Reflections on a Discussion Group for "Talking About Race and Learning

About Race"

Jodie Kliman

It was an honor to be asked to facilitate and report on a discussion group following the brilliant and moving plenary by Beverly Tatum, Paulette Hines, and Jacqueline Fortes de Leff. We were a tapestry of races, ethnicities, genders, and ages; North Americans, Latinoamericanos, and Europeans; and members and guests. Our conversation was rich with ideas and feelings, referring continuously back to the plenary, which evoked so much for us all. I would gladly have continued for hours.

The group began with four guiding questions the plenary presentations had evoked for me; the fifth question emerged from the ensuing conversation. Although we did not have time to cover the questions in depth, they invited reflection and continuing conversation. Because we agreed not to identify specific stories and people to those outside the group, I have written the report in a manner that preserves the anonymity of the participants. Our discussion was far from linear, but I have summarized it (as well as my notes and memory allow) in the order in which the questions were asked. I hope this approach lends coherence to a description that can only begin to reflect the rich textures, emotions, and layers of our conversation.

Question 1: How do silence and silencing about racism affect you, personally?

* Participants related the pain they felt at seeing internalized racism in the US and racismo in Latin America, including the favoring of lighter skinned children in their families and communities of color.

* Latin American and European participants described unquestioned regional prejudices (e.g., north vs. south, country vs. city) that feel very similar to racism.

* People of color and whites from the Americas described feeling shamed and even fearful when they are confronted with silencing messages when speaking their own experiences about race.

* Some U.S. whites said they felt silenced by an anxiety that they will say the wrong thing when talking across race and other differences.

* Several Latinas said that they were silenced by the anxiety that arises from constantly second-guessing themselves, gauging whether what they had to say was important enough for others to listen to them.

* Several people described their perception that others sometimes won't talk to them because of their race, Jewishness, or physical disability/differentness.

* A U.S. Jew described feeling silenced and disrespected because AFTA ignores Jewish experiences; he pointed out that AFTA has had no plenaries on Jewish experience.

* One U.S. White said he was not sure about the effects of silencing on him.

* Another U.S. White talked about the effects of silencing not on himself, but on his clients of color.

* The White mother of an adult Black son said she had not known how to challenge his racist treatment as a schoolboy, and had felt helpless in talking about racism to her young son. It hurt to see him deny the facts of racism, in hopes of fitting in with White peers.

* A U.S. Jew said that he can only listen to others' experiences of oppression and pain when he has compassion for his own, and that competition over who is more oppressed can interfere with that compassion for both self and other.

Question 2: What interferes with your breaking that silence?

* Several people agreed that anxiety and self-doubt about talking across races and other differences interferes with breaking silence about "isms" related to difference.

* A U.S. Jew said that competition among multiple oppressions maintains the silence.

* The conversation seemed (to me) to be permeated by an implicit recognition that racism itself is silencing.

Question #3: What were your personal reactions to hearing Paulette Hines' story? (She movingly described her teenage son's arrest, his experience of police brutality, days in jail, mistreatment in school and court, and ultimate sentencing to two-year's probation, for protesting a policeman's abuse of a less "upstanding" African American at school. She described silencing herself as the judge berated him in court for breaking her heart, for fear that her protest would provoke more punishment and abuse for her son.)

* A U.S. White reported that Paulette's story had facilitated "entering into the experience of having no power to affect things in my life."

* A White woman who immigrated in childhood described feeling helplessness and outrage at a relative's wrongful arrest for a serious crime, based on ethnic stereotypes.

* One U.S. White commented on knowing how accomplished and economically successful Paulette's family is, and voiced outrage that they could be subject to such abuse. Another voiced outrage that it could happen to anyone at all.

* Paulette's story triggered a deep, personal resonance for me, as I recalled the painful knowledge that my racial, class, and linguistic privilege (as a White person) allowed me to successfully raise hell to get essential care for my critically ill husband in an unresponsive emergency room. Without these privileges of race, I would now be widowed. An African American added that I might also be a convicted felon.

* One U.S. White said that Paulette's story opened an important new window into the racial experience of a spouse of color.

* One Latina said that, in her country, her colleagues would not understand the racism involved in the story, and she would feel unable to convince them.

Question #4: What were your personal reactions to Jacqueline's description of racismo in Mexico (as compared to racism in the US)?

* The aforementioned Latina said that her reaction was one of frustration, because in her country, where race and class are confused, colleagues would say, "poor thing" about Paulette and her son, without recognizing the racism involved in his mistreatment.

* Two Latina Jews described their distress over non-Jews' anti-Semitism and Jews' racism against Indios. They mentioned frequent experiences of anti-Semitism.

* A Latina guest reported that it was very meaningful, and painful, that this conference was the first time she had ever heard Latin American therapists acknowledge racismo.

Question #5: What helps to break the silence?

* A Latina reported, "I need to work up the courage to speak in any setting, but especially patriarchal ones like the university."

* Several Latinos said that they are encouraged to speak when, as occurred in the plenary and the discussion group, the conversation opens with an invitation for them to voice their experiences.

* An U.S. Jew said that compassion for one's own experience helps break the silence.

* Rage at injustice can be a motivation for change, and therefore for breaking the silence.

* One participant recalled Jesse Jackson's exhortation, "Don't let hope die!" at a recent American Psychological Association meeting as being helpful to his breaking the silence.

I found our discussion group very moving and stimulating, which is no surprise, after having shared the experience of hearing such an evocative plenary. The group was remarkably open, given how many people were new to each other and considering the range of backgrounds and experiences we brought to the conversation. As ever, the value of having small group discussion following plenaries was clear. We had a wonderful opportunity to process important ideas, familiar to some and new to others, and to share them across several kinds of cultural borderlands, or fronteras. It gave us a chance to be in a caring community with our pain and hopes for ourselves and our loved ones, for the speakers and their loved ones, and for each other. Coming together from different continents, racial groups, and cultural histories in order to create a safe environment for real conversation gave us a particularly rich chance to learn from each other.

There were challenges for me in facilitating this group. A minor one was taking notes and facilitating at the same time (I fear I left out important contributions to the discussion—wish I'd had a tape recorder!). A major challenge was helping keep us to our agreement to relate only our own experiences, rather than reporting, as if we were experts, on others' (or "the other's") experience. I noticed having to do this piece of facilitation more with white participants than with participants of color. I also found myself having to work to ensure that the former didn't take more than their share of "air time." I reflected on how easy it is to take an expert position and extra air time if (like me and in contrast to my Latina colleagues) one has been culturally trained to expect that people will be interested in one's ideas. I wondered about what it would be like to have that other training, in self-doubt and internalized oppression, instead. I wish there had been time to talk about this question, and others.

Above all, the group, like the plenary it reflected on, was a moving learning experience for me. I hope it was, as well, for my colleagues, who generously expressed thoughts and feelings that might have been too difficult to say out loud without the breaking of silence that had begun over the days (and years) of this meeting. I am especially grateful to group members who shared their understandings and questions, both nascent and well-developed, about race and racism; to Beverly Tatum, Paulette Moore Hines, and Jacqueline de Fortes Leff, for stimulating so much conversation; and to Lois Braverman and her Program Committee for creating the space to make it all happen.

Jodie Kliman, Ph.D. is a psychologist and family therapist in practice in Brookline, MA. She is on the faculty of the Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology, in Boston, and has written several articles and book chapters on the interplay of gender, class, race, and culture in family therapy. She joined the AFTA Board in 2000 and served as Pre-Conference Workshop Co-Chair in 1995 and as AFTA Program Chair in 1997.