What if Racialicious wasn’t just a blog, but an actual experience?
by Carmen Van Kerckhove
Wow! I just checked our stats and it turns out we had close to 400 people registered for my free teleseminar yesterday, “Love and Sex: What’s Race Got to Do With It?”
Those of you who joined me live – thank you! Those of you who missed it, don’t worry. If you registered, you will get an audio recording via email. (You can still register for the audio now if you’d like to hear it.)
As you know, this call was a preview to a new program I’m launching called The Racialicious Experience.
Let me tell you more about it.
I’ve been really inspired by the quarter million people who visit our blog Racialicious each month.
Our readers have told me that the blog is a refuge for them, a place where they can come to feel sane, and that it provides them with something that’s missing in their offline lives: a safe space in which they can have relaxed, authentic, and productive conversations about race.
So I began thinking to myself: would it be possible to replicate those qualities of our blog into something bigger? Into a live experience?
And that’s how The Racialicious Experience was born.
It’s a 6-week program in which we’ll explore how race impacts the way we view the world, our experiences in the workplace, our family life, our sexual and romantic relationships, and even the way we do or do not express our authentic selves. We’ll conclude with the biggest question of all: Why does it even matter? At the end of the day, what’s the human cost of racism?
One of things that I believe is missing from a lot of programs out there that explore race or diversity, is this human element.
A lot of corporate diversity training, for example, is really about telling you what you should or shouldn’t do in the workplace. And there are a lot of programs that fall into the anti-racism or anti-oppression training category that can stay too much in the abstract: they deal with issues of racial justice, social justice, but often don’t connect those issues to how these impact the actual lives of everyday people like you and me.
That’s just one of the things that sets this program apart from others. I really want us to focus on how race and racism impact us as human beings. How it prevents us from forming real connections with one another. How it can even get in the way of allowing us to express our authentic selves. How does that impact our spirits? Our souls?
Now, I’d love to accept every person who applies for this program. But, there’s just no way I can accommodate everyone and still provide the select, hands-on experience you need.
So, to honor my commitment to you, I’ve decided to limit enrollment to two select groups of 15 people.
Also, because it’s so important to this experience that I create the kind of safe, intimate space that will most conducive to authentic conversation, I have created an application process for this program. Only those who are accepted will be able to participate in the program.
I’ve created (a rather long) page with all the details you’ll need to know about the format, the dates, the tuition, the application process, etc. You can read it here, and also request your application: http://www.racialiciousexperience.com
One thing you should know is that I must receive your application by 5 pm Eastern on Wednesday, July 8th, in order for you to be considered for this program. So if this sounds like something you’d like to participate in, please do get your application in early!
Thanks! And I hope you’ll join me this summer for The Racialicious Experience. 
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
Rachel Hills wrote:
This is a really fantastic idea.
Posted 02 Jul 2009 at 5:54 pm ¶
Nikki wrote:
Great idea! Wish I was available during either of the two sessions. Maybe next time?
Posted 03 Jul 2009 at 11:06 am ¶
fatima wrote:
im really not impresed with the fact that it costs $300 dollars, and $25 just to apply. if you want ‘only serious applicants’ then why don’t you ask serious questions on the application?
and $300 for what? it doesn’t seem that materials could cost ANYWHERE near that amount.
whether or not you are doing so deliberately, you are pushing away working class/poor readers from your seminar. im really disappointed in that.
for the future, i would suggest that you offer some type of scholarship, and get rid of any application fee.
for this time around, you are really losing out on a lot of applicants that are SERIOUS but just not rich.
