Description

“A helpful introduction to facilitating affinity spaces in an inclusive, emergent, and trauma-informed way to foster the communal healing spaces that in turn ignite community action and liberation.”—Resmaa Menakem, best-selling author of My Grandmother’s Hands and Monsters in Love

The first comprehensive guide for leading BIPOC affinity groups for challenging white supremacy, healing racial trauma, and taking collective action

Meeting in racial affinity groups is a common practice in anti-racist, social justice, diversity, and similar forms of educational endeavors. These groups provide a structured space in which participants can explore how racism personally impacts them, process specific experiences of racism, receive validation and support from their peers, heal, and strategize next steps for challenging racism, white supremacy, and internalized racial oppression.

In A Space for Us, Michelle Cassandra Johnson brings her over 20 years of experience leading dismantling racism work to provide the first affinity groups guide made for BIPOC communities. This essential guide will:

• Provide an understanding of the racial hierarchy and how it has impacted Black, Indigenous, and People of Color differently.
• Define and share common manifestations of internalized racial oppression.
• Define anti-Blackness and provide skills to interrupt and address it.
• Share rituals, practices, and sample agendas for affinity groups.
• Explain when it is useful to meet as one BIPOC group and when it is useful to meet based on one’s specific racial identity.
• Provide rituals and tools for healing in BIPOC affinity groups.
• Provide information about how to come back together as BIPOC and white people to strategize and take collective action.

About the Author

MICHELLE CASSANDRA JOHNSON is an activist, social justice warrior, author, anti-racism consultant and trainer, intuitive healer, and yoga teacher and practitioner. She has led dismantling racism work in many settings for over two decades and has a background and two decades of practice as a clinical social worker. Michelle’s work centers on healing from individual and collective trauma, coming back into wholeness and aligning the mind, body, spirit, and heart. She has a BA from the College of William and Mary and an MA in social work from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She is the author of We Heal Together, Finding Refuge, and Skill in Action.​