http://startribune.com/minneapolis-officials-canceled-segregated-meetings-for-city-staffers-marking-slavery-anniversary/510826012/
Fliers promoting a series of discussions for Minneapolis city staffers on the 400th anniversary of slavery in North America — the sessions to be segregated by race for black and white city workers — have been taken down at City Hall after officials decided to cancel the events, at least for now.
The lunch-hour sessions, called sacred conversations, were scheduled to begin last Thursday, with “Black Bodied Staff” meeting in one building and “White Bodied Staff” meeting in another.
City Coordinator Nuria Rivera-Vandermyde issued a statement indicating she had called off the sessions but that they would be rescheduled. It was unclear Tuesday when that would happen.
“It came to my attention ... that sessions had been promoted publicly in a way the city does not condone, as we cannot nor will we divide people based on race, ethnicity or any other protected class,” Rivera-Vandermyde wrote.
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Minneapolis Civil Rights Director Velma Korbel, who wasn’t involved in the planning, said the discussions were meant to be part of a long-running effort to address racial equity in city government and services such as development, transportation and housing.
“It was never our intent to exclude or marginalize anybody in the city,” she said. “What’s lost is the understanding that not everybody is in the same place in these issues.”
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The sessions, three in all for each race scheduled into July, were to be led by the city’s racial equity coordinators, according to the fliers.
Each one-hour session was to have a theme: Thursday’s was to be “remembering who we are,” the one on June 27 was designated as “recovering our narratives of oppression and liberation,” and the July 25 session was on “re-imaging a future without harm.” The sessions for black and white staffers were to be held at the same time but in different places.
Council Member Andrea Jenkins said that while she hadn’t planned to attend Thursday’s session, she supported engaging city staffers in discussions about racial divisions.
Jenkins, who is black, said she saw it as “trying to create a space for city employees dealing with emotional trauma from a number of recent events and the realities of being black” in the public sector, such as the conviction of former Minneapolis Police Officer Mohamed Noor for shooting an unarmed white woman.
“We’ve had lots of police shootings and only one officer has been charged and convicted, and he happens to be black,” Jenkins said. On the matter of separating the sessions by race, Jenkins said the experiences of blacks and whites past and present are vastly different. “It’s a really emotional conversation for even me to engage in,” she said.
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To Minneapolis activist and civil rights attorney Nekima Levy Armstrong, a frequent critic of police tactics, the sessions look like an attempt by the city to create a safe space for a sensitive conversation.
“I think they mean well, but it’s a very deep, difficult conversation to have in one-hour pieces spread over three months,” she said.
Levy Armstrong, who leads workshops on race as a consultant, said a better design for the discussion would be an initial grounding session for everyone, and then breaking into racial groups before bringing everyone back together for a concluding session.
“I don’t think they’re trying to exclude people but they’re focused on the two groups whose ancestry is affected by slavery,” she said, adding that between black and white people, “The level of sensitivity and grief is going to be vastly different.”
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