Training

In the Office of Equity and Inclusion, we know that training is one piece of advancing equity and inclusion. Whether we’re using the space to bring awareness or to sharpen our racial equity skills, we work to create environments where people can connect, practice, and grow. We also try to be responsive to things happening in our communities and the educational needs of our staff. All trainings are open to City of Asheville staff and Advancing Racial Equity 101 and 201 are available to Board and Commission members. 

Training Data Visualized

NOTE: The above report has multiple screens, which you may access by using the tabs along the bottom.


Advancing Racial Equity 101

Intro to Racial Equity: Why Racial Equity at the City of Asheville?

About: We have an Equity Action Plan? Who’s in the Office of Equity and Inclusion? Why racial equity at the City of Asheville? Advancing Racial Equity 101 is part 1 of a 2 part series where we will begin gaining an understanding of racial equity and why it’s relevant to the City of Asheville. In this training we’ll start getting comfortable talking about racial equity, learn key terms and concepts, begin understanding government’s role in racial equity, and review some key points in Asheville’s history. You can earn a Wellness Point if you take both part 1 and part 2.

Objectives:

  • Normalize!
  • Learn key terms and concepts
  • Overview of the Office of Equity and Inclusion
  • Understanding Government’s Role in Racial Equity
  • Review key points in Asheville’s history
  • Bring awareness

Advancing Racial Equity 201

A Deeper Dive into Racial Equity: Individual, Systemic, Structural Racism, Implicit Bias, Microaggressions, and Operationalizing Equity

About: Advancing Racial Equity 101 is the prerequisite for this training. Now that we’ve covered some of the basics, we’re going to continue to normalize racial equity by introducing implicit bias and microaggressions. We’re also doing a deeper dive into individual, systemic, and structural racism, as well as the Equity Action Plan and what the City is doing to operationalize equity. Want to start incorporating equity into your day to day? Good news! You’ll have an opportunity to explore that as well. You can earn a Wellness Point if you take both part 1 and part 2.

Objectives:

  • Continue to Normalize – 101 Review – We’re going to touch on operationalizing racial equity into your work and we’re still very much working on normalizing.
  • Deeper Dive – Operationalizing Equity 
    • Equity Action Plan
    • You! – Be thinking of something you can do
  • Equity vs. Equality – Curb Cut Example
  • Intro to how the brain works
  • Learn about Individual, Systemic, and Structural Racism

Implicit Bias & Microaggressions Overview & How to Interrupt them

About: The purpose of this training is for people to be able to identify their particular biases and disrupt them. Trainees will learn about how our brains work, start to develop more self-awareness, and learn ways to interrupt harmful behaviors. We will also be analyzing power, identity, and bias and how they intersect. 

Objectives:

  • Develop more self-awareness of individual bias
  • Start learning how our brains work
  • Examine the ways implicit bias and unacknowledged power perpetuate oppressive behaviors toward others
  • Offer tools to recognize and challenge your biases

Processing Grief & Being Antiracist

About: “Americans want to heal America of racism without pain. That’s impossible.” – Dr. Ibram X. Kendi

You might be in shock, angry, sad, or all of the above by the painful images, videos, and news around two recent events, the attack of Christian Cooper, and the murder of George Floyd. You may also be feeling energized and ready to act. 

Join us for a discussion where we will connect, process, and work towards antiracism together.

*This discussion is for non-Black employees*

Pre-reqs: Willingness to be open and compassionate and dedication towards creating a more equitable society. 

Objectives:

  • Hold space to process some emotions brought up by recent events
  • Define antiracism
  • Start identifying ways for us as individuals to be antiracist
  • Support an environment for growth 

Cultivating a Black Safe Space 

About:  “To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”- James Baldwin 

This is a safe space dedicated to processing the many feelings and emotions that accompany being Black in America. We’ve recently seen public outrage around the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbury, and Breonna Taylor. You might be feeling overwhelmed, exhausted, or frustrated by witnessing recurring acts of state sanctioned violence against Black bodies. You may also feel the weight of continuing daily responsibilities while the nation and your community grieves.  

Whether you’re feeling anger, frustration, sadness, hopelessness, or energized by the thought of institutional and systemic change, we welcome you. 

