly.
Apparently circling isn't the only place they've made a rebranded reappearance. No, there's now something called "racial healing circles" which I spent an hour chasing down specifics on today. As far as I can tell, they are slightly more focused encounter groups being put forth by a number of social-justice-oriented foundations where you're all supposed to sit in a circle with a facilitator and talk about your racial feelings. They're explicitly not about dealing with systemic injustice, but rather are supposed to be a place where you all sit in a circle and talk about your racial feelings and promote *understanding* each other.
I don't have to describe all the obvious ways for this to go horribly wrong, right?
ALA-- yes, my very own professional organization-- has trained some people to facilitate these in libraries as a way of getting libraries to participate in more social justice stuff. Just a two-day workshop with some preparatory webinars, and you can be qualified to facilitate racial healing circles too!
The thing is, because the way this sort of disaster manifests is in the form of quiet lasting damage to the individuals hurt by it, the people running the workshops are never going to know the harm they're doing.
Apparently circling isn't the only place they've made a rebranded reappearance. No, there's now something called "racial healing circles" which I spent an hour chasing down specifics on today. As far as I can tell, they are slightly more focused encounter groups being put forth by a number of social-justice-oriented foundations where you're all supposed to sit in a circle with a facilitator and talk about your racial feelings. They're explicitly not about dealing with systemic injustice, but rather are supposed to be a place where you all sit in a circle and talk about your racial feelings and promote *understanding* each other.
I don't have to describe all the obvious ways for this to go horribly wrong, right?
ALA-- yes, my very own professional organization-- has trained some people to facilitate these in libraries as a way of getting libraries to participate in more social justice stuff. Just a two-day workshop with some preparatory webinars, and you can be qualified to facilitate racial healing circles too!
The thing is, because the way this sort of disaster manifests is in the form of quiet lasting damage to the individuals hurt by it, the people running the workshops are never going to know the harm they're doing.
