Sacramento City Unified School District Racial Affinity Groups

As part of its “Anti-Racist Classroom” website, Sacramento City Unified School District promotes the development of racial affinity groups. It explains that racial affinity groups “offer a structure of inquiry and can address many needs.” It continues: “white people can discover together their group identity” and can “cultivate racial solidarity and compassion and support each other in sitting with the discomfort, confusion, and numbness that often accompany white racial awakening.”

The explainer also states that white people can “also discern white privilege and its impact without the aid of or dependence on People of Color (POC). It goes on to add that “while many POC may not need an affinity group,” it may help them “explore the diversity that exists among POC” without having “the distraction of having to educate white people on whiteness and its harm.”

The district’s webpage further adds that “To separate into same-race groups, in this sense, is not intended to divide us but rather to leverage the fact that, in relative reality, we are racially divided. In a Racial Affinity Group, we use separation to more deeply understand this conditioning.”

The page also state that racial affinity groups “can be self-forming and completely voluntary.”

A document from the National Equity Project included as part of the resources includes sample agendas, “Racial Affinity Caucuses,” sample racial affinity prompts, and other literature on becoming an anti-racist white ally.