Prerequisite: Black City of Asheville employees 

Objectives:

  • Hold space to process emotions brought up by recent traumatic events 
  • Foster community among Black employees at the City 
  • Define caucusing and understand the importance for racial healing 
  • Unpack experiences of racism on an individual, institutional, and systemic level 
  • Discuss what support could look like at an institutional level 

Equity & COVID-19

About: What does equity have to do with COVID-19? A lot. 

Join us for a conversation on ideas of how to navigate COVID-19 from an equity perspective. We’ll review the difference between white supremacy* culture, which hurts all of us, and relational culture, which we can move towards, and how they can manifest in times of crisis. 

Heads up, this is a two-way conversation, so bring your experience too! You’ll get some questions ahead of time because we want to move towards action.

We’re in this together, so let’s connect, learn from one another, and act. 

*White Supremacy – a system of structural advantage that favors white people over others in social, political, and economic arenas. Bryan Stevenson, the Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, refers to it as the “narrative of racial difference,” in other words, it’s the story we told ourselves to justify slavery, Jim Crow, redlining, etc. – Baratunde Thurston

Objectives:

  • Define white supremacy
  • Connect white supremacy culture to COVID-19
  • Identify relational culture
  • Define antiracism
  • Start identifying ways for us as individuals to be antiracist
  • Support an environment for growth 

Self-Care & COVID-19

About: We’re gonna talk about bubble baths, massages…juuuust kidding. While bubble baths and massages are great, self-care can be deeper than that.

With all of the news, constant changes, and impacts on our community, there’s a lot, so how are we coping?

We’ll share some resiliency tips that we use to keep us grounded and ready to do equity and inclusion work. We’ll also provide some resources for you to explore. You can’t pour from an empty cup.

The only way through is together, so let’s hold some space for one another!

Objectives:

  • Take an opportunity to check-in with one another
  • Share resiliency tips
  • Provide resources for self-care

Seeing White Podcast Discussions

About: We’re excited to offer another opportunity to plug into conversations around racial equity with a 4 part discussion. Seeing White from Scene On Radio is a podcast that takes a historical view on the construction of “whiteness” came to be and brings the conversation to present day. 

Podcast Description from Scene On Radio:

“Just what is going on with white people? Police shootings of unarmed African Americans. Acts of domestic terrorism by white supremacists. The renewed embrace of raw, undisguised white-identity politics. Unending racial inequity in schools, housing, criminal justice, and hiring. Some of this feels new, but in truth it’s an old story.

Why? Where did the notion of “whiteness” come from? What does it mean? What is whiteness for?

Scene on Radio host and producer John Biewen took a deep dive into these questions, along with an array of leading scholars and regular guest Dr. Chenjerai Kumanyika, in this fourteen-part documentary series, released between February and August 2017. The series editor is Loretta Williams.”

https://www.sceneonradio.org/seeing-white/

Objectives:

  • Create a space to practice having conversations around racial equity
  • Learn historical information about the creation of race 
  • Deepen racial equity analysis

Race the Power of an Illusion Viewing & Discussion Series

About: This is a viewing and discussion of a three-part documentary series produced by California Newsreel that investigates the idea of race in society, science and history. The educational documentary originally screened on American public television and was primarily funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Ford Foundation, and PBS.

Chapter One – The Difference Between Us

Examines contemporary science – including genetics – that challenges our common-sense assumptions that human beings can be bundled into three or four fundamentally different groups according to their physical traits.

Chapter Two – The Story We Tell

Uncovers the roots of the race concept in North America, the 19th-century science that legitimated it, and how it came to be held so fiercely in the Western imagination. The episode is an eye-opening tale of how race served to rationalize, even justify, American social inequalities as “natural.”

Chapter Three – The House We Live In

Asks, if race is not biology, what is it? This episode uncovers how race resides not in nature but in politics, economics, and culture. It reveals how our social institutions “make” race by disproportionately channeling resources, power, status and wealth to white people.

Objectives:

  • Create a space to practice having conversations around racial equity
  • Learn important information about the creation of race 
  • Connect racial equity work to systems level change
  • Deepen racial equity analysis