For Immediate Release, Sept. 20, 1999
Contact:
Trish Brink, (860) 439-2508
or: [email protected]
First International Conference
on Healing Racism Slated for
October 15-17 at Connecticut College
NEW LONDON, Conn. -- Authors, speakers and facilitators with international reputations in race relations will conduct workshops, dialogues and panel discussions as part of the First International Conference on the Institutes for the Healing of Racism October 15 to 17 at Connecticut College, 270 Mohegan Ave.
"In a time when our nation is seeing hate crimes escalate into killings more and more frequently, we have to ask ourselves: what can we do to get at the roots of these feelings?" said Judy Kirmmse, affirmative action officer at Connecticut College. "This is a first-ever effort to showcase a method that has been successful in local school districts, businesses and many other arenas."
First established in 1989 in Houston, Texas, the Institutes for the Healing of Racism (IHR) began as a grassroots movement that has since grown to about 300 institutes in the United States, Canada and England. The IHR program is cited as one of the "Promising Practices" to improve race relations, a White House project created by the President's Initiative on Race and being continued through the President's Initiative for One America. Predicated on the notion that "there is only one race -- the human race," the international network of IHR organizations advocates the elimination of racism through a series of dialogues and workshops. Some 18,000 people, including educators, students, clergy, lay persons, business and civic leaders, and others have participated in the institutes' dialogue sessions.
The conference is the first effort nationwide to create a public forum in which people working to eliminate racism can experience the success of the dialogue process used by the institutes. Participants will learn how to set up an institute, how to engage communities, how to provide facilitator training, and will hear from a roster of renowned experts on racism. Among those slated to speak are Jane Elliott, a former teacher and leader in the fight against prejudice whose diversity/sensitivity program Blue Eyed/Brown Eyed was featured on Oprah, Today, The Tonight Show, and others; Joe Feagin, professor of sociology at the University of Florida and co-author with Melvin Sikes of Living with Racism: The Black Middle Class Experience; Nathan Rutstein, one of the founders of the IHR and author of Healing Racism in America: A Prescription for the Disease and Racism: Unraveling the Fear; and Rita Starr, founder and director of Healing Our Nation and an originator of the IHR process!
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The institutes' program includes a series of dialogue sessions facilitated by an IHR-trained leader. People of all racial backgrounds are provided a "safe" environment in which everyone can air their perceptions of each other, discuss and dispel the myths that trigger racial divisions, and ultimately eliminate the barriers that perpetuate societal divisions spawned by misunderstandings among races.
Rutstein, one of the founders of the IHR, said he has been moved by the transformations he has seen take place during seminars in which chief executives of industries and members of the Ku Klux Klan, among many others, have been powerfully affected by the insights gained into the roots of their own racism.
While Rutstein notes that there's a movement to avoid using the word racism and substitute diversity, he added: "Whites are afraid of it and successful people of color don't want to be reminded of it. But the Institute gets at the core of the problem and tries to heal it. It brings tears of joy to my eyes when I see people who were suspicious of each other and had feelings of superiority or inferiority embrace each other. This transformation sustains my hope."
The conference is cosponsored by Connecticut College; Starr Commonwealth, of Albion, Mich., a non-profit group serving at-risk youth in Michigan and Ohio; and the Multicultural Coalition of Southeastern Connecticut. Strong support and endorsement have also been received from many community organizations, including The Day newspaper of southeastern Connecticut The Norwich Bulletin, and Lawrence & Memorial Hospital in New London, Conn.
Ranked by U.S. New & World Report among the top 25 liberal arts colleges in the nation, Connecticut College is an independent, coeducational, residential college of about 1,650 undergraduates. It was described by Ted Fiske, former New York Times education editor, in his 1999 Guide to Colleges, as "an academic powerhouse" with "a bevy of strong, new academic programs -- many with an international and/or cross-disciplinary focus -- (that) has propelled Conn Coll into the forefront of higher education and captured the attention of bright, cosmopolitan students everywhere."
Registration is required and a variety of fee packages are available. For more information, call (860) 439-2103, or consult the website: http://www.camel.conncoll.edu/healing.htm.
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