MAZAMAS AS CHANGE AGENTS FOR OUR COMMUNITY Editor’s Note: Chris LeDoux and Jesse Applegate are participants in the Intertwine Cohort. This column includes articles from each of them.
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n the last newsletter, we introduced our new column. Here, we’ll both share some ideas, continuing to think about what it means for the Mazamas to be change agents for our community. There was an error in the last article. The two instructors for the Intertwine Change Agent Cohort are Dr. Derron Coles, a learning strategist and Executive Director of The Blueprint Foundation (theblueprintfoundation.org), and Alexis Millet, a Consultant Partner at Capacity Building Partnerships (capacitypartnerships.com) and member of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) Committee.
by Chris LeDoux Here’s the idea that I would like to share for reflection: Derron shared with us the idea that “unpacking how the system we grew up in has impacted our thoughts, feelings, biases, and behaviors, is the first step in being able to have conversations that are fruitful and that help us connect to each other in experiences that are different from our own.” Wait! What do you mean by unpacking? Often it can be the things we take for granted in our lives. Here’s an example, and it may not be your case, but you probably have something in your life in which you had an opportunity. For example, were you able to go camping as a kid? If you were, would you have been able to do that if your family couldn’t afford a car? Were you able to go because at least one parent or caregiver was able to have the time off to go and do that with you? Unpacking is looking at your life as you lived it and realizing that not everybody else had the same things or the same experiences. Do you mean privilege? Maybe, it could be privilege, part of what is described as internalized superiority. It could also be limitations or disadvantages, part of what is described as internalized oppression. I think it often comes down to resources and policies, and whether these were available or applied equitably. In that way, I think it’s really a more compassionate lens in which to view most things, and to better understand the solutions that are needed. Alexis shared with us how it is essential to examine, understand, and heal our internalized
superiority and oppression to avoid recreating patterns of oppression that we are trying to dismantle. Here are some resources (in no particular order) to understand these ideas more: ■ National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC): Social Identities and Systems of Oppression (tinyurl.com/NMAAHC1) ■ NMAAHC: Whiteness (tinyurl.com/ whitness) ■ Peggy McIntosh’s White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, tinyurl. com/knapsack1 ■ Dismantling Racism Works (dRworks) web workbook: Internalizations: tinyurl. com/wkbook1 Books such as Ijeoma Oluo’s So you want to talk about race, Austin Channing Brown’s I’m Still Here: Black Dignity in a World Made for Whiteness, Ibram X. Kendi’s How to be an Antiracist. I’d like to introduce a tool that Derron shared with us that is another way for us to look at culture. The tool is called the culture cycle and looks at culture as a dynamic and iterative system of individuals, interactions, institutions, and ideas. The iterative culture cycle can start at either end, at individuals or with ideas, or really at any point--follow the arrows. For example, starting with individuals, individuals interact with others to form institutions which institute policies, which feed back into cultural norms and ideas about what is good, moral, and who has power and who doesn’t. From the other end, ideas come first and ideas are used to create institutions, which control who
we are able to interact with, which then has an impact on our thoughts, feelings, biases, and behaviors. A change in any of these entities—individuals, interactions, institutions, ideas—has an impact on the others. Do you mean segregation? Sure, segregation was a policy that was born from the idea of white supremacy, was enforced by institutions that placed limits on people’s interactions, which had impacts on individuals. There are examples all around, including school funding and sidewalks, and much more. What about the Mazamas? A question to ponder, to reflect, many answers, no wrong ones, each valid and personal. For me, I’m very interested in expanding access to the healing aspects of the mountains and nature. I look forward to conversations examining the Mazamas and the culture cycle. Together, we can help the Mazamas become a more inclusive organization.
by Jessie Applegate Along with some of the tools Chris has shared from The Intertwine Cohort, one of them that struck me was this paper on White Supremacy Culture* (based on Dismantling Racism by Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun), and particularly how white
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