Racial Healing Circles are conversations

designed by Dr. Gail Christopher, as part of the Truth, Racial Healing, & Transformation framework, to help communities like Spartanburg heal and transform. They are designed to honor and value each person’s humanity, build mutually respectful relationships across racial and ethnic lines, and better reflect our common humanity.  The four videos below will give you more information and context.

After hosting about a dozen racial healing circles engaging more than 200 participants, Spartanburg Truth is pausing further Circles, based on some feedback that, while the Circles are great for validation, counter story-telling, and sharing experiences; despite our best efforts, the Circles also carry the potential to re-traumatize people of color and/or cause them to have to expend emotional energy to educate white people on the reality of experiencing racism, which prioritizes benefits to white people while burdening people of color. Because above all, we don’t want to do harm, we’re taking the summer of 2023 to evaluate whether we can tweak the model or if we need to abandon it.

That said, if you have a multiracial group (with half or more being people of color) that has familiarity with each other and a foundational understanding of systemic racism (e.g., has completed Racial Equity Institute Phase I), who is interested in participating in a Racial Healing Circle together now, please email us at spartanburgtrht@wofford.edu. The best groups are those that not only know each other and know about systemic racism, but are also already committed to working together to address it.