Webinar: Interrogating colonial legacies in self-evaluation and self-representation

Webinar: Interrogating colonial legacies in self-evaluation and self-representation

valter

Wed, 08/12/2026 - 13:25

The World Council of Churches (WCC) will host a webinar on 31 August 2026, marking the UN International Day for People of African Descent. The question put forth will be a plain one: How do colonial assumptions survive inside the everyday expectations a workplace puts on the people who work there? The session s will be convened by the WCC programmes on Overcoming Racism, Xenophobia, and Related Discrimination and Just Community of Women and Men.

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Many organizations have committed to decolonizing themselves – undoing the colonial patterns that still shape how they work. Most of that work has gone into what can be seen and counted: who gets hired, which policies apply, how partnerships are written. The organizers call this work critically important. They also call it unfinished.

The quieter part is what greets a person from a racialized background – someone a society marks and treats as belonging to a race – on the day they arrive. How they are expected to speak. How they are expected to dress and carry…