Yesterday I finished two days of REI training. You might be thinking this involved the outdoor retailer, but the training was with the Racial Equity Institute (REI). They were invited to the college I work at and I had the opportunity to sign up. The two days involved intense presentations of research data, fact-based history, documentary, discussing questions like “Why are poor people poor?” and “What do you like about being white?”. The purpose of REI training was to increase understanding of how racism developed and continues to operate at systemic levels in our society. There were about thirty other people in the training. Most of whom worked at the college and most of whom were white. Going into the training, I’d already had quite a bit of in-depth diversity training through graduate school and work. I’ve done some reading out of Zinn’s A Peoples History of the United States. So I’m no stranger to ideas…