Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 5/25/2021
NORTHAMPTON – REAL Northampton, an organization founded to tackle racism in the Northampton Public School district, will host an online workshop addressing systemic white supremacy in partnership with Camp Equity on June 5 and 6.
Deborah Keisch, one of REAL Northampton’s co-leaders, said the organization was initially created by a group of community members who wanted to confront racism in the schools.
“We have been around since 2017 and we are funded by the Northampton Education Foundation so when we came together, we applied for a grant from that organization. It was just a group of parents, teachers, staff, and students who wanted to begin a more collective effort to address racism in our school district,” she said.
Keisch said one of REAL’s current projects is to collect people’s stories about their experience with race and racism in the school district.
“One of our main projects is a story collection project and an exhibit coming out of that, so we basically spent a couple of years gathering people’s stories about their experience with race and racism. The stories are not only about racism and oppression but also about people taking steps to build an anti-racist school district,” she said.
While ending racism in the district is a huge goal, Keisch said one of REAL’s shorter-term goals is to allow people to engage in deeper discussions about race and equity.
“We have a very lofty goal to reach an anti-racist school district. We recognize that is an incredibly ambitious goal. I think what we want to do is enable people to have honest conversations about whiteness, race, racism in the district, not only in terms of interpersonal interaction, but really the structural institutional systems that uphold practices of whiteness in a predominantly white district,” she said.
One of the organization’s upcoming events is a workshop in partnership with Camp Equity to help address systemic white supremacy.
“It is for white-identifying families who want to begin to dismantle their own internalized white supremacy and show that they are allies and anti-racist in their everyday lives. When we are talking about white supremacy we talk about the political socio-economic system where white people enjoy structural advantage and rights over other racial and ethnic groups,” she said.
Keisch added that families will take part in two, two-hour sessions on June 5 and June 6 with homework in between.
Keisch also said REAL teamed up with Camp Equity after several members’ children participated in a previous workshop with them.
“Camp Equity is a fantastic organization that runs these virtual social just camps online for students of all ages and all racial identities. Several of us had children attend their sessions and we were so impressed with their work we thought we would team up to do a local effort and see how it goes to do some more regional building of networks,” she said.
As of May 20, Keisch said 12 families had already signed up for the workshop.
While signups are closed online, anyone interested in still signing up for the workshop can reach out to REAL by email at northampton.real@gmail.com.