Welcome
We are glad you have come to the R.A.C.E. (Race And Conciliation Encounters) website. It explains who we are, why we do dialogue and why we offer public dialogues focused on race. We hope you find the information helpful.
OUR MISSION
To raise self-awareness by reflecting, challenging, accepting, and understanding how race and racism impacts us all by offering dialogue series about race so we can build a just and inclusive community.
OUR BELIEFS
- Racism is pervasive.
- Racism impacts both people of color and white people.
- Ending racism requires us to examine and understand our personal beliefs around race as ongoing work.
- Dialogue about race can help us envision a different way of relating to one another.
- Dialogue about race is a tool to do this work.
- Dialogue about race is a form of activism.
WE’RE GRASSROOTS
In 2010, a diverse group of community members, African Americans, Asians, and White Americans, decided to act on their shared vision and desire for a public forum dedicated to dialogue about race. This resulted in a weekly gathering every Thursday evening to dialogue among ourselves and to receive training to be facilitators of future dialogues focused on race. Over time, the original facilitator group’s composition has changed but the group continues to meet weekly to dialogue and to enhance our facilitation skills.
The first public race dialogue took place in 2011. In the years since, we have offered many R.A.C.E. dialogue series, free of charge, open to the public, hosted in different locations around the community. Our goal is to make public race dialogue series like these available throughout the year and to increase the number, frequency, locations and formats of our R.A.C.E. dialogue series.