Louisville paid $20K to sponsor for-profit racial equity conference for white women

Louisville Metro Government paid $20,000 to be a sponsor of a for-profit company’s $1,500-per-person racial equity conference for “inclined white women” who, according to the event’s website, would be freed of “long-held guilt and shame” by attending.

“Here’s my foundational secret: White women have every right to be as mad at racism as Black women do!” reads large text on the website of the RAARE Woman Collective Live event, which will be held at the Brown Hotel in downtown Louisville Nov. 2-4.

Marketing emails for the event, including one urging women not to choose the side of "apartheid," strongly pushed ticket sales, at times slashing the price from $1,500 to $750 for limited times.

A check obtained by The Courier Journal through an open records request shows the city paid $20,000 to Nikki Lanier, the founder and lead coach of the RAARE Woman Collective, to sponsor the event. RAARE stands for Radical Action Advancing Racial Equity.

According to a May press release, Lanier’s racial equity advisory firm Harper Slade announced the event, saying two prominent Louisvillians on RAARE's advisory board would be in attendance. In an interview, Lanier told The Courier Journal the event was being held under the umbrella of Nikki Lanier Holdings, a for-profit company.

The conference sponsorship represents the second-biggest payment by the Office of Equity in fiscal year 2024, according to the city’s online checkbook.

In interviews with The Courier Journal, local organizers working on racial equity were critical of the event and its high price tag, calling it exclusionary, a misuse of government funds and questioning whether it was more about making white women feel good about themselves than addressing inequity.

Joi McAtee, the executive director of the Office of Equity, said she is not aware of any other for-profit companies her office is currently sponsoring.

“... Mostly, we're trying to make sure that we're supporting and uplifting grassroots nonprofits to help move the needle towards a more equitable world,” she said.

McAtee said Harper Slade and Nikki Lanier approached the Office of Equity about sponsoring the conference.

McAtee said partnering with the conference “made sense” for what the Office of Equity was trying to do in "making sure that we’re reaching out to people who aren’t inside necessarily these kind of Black, brown, marginalized groups to make sure that they’re also educated and doing their part to create a space for racial equity within their networks."

She said Lanier "has put together just an amazing portfolio of work, and we saw her as the perfect partner to help facilitate this conference and thought that it would be a great investment for the city as a whole, for us to show our support and be involved.”

Attica Scott, a former Louisville state representative who was arrested during the 2020 racial justice protests following the police killing of Breonna Taylor, isn't convinced.

"Twenty-thousand dollars from the Office of Equity for white women to come together in an exclusionary conference being led by a for-profit organization — wow, you can’t make this up.

“So, after 2020 this is where we’re headed — towards creating this kind of space for white women who don’t have to live with racial injustice on a daily basis to come together and talk about being ‘fed up,’” Scott said.

Lanier told The Courier Journal she has been accused of “coddling” or “placating” white women before, but said she firmly believes in the mission of the conference.

“I'm unequivocally anchored to this as a remediation for systemic racism,” she said. “And this is, quite frankly, a path that we've never tried.”

'I know you are fed up'

In September, Lanier hosted an online informational webinar about November's RAARE Woman Collective event that was later posted to YouTube.

“How many of you are tired of being presumed to be the problem just because you’re white?” she asked the group joining her on the Zoom call. “Let me see you type ‘fed up’ in the chat. I see it. I see all of it, yes. I know you are fed up. And you know what? I am too.”

She said the RAARE event is for white women who want to lead in "the dilution of racism" with "the support of Black women" but do not know how, and those afraid of getting “yelled at” by Black women “because you’re too woke, but not woke enough.”

She also laid out what the event, which will feature branded merchandise and a DJ, would not be about.

“One of the things I’m very clear about is that we will not, in this community, bash men or Republicans or Christians or whatever wings — left or right,” she said.

At the end of the call, Lanier compared prospective attendees to white women protesters who formed a line between riot police and Black demonstrators during Louisville protests over the 2020 police killing of Breonna Taylor.

“That’s what we’re looking to create with the RAARE Woman Collective. And this is a metaphor of that,” she said.

