Class-Race Stand-Up and the Heart Exercise

Three linked embodied practices for working with race, class, and privilege in a residential group: the Heart Exercise, the privilege walk, and the Racism Stand-Up.

Class-Race Stand-Up and the Heart Exercise

Three linked practices for working with race, class, and embodied privilege in a residential group. The hardest day of the JAM week, and the one that requires the most preparation.

Published by ToGather, the research archive on intentional community life. Curation by Sharon Avraham.

What it is, and what it is for

This entry documents three practices that the JAM tradition uses, in sequence, to work with race, class, and the embodied weight of privilege. The Heart Exercise (45 minutes) opens the day with a metaphor for how children are wounded and how shields develop. The Class-Race Exercise (90 to 180 minutes) is the canonical "privilege walk": participants line up, the facilitator reads 50-plus statements, participants take steps forward or back based on whether the statement applies to them, and then they look at where they stand. The Racism Stand-Up (60 minutes) is a follow-on practice in which participants stand silently for statements about racist experiences they have lived through. The three together usually run the better part of a day.

The diagnosis underneath the practices is that race and class shape every participant's life in ways that an intellectual conversation cannot reach. A privilege walk puts the asymmetry into the body. A circle of participants standing for "stand if you have ever been called names because of your ethnicity" makes the pervasiveness of racism legible to white participants who may have never seen it as a system before.

The JAM manual is explicit about the danger of these practices. "These activities have the potential to touch into deep pains and explosive issues. We ask you to tread with care, caution and consciousness. Make sure you have capable, representative and informed leadership guiding these processes." The activities are positioned later in the week, after the container is built, and only with a facilitator team that includes representative leadership across the lines the practices are working with.

FROM THE FIELD The practices documented here are widely used in U.S. anti-racism and community-organising work, less so in European and global intentional community settings, and almost never in their JAM form in the Middle East or East Asia. The lineage runs through Paul Kivel's Uprooting Racism, through the TODOS Institute in Berkeley, and through the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond. The JAM manual's contribution is to embed the practices inside a week-long container that can hold the affect they raise. Many archive communities use lighter versions of similar work; none use the JAM sequence in full.

Where it came from

The Heart Exercise is credited in the manual to the TODOS Institute, an Oakland-based group that ran cross-racial dialogue and ally training from the 1980s through the 2000s. The exercise itself draws on metaphorical work in attachment theory and on lineages of trauma-informed group work that connect through Lillie Allen's Be Present model (Allen is named in the JAM manual's acknowledgements).

The Class-Race Exercise is credited in the manual to Paul Kivel and Martin Cano. Kivel, a long-time anti-racist educator based in Oakland, developed and published widely-used versions of the privilege walk in his book Uprooting Racism (New Society, 1996; revised in 2002 and 2017). The Class-Race Exercise as it appears in the JAM manual is one specific adaptation. Versions of the privilege walk exist across many lineages, including in earlier work at the Oakland Men's Project and in adaptations widely circulated in U.S. higher education during the 1990s and 2000s.

The Racism Stand-Up has roots in the Anytown USA programme and in the New York-based Center for Anti-Violence Education. The form (silent standing in response to statements) is older than any single attribution; cousins appear in Quaker query practice and in the witness-circle tradition.

The diagnosis underneath all three is consistent: race and class are systems, not individual attitudes, and the body knows what the mind has been trained to hide. Putting the asymmetry into the room (literally, with steps forward and back) makes the system visible in a way that argument cannot.

How it actually runs

The Heart Exercise (45 minutes, 15+ participants)

The facilitator asks participants to envision a newborn baby. The group calls out qualities. Innocent, sweet, dependent, noisy, trusting. The facilitator writes these up on paper and draws a heart around the list.

The facilitator names: "This is how we come into this world. Everyone, regardless of race or gender or class, is born like this. But then, what are some things that are said to young people that can hurt them and take away that innocence?" Group responds: "shut up and do what you're told," "you're just a kid and don't know anything." For each, the facilitator draws a small scar mark on the heart.

The facilitator then names: "Each of these words and remarks leaves a bruise. By the time we are adults, we have lots of scars." Draws concentric arcs over the scarred heart. Names that when a person gets a scar, they put up a shield to protect themselves. Asks the group: "What are some ways people might create armour to protect themselves from being hurt? What are some ways you have done it?"

