Don't be disempowered by analysis!

The following is taken from my comrade Jonathan in the program, who also has a blog chronicling his time here:

An elder African American mentor of mine back in NC who is a longtime anti-racist activist and has been an important piece of my political development over the years, raised a few concerns with me before i ventured out here. They stuck with me and were on my mind yesterday. He noted the propensity for white anti-racist training to lead to people becoming disempowered and making counterproductive assumptions about their role within multi-racial spaces. He noted that many white people coming in to anti-racism become so terrified of stepping on the toes of people of color, that they receed far into the background, rendering their intelligence and commitment ineffective. This severe self-censorship also implies the problematic belief that folks are color are not able to stand up for them selves when a white person is dominating a space. He was also concerned with difficulty many white anti-racists have in balancing the acknowledgment of their unintentional complicity in white supremacy, with an ability to proudly bring their full humanity into organizing spaces.