@ Project REACH, during three amazing workshops by Don.

From NYC 1

I think this friday's seminar and workshops impacted a lot of people pretty deeply, or at least I learned a lot from it, and learned a lot about my classmates. Don had us do the boat exercise, which is a lot to explain, but after that he had us line up by race, then by class, and we talked about privilege and how important it was for us to each work in our own communities to achieve social justice.

Some things Don said that are very important:
"Quite frankly, as a person of color, we'll live with or without you [privileged white liberals]"

"We cannot be creating a movement out of victims (the oppressed, the poor, etc). We need to be working from where we do have privilege." So Whites must address White communities, males need to address other males, etc.

Later we had a discussion about heterosexism (heterosexism is a system that places value and privilege on heterosexualism).
Don asked us what our immediate reactions would be if our best friend thought we were gay/lesbian, what our reactions would be if our best friends told us they were gay/lesbian, and another question that I can't remember. Overwhelmingly the responses were quite homophobic and negative, though some people in our group thought that responses like "shocked" and "betrayed" were positive.

I think that for us, privileged students going to an ivy-league school, working on progressive issues and pretending we're tolerant or PC or whatever liberals do, Friday's seminar revealed that we've still got a long way to go.