Racial Summit Raises Awareness

3/26/19- David Prim

March 21st, 2019 East Peoria – Attending the Racial Summit was a learning experience that was intended to educate those participating in the recognition of racial discrimination. But this topic does lack a level of comfort when becoming the conversation and dialogue of a larger group of people. And there were a lot of people in attendance for this event.

Several speakers and workshops for those in attendance, were set up to open dialogue into the topic of racism. Author Meghan Burke was specific to the topic of her book, Colorblind Racism. The origins of this country’s racism were contributed to “white people’s actions” and current reality in the practice of “white privilege” according to Burke, who is also a sociology professor at Illinois Wesleyan University spoke to the social impact of these issues. Burke stated, “There were times where I found myself apologizing for being white.” And the more her research led to the obvious signs and behaviors that exposed underlying racist factors, the more it was important to get this information out to as many people as possible.

Racial underlying factors Burke had related to specifically, were the views of “white privilege” as being a serious issue. I found the group workshops were positive, intimate settings, with ground rules and a promise to privacy for those small conversations that led to a greater awareness of the information. This seemed to benefit most of the group participants. And then with gaining this new knowledge, these groups would be able to continue sharing an educational message. And the notes of our group dialogue were kept by the moderators as the ideas we came up with were important to the continuing research in combating and eliminating harmful racist values.

This was an opportunity to reach more students and hopefully next time we can involve more ICC students as I was among very few of them, as most in attendance were visitors from leadership positions from within our local school systems.