After the events of the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville in 2017, members from the University of Richmond (UR) community formed a group to discuss race and racism.
Conversations were happening on campus and all around Virginia about the events of the White-supremacist rally. Eventually, Keith McIntosh, UR’s vice president and chief information officer, felt that it was necessary to create a space to openly discuss its impact.
So, he began facilitating conversations of the group, which adopted the name Intersections. 
However, after a few months, the layout of the meeting was changed in order to increase participant engagement. Books were introduced and used as a basis for discussion.
Participants started off by reading the book, Overcoming Bias: Building Authentic Relationships Across Differences by Matthew Freeman and Tiffany Jana.
“People felt more comfortable responding to the book versus sharing their personal experiences or perhaps their ignorance or fears,” said McIntosh. “That made it easy. From there, I think that’s where we really took off.”
Eventually, more topics were brought into the discussions including sexism, ageism, xenophobia, classism and more. The group named themselves Intersections because their conversations highlight the interconnections of people’s identities.
