It never ceases to amaze me how it's considered perfectly acceptable to exclude whites from a community event like this but the reverse would be considered bigotry and racism.

I've lost track of how many events I might have attended (like job fairs, for example) but then discovered they were for POC only.

And we wonder why there's still such a problem with race relations in our community...

Which two communities?

POC LGBTs and POC anti-racism activists?
POC LGBTs and POC congregations?
POC LGBTs and white-dominant LGBT organizations?

The first two are of interest to POC LGBTs specifically because they, family, POC friends are likely to be members of POC congregations, anti-racism organizations, etc - POC LGBTs are both insiders and outsiders in those situations. Strategies would be different from those involving complete outsiders (white LGBTs), in which there is no obvious pre-existing bond.

As for the last situation, I suspect it would be a beef and what works, doesn't work session that wouldn't be too candid if whites attended. I have no desire to barge in, and can understand the presence of a session like this - as long as there is another session available "white privilege 101" and an integrated session where actual policy and organizing work is done by everyone, because misunderstandings and beefs have been vented beforehand.

Rebecca,
The reason that happens it that when POCs start trying to candidly discuss these issues with whites present, what invariably happens is that the POCs unconsciously start censoring themselves or if a POC makes a comment that a white person deems problematic in their POV, they start getting defensive as if the topic were about them.

What ends up happening is that the discussion bogs down and the whole subject gets totally derailed from what the POCs wanted to originally discuss.

Im sorry but I dont buy that lame excuse Monica you can not have it both ways.When whites are in a group with non whites they to tend to self censor there selfs.So you then have no real vetting of ideas for everyone is to scared to be the big bad racist bigot.

Bil, it's only ironic to have a session on building bridges across communities be for people of color only if you're assuming that the only communities are "white people" and "people of color." There are many, many communities of color, and it is meaningful and important to build bridges among them as well as between those communities and whites.

Rebecca and Cathy: the distinction between spaces that exclude white people and spaces that exclude people of color is that spaces in this country that claim to be for everyone are, by default, targeted at and concerned with the needs of white people. Whiteness is the default in our society, and one of the benefits of white privilege is that, most of the places you go, you are the target audience and your needs are paramount. To make matters worse, when a space prioritizes the needs of people of color but is welcoming to everyone, conversations there almost invariably end up being about the white people present and reassuring them that they don't need to feel guilty about racism, thus derailing whatever conversation people of color actually wanted to make room for that caused them to build the space in the first place. It is almost only when white people are not present that people of color get to discuss their issues, put the focus on themselves and put their own needs first. And so the need for a space that excludes white people exists, in a way that the need for a space that excludes people of color does not.
The thing about racism that makes "reverse racism" a nonsensical concept is that racism is prejudice plus power. People of color can be prejudiced against white people until they're blue in the face, but they don't have the power of oppression to back it up, and so their ability to hurt the white people in question is limited. White people, on the other hand, have the power to use their prejudice to block people of color's access to jobs, housing, fair trials, etc, etc. That's racism.