Title: Racial Healing Circles: Empathy and Liberal Education | Association of American Colleges & Universities
Headings: Racial Healing Circles: Empathy and Liberal Education
Racial Healing Circles: Empathy and Liberal Education
Racial Healing and Liberal Education
What Effective Racial Healing Circles Are and Are Not
Imagining Transformation
Looking Back, Moving Forward
References
Previous Issues

Content: They are not anti-racism trainings or workshops on dismantling structural racism. They also are not the old twentieth-century race relations work, designed to promote “tolerance” of the other. Perhaps most importantly, racial healing circles are not “conversations about race.” To say that the work is about race is to reinforce the belief system based on the false idea of multiple human races. Through racial healing circles, we intend to embrace the true reality of the human family, and the myth of racism is a barrier to that intention. Rx Racial Healing helps participants move beyond that myth and immerse themselves in the commonalities of our shared human journey, while acknowledging the very real consequences of exposure to racism and honoring diverse cultures and experiences. Circle processes, including racial healing circle processes, are rooted in the spiritual and community-sustaining models of many Indigenous cultures. During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Europeans and Americans appropriated and popularized the idea of using circles to gather groups together for healing and growth (Baldwin 1998). Self-help circles, addiction recovery circles, restorative justice circles, conflict resolution circles, peacemaking circles, and disease support group circles are just a few examples. People have used circles for healing engagement over sustained periods of time because of a few inherent qualities: