At one point during the workshop on Friday, the participants were placed in different rooms according to skin color – all the white people in one room and all the non-whites in another.

Rev. Charles Ruehle, executive co-director of Crossroads Ministry, who is white, met with the white participants and introduced them to “internalized racial superiority,” defined as a “process that teaches White people to believe, accept and/or live out superior societal definitions of self and to fit into and live out superior societal roles.” The ultimate outcome of this is, according to Ruehle, “white supremacy.”

Ruehle made a comment during the segregated discussion that blacks have more to fear from whites that don’t recognize their inherent racism than from neo-Nazis and members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Anne Stewart, a trainer for Crossroads Ministry, who is black, met with the black participants and discussed what Crossroads calls “internalized racial oppression,” which is defined in the participant manual as a “process that teaches People of Color to believe, accept and/or live out negative, societal definitions of self to fit into and live out inferior societal roles.”

During the discussion, Stewart stated that many black families encourage their children to marry light-skinned mates to lighten their complexion, and she also blamed black-on-black crimes on white society instilling a sense of worthlessness in blacks.