An anti-racism group, known as WARN, White Women Against Racism, sent two members to speak to interested women about ways to address racism in their families, in their own lives and around the world Thursday.
The UNM Women's Resource Center invited the Albuquerque-based group to discuss issues surrounding racism as a presentation in the Brown Bag lecture series.
"We thought it would be an interesting discussion," said resource center Program Service Coordinator Summer Little. "They do good work and it's good for people to know about this."
"The hardest work is uncovering and owning up to and dealing with the assumptions of a white person," said Betsy Erbaugh, a UNM Sociology graduate student.
Erbaugh also is a teacher's assistant for the Dynamics of Prejudice sociology course.
Although the name of the group specifies white women, members said they welcome all women to their group. Erbaugh said the group chose the name because it did not want women of color to be obligated to teach them about racism.
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"Women of color already know the stuff that we're trying to learn about," Erbaugh said.
The Albuquerque-based group meets every other week at a variety of places in the community.
WARN was first founded by Anne Russo, owner of a feminist bookstore. Now, that group has spurred the creation of other WARN groups, including the one that came to campus.
Organization members said other WARN groups are in development around the state
"It's a place to be honest," Clark Vivio said. "It makes our lives better. It's a service act for ourselves as white women."
Erbaugh said the group questions the right of white women as advocates against racism and the roles they play in social class structure.
"We ask, can we put ourselves out there? And it's hard to answer," Erbaugh said. "The group helps me to remember to think about that. It challenges me to think about what I did or said that day."
Pauline Sargent, an academic advisor at the College of Arts and Sciences, said she attended the meeting because she is against institutional racism.
"You have to look at yourself before you can do something useful in the world," Sargent said.
The core of Thursday's discussion was to learn new ways of discovering how to personally handle racism and how to use racial privilege to fight racism.
"I'm discovering in the last few years how really blind I am," said Lynn Murrey, a temporary secretary at Accessibility Services. "Racism has become so much a part of our culture, you can't see it."
"The group in part is making whiteness an object of critique and investigation," Erbaugh said. "It's important to start talking about whiteness as a racial category."
