Create Sustainable, Emotionally Resilient, And Equitable Personal Relationships.
If you are interested in social justice but still find your life to be pretty much made up of the same type of people. If you find yourself getting defensive when someone approaches you about how they’ve been hurt by you. If you have a diverse group of people in your life and want to treat them right. If you have received complaints from people you work with about how people are treated differently based on their identity...our classes are perfect for you.
2024 Course Descriptions
Identity Navigation For Interpersonal Relationships
Each individual’s identity consists of not merely who we believe ourselves to be but how others view us. Both perceptions impact how we move through the world. Unfortunately, most of us have allowed society to dictate this and have spent little time thinking or processing what our identity holds for us. The more we become aware of our own identity, the greater our opportunity to develop compassion and empathy for others. In this course, participants will learn how to navigate who they are and begin to process what this means in their everyday life. We will learn what the practice of undoing oppression looks like for us as individuals as well as in our relationships. Relationships closest to us are mirrors of ourselves and the most challenging places for us to create equity and learn to recognize how we have internalized societal messaging. This course is about navigating these complexities through a process of admittance and accountability.
2024 CLASSES
DATES
What It Is Like Working With Us?
If I do this work as an individual, not part of a company, what will it do for me?
Identity navigation will transform you and therefore affect the people around you. Your imprint in the world will become one of informed compassion. We can’t predict how every relationship will respond to you as you grow, but we can assure you that doing this work will help you build meaningful equitable relationships with others. Whether others are up for the task is another story, but we help you prepare for this too.
Why this focus on interracial relationships? Do I have to be in an interracial relationship to do this work?
Great question! You already are in many relationships with people who hold power differently than you do. This work is for EVERYONE. The messages we receive about interracial relationships are wrought with fetishization; we’re taught that interracial relationships mean the end of racism. This is radically incorrect. Because segregation was intentional so desegregation must be too. The truth is, if we want to live in a diverse, inclusive, “postracial” society, we all have a lot of undoing ahead of us. We have all been socialized to believe that the more of a “melting pot” we become as a nation the more our history of colonialism, among other things, will simply disappear. At The Good Peoples Group and Center on Interracial relationships, we believe that identity development is the missing piece. Everything we do is about existing together, we can’t avoid it. Only by acknowledging to the multiplicitous experiences that have until now been excluded from the mainstream narrative of who we are as a nation can we become more authentically ourselves.
“A safe and supportive space wholly and completely dedicated to exploring oneself shows people that their mental health and identity is a valid and important part of themselves.”Aira Bazaz, The Ellis School, Pittsburgh PA