Ep 43: The Importance of Affinity Spaces Artwork

The Joyous Justice Podcast

Systemic oppression conditions us to deny others’ and our own humanity. Many justice-seekers unwittingly perpetuate that dehumanization when they assume they must suffer, punish, or martyr themselves to dismantle oppression. At Joyous Justice, we're imagining and embodying a different way. Wholeness, love, and thriving are the antidotes to the brokenness in our world and in our own lives. Each week, April Baskin–with her friend and colleague, Tracie Guy-Decker–delves into theoretical and practical aspects of the pursuit of justice AND wellness.

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The Joyous Justice Podcast

Ep 43: The Importance of Affinity Spaces

July 01, 2021 • April Baskin and Tracie Guy-Decker • Episode 43

In this week’s episode, we talk about the importance of affinity groups, which are spaces for people with shared identity to safely unpack dynamics around oppression. Though it may feel counter-intuitive, affinity spaces are actually important tools as we develop our liberatory consciousness.

Find April and Tracie's full bios and submit topic suggestions for the show at www.JewsTalkRacialJustice.com

Learn more about Joyous Justice where April is the founding and fabulous (!) director, and Tracie is a senior partner.: https://joyousjustice.com/
Read more of Tracie's thoughts at her blog, bmoreincremental.com

Learn more about the Jews of Color Mishpacha Project at https://www.jocmishpacha.org/

Reflections/Discussion Questions:

Tracie and April begin discussing affinity spaces, particularly white affinity spaces to discuss dynamics around whiteness and racism. Have you been in these types, or other types, of affinity spaces? How was that experience? If these are new for you, what are your initial reactions?
April notes that affinity spaces are different from segregation, pointing out that we engage in affinity spaces all the time, for example, being in an all Jewish space. What affinity spaces do you find yourself in without realizing it?
April explains the differences between a segregated space and an affinity space, hinging on oppressive dynamics and how they manifest or not. Segregation is inherently oppressive, while affinity spaces help to unpack oppressive dynamics. Do you understand the difference? Explain it in your own words.
Tracie uses the example of discussion antisemitic microaggressions at work and how Jewish and non-Jewish employees need specific spaces to discuss this. This is because affinity spaces help to prevent marginalized groups from being re-traumatized, like in explaining why antisemitism is harmful. How does this example illuminate the importance of these spaces?
April reminds us that the oppressor group still may have been wounded somehow and affinity spaces allow dominant group members to be vulnerable. Why is this important?
April talks about the evolution of interfaith affinity spaces and how they were originally created to discuss certain dynamics but then they were dissolved once they were no longer needed. How can this example serve as a model for the future? How is the experience of interfaith folks different from navigating racism (and it very much is)?
April invites us to think about what other questions come up from this initial overview of affinity spaces. What other questions do you have? Submit them here!

