ONLINE WORKSHOPS AND TRAINING AVAILBLE
we are wherever you need us to be.
Despite the Covid-19 pandemic, and any other social upheavals that may keep us from gathering in person, we are still able to provide professional and effective Contact & Conversation events and Racism Reduction training to organizations, institutions, and public or private groups via Zoom. Contact us and we’ll create a program for your groups particular needs.
Our Offerings
CONTACT & CONVERSATION | 1.0 & 2.0
1.0 | Contact & Conversation 1.0 is our foundational grassroots offering. It's designed to gather people together from all walks of life and from all races in order to make the “Human Oneness” connection we all need to begin having real conversations that go beyond head knowledge and polite politically correct speech and performative behaviors.
2.0 | In Contact & Conversation 2.0 we begin building a dedicated community of individuals that continually create and live from a place of inner awareness. The mindfulness-based racism reduction techniques learned in 1.0 are practiced, honed, and integrated into a new lifestyle for people dedicated to healing themselves and their community, while being actively accountable to others dedicated to reducing racism.
EquITy & DIVERSITY | RESEARCH & EXPERIMENTATION
E | Authentic equity & diversity and cultural competency training, supported by scientific knowledge, and practical interactive experiences are severely needed in almost every institution and organization in the United States. The contagion of the toxic social mind conditioning of racism is an endemic feature of American culture which the Ambient Noise approach, using mindfulness and social psychology, can help to expose, address, and heal.
R | We feel strongly that as more people become aware and active in reducing racism within themselves and in society, there will be a need for new and ongoing research and social experimentation to help support the work that the educators, healers, activists, leaders and everyday people dedicated to change are doing.
Contact & Conversation
1.0
Effective conversations around racism can actually happen.
Racism shows itself as a fundamental relationship that has been broken, and that being the "Human Relationship". Racism teaches and passes on the fear, hate, and tribal impulses to dehumanize others for control, subjugation, exploitation and extermination. The foundational relationship of compassion between humans in order to survive and thrive in the United States has been shattered via American Racism. Contact and Conversation helps begin the restoration of this severed relationship by "re-humanizing" each other through its unique method of Taoist-based mindfulness meditation and philosophy, physical connection, and evidence-based social psychological methods of reducing racism. This foundational skill-building workshop is a pre-requisite for participating in the Contact & Conversation 2.0 workshops.
Pace University, 2016. Darryl Aiken-Afam & recording artist Noni Rene w/ Anti-Racism Activist and Author Tim Wise, 2016
Pace University, 2017
Mount Holyoke College, 2017
Contact & Conversation
2.0
Reducing racism within ourselves and society is a life-time practice.
We are under no illusion that the insidiousness of deeply entrenched American racism and implicit bias can be fixed overnight. We know that for change to come we must dedicate our lives to the daily practice of making change even if we do not see the immediate results of our efforts. Contact and Conversation 2.0 is about doing the individual and group practice of mindfully challenging our social mind programming and conditioning around racism. It’s also about building and being accountable to a community of like-minded people that will check on and support each other on this healing path of freedom and liberation for all.
Rutgers University, 2018
Practice... (Rev. Angel Kyodo Williams @ The Shambhala Center NYC, 2018)
... & Action. (ALL of us together moving beyond just talk)
Equity & Diversity Training
Cultural Competence
Is your training Authentic?
Dealing with the human relationship problems that racism causes goes way beyond taking workshops, using buzz words, and checking off boxes. Putting a bunch of different people in a room, on a team, or into an organization, neighborhood, or university does NOT make it diverse. "Cosmetic Diversity" does not go to the heart of the matter, that of changing minds and attitudes and directly challenging social conditioning, where "Authentic Diversity" is all about encouraging those very types of changes which will lead to ongoing positive adjustments in the behaviors that drive and sustain American racism and implicit bias. Below are a few examples of authentic activists, teachers, and speakers in the field of reducing racism and creating racial equity that we are deeply in accord with.
Rev angel Kyodo williams. Writer, activist and ordained Zen priest. Her work in bringing together the fullness of what’s required in the human being to heal and transcend the destructive nature of American racism is powerful, real and what we endeavor to bring forth ourselves.
Dr. Robin DiAngelo. Academic, lecturer and author. Her research into the underpinnings of the sociological conditioning she termed "White Fragility" is an integral part in supporting effective dialogue in Contact & Conversation.
Michelle Alexander. Writer and Civil Rights advocate, author of The New Jim Crow, a reference source on accurate and evidence-based research on the War on Drugs and law enforcement history and policy as it applies to people of color.
Ambient Noise founder Darryl Aiken-Afam w/ Ambient Noise facilitators Dr. Kevin Gillette, Eric Santiago, & Suzie Choi, along with Dr. LaTisha Forster after C&C 1.0 at Rutgers University. We are a team dedicated to authentic diversity!
Research
Social Experimentation
Carrying on the scientific method of Social Psychological research
The importance and power of research in social psychology, sociology and other related fields cannot be overstated. Through the genius and hard work of dedicated men and women in the past and present, we are given tools to unravel, expose, and undo the diseased socio-cultural conditioning known as American racism.
The Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clarke’s Doll Experiments were ground-breaking social psychology research and were used in the pivotal “Brown vs The Board of Education” in determining that the Jim Crow practice of separate but equal was unconstitutional. It demonstrated how racial identity and implicit bias are programmed in children at a very young age through various social means.
The Stanford Prison Experiment by Dr. Philip Zimbardo was very controversial but yielded important social psychological information when it comes to a group of people with power interacting and controlling a group of people without power.
Dr. Albert Bandura’s Bobo Doll Experiment to understand how parents model aggressive behavior to their children is a hallmark in social psychology and demonstrates how the attitudes and behaviors of racism can be passed on to children.