Event Info
Day:
Tuesday evenings from 7-8pm central time.
Dates are:
April 2nd, April, 9th, April 16th, April 23rd, April 30th, May 6th, May 13th, and May 20th.
Location:
1 North Lasalle Street, Suite 1600, Chicago, IL 60602
Cost:
$40 per session. We also accept PPO health insurance plans.
Group Leader: Jake Stone, LSW
Jake Stone, a therapist at Symmetry Counseling’s Chicago location, has a history of involvement in racial justice work. His first master’s degree was in sociology and his thesis focused on how gay white men developed their white racial identities in comparison to their gender and sexual orientation identities. During time in his undergraduate program and thereafter, Jake collaborated with several racial justice organizations and community groups to address structural racism and led dozens of trainings to educate White communities on the history of racism, the development of Whiteness, and how Whiteness impacts everyone. He developed and taught a course entitled, “Privilege, Power, and Policing” that taught the simultaneous histories of policing and race in the US. His goal to integrate this history of racial justice activism with education and his career as a therapist resulted in the development of this group.
About the Group
Desmond Tutu, in his phenomenal text on South African apartheid entitled No Future Without Forgiveness, discusses the idea of “ubuntu”, which means a person is a person through other persons. He equates this idea to dehumanizing another dehumanizes the self. Inherent in adopting a White identity is the dehumanization of People of Color by severing ourselves from a sense of empathy to the experiences and plights of others. Empathy is an emotion central to what makes us human and without it we struggle to connect with others in genuine and honest ways. Engaging in this group and engaging in community organizing for racial justice can be a way to regain that lost sense of humanity and heal from the time spent dehumanizing oneself and others. While structural racism harms People of Color and benefits White people, it also harms White people in the way mentioned above, among others. All systems of power harm the people they also benefit and without acknowledgment of this harm, it is impossible to heal.
You will leave this group with an understanding of the differences between Whiteness, White identity, White supremacy, and different types of racism; reflections on how you developed your own white identity and how it has impacted your mental health; a grasp of how Whiteness shows up culturally in your worldview and alternative ways of being; a connection with your ethnic background to re-establish a relationship with your ancestry beyond White identity; a resource list for continued and studying this topic; and finally, a community of other White people to process this experience in an open, honest, and safe environment.
Contact Us
For more information, please email: jstone@symmetrycounseling.com
intake@symmetrycounseling.com