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- [Narrator] In this week's episode, we talk about the importance of affinity groups which are spaces for people with shared identities, to safely unpack dynamics around oppression. Though it may feel counterintuitive, affinity spaces are actually important tools as we develop our liberatory consciousness.- This is Jews Talk Racial Justice, with April and Tracie.- [Narrator] A weekly show hosted by April Baskin and Tracie Guy-Decker.- In a complex world, change takes courage.- Wholehearted relationships can keep us accountable. We recently were talking to, I can't remember exactly who the student was, but there was a student that was, where affinity spaces came up. And we talked about the importance of affinity spaces. And I recently hosted an affinity space for white-identified Jews. I thought maybe it would be useful for our listeners to hear a little bit more about why affinity spaces are beneficial.- Yes! What's good about them?- And how are they any different from segregation from the 1950s.- Exactly, exactly.- Exactly. Because I tell me if this is your experience, it's been my experience that whenever I say like, okay, so we're going to do affinity spaces. Like there's at least one white person. Who's like, why are we doing that? Why are you segregating us? Like, I want to hear what the people of color in the room have to say. And like, it feels very uncomfortable, especially for the white folks. When they're first told that we're going to do that. If they have, if they've never encountered affinity spaces before, I don't know if you you've had that experience.- Oh, I've experienced that a lot from, for many different people, especially as someone who was facilitating affinity spaces 20 years ago. So I've heard all kinds of things. And what to me is interesting is that, well, one I want, I wanted to tell you, I am. I love affinity spaces. I can't remember I've said it on the show before. I might say it five times on this show, over the course of the shows, duration. To me, affinity spaces are to me what cars were on that episode for Oprah, where she was like, and you get a car and you get a car and you get a car. Everybody got that car! Right? Like I'm like everybody deserves affinity spaces, I want, and I want multiple affinity spaces for every person. So the first thing I want to notice is that because of complicated dynamics around race and racism, and honestly just a severe, intense lack of education and accurate education about race, people get really confused about this and because of our country's history of segregation, they also get confused about it. But the first thing I want to say is we engage in mindful affinity spaces and, or it's not segregation, it's affinity spaces all the time. Like often people are having that dispute as they're in an explicitly Jewish space. Right? Like it's occasionally some people are invited, but if tons of people started coming out and we would feel like they were invading our space, like we want, we want time with our people to connect deeply and do something that's different than what we could do. If half the group were Christian or Muslim. Now sometimes we can occasionally do that. But you know that, and there are at times gendered like there's or age wise, that there is a value that affinity space has, especially in the context of oppression and the difference between segregation, as we understand it. And affinity spaces as teachers teach it is segregation is coming out of a polarized sense that people should be divided inherently and consistently, and always as opposed to we are working to undo the harm and damage that has been done by oppression. And also for certain groups of people who are used to being in a dominant group or in a, an oppressed context, it can be helpful to begin practicing liberatory consciousness in an affinity space to allow people to come together. So in the Jewish community, most, almost all Jewish programming is mixed programming around race. And right now, because of issues that we still need to address in our community, the fairly significant percentage of our community that are Jews of color don't feel included in Jewish life or, or have been turned off after so many years. And so many experiences of racism that right now we're in our community is collectively, a lot of our community is collectively making meaningful efforts to shift this, which is great, but there aren't many Jews of color. So it's incredibly valuable just like if there were only a few Jews in a town, or if there were only 12 Jews in a community that had hundreds of people, a minyan is useful. And I don't hear anyone saying, excuse me, that's religious segregation. You shouldn't be forming a minyan.- You know, you know, I explained it to a big group that I was leading when I did the 18 days with a similar analogy with Jews where I said, so imagine we worked at like the largest employer in our town. We all worked at the same place and the town was the employer say they had maybe, I don't know, 15% of the workforce was Jewish. And recently there've been a lot of sort of, antisemitic microaggressions, right? Like people saying, talking about being jewed down on a bargain or, or making it look gross, gross or making comments about, you know, about Jews controlling the media or space lasers or whatever- All these things are lies. All these things are lies, yes. Okay, keep going.- So imagine that's happening. We all work for the same company and, and the, and the management says that they're, they want to do something about this and really like, bring it on it, like address it. Can you see how it might be useful to have a space where only the Jewish employees got together in order to talk about what it's felt like and how it's been without having the people who were guilty of those microaggressions, being able to overhear what they're saying. And you can see where it would be useful for the non-Jewish employees to be in a space and be talking about it so that they can be like, well, why is it offensive when I say, blah, blah, blah, Have a non-Jewish tell them why that thing is offensive so that the Jew doesn't have to be re traumatized the Jews in the, in the room that seemed to really like help, help folks understand a little bit about what the power of an affinity space. Those are both negative. Both of those examples that I just gave of the power of the targeted affinity group and the non targeted affinity group are they're pretty negative. I think those are my examples. And I think there are also positive.