On May 18, 2024, the committee I chair met for the second time with a few youth leaders from the Northern Illinois Conference of the United Methodist Church. The committee had developed the conference’s anti-racism workshop “Becoming the Beloved Community: How to Talk About Race in America,” and this was a follow-up to the first meeting a month earlier, both organized by the conference group DAY: Discipling Anti-Racist Youth. In that first meeting we spent most of the time getting to know one another in hopes that this would lead to forming a community of youth leaders concerned about racism and how to lead youth towards a life of anti-racism. We spoke very little about racism issues directly, however, which we did much more of in our second meeting.
But we began this second meeting again stressing the importance of community, of being together in the fight against racism. That was as important as gaining a deep knowledge of the presence and workings of racism itself. Afterall, our workshop was called “Becoming the Beloved Community,” so we stayed with that theme as we began. The term comes from the philosopher Josiah Royce but was popularized by Martin Luther King, Jr., for whom The Beloved Community was perhaps the key element in his thinking, something 
most people don’t realize. That seems like heady stuff for youth…but not necessarily. Our first suggestion in engaging youth in a discussion that might open the door to deepen their awareness and understanding of racism was to ask, What’s your “community” like?—as well as important variations on that theme. How do you get in (or thrown out) of your community (your group of freinds, your clique)? How big is your community and who is not in it? What would be your ideal community? Do you feel Beloved in your community? This last one is perhaps the most important of all, but must be handled carefully.
Below, in newest to oldest order, are suggestions and comments from those who were at the workshops. What have you all been thinking? What have you tried and how did it work? This is a modest way we’ll try to keep this community of youth leaders going, and hopefully deepening and growing.
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