Leda's reminder and a few comments, Lily's summary--and Theresa's follow up

Hi,

following on from the earlier themes, some thoughts:

1. to lead in our fliers, recruitmemt stuff: "How does race matter? An invitation to dialogue. . ." and for grant writing, irb, something similare but more academic.
2. on format for campus dialogues: first, intergroup with small groups and all faciliators co-facilitating in as mixed configurations as possible. second, affinity groups dialogue--including a multi-racial group and possibly an-other group. last, intergroup dialogue. This format, while not my preference, has several important logistical benefits, including facilitation and recruitment.
3. an initial informational session for profs and program heads (e.g., athletics) on campus. help with this is welcome!!!!!!
4. our last summer session will be a discussion of goals, some of which should happen on the blog, small group co-facilitating (with hopefully enough folks in attendance to do so), and a large group dialogue facilitated by Dee and I. It's a lot, but we'll prioritize and discuss as we move along.

Please let me know if u have questions, concerns AND if you have contact info for potential facilitators. We hope to bring a few more folks to our group.

The following is just an attempt to keep some track of our conversations. will try not to duplicate everything.

Posted by Lily

Hi everyone,

Below is an attempt to sum-up today's engaging conversations; if i'm
missing/misrepresenting something, please add/correct it; also my chronology is
a little messed-up, so even though there are numbers, this might not necessary
be the order in which things happened.

* Leda and Dee are accepting ideas about a possible title for the
dialogue/project

1.We began by talking about dialogue in terms of:
a. A broad definition – a dialogue gives people opportunity to say something
they may otherwise not say, opens up conversation, rather than closing it. As
facilitators, we should continuously consider/ask the group, “What are we doing
here as a group?”
b. What distinguishes a dialogue from a discussion and from a debate (there’s a
handout in the packet Leda sent & we talked based on this and questioned the
values it presupposes)
c. Helpful ideas for starting/leading dialogue – a lot of this and the
conversation that followed was based on the Public Dialogue article on e-
reserves: setting up ground rules, including what we, as a group, understand as
dialogue, allowing for emotion (including anger), finding connections in
disagreements, appreciative inquiry (e.g., “What would a good conversation
about race look like?”), lead with curiosity and wonder (Ellen brought up an
example from “Grand Torino” here & Dee followed up with “Crash”), facilitators
record & revisit language used by dialogue group participants

After talking about dialogue and what we can do as facilitators, we talked
about some of the logistics and procedures of organizing the dialogue groups.

2. Groups would last approximately 2 hours each, with 1 meeting early in the
fall semester and a follow-up meeting later in the semester; a framework/format
is available in the packet Leda sent as a curriculum design

3. We considered different options for the overall design of the project –
should we first have affinity groups dialogue and then an intergroup dialogue?
Should we have an informal meet-and-greet/info session for all participants
together? How would our choices affect retention for the second meeting?
Danette emphasized that either way we should be clear and explicit with
participants about what to expect and that both types of groups will meet.
Raphael emphasized that either way, the facilitation of the dialogue matters
more than the format alone and that co-facilitators should be mindful as to who
participates in the dialogue and think of ways to include everyone.

4. Using Hari’s example of Henry Gates Jr.’s arrest, we talked about some forms
of resistance to conversations about race we may encounter & how we, as
facilitators, should respond to such resistance – e.g., through reframing, role
playing of alternative scenarios, appreciative inquiry, directing conversation
toward systemic foci, while bringing it back to concrete personal experiences
and away from the abstract – for example, we may start by asking considered
appropriate and/or legitimate, what are the rights of home-owners, who
determines what is legitimate, how has that affected us in our personal
everyday experiences

5. Several times throughout the conversation today the question came up of what
are our goals, hopes, desired outcomes for this project; we thought it will be
interesting and helpful if each one of us came up with her or his own “list”
(also including what are our goals/desired outcomes for ourselves as both
facilitators and participants in the dialogue) & then we share our thoughts.

6. Leda asked what would be most helpful for us in our last meeting
(tentatively scheduled for Aug. 19?) – should we have a panel of facilitators,
do something more applied, other suggestions? Thoughts, suggestions, and
feedback are welcome.

7. Throughout the conversation another question kept coming up as well – how do
we “deal” with expressions of emotion during dialogue groups. Toward the end of
the meeting, Dee summarized lessons from other facilitators and experiences to
say that we should not shun emotion, but expect it and find ways to include it
into the conversation, to ask the group to talk about it, to ask the individual
(s) who “exhibited” and emotional response to something to talk about it and
what triggered it.

Thanks for filling our home with so many interesting and valuable thoughts,
looking forward to August!

Lily

Theresa replied:

There were a couple of points that I took away that could be added.One
of the items that was mentioned by Dee and Molly resonated with me
with regard to the dialogues. Both the critical incident that is
personally identified and a critical moment that is used as a text to
comment on were important points to include.

