- OAKLAND, CA -
-SOWETO, SOUTH AFRICA-
Dr. Gigi Khanyezi
Faith, Justice, Race, Healing
Workshop Series
The Epigenetics of
White Supremacy
Many who landed on the shores of North America went from being victims in Europe to brutal perpetrators in “the new world”. Their role changed, but the driving force did not. Epigenetics has shown this driving force is passed down through generations in the physical body by the shift it caused in their DNA.
Even though you are vehemently against white supremacy, it still lives in your unconscious. This is true for all of us, regardless of color, although for different reasons. Since 95% of your life is lived from your unconscious, the supremacy, or trauma from it, living there helps hold the system in place. Crazy right?! But there is good news! There are practical skills to shift the unconscious (and DNA) and make you more effective in your efforts toward justice.
Through an integration of history, science, and current events, this workshop series explores this driving force and how we begin to dismantle it… in society and in ourselves.
This workshop series will consist of cutting-edge teaching, robust dialogue, experiential learning, and very practical tools and skills. It is not just informative; it is transformative.
Dr. Gigi has the very unusual experience of having lived entire sections of her life identified as two different races in two different countries. She will be very transparent about her own journey, and how this teaching and its research came from her own personal experience.
This is for you if you:
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Recognize that racial injustice is pervasive in our society
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Recognize that change must happen
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Want to do your part even if you don't know how yet
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Are open to engage new ways of thinking
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Are open to self-reflection
This is not for you if you:
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Are unsure if there is racial injustice in our society
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Are unsure if change is critical
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Are undecided about doing your part
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Are closed to new ways of thinking
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Are not open to self-reflection
Content
This series has five 90-minute workshops. For those who cannot attend live, recordings will be sent out. There are two separate groups, one for BIPOC, and one for folk racialized as white.
We will integrate six components:
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Epigenetics - Unresolved trauma is passed down in our physical bodies through the way it shifted our DNA
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De-colonizing Theology / Faith - Throughout history, scripture has been strategically distorted to justify the colonizing / enslaving of peoples. Those distortions are in the foundation of what we call "Christianity" today, making the de-colonizing of our faith a life/death matter in 2025.
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History (Little Known!) - Many of the colonizers who dawned the shores of North America came from a profoundly traumatic collective background in Europe
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Neuroscience - How they went from collective victim to collective perpetrator and what we can do about it now
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Practical Skills - to divest from the unconscious white supremacy locked in our bodies
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Current Events - Integration of current events
Choose a Track
Meet your Facilitator and Designer of the Workshops
Dr. Gigi Khanyezi
Dr. Gigi Khanyezi has the unusual story of living entire sections of her life as two different races in two different countries: 38 years Brown in the U.S., and 10 years viewed as white in the second most racially polarized country in the world: South Africa. More specifically, among the unmistakably beautiful and vibrant people of Soweto.
Dr. G, founder of Jesus and Justice™, is a Certified Historical Trauma Specialist and holds a Doctor of Ministry in Healing Racial Trauma from Howard University School of Divinity. She is a healing-centered anti-racist facilitator, speaker, artist, and cultural architect.
While cultivating the liberative faith Jesus modeled, Dr. G integrates principles of interpersonal neuroscience in bite-sized pieces so that a justice-centered theology is integrated with transformative collective healing. She specializes in training leaders to co-create liberative, embodied Beloved Communities with an ethos that is organically healing and empowering to the people in them.
Dr. G is a Brown woman with Afro-Brazilian and Amish roots; an artist and activist who spent ten years in Soweto, South Africa, and she is Momma to two beautiful boys.