1) “My people:” heritage and stories

• What do you know about your heritage and ancestral roots? Who are “your people”? Where are they from? What were the stories told to you growing up about their culture, their connection to place? What are some things you love about the culture(s) and place(s) you are from?

• What were you taught about race by your family and environment (implicitly and explicitly)?

• Were there stories about “other people”? What racial stereotypes (positive and negative) were you taught through the environment you grew up in?

• Growing up, what were you taught (explicitly and implicitly) about your national identity? Did belonging to this group and/or ethnicity also mean being “white” — explicitly or implicitly?

• What was the socio-economic status of your family when you were growing up? Do you think the messages you received as a child about race have anything to do with class? And what about your gender?

Some further questions may make more or less sense depending on our context:

• For folks raised in countries that were formed through settler colonialism: Do you know if, when and how your people became “white”? At some point, were some of your white ancestors not considered white? What did they give up, if anything, in the process of assimilation?

• For folks of Jewish backgrounds: how were you taught to think of yourself in terms of race? How did this connect, or not, with a sense of Jewishness?

• For folks raised in multi-racial families: what did it mean in your family context, to be “white”, and how was/is it talked about?

2) My personal history of race

Many of us have told our life stories in study groups, chapters and sometimes on retreats. Inspired by the journey of Siddhartha experiencing the Four Sights. and by Sangharakshita’s personal history of Going for Refuge, we invite you to reflect in your life story through the lens of race. These prompts might help":

• What are your earliest memories of something called “race”? What happened? What messages did you take away from those experience(s) as a child?

• What have been your most formative experiences of race in teenhood and adulthood? What happened? What imprint did these experiences leave? What views arose in their aftermath?

• So far, what have been your turning points or wake up calls with regards to race? (Notice how, when talking about race, how often it’s about other people’s race(s). Try to keep in view your own race as well, even as this co-arises with awareness of others.)

• What are your memories of realizing you were “white”? When have you become particularly aware of the color of your skin? How do you relate to being “white” or identified as such? What does this bring up for you?

• What has it been like to share your racial autobiography? How does it feel to do this?

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• How did you relate to any of the readings or the videos of white people talking about their experience of their race and racial conditioning? What was awkward? Cringy? Liberating? Funny? Heartbreaking? Strange? Alienating? Inspiring?

3) Revisiting Suggested Community Agreements 

• Following on from last session’s discussion about the Suggested Community Agreements, does anything need to be said? explored?

• As we share our stories with one another for this module, what agreements might be most useful? How can we support each-other to maintain a compassionate space and receptive space as together we try to find words to describe our racial conditioning? What support do you need?