

Racial equity work is also about changing systems and centering the experiences and voices of people and communities of color. Racial equity work should make us all think and challenge us to think and accept new information. Safety and comfort are the norm for white people, but you can’t be safe and comfortable to learn and grow.

There are elements of ‘safe space’ agreements that we agree with such as ‘respect’ and ‘confidentiality.’ However, too often safe space translates into too comfortable for white people and they take safe to mean, ‘don’t threaten my ways of thinking’ or don’t make me feel uncomfortable. Erin attends a lot of meetings with standard group norms and often sighs and wishes she could refocus the group with the Color Brave Space. They allow the status quo to continue and don’t push people, both white people and people of color, to understand their roles in undoing racism and challenging long held beliefs. What she found was those types of meeting norms cater to whiteness. In that time, she’s had groups come up with their own group norms, used ‘safe space’ agreements, and lots of other standard meeting practices. Heidi has been conducting racial equity trainings for over a decade. And stop stealing my table tents - bad karma will come your way!” We’ll quit cross-referring and write the blog post. Tell Heidi to blog about it since she’s the creator of Color Brave Space. Can I get a copy and use it?” She’ll say: “Go ask Erin to blog about it.” Or someone will come to the Southeast Seattle Education Coalition meeting and say: “I really like the Color Brave Space table tents, can I take it?” and Erin says “No, no taking the table tents. Someone will approach Heidi and say: “I really like your Color Brave Space. We’ve punted this one back and forth for months. This blog post has been a long time coming. Today is the start of Ramadan Ramadan Mubarak to many of our partners.