On TikTok, she has amassed more than 70,000 followers with videos discussing how white women should embrace the “white savior” label, how racism has negatively impacted white women’s lives and encouraging people to buy tickets for the RAARE Woman Collective Live event in Louisville.

In the informational session, Lanier voiced support for Critical Race Theory and said the conference will teach the “fullness” of American history.

“We're going to teach people what has actually happened uniquely and specifically to Black people in this country,” she told The Courier Journal. “In our country, we don't teach that any other place.”

Louisville connections include mayor's wife

Lanier was among the 58 people selected by now-Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg to serve on his transition team after becoming mayor-elect in November. Lanier donated $1,000 to Greenberg’s campaign during his mayoral run, according to the Kentucky Registry of Election Finance.

Lanier, who is Black, is on the board of directors of OneWest, the multimillion-dollar nonprofit dedicated to bringing development to Louisville’s predominantly Black West End.

She is also on the board of the Louisville Regional Airport Authority.

Among RAARE’s seven advisers, two are from Louisville.

One is Greenberg’s wife, Rachel Greenberg, who is identified as “First Lady of Louisville.”

The other is Maggie Harlow, the owner of Signarama and the mother of Grammy-nominated rapper Jack Harlow.

“I knew very early on that in order for this to feel like a movement, not just an event or coaching experience, we would have to have women who were unto themselves in this journey in some way on their own right, on the racial equity journey. Who had incredible cachet and pedigree and a following,” Lanier said about the advisers in an interview. “I also needed some sounding boards. I needed folks I could come to and bounce ideas off of and assure that I am creating the curriculum and experience, and doing so in a way that honors and respects and gives grace to where white women are on this topic.”

She added Rachel Greenberg was one of the “early adopters” of the event’s concept and was on board even before the event was formalized.

McAtee, the Office of Equity director, said she was unaware of Rachel Greenberg’s involvement with RAARE until after the sponsorship.

In response to written questions about Rachel Greenberg's role in the event and her experience working in racial equity, mayoral spokesman Kevin Trager issued a statement:

"The First Lady was asked by Nikki Lanier to provide welcoming remarks to participants of this conference, which is bringing hundreds of women from across the country to Louisville with a common goal of advancing racial equity," he said. "The Office of Equity is a sponsor of this event; Mrs. Greenberg had no role in that process."

Later, in a follow-up email, Trager said among the reasons the Office of Equity was sponsoring the event was the city's commitment to Black-owned, women-owned and locally owned businesses.

‘It will not add up to the changes we need’

Louisville activists who spoke to The Courier Journal are not convinced spending $20,000 on the conference will help advance racial equity.

Carla Wallace, the co-founder of Showing Up for Racial Justice, said racial equity work needs to be on the agenda for white people, but said there were pitfalls to trainings that focus on personal transformation without a framework to address systemic, institutional change.

“We will have white people who feel better about themselves, and maybe know what words to use and what words not to use,” she said. “But it will not add up to the changes we need in the lives of Black and brown people.”

Shameka Parrish-Wright, the director of the grassroots organization VOCAL-KY who is on the ballot for the Metro Council District 3 seat, said there were better uses for taxpayer dollars.

“That $20,000 could be better spent in ways where it actually impacts the communities,” she said. “These folks are probably disengaged from the terrible things that people are experiencing on our streets.”

District 4 Councilman Jecorey Arthur said "the Office of Equity is making a mistake in sponsoring this" after The Courier Journal described the event to him and shared Lanier's TikToks promoting it.

But Lanier says the event is based around developing racial equity advocates, and that attendees will leave with their own “racial equity legacy plan.”

About 120 people are signed up to attend the conference, Lanier said, including 30 who could not afford the registration cost but were given complimentary tickets.

Lanier defended the price point, which has recently dropped from $1,500 to $750.

“The price tag is what it is. I’m in business. I’m running a company. I am an internationally acclaimed, extraordinary pedigreed adviser,” she said.

Reach reporter Josh Wood at jwood@courier-journal.com or on Twitter at @JWoodJourno. Reach reporter Eleanor McCrary at emccrary@courier-journal.com or on Twitter at @ellie_mccrary.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville sponsors racial equity conference for white women