Racism: What It Is and How to Deal with It - Uned

Introduction | 13
How the Guide Was Made
How did we make the Guide? The best way that we knew how: working as a team.
We had to read, look for information, resources... but above all what we wanted to do
was discuss the issues. In order to do this, we had to find ways and spaces that would
allow us to stay in contact and share what each of us had to offer.
From the start, we worked in groups. During our first meeting, the structure of the
Guide was decided: what modules there would be and the specific points to be
included in each. From there on, we formed small work groups, each one in charge of
a specific module. Each person was assigned to their module by choice; each one of
us freely chose a subject according to our preferences or previous experience.
The number of people who collaborated on the Guide is large, and we are from
different institutions and different countries; thus, the idea of having work groups
made it necessary to consider the possibility of on-line meetings. We used the ALF
platform (www.innova.uned.es) as a means to share materials, e-mail, and news. The
advantage of working this way was that all of the authors could share both the
documents and the multiple messages we used to communicate our progress and,
most of all, our doubts and disagreements. Together with this way of working, our
physical meetings were key moments for “energizing” ourselves and committing
ourselves to achieving (or at least trying to achieve) a consensual version in each of
the groups for their module.
The meetings were as long and hard a they were stimulating. In a way, we found
ourselves faced with an internal evaluation that always ended with suggestions for
improvement, contributions, and borrowings from other colleagues, and, of course,
with crossing things out and starting over again. But it was necessary to share a
common focus, more so concerning the concepts that had to be clarified. That is
where the idea of the glossary came from. As a reader, you must believe that it is not
there only to make our ideas about certain terms explicit; we ourselves needed it as
much or more, in order to understand each other. In this sense, we believe that we
are working with the same focus, and that makes it possible for each module to have
its own style, to a certain extent. We think that this can be an advantage, or perhaps
not, but at any rate, we are different and that is how it turned out. On the whole, we
enjoyed learning about this subject and working in this fashion. And we are
threatening to continue learning and working.