"Hi, I'm Bonnie, and I'm a Racist"
Interesting.On a September evening at the United Church of Christ in Sunnyvale, California, a dozen people are sitting in folding chairs arranged in a circle. Nearby, a plastic folding table is topped with cookies and fruit. (Coffee is notably absent.) The setup is basically that of an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, except that the group, mostly older and mostly white, isn't here to deal with chemical dependency. Rather, they have decided they want to better understand their own prejudices and take part in productive conversations about race.
Welcome to Racists Anonymous, the brainchild of the Reverend Ron Buford, the church's pastor. Buford, who is black, was fed up with attending race talks where either he left feeling angry or white attendees left feeling guilty. During the presidential campaign, he watched Donald Trump and others sow racial division, and he decided to fight back. What would happen, he thought, if we treated racism like a disease, one that all of us suffer from?