In an effort to offer more in-depth learning opportunities about racial equity, OLLI at Duke is partnering with Organizing Against Racism (OAR) Durham to offer the Racial Equity Institute (REI)’s Phase I Workshop. Thanks to the support of the Lynne Blake Fund, OLLI members can participate in REI workshops hosted by OAR Durham for the reduced price of $150, a 60% discount off the $375 registration fee. OLLI will offer this same two-day workshop three times throughout this term.
Workshops run from 9 am-5 pm on both days with multiple breaks, including a 60-minute lunch. Members can register now for REI’s Phase I Workshop for any of the following dates:
You must be an OLLI member to register and receive this special price. OLLI members who sign up will join a group of participants who enroll from across the country. Thanks to OLLI Instructor, Cathy Rimer-Surles and Communities in Partnership Executive Director Camryn Smith, Co-Chairs of OAR Durham, for facilitating this partnership.
From the REI website (https://www.racialequityinstitute.com/ourservices):
“REI’s two-day Phase 1 training is designed to develop the capacity of participants to better understand racism in its institutional and structural forms. Moving away from a focus on personal bigotry and bias, this workshop presents a historical, cultural, and structural analysis of racism. Topics covered include our fish/lake/groundwater analysis of structural racism; understanding and controlling implicit bias; race, poverty, and place; markedness theory; institutional power arrangements and power brokers; the importance of definitions of race and racism; history and legacy of race in American economic and policy development; racial identity and its interaction with institutional culture. Participants are likely to leave the training with a clearer understanding of how institutions and systems are producing unjust and inequitable outcomes and better equipped to begin to work for change.”
“The racial equity training REI provides is unique. It does not accuse. It lightens. It does not ask for guilt, but rather understanding. It imparts hard truths that could easily drive participants away, but instead and find them leaning in to learn more, perhaps this is because rather than focusing on individual bigotry and bias the training presents the systemic foundation of racism. It explains how racism is a result of decisions made centuries ago that created ripple effects still felt today.”
-Christine McTaggert, Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina
