The Interrupting Privilege program centers on intergenerational dialogues and radical listening to conduct action-oriented research that interrupts current structures of power. Through stories, we feel a sense of agency when our voices are intentionally listened to, and audiences empathize with our personal stories when they are presented conversationally. To create these stories, we ask two or three community members to interview each other on a given topic. The interviews are loosely structured, gently facilitated, and can last from 30 to 90 minutes.
After we have received the transcription of the interviews, we ask the participants to read through interview, striking out what they don’t want us to consider, and highlighting the parts of the conversation they would like us to focus on. We then use their feedback to create audio clips and share the clips with them again for their approval. Participants will have a choice to remain anonymous, or to not have their clips shared publicly. For some, it is the process of the dialogue, of being heard, and of having their words be the center of these discussion, that feels fulfilling. For others it is important to have the story publicized as widely as possible. We honor their choices.
We use these clips to ground the discussions during our Interrupting Privilege sessions. If participants choose to attend the sessions, they will be able to speak back to the way we created the clips, the process, and what they have been thinking and doing since the interviews.
Selection of Research on Interrupting Privilege
Generation Mixed Goes to School | Radically Listening to Multiracial Kids
Ralina L. Joseph & Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith
Generation Mixed Goes to School: Radically Listening to Multiracial Kids, centers the perspectives of multiracial children in the creation of anti-racist schools. Listen to Ralina and Allison talk about the book on KALW’s “State of the Bay,” watch them with Jared Ball, listen to a podcast about the Gen Mixed Project by former CCDE RA Dr. Anjuli Brekke, and read an interview in the South Seattle Emerald. Generation Mixed won the DKG Educators award in 2022.
“You ’re the Whitest Black Person I Know”: SpeakingBack to Microaggressions Through the Poetics of Interruption
Meshell L. Sturgis & Ralina L. Joseph
ABSTRACT
Anti-Black and anti-woman animus is packed into brief and subtle communication exchanges including seemingly mundane moments like jokes and compliments. The lasting negative effects of microaggressions call for what we deem poetics of interruption, a Black feminist intervention that dynamically responds to interstices of oppression. Through the creative retelling of a conversation that leads up to and follows the microaggression “You’re the whitest Black person I know,” we demonstrate how the poetics of interruption holds interlocutors accountable to structural and interpersonal power imbalances through purposeful dialogue. Practicing a poetics of interruption refigures language with an anti-sexist, anti-racist aim to refute the passive-aggressive postracial language of microaggressions.
“I address race because race addresses me”: women of color show receipts through digital storytelling
Anjuli Joshi Brekke, Ralina Joseph & Naheed Gina Aaftaab
ABSTRACT
In Black colloquial culture, the practice of documenting and calling out injustices is known as “showing receipts.” The ongoing labor of collecting, communicating, and showing receipts is one way to highlight the hypocrisies embedded in racist structures and hold those in power accountable. As the receipts pile up in the form of viral videos of sexism, racism, and violence against Black bodies, accountability cannot be easily ignored. Showing receipts as a form of resistance, however, is both exhausting and never-ending. Thus, women of color need spaces of respite and community care where we can speak our stories and be heard. In this essay, we demonstrate one such space: digital storytelling shared between women of color. While reciprocal sharing provides women of color storytellers a respite from the labor of proving our worth and producing receipts, in recording our truths and sharing them online, we also create digital receipts as testimony to our experiences. Although there is no guarantee that those in power will listen, by producing, archiving, and disseminating these receipts, storytellers maintain hope that our words will make an impact.