October 2024: Exploring Belonging

If you were able to make it to a September conversation, thank you. The openness and curiosity that were expressed in each gathering are a reminder of how important it is to have a community in which we can explore how whiteness shows up in our lives and how we can be inspired to take action that creates a more just society.

If you weren’t able to join us, we hope to see you this month. We can’t think of a better way to enter into this last month of the 2024 election cycle than in community with other white folks committed to racial justice!

Although CWC is not political and does not endorse any political candidates, the election has us thinking a lot about division and unity; not just as rhetoric, but what actually divides us and unites us more universally as human beings. As one member of CWC recently shared:

"It’s been hard for me to connect with people who vote differently than I do, but when I went to my local state fair recently I was struck by how nice everyone was to each other. I definitely vote differently than the majority of my neighbors but at the fair I didn’t feel like an outsider. I felt like I belonged, which is not something I usually feel in my community. It challenged a lot of my assumptions about ‘us vs. them’ and now I don’t know what to think!”

That got us curious about the idea of belonging; what does it mean to belong to a political party? What does it mean to belong in a country divided? What does it mean to belong with each other? What role does belonging play in creating a racially just world?

To help us navigate those questions - especially the last one - we want to revisit a book that has come up a lot in the resource recommendations, The Four Pivots: Reimagining Justice, Reimagining Ourselves by Dr. Shawn A. Ginwright. As part of his second recommended pivot from transactional to transformative, Ginwright explores what it means to belong. He is inspired by the work of Ben McBride, a self-described visionary leader of radical belonging. 

To help us reflect, we’ll begin by watching a two-minute portion (48:33 - 50:53) of this panel discussion featuring Ben McBride that was part of the Othering & Belonging 2019 conference. After that, we’ll reflect on these additional quotes from Ginwright’s book:

• "Ben believes deep down in his bones that healing how we belong is the only way to transform our society. He says that the harm that comes from not belonging has inflicted a deep wound that we cannot even see.” (Ginwright, pg. 95)

• "Belonging…requires mutual consent to matter to one another. Belonging is a mutual exchange of care, compassion, and courage that binds people together in a way that says you matter.” (Ginwright, pg. 93) 

• "The wrong first question is, ‘What do we need to do?’ The right first question is, ‘Who do we need to become?’” (Ginwright quoting McBride, pg. 91) 

• "We have to sit with the question, ‘Who have I been, and what has it cost me or my relationships with others?’ When we sit with questions like this, it forces us to lean into the messiness of life and uncover the ways that we lie to ourselves and believe that our growth is fixed and our healing is limited.” (Ginwright, pg. 107)

We know this is a lot of content to take in, so here are a few questions to help focus our thoughts:

1. How has my experience with not belonging influenced my ability to connect with people across race, if at all?

2. How has my ability to feel that “I matter” been affected by white supremacy culture, if at all?

3. Who have I been and what has it cost me and my relationships with others?

4. Who do I need to become to help create a culture where everyone feels like they matter?

We look forward to digging into this topic with you. As always, these prompts are meant to help us deepen our awareness of how whiteness and racism show up in our lives and inspire new ways of being. 

If the prompts don’t resonate, come to a conversation anyway and share what’s on your heart and mind. We strongly believe that whoever and whatever shows up is exactly who and what is supposed to be!

"Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy."– Audre Lorde