plan a meeting. |
1. Initiate the Conversation
Contact your community.
Message Template for the Group Chat
Hello everyone! I’m sure you have heard about the terrible state-sanctioned murders that have happened at the hands of the police and the consequential protests and riots that have happened all over the country. As South Asians, there are several ways we can support our Black siblings especially through educating ourselves on anti-Blackness in our own community. So let’s all meet: TIME: _____ PLACE: Zoom [Insert link] To discuss what we as South Asians can do for the Black community. This is not a one-way education. This is not about politics. But rather a discourse between all of us, and safe space to ask questions and propose ideas. This will only work if we all actively participate in this together! Take care and look forward to speaking with you all! ❤️ |
Follow-up Message for the Group Chat (day of)
Hello everyone! An update on today’s meeting:
|
2. Educate Yourself
This is a must! There are many ways to educate yourself.
Read:
Draw from a resource list: |
Follow these black-owned accounts to learn more:
These resources are specific to Asian-American allyship:
|
3. Read this reflection based on previous meetings to better design yours
Overall, we felt that the information provided to our neighborhood helped not only introduce many of the topics important to the Black Lives Matter movement, but encouraged parents and children to have conversations in their own homes.
Many of the parents discussed how they had become much more aware of their discomfort with race and the anti-Blackness prevalent in the South Asian community. And while the kids had grown up being a bit more aware of racism in America, they also expressed their newfound awareness to how pervasive the appropriation of black culture was and what they should be doing when racially insensitive comments and jokes are made at school by members of the South Asian community.
The most contentious point of discussion was the role of cops. We chose not to dive directly into Police Abolition in our initial meetings but will update this resource with more information about how that conversation goes at our next meeting!
But nonetheless, the topic came up in conversation. The adults were generally confused about the alternative means to the police. But as we discussed under Topic 3 and 4, once we explained some of the preliminary ideas of “defunding the police” drawing from organizations such as Reclaim the Block and Black Lives Matter.
In the interest of first introducing our community to the contentious issues of race, we wanted to first focus on the existing problems and decided to postpone the topic of solutions and alternatives to the institution of policing to separate discussion. We did this to highlight the pressing issues and allow for the members of our community to have time to process the information before being introduced to an unfamiliar topic.
By the end of the meeting, most people began understanding the importance of the political violence and the reasons for the riots occurring across the country. In fact, the adults seemed to learn the most from directly conversing with each other during meetings. After we introduced discussion topics, the adults would reiterate points in ways they understood best and reinforce the information by answering each others questions as we facilitated the conversation.
In our neighborhood, most of the parents have younger children, so their primary concern was being able to talk to their children about race in a productive way. In terms of the format of the meeting, we realized the benefit of combining all the age groups for our initial conversation with the community. Having both parents and their children present gave both topics to discuss in their own homes. One parent said, “we as parents should talk to our kids about racism continuously because this is a very, very big issue in the US. We need to keep educating them so they do not forget.” They also asked for additional resources to help talk to their kids about race.
And perhaps the most positive outcome is that people want more meetings to discuss this issue, so we have planned more Zoom meetings on weekends focused on specific topics to give more attention to each one and continue the conversation when this topic is no longer “trending.” And we are also hosting separate meetings with parents and kids to focus on the specific questions they have and tailor our language accordingly.
And to the South Asian American parents reading, the parents of our neighborhood are also writing some testimonials on discussion with their children about race and Black Lives Matter in hopes of helping you and other parents start those conversations. We will be uploading those shortly! Here are the current resources other parents have created and curated for you!
Many of the parents discussed how they had become much more aware of their discomfort with race and the anti-Blackness prevalent in the South Asian community. And while the kids had grown up being a bit more aware of racism in America, they also expressed their newfound awareness to how pervasive the appropriation of black culture was and what they should be doing when racially insensitive comments and jokes are made at school by members of the South Asian community.
The most contentious point of discussion was the role of cops. We chose not to dive directly into Police Abolition in our initial meetings but will update this resource with more information about how that conversation goes at our next meeting!
But nonetheless, the topic came up in conversation. The adults were generally confused about the alternative means to the police. But as we discussed under Topic 3 and 4, once we explained some of the preliminary ideas of “defunding the police” drawing from organizations such as Reclaim the Block and Black Lives Matter.
In the interest of first introducing our community to the contentious issues of race, we wanted to first focus on the existing problems and decided to postpone the topic of solutions and alternatives to the institution of policing to separate discussion. We did this to highlight the pressing issues and allow for the members of our community to have time to process the information before being introduced to an unfamiliar topic.
By the end of the meeting, most people began understanding the importance of the political violence and the reasons for the riots occurring across the country. In fact, the adults seemed to learn the most from directly conversing with each other during meetings. After we introduced discussion topics, the adults would reiterate points in ways they understood best and reinforce the information by answering each others questions as we facilitated the conversation.
In our neighborhood, most of the parents have younger children, so their primary concern was being able to talk to their children about race in a productive way. In terms of the format of the meeting, we realized the benefit of combining all the age groups for our initial conversation with the community. Having both parents and their children present gave both topics to discuss in their own homes. One parent said, “we as parents should talk to our kids about racism continuously because this is a very, very big issue in the US. We need to keep educating them so they do not forget.” They also asked for additional resources to help talk to their kids about race.
And perhaps the most positive outcome is that people want more meetings to discuss this issue, so we have planned more Zoom meetings on weekends focused on specific topics to give more attention to each one and continue the conversation when this topic is no longer “trending.” And we are also hosting separate meetings with parents and kids to focus on the specific questions they have and tailor our language accordingly.
And to the South Asian American parents reading, the parents of our neighborhood are also writing some testimonials on discussion with their children about race and Black Lives Matter in hopes of helping you and other parents start those conversations. We will be uploading those shortly! Here are the current resources other parents have created and curated for you!
3. Brainstorm topics
Think about what messages you want to get across. Remember: you don't have to put everything into 1 meeting!
You can always plan more discussions.
You can always plan more discussions.
Sample TopicsTopic 1: Background
Topic 2: History & why we need to talk about race at home Topic 3: Police Brutality Topic 4: Riots Topic 5: Why do we as South Asians need to be active allies? Topic 6: What actions can we take? The topics we included were organized in a flow such that our community is given the most information about the movement before given actionable items. Feel free to include or omit any topics in your discussion. |
Time DistributionWe recommend having 5-6 minutes dedicated to just sharing content of the topic, and then about 10 minutes for Q&A after each topic, to allow more time for answering questions and facilitating discussion between everyone in the group.
|
4. Create a meeting agenda
Think about how you want to structure your meeting. We created a presentation to help guide our meeting, and you can find it here:
Sample Meeting Agenda
|