Social need for Racism Awareness Training programs

We offer Racism Awareness Training for white people and Black Consciousness Training for black people. We feel that this type of work is essential since racism nowadays still shapes the relations between black and white people. Moreover, racism is one of the least worked up factors in our social reality.

In his book The Souls of Black Folk W.E.B. Du Bois already wrote in 1903, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line". This fact is consistently being treated as a taboo or is being played down. Consequently and especially due to a mistaken social classification of racism by a majority of people we have been experiencing how racist riots and racist sentiment have been on the rise for several years now, increasingly threatening social peace.

Generally, there is a wide-spread sense of uncertainty about what actually constitutes racism and how to confront it. Even people who have already developed a feeling for living together in equality continue to think and act in a racist manner, revealing prejudices, claims on power and deep-rooted, hidden images if one takes a closer look.

Aim and method of the program

With the Racism Awareness Training we wish to offer white participants the opportunity for exploring their own prejudices and behaviour and of learning how they them-selves can contribute to a future in which people live together in equality.

The training program is not meant to be a seminar in which theories on racism are under discussion. It rather wants to examine the interplay of individual and social structural racism. People wishing to take part in these training sessions, therefore, should be willing to contribute actively and openly to the work being done and should also be prepared to attend regularly.

We use various approaches and methods in the training program: plenum, teamwork, pair work, videos, and role play. The actual form of the workshops evolve as we go along; we alternate between phases set apart for information, assimilation or reflection.

The background of phoenix

Our group was founded on January 23, 1993. Phoenix e.V. has been a registered association under German law since May 14, 1996. Our aim is to fight racism and to develop models of living together based on equal rights.

Two developments played a vital part in the beginnings of our work:

• Beginning in 1979, Austen Peter Brandt, a black German, took part regularly in Racism Awareness Workshops in London that were conducted by Sybil Phoenix, a black British woman, and her team. It was there that he systematically studied the teaching methods used in Racism Awareness Training.

  He decided to be trained in England because the German environment did not offer him any options for reflecting the racism he had experienced here in a larger context and for finding strategies to fight racism.

• In 1986 the Churches Committee for Migrants in Europe asked a group of black Germans to get in touch with Racism Awareness trainers in the Netherlands and England in order to learn more about their methods, to be trained, and to organise and conduct such training programs in Germany.

  This was accomplished in several seminars and meetings and this type of training was offered in Germany starting in the same year already.
  Experience showed that the training programs were precisely targeted on the level that had been suppressed in the Federal Republic of Germany, namely the interface between personal and societal racism.

The intercultural strategy of phoenix

Establishing phoenix e.V. was a response to an increasing demand for training and a step towards standardising the training programs with an independent, modified approach. The group deliberately works in an intercultural context. There are both white and black trainers. While the training sessions were conducted exclusively by blacks in the early years, the team now also often works with black and white groups of instructors.

This approach integrates two aspects of our analysis:

On the one hand, we feel that the experience of black Germans encountering racism in Germany is of fundamental importance for identifying racism in this societal context. On the other, we consider the experience and responsibility of white people to be critical to taking carefully reflected steps against racism in the present societal context and investing effort in establishing anti-racist strategies.

We therefore regard any kind of helpful act of solidarity by whites as rather dubious if it is undertaken without any self-analysis. From our point of view, the process of developing anti-racist strategies and an anti-racist way of life necessarily also requires whites to identify themselves as constituent parts of this system of racism. They also need to find new ways of living and behaving in an anti-racist context. This in turn means that whites must be willing to deal with racism as experienced and analysed by blacks and to take similar steps in reflecting, coping, and acting.

With our training we wish to help break this taboo surrounding racism and to support white people in gaining a realistic perspective on it. We want to leave behind the level of guilt and individual failure and open up the level of white responsibility and intercultural togetherness instead.

Follow Up

Developing anti-racist strategies and an anti-racist way of life represent long-term processes which ultimately can only be brought to fruition if others are willing to join in. For this reason we are happy to assist in setting up other groups as necessary who will then continue to meet regularly. We also offer basic materials, support and Follow Up Training.