A Space for Us: A Guide for Leading Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Affinity Groups

Summary

The first comprehensive guide for leading BIPOC affinity groups for challenging white supremacy, healing racial trauma, and taking collective action

Meeting in racial affinity groups is a common practice in anti-racist, social justice, diversity, and similar educational endeavors. These groups provide a structured space in which participants can explore how racism personally impacts them, process specific experiences of racism, receive validation and support from their peers, heal, and strategize next steps for challenging racism, white supremacy, and internalized racial oppression.

In A Space for Us, Michelle Cassandra Johnson brings her over twenty years of experience leading dismantling-racism work to provide the first affinity-group guide made for BIPOC communities. This essential guide will: provide an understanding of the racial hierarchy and how it has impacted Black people, Indigenous people, and People of Color differently; define and share common manifestations of internalized racial oppression; define anti-Blackness and provide skills to interrupt and address it; share rituals, practices, and sample agendas for affinity groups; provide rituals and tools for healing in BIPOC affinity groups; and provide information about how to come back together as BIPOC and white people to strategize and take collective action.