What’s My Story?

The following self-assesment prompts are intended to foster your self-knowledge and help you to understand where you are positioned within anti-racism frameworks. Please write out your answers and respond as honestly as possible. Tip: Find a journal that you can use specifically for your anti-racism journey.

Any differential behaviour towards a particular racial group is a result of stereotypes, prejudices, and feelings that may be positive, negative, normative, or neutral. The following sections will explore these issues and the kinds of assumptions and actions they can bring about.

Part 1:  Autobiography

Your Autobiography: Racial and Ethnic

1. How would you describe your ethnic and racial background?
2. What ways do you identify with these and/or other ethnic and racial heritages?
3. What events, situations, moments, or processes have led to a greater awareness of your ethnic/racial background?
4. What has being racialized and observing someone close to you being racialized meant to you?
5. What questions or comments come up for you after doing this section?

Your Autobiography: Co-Cultural (gender, sexual orientation, age, physical abilities, class religion, affiliations)

1. What are the co-cultures that most strongly influence your present sense of identity?
2. Which ones do you most strongly or closely identify with?
3. Which seem the least important to your identity and why?
4. Where do you have privilege and where do you not? What role does privilege play in your actions, reactions, and attitudes?
5. What questions or comments come up for you after doing this section?

PART 2:  Assumptions and Behaviorships

1. Think about an ethnic or racial group that you know little about. List everything you know, or think you know, about this group.
2. Identify the sources of your knowledge and evaluate the information obtained from these sources.
3. How has this knowledge influenced how you interacted with people of that specific group?
4. Reflect on an encounter or experience that changed one of your assumptions. What factors contributed to this change and your way of thinking?
5. What questions or comments come up for you after doing this section?

PART 3:  Actions
1.  In your group (classroom, workplace, community etc.,) what general policies and practices exist that take into consideration the needs of people from various racial groups? (e.g., hiring, retention, harassment or professional development.) For example, if you are a teacher, what do you know about school board policies, teacher associations policies, provincial policies, as well as what are your inclusive classroom practices and procedures?

a)  If you do not know what these policies, procedures, and resources are, why do you not know this and where can you go to obtain the information? In your organization, whose job is it to know?
b)  What is the impact of the procedures, practices, and resources in your immediate workplace, institution, or governing bodies?

2.  Provide examples of the ways that systemic racism has influenced specific choices in your life. If you believe that systemic racism has not played a part in your life, click here to see our definition of systemic racism.
3.  What questions or comments come up for you after doing this section?
4.  For the following questions, recall an event that you were part of in which a racial dynamic was involved.

a)  How did it make you feel?
b)  Describe your reactions and actions
c)  What responses (physiological, emotional and thoughts) affected your decision to respond in the manner you did?
d)  What questions or comments come up for you after doing this section?

PART 4:  Anti-Racism

1. What is your understanding of anti-racism?
2. What does it mean to you?
3. How do you engage in anti-racism in your life?
4. What questions or comments come up for you after doing this section? 
5.  Are there hazards (liabilities) involved in living anti-racism? If so, what are they?

a)  What is the range of feelings you experience when addressing racism and what are the ways in which you deal with them?
b)  What strategies do you use for dealing with uncomfortable situations? (e.g., anger, anxiety, defensiveness, confusion, threats, hostility, tears, assumptions, niceness, civility, silence, condescension, isolation, and disruption).
c)  Share a successful anti-racial moment. What made it successful?

6.  What are the limitations of anti-racism?
7.  What questions or comments come up for you after doing this section?

FINAL THOUGHTS:  Personal Discovery

1. What areas do you recognize you need to work on?