Wheaton Franciscan department heads, supervisors, and other invited staff met on March 7, 2025, and Sisters and Covenant Companions met on March 8, 2025, to delve into the personal and systemic impacts of racism, power, and privilege in our daily lives. Called Courageous Conversations, the workshops were led by two facilitators experienced in working with religious communities to face systemic racism head on: Sr. Patricia Chappell and Sr. Anne-Louse Nadeau, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur. The facilitators shared realities or “ouch moments” about racism in our lived experiences and offered ideas on how to dismantle racism in transformational ways.
Sisters Patty and Anne-Louise demonstrated how racism cripples all of us, with white people blinded by privilege based on their own social, political, and religious systems and their own internalized racial superiority and people of color living with their internalized racial oppression, leading to low self-esteem and never feeling competent enough.
A challenging look at how people of color live with racism 24 hours a day was delivered through a video shown on March 8 called A Poem for My White Friends: I Didn’t Tell You.
The facilitators then enlarged the lens to demonstrate how our social systems (family and neighborhood, legal, education, religious institutions, health care, economics, and politics) perpetuate racism through policies and practices that favor white people.
“If we want to create an entity which embodies inclusivity and justice, a new set of values must emerge and we must reimagine a new way of acting,” noted the presenters. A set of transformational values was shared as guideposts toward creating anti-racist relationships:
- Both/and thinking
- Abundant world view
- Transparent communication
- Cooperation and collaboration
Both days closed with a message about moving toward responsible actions to foster anti-racist behaviors, so that we can “raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.” Education on how to be an ally in the racism struggle will continue within the Wheaton Franciscan community. A set of transformational values was shared as guideposts toward creating anti-racist relationships.