In May 2019, Sheila M. Beckford and E. Michelle Ledder met for the first time in the aftermath of racialized terror. The circumstances were unusual but not unique. A prominent, mostly white social justice board of directors had gathered at a retreat center in Maryland – but not for the reasons one might first imagine. Earlier that year, one of its white directors had perpetrated a series of racist acts upon Black people who gathered at a national meeting to fight against the discrimination of another group. The board convened in May to address what had happened and to figure out what they needed to do to repair their reputation and “become anti-racist.”

 

Beckford, a Black woman and chair of the New York Black Caucus attending the national meeting, was one of the Black people who was targeted by the racist acts. She was there to name exactly what happened as one way to challenge the board to deal directly with what they had done. Ledder, a white woman who served a global non-profit as their Director of Equity and Anti-Racism, was brought in by the board to highlight the racism brought forward from Beckford’s and other Black leaders’ experiences. Beckford and Ledder named racism in straightforward ways – Beckford as a Black woman who was targeted by and has fought against racism her whole life, and Ledder as a white woman who was there to teach the white board members the specifics of the racism they enacted and a way toward becoming an anti-racist organization.

 

4REALS began from a one-time dialogue about racism between two strangers and a social justice board of directors. However, it quickly turned into an ongoing friendship and working partnership that highlights honest, insightful, incisive, and increasingly generative co-facilitated training and consulting about racism and anti-racism. An anti-racist intervention at a Maryland retreat center grew into Anti-Racism 4REALS training and consulting firm, a co-authored book (Anti-Racism 4REALS: Real Talk with Real Strategies in Real Time for Real Change), with future projects in the works. Anti-Racism 4REALS, centered in the 4REALS method, brings the proven thought leadership and agile skill set training for any organization to create, sustain, and protect an anti-racism culture for itself and its partnerships. Our goal is to provide the content (the WHAT), the pedagogy (the WHY), and the ACTION-NOW Learning Engagements (the HOW) to every person and group who is willing to believe that every single person can do anti-racism right now… if they choose to do so. Join us and let’s do Anti-Racism 4REALS together, for real.