Friends,
The Working Group on Racism of our Baltimore Yearly Meeting is offering a reading group on CASTE, the extraordinary, highly readable book by Isabelle Wilkerson. I read the book last year and plan to participate. Please join in, if you are so led!
You can learn more about the group and how to register here.
I’ve pasted some details from that site below, and the link to register, FYI.
In the light,
Lynda
Lynda Perry
Clerk, Richmond Friends Meeting
CASTE ONE BOOK PROJECT BEGINNING SEPTEMBER 14TH
The Working Group on Racism (WGR) is asking Baltimore Yearly Meeting Friends to read Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, The Lies that Divide Us by Isabel Wilkerson.
WGR members will host a Caste reading group by Zoom, available to all in the Yearly Meeting. Zoom offers the option of access to the reading group by phone.
Friends are also invited to read Caste as Monthly Meetings or as individuals. The BYM Working Group on Racism is available to support these options. Ellen Cronin can be reached at ecronin343@gmail.com.
The Caste reading group will be offered via Zoom seven Wednesday evenings, 7-8:30, beginning Wednesday September 14 and ending December 14. Many across the Yearly Meeting have been reading and working in anti-racism for years. CASTE is a somewhat difficult reading rather than a beginners’ introduction to reckoning about race and racism. Each session will feature readings, together with questions and queries, and online, opportunity for large-group discussion and small-group sharing. Friends of Color are invited to indicate a preference for an affinity group. We hope the numbers will make this possible.
The aims of the series:
- Offer white Friends an opportunity for spiritual searching and growth in processing the information and perspective presented by the author, seeking to understand historical and present-day prejudice and trauma from a Black perspective.
- Offer a place for participants to practice ways to approach difficult readings and conversations, aided by somatic body work and supporting each other, especially when making mistakes and taking risks.
- Offer BYM Quakers an additional means to educate ourselves together, and move closer to having BYM be an anti-racist faith community.