- Yeah, but I think it also comes from, but, And I think that's part of the value of affinity space. One, because also positive things can happen, but they're necessary in part because harm has been done because actually we lived in the utopia or semi utopia that sometimes people erroneously claim we've achieved.- Then it most likely really wouldn't be necessary. But, and so that's another dynamic that shows up with this is that certain people are resistant to it because they're in denial that there is suffering and oppression. And yeah. So what were you about to say? So you wanna just say a little bit about positive stuff.- No I just was thinking about the, the power of it, especially for the targeted group. It's, it's clear to me for the targeted group. When I think about myself as a woman, when I think about myself as a Jewish person, I can see how in the affinity space, around the targeted identity, there could be a lot of power in, in like for instance, the Jews of color, Mishpacha project just had their shop Shabbaton recently. Woo. And it was amazing. There were affinity spaces for Jews of color and for white Jews. And there were, but the services were open to all, but they were all explicitly led by Jews of color. And so having that opportunity for leadership that in the broader community, maybe isn't there. Like I can see how that also could be a really amazing positive benefit of affinity space for a targeted identity group.- Exactly. That and well, yeah, and, and to, and also affinity spaces are a safe, it creates a safe Haven to explore new ideas without as much weight attached. Like this is also the value of men's groups that for the dominant group, it also gives that group a chance to unpack certain things. Because typically in almost every oppressive dynamics, a group with power has also been hurt in some way, and then not having a chance to process that hurt. Even if it isn't as bad, it can still be quite significant or scary. And so them having a space outside of the limelight, outside of the attention of the full community, to- Be vulnerable- For different groups and yeah, different groups take different processes, depending upon the nature, like a men's group, because they're mostly dominant group might start out with actually just relaxing and having fun or doing golfing or playing cards or something. But over time as trust and safety is built, there may be a space for them to start to say, is anyone else feeling absolutely miserable and hates their life even as they love everyone in their life, but are so bitter after so many years, you know, and like can start to open up, right. And an often in JOC spaces, it starts with pain. And it there's some time of needing to process that and be heard. And just at times just being heard is enough for some folks. And sometimes the pain is deeper, so there's more work. And then it starting to, and also, and also doing relationship building and forming relationships and starting to contradict the deep, deep depths of isolation that has developed over years. And then that can happen for a few weeks or months or even a couple years. And then some folks may start to say, and this, and it depends on the group, but this is a pattern I've seen play out over a number of different groups start to say, okay, now that we've worked with this, what do we want to change? And they might've been working on subtly change, but actually we actually have power together and starting to notice like, now that we've done this healing work, and that's still kind of ongoing because stuffs still cause oppression is still oppressing and also new members may be joining, but now we want to start to get into, we're actually pretty powerful together. And what do we want to see? Right? Or over the course of time with Reform congregations, I've been told, and I wasn't there at the time, but this makes sense that there was a need. And recently, you know, to kind of harken back to some at URJ days like, and some clergy were starting to notice, actually we think we need to redo that again, that happened. This, we had affinity spaces for a whole generation, and now we're needing again around interfaith families and that interfaith family circles started forming and a lot of different congregations. And they found that after about 10 to 15 or 20 years, but about 10 to seven to 15 years, a lot of them dissolved because a lot of the people got what they needed in a deep way. And they formed relationships. They're able to have outside of that space. And they were able to advocate in different ways and get some of the things they needed and meet their needs, that they were able integrate it back into the community. And so depending upon the depth and now the targeting that interfaith family receives is different than hundreds of years of racism. Right? So depending upon the subject, there are ways in which at times affinity space, within a given thing, a given issue issue or identity can be a short-lived thing or an extended for ever thing, or some people or communities who say actually the pain and the oppression is so bad in other contexts, I actually want to have this be much of my life, right? But most of the time, that's not what happens. It's just a source of strength and connection and community. I suspect in the future, you know, I would invite you the listener. If you, if this is something that's come up and you have more specific questions about this, because this was just kind of Tracie's and my entry into the discussion, but there's a lot more we could say, but I hope that this has been helpful for a number of you. If you've been struggling with the concept to better understand its value and how it's different from oppression, that's actually moving in a liberatory way in the direction that we want to be going and that it has multiple uses. And for those of you who are on board to that, perhaps, maybe some of the metaphors or examples that we've shared can help you if, and when you confront resistance to the valuable ever wonderful affinity space resource. So with that, I wish you a wonderful rest of your week. Whenever you're listening to this, a wonderful Shabbat, if you're listening to it on Shabbat and we'll see you next time.- [Narrator] Thanks for tuning in our show's theme music was composed by Elliot hammer. You can find this track and other beats on Instagram at Elliot hammer. If this episode resonated with you, please share it and subscribe to join the conversation, visit jewstalkracialjustice.com, where you can send us a question or suggestion, access our show notes and learn more about our team. Take care until next time and stay humble and keep going.