Our Approach / Radical Optimist Collective

Radical Optimist Collective (ROC) began as an offering to guide and support individuals and small groups in racial awareness and racial healing work within the context of journeys to The Legacy Museum and Memorial in Montgomery, AL.

In time, these same processes transcended into deeper consultative, training, coaching, and facilitation work with organizations and companies. The heightened calls for racial justice that arose in the spring of 2020 following the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and so many more prompted us to expand our services to include additional offerings – such as Immersive Journeys, Transformational Coaching, Racial Equity & Inclusion Strategy Development, and Affinity & Healing Circles.

We honor and acknowledge that each person comes to us with their own lived experience, ancestral history, trauma, and current context. As a result, we utilize an individualized approach within the bounds of group or organizational work. We apply these learnings into ongoing racial equity and inclusion strategies within organizations, and we help identify the systems that require disruption and rebuilding. Our methods provide participants with the tools necessary to challenge white dominant culture with every action and choice, especially with decisions about how we engage others.

ROC operates as a collective because we believe that our own structures and methods must challenge white dominant culture at all times, every action and choice, and especially in the choices we make about how we engage. Drawing on the experiences and strengths of multiple people creates a more powerful experience.
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Every relationship starts with a conversation.

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Our Approach

We help individuals on their personal journeys while supporting the group’s collective work.

“People are opting out of vital conversations about diversity and inclusivity because they fear looking wrong, or being wrong. Choosing our own comfort over hard conversations is the epitome of privilege, and corrodes trust, and moves us away from meaningful and lasting change.”

“No one who has ever touched liberation could possibly want anything other than liberation for everyone.”

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.”

“Ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part.”

“The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. And it’s the only way forward.”

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

“The most addictive drug known to America. Racism. It causes wealth, an inflated sense of self, and hallucinations.”

“Humanity is not without answers or solutions regarding how to liberate itself from scenarios that invariably end with mass exterminations. Tools such as compassion, trust, empathy, love, and ethical discernment are already in our possession. The next sensible step would be to use them.”

“A real apology requires some labor.”

“We can’t meaningfully proceed with healing, with restoration, without ‘re-story-action.’ In other words, our relationship with the land cannot heal until we hear its stories. But who will tell them?”

“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

Every relationship starts with a conversation.

Equity

Inclusion

Intuition & Empathy

Vulnerability & Emotional Courage

Optimism

“People are opting out of vital conversations about diversity and inclusivity because they fear looking wrong, or being wrong. Choosing our own comfort over hard conversations is the epitome of privilege, and corrodes trust, and moves us away from meaningful and lasting change.”

“No one who has ever touched liberation could possibly want anything other than liberation for everyone.”

“Prejudice is a burden that confuses the past, threatens the future, and renders the present inaccessible.”

“Ours is not the struggle of one day, one week, or one year. Ours is not the struggle of one judicial appointment or presidential term. Ours is the struggle of a lifetime, or maybe even many lifetimes, and each one of us in every generation must do our part.”

“The beauty of anti-racism is that you don’t have to pretend to be free of racism to be anti-racist. Anti-racism is the commitment to fight racism wherever you find it, including in yourself. And it’s the only way forward.”

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

“The most addictive drug known to America. Racism. It causes wealth, an inflated sense of self, and hallucinations.”

“Humanity is not without answers or solutions regarding how to liberate itself from scenarios that invariably end with mass exterminations. Tools such as compassion, trust, empathy, love, and ethical discernment are already in our possession. The next sensible step would be to use them.”

“A real apology requires some labor.”

“We can’t meaningfully proceed with healing, with restoration, without ‘re-story-action.’ In other words, our relationship with the land cannot heal until we hear its stories. But who will tell them?”

“If you have come here to help me you are wasting your time, but if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.”

Every relationship starts with a conversation.