One of the most interesting trainings that I have attended so far was onsite training about Race equity and justice in the United States in specific and in the world in general.

The training was done by Race Forward, a nonprofit organization that is dedicated to “dismantle structural racial inequity and create equitable outcomes”.

In the training agenda, a lot of topics, activities and exercises were covered. After introductions about our names, roles, homes, identities and pronouns, we had an overview about racism in the US and how it was structured in the systems of the government where black people didn’t have a lot of rights, as well as other people of color.

In the next exercise, we were divided into groups and we discussed how our organization has strengths when it comes to racial equity and diversity, and what are our challenges and aspirations when it comes to this topic.

After that, we went into the dimensions of racism and had a better understanding about them through examples extracted from a role play scenario. Racism can be of four levels and these levels are:

  • Internalized Racism,
  • Interpersonal Racism,
  • Institutional Racism, and
  • Structural Racism, which is the highest type of racial bias that spans across institutions and society.

Another way of understanding racism is to differentiate between implicit and explicit biases. It was followed after that with a discussion about white privilege and how it is perceived inside the US and abroad where we have offices.

This training was very rich and informative for me especially since I am working in the Human Resources sector. It gave me a wider angle on how to target more people of color and try to find alternative means of hiring that is more sensitive and inclusive to a wider array of people of color.

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