The facilitator draws a second heart with scars and shields next to the first. Names: "When two people meet, each finds it very hard to see the real person behind the shields, much less let themselves be seen." Closes with a frame: "It is important to see people for the heart inside, not the armour. We are the hearts, not the walls."

The Heart Exercise is an opener. The manual is explicit: it should be followed by some of the other activities. The frame lands the group in the metaphor that the rest of the day will work with.

The Class-Race Exercise (90 to 180 minutes, requires diverse group)

Participants line up at one end of a large room, facing one wall. There is open space behind them and in front. The facilitator names: "You are at the starting line for a race to get a seven-figure salary, a private jet, a limo, four secretaries, and lots of power. In other words, our society's materialistic dream of success."

The facilitator names the frame:

This is not a yardstick of pain. It is a tool for exploring how our society has privileged some of us at the expense of others. By absolutely no means does where you end up exemplify how easy or hard your life has been.

The facilitator then reads 50-plus statements, slowly. After each, participants take one or two steps forward or back in silence, based on whether the statement applies. Sample statements from the manual:

If your ancestors were forced to come to this country or forced to relocate, take one step back.

If you have immediate family members who are doctors, lawyers, or other professionals, take one step forward.

If you ever felt afraid of violence towards you because of your race, class, gender, or sexual preference, take one step back.

If you have ever inherited money or property, take one step forward.

If you ever felt uncomfortable or angry about a remark or joke about your race, gender, sexual preference or ethnicity but did not feel safe to confront it, take one step back.

After the last statement, participants freeze and look around. They notice where they are and where everyone else is.

The facilitator then names the race. At the count of three, participants run to the front wall as fast as they can. The first few to the front get the best jobs. The race takes 30 seconds. The room rearranges itself around the inequity that was always there.

The debrief is the work. Participants pair up first, then return to the whole group. The facilitator opens the conversation: "How are you feeling? How was that for you? Notice any memories or experiences that came up." The discussion runs as long as needed, often 45 to 90 minutes.

The variation. The manual offers a one-hour variation in which small groups of five to seven first develop their own definition of "success" before the race, which adds complexity and resists the predictable outcome.

The Racism Stand-Up (60 minutes, diverse group of 15+)

Participants sit in a circle. The facilitator names: "I am going to read a number of statements. Stand if the statement applies to you. Notice your feelings, memories or thoughts throughout the exercise."

The statements are sequenced from easier to harder:

Stand up silently if you have ever been called names because of your ethnicity.

Stand if you have heard jokes told about members of your group.

Stand if you have been treated unfairly by teachers or counsellors in school because of your ethnicity.

Stand if you have been the target of violence because of your ethnicity.

Stand if you have been stopped by the police or other authority because they said you "looked suspicious."

Stand if you have tried to change how you look or speak for fear of being put down for being of your ethnicity.

Each statement is held for about ten seconds. The facilitator says "thank you" as the signal to sit. The pace is slow.

After the last statement, participants pair to process. Then the whole group returns for a larger discussion. The Racism Stand-Up is often the place where white participants in the group see for the first time how pervasive the experience of racism is for their colleagues of colour.

The integration

The JAM manual is explicit that one of the supporting practices for the day is the Truth Mandala, which can be scheduled later in the week to hold the affect raised by the Class-Race work. The manual notes: "If things become intense, one format that can hold space for intense discharging, in a relatively safe context, is the Truth Mandala."

A representative sequence for the Power Day at a JAM:

| Time | Practice | |---|---| | 09:00 | Morning check-in | | 10:00 | Heart Exercise | | 11:00 | Break | | 11:30 | Class-Race Exercise (90 to 180 minutes) | | 14:00 | Lunch and recovery | | 15:30 | Racism Stand-Up | | 16:30 | Whole group debrief | | 18:00 | Free time | | 20:00 | Evening practice (often a Truth Mandala or Cultural Awareness Dialogue) |

What it is and what it is not

The privilege walk works with embodied asymmetry. The walk is not an argument that any one participant deserves blame or credit for where they end up. The manual is explicit: "There is nothing wrong with you if you find yourself moving forward or backward. None of us are responsible for the ways that our society has given unfair advantages to some at the expense of others."

The Class-Race Exercise is a snapshot of one axis of an unjust society. The exercise is not the whole picture. It captures certain forms of class and racial inequity well, and misses others. The variation that asks small groups to define "success" before the race is one way the manual addresses the partial framing.

