House caucus holds discrimination-prevention training led by Tanya Richard

Tanya Richard, a presenter brought in through the Council of State Governments and founder of the platform Tanya's Take Race, led a discrimination-prevention workshop for the House Caucus of the Whole focused on personal reflection, bias mitigation, and practical steps to interrupt discriminatory behavior.

Richard opened by defining core concepts for the session — identity, diversity and intersectionality — and said the purpose of the training was not to parse policy language but to "inspire individuals not to discriminate" through self-interrogation and behavior change. "My name is Tanya Richard," she said in introducing herself and the platform she uses for this work.

Through interactive exercises, Richard asked participants to list 15 descriptors of themselves and mark which traits are visible to others, using the exercise to illustrate how visible characteristics (race, hair, apparent gender) shape initial impressions and power dynamics. She described bias types — group bias, conscious bias and unconscious bias — and said, "Everyone has bias." She urged attendees to surface unconscious bias by noticing what makes them uncomfortable and to test whether those reactions affect decisions or behavior.

Richard used public examples and a short video to show how cultural assumptions and microaggressions operate. She described microaggressions as "brief and commonplace" actions or statements that often carry subtext and can be used to reestablish power, and recommended a direct response strategy: name the message received and describe the impact. The session reinforced that bystanders need not be targets to interrupt harmful conduct and encouraged using privilege to create opportunities for others.

Toward the end of the session Richard reviewed the jurisdiction's discrimination policy language and reporting framework and asked staff (identified in the session as Eliza and Arlene) to confirm where participants can find the policy online. She described the policy as "a few pages" and the convenor said the policy link and the training recording would be distributed to attendees after the session. The training concluded at noon.

The workshop combined definitional context, personal reflection exercises, and practical scripting for interrupting microaggressions; organizers plan to circulate the policy link and training materials to attendees for follow-up.