Race and Power: Keeping it Real Amid the Mess

Virtual conference sponsored by the Washington-Baltimore Center for the Study of Group Relations and Group Relations International

May 19-22, 2022

“Race and Power: Keeping It Real Amid the Mess” will be an experiential learning event conducted in the Group Relations tradition.  Although referred to as a Group Relations ‘conference’, this event will not feature experts delivering slide presentations to relatively passive learners.  Instead, it will be an opportunity to grapple with its title themes in the context of a temporary organization that participants and staff will co-create.  Within that organization, we will explore together our here-and-now experience of engaging with each other across various roles within a living system.  Focused at the level of the group, we will pay attention to what is happening at both the conscious and unconscious levels.  We will pay particular attention to manifestations of the title themes in our temporary organization as a whole and in its parts, and to connections between the title themes and issues of leadership, authorization, and representation.  We will explore our very human needs, wishes and fears, both rational and irrational, in ways that connect these to race and power.  We will not work with these themes “out there,” but rather “in here” within the groups we form during the event.