Educators seeking to create in the 21st century curriculum and learning experiences for their faculty and their students that will bring about a culture of Racial Sobriety in their schools have found this program a powerful tool. The program can engage the faculty in the construction of a new culture for the learning environment and also extend into the student body. The processes and the skill base have been used in every level of education from Junior High school to the university level. The experience can be intergenerational and involve parents and community.
The racial sobriety approach offers time for personal reflection, small dialogue groups, group reporting to the larger circle facilitates and intensifies social transformation. The Racial History Journal process is an experience of sharing one’s journey of racial awareness in a non-threatening way. One of the major leaning experiences for an institution is the suspension of the “Don’t Talk” rule that makes casual conversations about race a taboo. It participants to find their own “voice” of racial sobriety.

Always open to design a program to address the particular learning objective of an institution, the following formats have been successful throughout the country.

Introduction to Racial Sobriety®

This facilitated workshop introduces the audience to a unifying approach begin the conversation on racisms. The experience includes the explanation of the three elements of talking about racism that brings on anxiety; facilitates a discussion of finding one’s own “voice” in the conversation on racial issues; allows for a discovery of one’s Racial History Journal; and introduces other instruments for continuing one’s understanding of the Racial Sobriety approach.
A brief introduction is a two hour program; while a full introduction is a four hour program.

Racial Sobriety and Working Groups

This six hour workshop takes the Racial Sobriety® approach and demonstrates its use with committees, task forces and other forms of working groups who are entrusted with bettering racial and ethnic relations for their respective communities or organizations. This program includes the Introduction to Racial Sobriety and develops from this core approach its applications for social and organizational transformation.

Executive Leadership Training

This is a 12 hour workshop aimed at leaders who need tools to get the organization on the "same page" in their conversation on race, ethnic, cultural and religious issues. It offers a benefit approach so as to move away from a anxiety/guilt model as a motivation for Racial Sobriety®. The leaders will develop their “voice” of racial sobriety as a personal way to balance the internal feelings of their own concerns and the feelings and challenges that come with a diverse work force. The outcome of the training is to equip leaders with the tools they need to construct a culture of racial sobriety within their organization.

© Institute for Recovery from Racisms, 2002 - 2012