A call to groups and organizations committed long-term to developing racial self-awareness, mindful leadership, and cultures of belonging.
A Cultural Change Initiative for Groups & Organizations
The power of the Mindful of Race Training Program is that it builds over time, supporting the development of two crucial awareness competencies: racial education and integration.
Get Educated
Mindful of Race Training
A 5-day training intensive to understand the skeletal shape of racism and the flesh we put on its bones.
Get Integrated
Racial Affinity Group Development
A 12-month immersion supporting a shift from racial innocence and distress to racial literacy and harmony within community.
The Aim
To Understand our Racial Conditioning, its Impact, and our Potential
In this training, we aim our energy toward awareness, non-harming, and harmony. Together we create a vital and supportive learning community where we become more aware of our racial conditioning, discover how to deconstruct habits of harm, embody racial wellness and responsibility, and contribute to a culture of care. We also experience the relief that self-awareness, honesty, vulnerability, and presence makes available to us and others, and recognize our kinship and innate propensity for kindness and insight. All this while having a bit of fun!
Ron Rawald, senior managing director and head of international real estate at Cerberus Capital Management, died two days after recording this video. His biracial daughters, who recorded and edited the video, shared that their conversation with their dad was long awaited and profoundly healing for their family. Ron was unable to join our memorable event but his legacy lives.
Dear Ruth, To come in to the (South Africa's Mindfulness Institute) conference as you did, at the end of a long and full day, sitting in front of a screen on the other side of the world, and to engage everyone so deeply, is extraordinary. Everyone’s attention was rapt. Your seamless weaving together of your talk with Baba Mandaza’s was exquisite. The content, the depth of insight, the clarity, the warmth that you embodied landed deeply, wholeheartedly in the room. It will not be possible to assess the impact of such a transmission, other than to let you know that I speak on behalf of the collective in expressing our deep gratitude for what you shared, and how you shared it. With immense respect, and love. ~ Dr Simon Whitesman, MBChB, Chairperson for the Institute for Mindfulness, South Africa
Results
The Mindful of Race Training Program allows groups and organizations to strategically and gracefully shift from racial unawareness and reactivity to racial literacy and accountability. Participants in this program develop the following awareness skills:
Recognize
Recognize the ways in which your racial history shapes your perception of others and yourself
Grow
Become more sensitive to your individual and racial group impact
Awaken
Wake up to micro and macro-aggressions - your own and others
Become
Become aware of the construction of oppression and your role in it
Discern
Discern how mindfulness supports racial awareness and group wellbeing
Soften
Soften the grip of anger, shame, and fear, and use discomfort to clarify intention
Discover
Discover how your unconscious racial views are expressed in your life
Elevate
Elevate your understanding of power and influence
Identify
Identify your most sensitive “activation points” and tend to them with wise care
The Mindful of Race Training Program allows for the rare opportunity to learn and live an experience dedicated to racial awareness and genuine connection while also ripening capacity to engage across race. In this year-long program, participants leverage learning crucial to the organization's diversity, equity, and inclusion aspirations.
Is this Program for Me & My Team?
The Mindful of Race Training Program is designed for groups, teams, and organizations invested in exploring the intersections of racial self-awareness, mindfulness, and leadership, and committed to doing the inner work that supports individual deconstruction of racial conditioning.
Your group need not be racially diverse to benefit from this training.
Your presence was personally meaningful to me and turned out to be "mission-critical" for the educational flow of the 4-day experience. I would go so far as to say your presentation was a "turning point" in which participants were invited into a much deeper conversation with themselves with questions and explorations that are challenging and that matter. Your contribution to The Gathering was pivotal. I appreciated your pacing. You unpacked the framework with slowness, grace, and care. There was something for me about "how" you explained the framework that was a teaching in and of itself about the value of embodying presence and communicating clearly and carefully. Thank you for coming to the Sounds True Foundation Gathering and bringing your wise and loving presence. - Tami Simon, Founder, Sounds True Publishing, September 2019
The Mindful of Race Training Program is grounded in Ruth King's celebrated book, Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out, her professional background in leadership and organizational development and diversity training program design, as well as her extensive experience as a mindfulness meditation teacher. Groups and organizations committed long-term to cultivating racial self-awareness and mindful leadership will be inspired to respond to this call.