Posted 03 Jul 2009 at 11:49 am ¶
Restructure! wrote:
How do you moderate headache-causing comments in real time? I listened to the recent Addicted to Race podcast, and some of the caller comments were trolling and/or not productive (”White people are the minority now.”). You can cut off a caller’s rant, but in real life, you would have to address your customer’s Racism 1o1 questions about whether upper-class heterosexual white males suffer the most discrimination…
Posted 03 Jul 2009 at 2:12 pm ¶
Latoya Peterson wrote:
@restructure –
That shouldn’t be a problem. One, it takes far more effort than just dialing in/happening upon a blog, so only the serious will come. It takes a really motivated person to pay $300 to spew racial hatred or intentionally slow down the conversation. Two, people are generally much better behaved in real life than they are online. Our mod policy is aggressive because we literally don’t have time to fight with every commenter who wants to ignore the mod policy, etc. Three, Carmen is pre-screening, which is something we can’t do on BTR.
@fatima –
This blog is free.
However, it comes at a significant cost – Carmen pays all hosting/tech expenses out of pocket, we don’t have ads, and we have a fairly ambitious production schedule for a volunteer-run outlet that has no financial backing.
You support Carmen and help keep this site running by supporting New Demographic programs like this one. If it’s out of your budget, we understand that. But I’m getting tired of not being able to pay people for the amazing work they do here. I am tired of pushing back on my correspondents to supply more content, knowing they have been just as impacted by the recession as anyone else, and any article they volunteer to write here is one that they are not selling to a paying outlet. I am tired of not being able to expand Racialicious in the ways we want to because of a lack of funding to delve into really time consuming projects – like producing and distributing a print component to provide to those without internet access or to those who are incarcerated.
If Carmen dreams up anything to help create revenue that can come back to the site, I am all for it. You are correct in saying that cost of materials may not be that high, but you did not factor in the cost of a person’s time – something that is often taken for granted in digital spaces.
Posted 03 Jul 2009 at 2:58 pm ¶
Fiqah wrote:
I was one of the gajillion people on the line during this call, which was very well presented. This sounds like an innovative product addition to the Racialicious/New Demographic family. And considering what corporate diversity firms TYPICALLY charge for their semi-useful services, the price is actually great. So good job, you guys.
Posted 03 Jul 2009 at 4:33 pm ¶
Catherine wrote:
What a great program, how wonderful that anyone can come into the conversation for a safe environment to share, digest, learn and grow from the experiences of each other.
Sharing in a safe forum can be the environment in which feelings of discrimination can be a platform upon which all people stand to say the way against discrimination is only tolerance and understanding, not hatred, not anger, not violence. After all, we are 99 percent the same.
Its difficult for some people to pay in these days and times but the blog continues to offer the discussion at a cost to the host Carmen that she donates to the community. Thank you for such a great blog!
Posted 04 Jul 2009 at 3:47 pm ¶
atlasien wrote:
@fatima:
I also think that people who work in blue-collar and service industries could really benefit from something like this. I worked in restaurants for many years and the racism in that kind of environment was intense, and really difficult to deal with. I had to come up with strategies almost entirely on my own.
Putting myself back in my old shoes, there’s no way I would have paid $300 for a seminar… but I wouldn’t even have invested the time either, if it was free. I don’t want to speak for everyone in that situation, but where I was at — economically, psychologically — was very different from where I am today, and I just wouldn’t have seen the value.
My point is that if your #1 goal is to reach working-class people, that really has to be the number one goal, because it’s not easy, and it’s not just something you can fold into a pre-existing project. I do like the idea of a scholarship, but that creates a lot of extra work to decide who gets the scholarship.
The goal of this project, as stated by the organizers, is simply to work with a small group of people who a) have got the money and b) see the value, and then use the money to support a free project (Racialicious) that benefits everyone (with internet access).
This isn’t academia, there are no students paying tuition, and the money has to come from somewhere. Knowledge workers deserve to be paid for sharing knowledge just as much as waiters need to be paid for serving up food.
Also, I’d much rather see people profiting off anti-racism than profiting off racism.
Posted 05 Jul 2009 at 10:00 pm ¶
Elton wrote:
I would love to sign up for this, but I just don’t have the time. How is that Racialicious book coming along?
Posted 06 Jul 2009 at 12:52 pm ¶