Anti-racist and anti-oppressive work in groups and in community

Race Reflections AT WORK

In today's episode Race Reflections' Assistant Disruptor Lucia offers some reflections on how group work and community work can help or support people in developing their anti-racist approach to work. She looks at the advantages, drawbacks and limitations of working in groups. She begins with a definition and with her personal experience of being a client and a therapist and finding the most effective healing happening within group therapy. She sees group work as a space that allows people to be human and vulnerable whilst connecting to others humanity. But also cautions that building community/groups where everyone feels engaged and as safe as possible is a challenging endeavor involving emotional labour and care, but that when it's done effectively it can help combat isolation, helplessness and hopelessness that individuals might feel within the systems that surround them.
Considering obstacles and drawbacks to this approach she brings up expected responsibility for education and emotional labour being projected onto the more marginalised members of the group, dynamics of entitlement, space taking and access to others' feelings and experiences within the more privileged members of the group, and how group dynamics and enactments as microcosms of society can lead to people being retraumatised. She concludes by offering some suggested solutions for facilitators of this work to help mitigate these problems that include; naming the problems, challenging these dynamics, holding boundaries, and breaking the group down into affinity groups to process some of the work.
Lucia's website: https://www.luciasarmientoverano.com/
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