Guilty white women paying $5,000 to attend anti-racism dinners

By Isolde Walters via SWNS

Two women of color hold antiracism dinner parties to educate white women on their privilege, charging a staggering $5,000 per dinner.

Regina Jackson, 70, a former corporate executive, and Saira Rao, 46, a former lawyer, started their company Race2Dinner to confront white women with their ingrained racism over a three-course supper.

The dinners last around two hours and can be tense affairs with one white host admitting that the event devolved into a shouting match at the table.

Regina, a Black woman, and Saira, an Indian American woman, of Denver, Colorado, founded Race2Dinner in 2019 after Saira was inundated with requests to go for lunch with white women eager to prove their antiracist credentials.

Regina said: “White women were always chasing Saira down.

“They would want to go for breakfast, lunch, dinner or cocktails with her and they would always say: ‘It’s not me, it’s not all white people.’

“From that Race2Dinner was born.”

There have so far been 25 antiracist dinner parties in big cities across the US with more scheduled as COVID restrictions relax.

The pair hired a white assistant whom they call their “resident white woman” to handle the dinner party admin.

“We hired a white woman to schedule the dinners,” Regina said.

Saira added: “The reason we have her is because of white supremacy - white people are comfortable with other white people.

“She does an hour-long Zoom call with them after the dinners and that is when the real truth comes out.

“They wouldn’t do that with us.”

The women-only dinners are attended by 10 people - the host, her seven friends and Regina and Saira.

No men are allowed as the pair want to concentrate on reaching white women and added that male guests increase security risks.

Regina said: “White men are as destructive and dangerous and violent as hell.

“One of these men coming in with a gun is a real concern.”

Saira said: “Our thesis is the sisterhood. We are modeling a white and Black and brown sisterhood and we can overthrow the patriarchy together.”

The dinners begin with a cocktail hour where guests introduce themselves.

Saira and Regina then ask guests if they would trade places with them, a Black woman and an Indian American woman.

“Typically zero say they would swap places with us,” Saira said.

“Then I will say if you had to trade places who would you choose and everyone chooses the Indian woman.

“So that establishes that white people are on the top, Black people are on the bottom and the white women know that.”

The pair then go around the table asking guests to recount a racist thing they have done recently.

Regina recalled: “One woman said she was driving home in an affluent neighborhood and she saw a cop had pulled over a carload of Black teens and her first thought was: ‘Gee, I wonder what they’ve done’.”

Saira said: “Other times they have heard a colleague or a friend say something like ‘ghetto’ or the ‘China virus’ and they have stayed silent.”

Regina and Saira said the guests either get incensed or tearful when confronted with their racism.

“They either get angry or they start crying.

“The tears aren’t always white women crying out of being fragile.

“A lot of the time it’s about carrying around trauma, knowing that you have been complicit in active racism.

“White supremacy hurts everybody including white people.”

The pair admitted that their dinner parties will not eradicate their guests’ racism.

Saira said: “It doesn’t work like that. You can’t buy a book or go to a dinner and it’s fixed.

“It takes decades for women to be programmed into white supremacy and it is a lifetime of reprogramming and relearning.

“They say the best way to break a habit is to replace it with another habit - so you need to replace a racist thought with an antiracist thought.”

The pair have faced criticism over the $5,000 fee they charge for a dinner party.

But Saira argued that this criticism is racist and does not take into account that the fee is split between one host and her seven guests.

“This fixation is white supremacy and I, for one, am tired of it,” she said.

“Let’s break it down: $5,000 split eight ways means $625 per guest.

“For that, they get two full hours with Regina and I, an hour with Lisa, our resident white woman, lots of pre-dinner prep conversations, an open invitation to continue the discussions with Regina and I plus dinner, drinks and dessert.

“This breaks down to less than $200 per hour and that does not account for the food and booze.

“If you think less than $200 per hour is comically high or a grift, you are steeped in white supremacy culture.”

Lotte Lieb Dula, 59, a retired financial strategist, hosted a dinner party in the summer of 2019 in Denver, Colorado.

The white woman said that the event quickly grew heated.

“At one point it was so uncomfortable that I went up and started bringing out dessert in the middle of a heated argument.

“People were shouting.

“I realized that every element of racism was present at that table that night and I exhibited many of the worst elements like being silent rather than confronting other women and choosing my own comfort and the comfort of my guests rather than protecting Saira and Regina.”

Lotte paid $2,500 to put on the dinner - the rates have since been raised - and said she would recommend the service to other white women.

“If you consider what you might spend over 10 years taking workshops where no one confronts you - it’s like taking ten years worth of workshops in a single night.

“That dinner changed my life.

“It’s not for the fainthearted but nothing will teach this lesson more deeply than this format.”