So You Want To Talk About Race

LGBTQ+ Health Initiative’s Anti-Racism Listening & Learning Series

So You Want To Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo

Basic Description: An Antiracism Listening and Learning Series that creates an opportunity to explore participants’ own internalized racism and begin to consider how to discuss racism in both personal and work circles. This is a book club focused on the book So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. Space is made for both BIPOC and white people to wrestle with how this information may be different than what they learned in the past and how it changes their perspectives on the world today.

So You Want to Talk About Race front book cover
  • Discussion Guide: Created by the author, we used this guide as the basis for some of our discussions. Please review the questions in this guide and see if any prompts better fit your needs than the ones we chose! We downloaded this document from the publisher’s website, Hachette Book Group.
  • Slides: We have condensed the slide decks for the four sessions in this Series and included them as editable PowerPoint presentations. In the notes section, we have included more information about which slides are relevant to which session (some are only relevant to the first session, others to all, etc.) and information on how much time we allotted for each slide.
  • We used Jamboard to co-create this guide.
  • We had four PAID facilitators, including two white facilitators and two BIPOC facilitators. Our community stressed the importance of having both white and BIPOC facilitators so that participants feel the space is created for and representative of them.
  • We suggest having 4-5 participants per facilitator. We had four facilitators and invited 16-20 people to participate.
  • Knowing how many people/who will participate is helpful, so we used a registration form.
    • Having a registration may also create a safer space, as facilitators know who to expect, and the group is more consistent.
    • We also asked participants whether they were white or BIPOC for affinity groups.
    • This Series was spread out over four sessions of 60 minutes each.
  • This Series was spread out over four sessions of 60 minutes each.
    • The 1st session and 4th session were in the whole group, with white and BIPOC facilitators and participants.
    • The 2nd and 3rd sessions were in smaller affinity groups, with the white facilitators and participants and with the BIPOC facilitators and participants. 
    • Affinity groups created a space where participants felt more comfortable being honest about their internalized racism, experiences, perspectives, and learnings.
  • We collected feedback in a short survey at the end of every session and incorporated changes based on that feedback.