Participation in the global village requires new skills in perception and communications. In the United States the awareness of racial and ethnic difference becomes the backdrop for transferring one’s known perceptions to the global partners and their world. Understanding and assessing our issues at home gives a foundation for articulating the emerging issues of racial, cultural and religious difference in the target population to which we are destined. This experience of what has been termed as a “cultural audit” has proved to be beneficial for groups that are concerned about promoting development of world populations that have experience deprivation and a lack of validation for their people, culture and value.

This particular Racial Sobriety experience focuses on the global patterns of culture and how each culture develops a sense of their ethnocentrism and social arrangements along lines of color and blood ties. The racial sobriety workshop engages multiple learning styles to engage the experience of the participants in developing their own reflective powers. The learning formats include time for personal reflection, small dialogue groups, and group reporting that enhances the insights gained as they are shared with the assembly. The Racial History Journal process is an experience of sharing one’s journey of racial and ethnic awareness in a non-threatening way. One of the major learning experiences is an awareness of how cultures use the “Don’t Talk” rule that makes talking about differences in a culture a taboo. The participants experience a new sense of team building and self-esteem as they find their own “voice” for cultural reflection and insight.

Always open to design a program to address the particular learning objective of an institution, the following formats have been successful in past experience throughout the world.

Introduction to Racial Sobriety®

This facilitated workshop introduces the audience to a unifying approach to begin the conversation on racisms and ethnocentrism.. The experience includes the explanation of the three elements of talking about racism that brings on anxiety; facilitates a discussion of finding one’s own “voice” in the conversation on racial issues; allows for a discovery of one’s Racial History Journal; and introduces other instruments for a continuing understanding of the Racial Sobriety approach. A brief introduction is a two hour program; while a full introduction is a four hour program.

Racial Sobriety and Working Groups

This six hour workshop takes the Racial Sobriety® approach and demonstrates its use with committees, task forces and other forms of working groups who are entrusted with bettering racial and ethnic relations for their respective communities or organizations. This program includes the Introduction to Racial Sobriety and develops from this core approach its applications for social and organizational transformation.

Executive Leadership Workshop

This is a 12 hour workshop aimed at leaders who need tools to get the organization on the "same page" in their conversation on race, ethnic, cultural and religious issues. It offers a benefit approach so as to move away from a anxiety/guilt model as a motivation for Racial Sobriety®. The leaders will develop their “voice” of racial sobriety as a personal way to balance the internal feelings of their own concerns and the feelings and challenges that come with a diverse work force. The outcome of the training is to equip leaders with the tools they need to construct a culture of racial sobriety within their organization.

© Institute for Recovery from Racisms, 2002 - 2021