The Racism Stand-Up is for the group, not for the participants of colour. The exercise shows white participants what their colleagues of colour live with. Asking participants of colour to stand for one statement after another, in a group that includes white participants, is asking them to do the labour of making the system visible. The manual recommends, fairly explicitly, that the facilitator team include representative leadership and that the framing be careful.

These practices pair with Truth Mandala (for holding the affect they raise), with Setting the Container at a JAM (which builds the trust the practices require), and with companion practices in Uprooting Racism and other Paul Kivel work.

The practices have several adjacent forms. The Cultural Awareness Dialogue (Item 110 in the JAM manual) is a follow-up dialogue practice. Prejudice in the Flesh (Item 111) is a more intense role-play where the group is divided into three eye-colour castes for an afternoon. Awareness to Action (Item 112) helps participants translate what they have seen into commitments.

Communities and lineages using these practices

Paul Kivel and Uprooting Racism. Paul Kivel's book is the canonical written reference. The book is in its third revised edition (2017) and is widely used in U.S. anti-racism work. See paulkivel.com.

The TODOS Institute and successor projects. Oakland-based, active 1980s through 2000s. The Heart Exercise emerged from this lineage. The institute itself has wound down, but several of its facilitators continue work in adjacent organisations.

The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond. New Orleans-based, founded 1980. Long-running anti-racism training that uses related embodied practices. See pisab.org.

Resource Generation. U.S. network of young people with class privilege working on wealth redistribution. The Money Secrets exercise in the JAM manual (Item 113) shares lineage with Resource Generation's work. See resourcegeneration.org.

Class Action. U.S. organisation working on class consciousness. Workshops on similar themes. See classism.org.

The Oakland Men's Project. Named in the JAM manual's acknowledgements. Active 1980s through early 2000s. Pioneered men's anti-violence work and related embodied practices.

FROM THE FIELD The communities the ToGather archive documents do not, in general, use the JAM-form Class-Race Exercise. The closest practices in the archive are the work-circle conversations on class and ethnicity at several Israeli kibbutzim, the inter-caste and economic-asymmetry work at Auroville, and the explicit class work at Tamera in their economic-circles practice (documented in the Tamera Communitarian Economy entry). These are lighter and less formalised than the JAM sequence. Communities considering the JAM practices should be honest that they are importing a U.S. anti-racism tradition, with its own assumptions about race, class, and conversation.

How to begin practicing this in your own group

1. Test the readiness of the group and the facilitators. The JAM manual is direct: do not run these practices without trained, representative leadership. The facilitator team needs to include people from the lines the practices are working across. A solo white facilitator running the Racism Stand-Up with a mixed group is a failure mode.

2. Adapt the statements to the context. The 52 statements in the manual are U.S.-centric. A version of the Class-Race Exercise that uses statements about caste, ancestral origin, language, or religion may fit a different community better. The manual invites adaptation. Adaptation is necessary, not optional, outside the U.S. context.

3. Schedule recovery time. The Class-Race Exercise plus the Racism Stand-Up plus the Heart Exercise is a long day. Participants will need time afterwards. The manual recommends free time, food, and quiet space. Some groups schedule the Truth Mandala for the following day to give the material a place to land.

4. Prepare for the white participant who shuts down. White participants who have not done this work before will often shut down, become defensive, or perform guilt in ways that take up group time. The facilitator team needs a plan: separate processing groups, white-facilitator-led debrief space, or simply naming the pattern in advance.

5. The companion practice. The Cultural Awareness Dialogue (Item 110 in the JAM manual) and the Awareness to Action exercise (Item 112) are the integration practices that the manual sequences after the Class-Race Day. They translate the embodied experience into language and commitment. Without them, the day risks becoming an emotional experience that does not produce change.

6. The reckoning. Most groups running these practices for the first time will, in the year after, find that some participants felt unsafe, some felt unseen, some felt they were performing for the white participants in the group. The honest path is to debrief at the facilitator level after every session and to revise the practice based on what is heard. The 2017 third edition of Uprooting Racism itself notes that the original 1996 privilege walk has been critiqued, sometimes sharply, and that the practice has evolved.

Living examples and entry points for community builders

The practices are alive in many U.S. and international contexts.

The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond Undoing Racism workshop. Active in the U.S. for over 40 years. Two-and-a-half-day intensive, includes related embodied practices. See pisab.org.

Class Action workshops. Active in the U.S. on class consciousness work. See classism.org.

