January 2025: Cultivating Curiosity for Lifelong Learning

Happy New Year! We hope that 2025 is off to a good start for you.

We can’t believe it but CWC is moving into its fifteenth year. If you are receiving this newsletter, it means that in one way or another you’ve helped make CWC what it is today. Thank you for being a part of this community.

For the last few years, some of us have been working on creating a CWC handbook. It’s an organized compilation of all that we have collectively learned – literature that will ground us as we move forward. 

One section of the handbook that we have been working on recently is what we are calling Elements of Practice. CWC is grounded in the belief that as we work through our racial conditioning, we find our greatest sense of clarity and purpose. To help us do that, we recognize the need for a process or guide - similar in spirit to AA’s twelve steps - that can ground our anti-racism. 

Here are ten themes, or “Elements of Practice,” that came up again and again as we examined our own journeys towards anti-racism:

• Be Curious & Open-minded

• Acknowledge & Understand Whiteness

• Share Stories

• Explore New Perspectives

• Embrace the Feelings

• Give Grace

• Find Your Purpose

• Recognize & Invite Joy

• Build Community

• Live These Practices

These elements are a first draft, and that’s where you come in. We have decided to explore these elements throughout 2025 as our CWC monthly prompts. We are certain that the wisdom of the CWC community will help shape these elements into an effective tool that any White person can use as they move towards antiracism and collective liberation. 

This month, we will explore the first element: “Be Curious & Open-minded.”  In CWC, we’ve found that curiosity and open-mindedness drive our learning, our ability to feel the feelings, and our exploration of what’s possible. However, there is so much about curiosity that we often don’t consider and that’s what we want to explore this month. 

We’ll start by listening to this short story that Perry Zurn shares as part of his interview on the Choose to be Curious podcast hosted by Lynn Borton. (We're not sure if we know what he means, but we were especially curious by the idea of "curiosity with.") 

We’ll also read and consider the following words from Black women who continue to ask important questions and lead us towards a better future: 

• "Getting curious about anti-Blackness, how we all perpetuate it, and its impact on Black people, means getting curious about how the structures of power came to be in this country, who benefits, who doesn’t, and how the civil and human rights of everyone, not only Black people, are slowly being repealed. Getting curious about anti-Blackness is a countermeasure to authoritarianism because realizing true freedom for Black people means shaping power so everyone benefits — not merely a select few.” – Shanelle Matthews from her post, The Case for Curiosity in the Fight Against Anti-Blackness 

• "We must be willing to exchange comfort for racial consciousness and to be more curious than critical or dispirited.” – Ruth King, from her book Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism From the Inside Out

• “Let’s begin our … journey not with the question ‘What do we have now, and how can we make it better?’ Instead, let’s ask, ‘What can we imagine for ourselves and the world?’ If we do that, then boundless possibilities of a more just world await us.” – Mariame Kaba, from her book We Do This ‘Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice

Inspired by the themes from the sound clip and these quotes, we’ll use the following questions to help us think about our own experience with curiosity:

1. What is resonating with me most after listening to and reading these reflections on curiosity?

2. What does curiosity look like in my life? (e.g., when have I made new discoveries or formed new relationships through curiosity? When have I been discouraged from being curious? When has curiosity made my life richer and more meaningful?)

3. When have I chosen comfort over curiosity, especially as it relates to racism and white supremacy?

4. How would my life be better in a world where racism and racial supremacy no longer exist?

For some of us at CWC, these prompts may inspire us to embrace curiosity and dive head first into the unknown. For others, they may bring up fears of conflict and reveal our preference for staying with what we know. As always, there is no right or wrong reaction to these prompts. Wherever we are on the spectrum, we believe cultivating our sense of curiosity is a practice that allows us to not only learn about others and ourselves, but helps us imagine the world we want to live in. 

As always, if the prompt doesn’t inspire you or you disagree with any of the themes that are reflected in the sound clip or quotes, come anyway and share whatever is on your mind and heart. All perspectives are welcome! 

“...curiosity (is) a virtue we can invite and nurture in ourselves to render it instinctive. It involves a kind of vulnerability – a willingness to be surprised, to let go of assumptions and take in ambiguity. The (curious person) wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other…” -- Krista Tippett, author of Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living