We will not achieve the goal of dismantling white supremacy without white people working together to understand how white supremacy and racial bias are defining characteristics of our whiteness. In this work, white people must engage with BIPOC and white individuals and communities. However, white people learning about and discussing whiteness can elicit fear, anger, confusion, denial, shame, blame, and the “good white/bad white” dynamic. This presentation will explore how white people can engage from within – within ourselves and within our own white communities.
Presented by: Sky Jarvi (they/them) is currently the Inclusion, Diversity, and Equity Manager at Dakota County, in Hastings MN. Before this role Sky spent eight years working in the Office for Equity and Diversity at the University of Minnesota as the Director of Education and the Director of the Gender and Sexuality Center for Queer and Trans Life.
Sky has worked over 20 years in the field of higher education providing education, advocacy and support around equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives. Sky has worked at five different universities across the country. They have a Master of Education degree from Kent State University and a Bachelor of Science degree from Baldwin Wallace University in Ohio.
In their twenty years of experience, they have provided over 1,000 workshops and classes related to equity, diversity, and social justice. They have developed programs, advocated for organizational policy changes, and led campus-wide initiatives.
They grew up in the south in Atlanta and Nashville and now currently live in Minneapolis with their partner, their teenage son, godson and two dogs.