Resource Generation gatherings. Active for young people with class privilege. The Money Secrets work and class-specific practice. See resourcegeneration.org.

Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) chapters. Active across the U.S. SURJ chapters use lighter versions of these practices in local organising contexts.

European antiracism networks. Adapted versions of the privilege walk are used in many European antiracism training programmes, often with statements that reflect European racial and post-colonial dynamics rather than U.S. ones.

Adjacent or inspired applications include the Anti-Bias Education work in Israeli-Palestinian co-existence programmes, the Decolonising the Mind work in several African community networks, and the caste-and-privilege work in several South Asian organising programmes.

Entry points for someone building a community:

• Read Paul Kivel's Uprooting Racism (third edition, 2017). The book is the canonical text and includes Kivel's own evolved framing of the practices.
• Attend a People's Institute Undoing Racism workshop if you are in the U.S., or an equivalent in your region.
• Read bell hooks's Teaching to Transgress alongside the Kivel material. The two together cover the practice and the philosophy.
• Start with a Cultural Awareness Dialogue (Item 110 in the JAM manual) rather than the Class-Race Exercise. The dialogue practice is gentler and is often the right first move.
• Find a co-facilitator who is representative across the lines the practice will work with.

One caution. The privilege walk has been substantively critiqued, including by educators who have run it for years. Critiques include: that it can reduce structural racism to a personal-attributes checklist, that it can centre white participants' emotional journey, and that it can put participants of colour in the position of performing their pain for a mixed audience. The 2017 revised Uprooting Racism itself acknowledges several of these critiques. Anyone running the practice should engage the critiques seriously before importing the form.

Where it gets hard

The white participant emotional cost. White participants who have never done this work before will often go through guilt, defensiveness, or shutdown. The facilitator team is responsible for holding this without letting it take over the group's time. Several practices (including separate-affinity processing groups) are commonly used to absorb the white-participant affect outside the mixed group time.

The cost to participants of colour. The practices ask participants of colour to be present to a group of mixed participants while standing for statements about racial trauma they have lived through. The cost is real. The manual recommends representative facilitation and careful framing, but the cost is not fully removable. Some communities have chosen to run separate processing groups for participants of colour and for white participants, with mixed integration only on later days.

The U.S.-centric framing. The 52 statements are U.S.-centric. A version run outside the U.S. without adaptation will misfire. Adaptation is real work and is often skipped.

The intersectional gap. The Class-Race Exercise primarily works with race and class. Gender, sexuality, disability, and other axes are present in some statements but are not the centre. The Gender Day (Item 115 in the JAM manual) is the partner practice for gender; the manual does not have an equivalent sequence for disability, queerness, or other axes. Communities adapting the work often add their own statements.

The "after" gap. A group that runs the practices and does not do the integration work (Cultural Awareness Dialogue, Awareness to Action, follow-up commitments) can leave participants emotionally raw with no path forward. The day is part of a sequence, not a standalone intervention.

The performative drift. Long-running antiracism workshops sometimes find that returning participants begin to perform the practice rather than enter it. The facilitator team should refresh the framing, vary the statements, and bring new material.

More resources

Canonical primary sources.

• YES! Activities Facilitation Manual for Young Changemakers (2010), items 107 through 114 (Race, Class, Gender and Power chapter, sections on race and class). The source for this entry.
• Paul Kivel, Uprooting Racism: How White People Can Work for Racial Justice (New Society, third revised edition 2017).
• Lillie Allen and the Be Present model (named in the JAM manual's acknowledgements; the Be Present Empowerment Model).

Trainings and lineages.

• The People's Institute for Survival and Beyond Undoing Racism workshop.
• Class Action workshops.
• Resource Generation.
• Paul Kivel's site.

Theoretical lineage.

• bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress (Routledge, 1994).
• Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility (Beacon, 2018).
• Audre Lorde, Sister Outsider (Crossing, 1984).
• Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones, "White Supremacy Culture" (originally 2001, revised 2021).

Companion frameworks.

• The JAM Method (the parent framework).
• Gender Day at a JAM (the gender-specific partner practice).
• Truth Mandala (the grief practice that often follows the Class-Race Day).
• Setting the Container at a JAM (the opening that prepares the group).
• Restorative and Transformative Justice (an adjacent lineage of group practice).

From the ToGather archive. Tamera economic-circle interviews on class and ownership. Auroville interviews on caste and ancestral origin. Several Israeli kibbutz interviews on ethnic stratification within the community.