Another point in our discussion was what we can do as facilitators to
keep the dialog process open and inviting. I took away Ellen's acronym
of WAIT (though I apologize to all if I did not use it well) and
Leda's elaborating linguistic strategy of "what does 'x" mean in this
context." Hari's technique of using a generative text, the police
transcript, started me thinking what questions could help guide the
shaping of text interpretations by a group interested in questioning
how privilege manifests itself. When Rafael brought up points of
legitimacy and power operating in the policeman's text, we could see
that as important to interpreting the report using a US historical
context. Dee also indicated that keeping account of the patterns of
interaction in the dialog, such as who is not talking, could be
productive as well. I wondered how I could be invitational, if the
interactions were racialized and emotional as well.

We also had several divergent views in discussion about the use and
consequences of grouping by affinity versus intercultural
grouping. One emergent question is how either functions in reifying
racial constructions and/ or in shaping perceptions of the
consequences of the dialogs. Dee added an important element to keep
in mind - the need to include the ambiguity and complexity of the
construct of race within the affinity groups.

These were a few of the points that resonated with me and add to Lily's summary.

Thank you all for a stimulating afternoon,

Theresa

Sorry

Hi everyone,

I want to apologize for my part in taking us off course on Tuesday. I realize I need to put the WAIT (why am I talking) acronym into practice. I'll do my best to listen more and talk less at our next meeting.

Ellen

Our last session, Gates and your suggestions

Hi all,

welcome to our new blog. please excuse my one-handed typing, and my post surgery grogginess. i am eager to start this blog and to see where we go from here.

first, thanks to Lily for her summary of our last workshop. i sensed (and heard from some of you) some dissatisfaction with what did or did not occur during our meeting. i thought we had some great discussion, and also thought i should have interrupted it a bit to keep us headed toward application. It's always tricky to assert,share,critique,evaluate...power.

Nonetheless, a few moves to hopefully move us to a title, a format and a sense of our next meeting in my next post. i'm feeling ill right now so i'll leave uo with some comments from a listserve i belong to that build on some of our discussion of everyday whiteness, race privilege, racism.

post below:

i sat on a panel at my school this year with a black colleague of mine, listening to two white guys tell us about the "glories of post racial nirvana." One of these guys had been with SNCC until they kicked he and his wife out. These white guys sat back expectantly as they expected me to congratulate them for tellling us all is right with the world now because Obama is the prez. I told them that as long as white students can walk in my class on the first day and walk right by me up to the oldest white man or woman in the class to find out if they are the course instructor, we still have a race problem. When i can still go to administration offices on campus and they ask me which staff department do I work for instead of knowing I am a professor, there is still a problem. As long as police on campus can profile our young black men simply by the cars they drive, ( never mind the white meth freaks and dealers we have on our campus) There is a problem. I am going to court in August because a young white cop gave me a ticket because he said I "failed to stop" at a stop sign. Mind you, he had no camera in his car. He did not even tell me what the charge was intially. He got mad because I demanded to know why he stopped me when there was no traffic on campus and he was sitting back too far to even see anything. He left me sitting there while he called for another cop. I found out later he did not have his ticket book with him; the other guy brought it to him. When he finally came back to me, he told me to sign the ticket. I refused to do so (they are supposed to tell you that this is not an admission of guilt; it is just to say you received it etc). I asked him why he decided to give me a ticket and why he had to call for his ticket book. He said it was " officer discretion." When I kept asking questions he told me to stop talking and I told him I was not raising my voice nor arguing I was exercising my first amendment right to speak.  Anyway, he gave me the ticket  just to show me he could curtail an uppity professor like myself. Oh yeah, I should tell you I had some of my black students in the parking lot because it was opening night for my play " Raisin in the Sun" and I was delivering food to the cast who was getting their last afternoon practice in. I kept talking to them to try to calm them down, but it was evident they were concerned.  I go to court on August 11th. Even if I have to pay the ticket I will. He made some mistakes on the ticket and did some things out of procedure which I will point out to the judge.  the officer says the judge will believe him because he does not lie as if to say I do lie. I have only had two tickets in my entire life about 14 years ago.  I said all of this to say that even the most simplest of offenses we still have to remind ourselves to fight them. Whites are not our allies, are not glad to see us succeed and will continue to try to bring us down. I spend a lot of time reading blogs from national newspapers and magazines and it is absolutely amazing what whites are still saying about racial issues.  they claim we are race card playing overly sensitive babies who can only get what they want through Affirmative Action because God knows we aren't smart enough or talented enough to really do anything on our own.  Wake up call!! Brothers and sisters my alarm clock is always on!!        Elizabeth F. Desnoyers-Colas,Ph.D Assistant Professor,  Speech/Communication Art, Music and Theater Department 11935 Abercorn Street Savannah Ga 31419 912 344- 9130 office