the human race is sacred.
We discover this only when we both deeply honor humanity’s variety and fully embrace its unity. As we do this, the possibility emerges for co-creating a just, harmonious, peaceful and flourishing world for all.
The Race Sacred offerings are dedicated to this aim.
allied: bringing the best of you to the racial justice journey
A 7-week online course designed for white changemakers who desire to deepen their positive impact as allies in the journey of racial justice.
Discover
How and when to initiate and navigate courageous and compassionate conversations about race.
Deepen
Your understanding of the history and relevance of race, racial prejudice, and racism.
Expand
Your emotional and spiritual capacity to be with suffering, injustice, and distress.
Explore
How to transform despair and outrage into embodied compassion and constructive action.
Learn
How to support your friends and colleagues who are Black, Indigenous, and People of Color.
Clarify
Your best contribution to a racially just, harmonious and flourishing world.
I can’t reiterate enough how life-changing this course has been. This work has been influential in who I am becoming as a person. This isn’t reading a book or attending a lecture. This is deep, personal work that requires a community and beautiful, encouraging leaders.
The fact that I can and need to be emotionally balanced and trained in conversational mastery to be an agent for positive change is something I think about everyday now. I feel I am less reactive and ask more questions to prevent spiraling and unproductive conversations.
the five alliances
As we learn to act as effective, empathic and empowered allies to others, our journey is served when we establish INNER alliances in five distinct areas.
Allied with...
Historical Paradox
The first Alliance invites us into an eyes-wide-open awareness of the sobering history of racial injustice in the United States. This first Alliance begins a lifelong journey of corrective self-initiated education.
Allied with...
Emotional Equanimity
The second Alliance is made essential as we cultivate the first Alliance. To fully bear witness to the depth of paradox, tragedy, cruelty, and dehumanization woven into our nation’s history requires enormous emotional, psychological and spiritual capacity.
Allied with...
Purposeful Clarity
Once one becomes aware of historical reality and capable of constructively transforming one’s own emotional reactions, the opportunity emerges to accurately discern one’s own best contribution to a just, harmonious, and flourishing future for all. This discernment involves deep reflection on one’s core values, strengths, talents, networks and resources.
Allied with...
Conversational Mastery
Conversational mastery is the single most important and practical skill to develop in navigating the racial justice journey. Conversations with other white allies, with Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), and with family, friends, and colleagues. Conversations that can break through gridlock, establish common ground, explore tough issues, and generate new possibilities.
Allied with...
Unwavering Resolve
The fifth Alliance provides the emotional fuel to sustain consistent, constructive action through the trials and triumphs of this lifelong journey. This alliance also involves knowing when to push and when to yield; keeping your eyes on the prize in the face of inevitable setbacks and disappointments; cultivating grit, persistence, and a long-term time perspective; and holding the intention to become a good ancestor — keeping future generations in mind with all you do.
I haven’t stopped talking about how great this course and Harry’s facilitation are. He created something that anyone can access no matter where they are on their path toward understanding issues of race, injustice and alliedship.
I want to mandate that so many of my friends and family take this course! It is incredible. I know they want to engage. I know they don’t know how to. I know this course will give them a safe space, to then be challenged, to then feel uncomfortable, to then empower themselves.
allied course format
ALLIED: Bringing The Best Of You To The Racial Justice Journey is offered as a seven-week online course. Participants meet for one 90-minute session per week with Harry Pickens via the Zoom platform.
ALLIED is intended to be an introductory and comprehensive survey that explores the Five Alliances in a clear and concise manner and provides a starting point for integrating these Alliances and corresponding skills into one’s ongoing state of being.
This course is for those, like me, who want to understand how to engage with intense conversations with friends, loved ones, and colleagues while maintaining a relationship. We are in a complex climate and these frameworks demystify what we need to do.
I’ve appreciated the grace, relief, and balance of embodiment, awareness, scaffolded skills, and resources. I haven’t had a racial justice training like that before. There’s a huge awareness of all the areas that I need to keep growing in, but also a growing trust in what I know and can share.
who is harry pickens?
Harry Pickens, course developer of ALLIED, is an award-winning performing artist, educator, composer, author, workshop facilitator and life transformation coach. His career as a jazz pianist has taken him to 17 countries throughout Asia, Europe and the Americas. Harry holds practitioner and trainer certifications in EFT and Spiritual Technology and a Certificate In Applied Positive Psychology from the Flourishing Center. He is the developer of the From StageFright To Standing Ovation™, From Burnout To Bliss™ and Rewire Your Brain For Inner Peace™ Workshops, and creator of Emotional Empowerment For Personal Mastery™, a step-by-step protocol that is designed to help his clients quickly and easily release the pain of the past, fully embrace the miracle of the present moment, and consciously create their best possible future.
More Feedback for ALLIED
The universality of the ALLIED message applies not only to topics like racial justice but also climate change, feminism, and much more. I firmly believe that this course has the potential to impact positively the wellbeing of our society by creating bridges where there is right now a deep chasm, a polarized society.
—OC, France
I think it’s incredibly important to be cultivating the inner self to be more loving, effective, and engaged in the outer world, and that’s what I see this work and course as doing.
—EM, Virginia
I would particularly recommend ALLIED to people on the “left” who are hampered by assumptions and ideologies about what they need to be or need to become.
—LT, Massachusetts
I think this course is different than others in many ways in that it appeals to folks across all spectrums of beliefs. I love that it focuses on real-world applications on these skills versus just giving information. I also love that there are so many resources available to us to explore on our own and that this is so blended with a strong sense of community.
—KSW, California