On behalf of the Berlin Senate Department for Labor, Integration and Women, Halil Chan presents a detailed, well-founded and field-tested recommendation for action – the HAKRA Empowerment Concept – for the implementation of empowerment workshops against racism. (HAKRA is the self-designation of the project and a conceptual self-creation from the words “hak” and “ra”, which in different languages carry meanings such as right, justice, truth, God, way and cosmos).
The expertise introduces the empowerment approach on several levels of meaning and on the basis of historical-geographical reference points. This is followed by an introduction to the HAKRA Empowerment Initiative and the HAKRA Empowerment Concept. In a subsequent reflexive section, the author discusses the course of various empowerment workshops that were conducted for and with women of color, people of color, Roma and Sinti, Muslims of color, and Black people. A subsequent chapter looks at a workshop for People of Color as part of an EU project and highlights its strengths and weaknesses. The recommendation for action concludes with general recommendations and demands of actors and civil society of color against racism. In addition, there are lists of links and literature on the topic as well as references to initiatives, associations, media and organizations in Berlin and nationwide that have an empowerment approach critical of racism.
About the HAKRA empowerment concept the author of the expertise says:
“In terms of its basic approach, the HAKRA empowerment concept is primarily focused on individual and community empowerment, self-determination, networking, and strengthening the sociopolitical participation of People of Color in Germany. At the same time, however, the HAKRA initiative relies on dialogue between people of color and members of the German majority society in its pedagogical and political educational concept. Starting from the critique of social inequality relations regarding resources, privileges and power, she focuses on the option of social change through the action maxim of active powersharing (power redistribution) on the part of the white dominant society. The critical whiteness approach of the Critical Whiteness Studies from the Anglo-American context forms the complementary counterpart to the empowerment approach from the PoC perspective. The critical whiteness approach, in the sense of the ‘racial turn’, is about critically broadening the view from the victims of racism, as represented in Black Studies, to the white society practicing racism and its actors. Based on this, HAKRA has now also expanded its concept in this direction to the extent that racism and discrimination thematic, multi-perspective and transcultural empowerment trainings and workshops for and by People of Color and majority Germans are offered together in mixed and protected spaces.”
The brochure as PDF file is available here