Classes & Events
Our Hard Conversations classes are 5-week intensive online courses. See links below to register for upcoming cohorts of each course.
Patti Digh and Victor Lee Lewis, Learning Community Guides
Why these classes now?
The year 2020, amidst the pervasive collective trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic, was a year of shattering racial violence, including the murders of Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and George Floyd, among others. It was also a year of unprecedented mobilization in the BLM movement and allied movements against racist violence. All over the U.S., everyday people can see that something in the fabric of the American culture is broken, and a lot of people want to help mend it. We yearn for new, more fruitful ways of confronting the American dilemma of race. Hard Conversations: A Deep Dive into Racism and its Undoing is a crash-course on what we need to know and remember to make sense of the racialized social tensions that are rocking society right now.
Victor Lee Lewis and Patti Digh invite you to join one of their 5-week intensive courses. Together, they guide and facilitate online learning communities to develop the knowledge and skills for understanding and undoing racism. We explore how to shift from reacting to social crises to creating positive social change, and how and why to enjoy it, much of the time.
Who They Are For
More than 5,000 people on 5 continents, from diverse race, class and cultural backgrounds have joined our learning communities. They include activists, educators, clergy, high school students, retirees, commissioned military officers, college professors, doctors and nurses, and other everyday people who have taken these intensive learning journeys with us, since Patti called the first Hard Conversations cohort in response to the Charleston Church Massacre of 2015. Over this time we have continually updated and refined the courses to deliver a learning experience that is intellectually challenging, deeply collaborative, socially supportive, fiercely honest, and inspiring.
What You Will Get
The heart of every Hard Conversations course is the 7.5 hours of expertly-guided conversation with Patti and Victor on our live calls. On top of that, three times each week, you also get big content updates in our online classroom, which you can unpack to your heart’s content, all in managed online forums set up just for the people in your cohort. You will get a wide range of informative and provocative videos, readings, audio presentations, discussion questions, and activities, all to further and deepen your learning. And everything is yours to continue working with for at least 3 months after the final live call. Your learning on the calls is greatly enriched by your having 24/7 access to the course content and learning community.
These courses provide an opportunity to work with a supportive community of like-minded people to deepen our knowledge and wisdom in these times of profound and stressful social change. Each course brings together regular people from many walks of life, committed to making a personal and social difference. Whether you are white, black, or brown, if you seek company in moving forward in your own anti-racist life, consider taking some of your next steps with us.
Organizational and Group Registrations
In this period of continued lockdowns, our established online learning approach can be a good solution for professional, civic, activist, or academic groups to take together. We have guided groups of mental health workers, doctors-in-training, faith groups, neighborhood groups, theater-makers, teachers, church groups, and trauma clinician trainers. For more information on registering your group for these events or custom training or to arrange for concurrent support groups, facilitation and consultations tailored to your requirements, contact us at info@hardconversations.com.
These Courses are Community-Supported Education:
“Tuition” options for our courses are based on a modified gift economy model, in an effort to align our economics with our deeper values.. The faculty and staff that produce and guide this course provide our content and care in a spirit of open-handedness and generosity. Providers of comparable programs, on average, charge 2-4 times as much, and provide half or less of the content. We ask that you take this to heart when considering your contributions.
We, on the Hard Conversations crew, rely upon generous voluntary contributions of allies to keep us “in business.” We are committed to universal affordability. To help make this work, we are asking that course participants support our efforts at the highest level that is affordable for you. Your gift contribution from $50-500 keeps us alive and teaching. To keep this work sustainable. We ask that folks with the means to do so, contribute a gift equal to or greater than our $100 “break-even” level, to support our accessibility scholarship commitment and our organizational growth. For those that cannot, we ask only what you can afford.
To give back to our communities, we tithe 10% of each participant’s fee among several organizations, including the Equal Justice Initiative, ColorofChangeOrg, and two indigenous land trusts, one in California and one in North Carolina.
Available Courses - Summer 2021
HARD CONVERSATIONS: A DEEP DIVE INTO RACISM AND ITS UNDOING
TOPICS:
- Week 1: Introduction, Creating our Learning Community
- Week 2: Institutional and Structural Racism: Myths and Facts
- Week 3: On White Privilege and “White Fragility”: The use and misuse of these ideas
- Week 4: On Color Blindness, Microaggressions, and Cultural Appropriation
- Week 5: On Being an Ally: What Will I Do Next to Help Make Everybody Free?
COHORT 40: Hard Conversations: Deep Dive Into Racism and Its Undoing
Thursday afternoons, July 1 – 29
with Live Seminars from 3 – 4:30pm EDT (12 – 1:30 PDT) on July 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 EST.
All are Welcome...
To the extent you are able, please consider contributing to our work
$250-500
Accomplice
Give aid and comfort to our efforts to create antiracist learning communities.
HARD CONVERSATIONS: WHITENESS, RACE, AND SOCIAL JUSTICE
TOPICS:
- Week 1: Introduction, Creating our Learning Community
- Week 2: The Social Construction of Race and Whiteness
- Week 3: The Color of Supremacy
- Week 4: The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness
- Week 5: On Being an Ally: What Will I Do Next to Help Make Everybody Free?
COHORT 39 – June 29 – July 27
Live Seminars via Zoom from 3 – 4:30 EDT (12-1:30 PDT) on June 29, July 6, 13, 20 and 27
(including an introductory call on the first day of class on June 29) on July 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 EST.
All are Welcome...
To the extent you are able, please consider contributing to our work
$250-500
Accomplice
Give aid and comfort to our efforts to create antiracist learning communities.
Upcoming Cohorts
To be notified of upcoming cohorts,
please sign up for the Art of Activism
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