Anxious To Talk About It

Hello and Welcome,

This is site for the “Anxious To Talk About It” discussion group. This is in addition to our weekly Zoom meetings, which take place at 7:00pm every Thursday beginning on September 3rd. If you need a link to the zoom meeting simply email the church and we will provide it.

My name is Tom Safford and I’ll be the moderator for this discussion group.

Each week we’ll post a summary of the meeting discussion with the following intent:

• People who miss the meeting can review and add their comments
• Discussions can continue online once the meeting ends
• People can add additional comments throughout the week.
• Any who join late in the study can catch up with all that’s gone before.

The book is “Anxious To Talk About It” by Carolyn B. Helsel and is available in print and ebook versions on all your favorite vendor sites.

This online discussion is a first for FCC-Stow and we hope that we can all learn and grow from this experience.

People who want to leave comments will need a user name and password.  If you want a user name and password please email your information to jacob.aukeman@gmail.com

Carpenters always say “measure twice, cut once”.  Let’s adapt that to this group and say “read twice, post once”.  We want to keep this a safe place where all can be heard and contribute to a friendly, positive learning opportunity.

Shalom,

Tom

Session 1, 9/3/20

As an introduction Jonathan said that we should prepare to be uncomfortable as we try to view things from other’s perspective.  Being uncomfortable can be a good thing because it leads to questions that, if pursued, can result is new knowledge, awareness, and wisdom. Further, each participant needs to think about what they want to gain from this study.

The first question Jonathan posed was “what do we feel about racism?”

Answers included:

• Sadness: what can we do to help?
• Afraid of saying something offensive
• Wondering how we can contribute to a solution and not contribute to the problem
• Wondering how we can talk to our peers to explain racism
• Wondering how we can counter racism.
• Anxious about what racism says about us and our country.

So how do we press through our discomfort to arrive at a better place?

One way is to identify our emotions caused by injustices we see on the news and read about in our country today. Talking through these issues with others, as in this study, can focus our feelings and help us to find ways to affect change.

We next discussed the four phases of racism identified by the author: Melting Pot, Reverse Racism, Post Racial and Colorblind.

We exchanged personal anecdotes about encountering all these phases. These anecdotes showed that all four phases can be used by people to view racism based on personal experience while avoiding attempts to understand how racism affects minorities or society as a whole.

Our major takeaway from this session is that our emotions conspire against us to not take a stand. We have to identify and acknowledge those emotions before we can respond to them.

Jonathan concluded by giving us two assignments for the week:

1. Work on putting ourselves into the story of others. How would a news story impact each one of us if we were in the shoes of the subject of the story.
2. Luke 10:25-37 is the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan. Let’s respond to this parable by putting ourselves into the position of one of the others.
   1. What feelings would we have as one of the others; the lawyer, the priest, the victim, or the Innkeeper.

 

Session 2, 9/10/20

This session covered Chapter 2 of “Anxious To Talk About It”.

We opened the discussion by talking about the problem of Political Correctness and why it’s such a lightning rod. We arrived at the consensus that the problems arise from the manner in which using non-offensive language is addressed. Oftentimes, those using “political correct” language appear to be judging those who don’t. Whether they are or not, the perception is what matters. If people appear to be judgmental that results in anger and resentment from those being judged.

This has become one of the themes of this study. Namely how people perceive and understand what we say is more important than what we think we’re saying. Overcoming this depends on us developing the ability to put ourselves into the shoes of others.

We then moved on to a discussion of the author’s concept of being “response-able” instead of being responsible. This is the idea that we can’t fix the problems of the world. We shouldn’t respond to someone expressing anger or frustration by trying to fix their issues. Rather we should actively listen to them and show that we care and are affected by what they’re going through. There is a fine line to walk, to show empathy without appearing to be condescending. If someone reacts badly to our response-able efforts we should not get angry or defensive, but we should ask, with a smile, how we can do better.

One of the largest issues we face is how to bridge the racial divide. As a group we all have different backgrounds that include many levels of inter-racial interaction. This leads to a different comfort level in interacting with people “not like us”.

It is very difficult to bridge the cultural divide because, as the White majority, we don’t know what it’s like to be Black, Muslim, Native American or any other person who’s a member of a minority.

Since the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement it has become evident to most Americans that there is an undercurrent of anger amongst minorities in this country. This anger is rooted in centuries of injustice and discrimination suffered by minorities. As members of the majority we cannot feel that anger but we can try to learn about it and understand it. We have to respect that anger and understand that it comes from life experiences that we just don’t have and never could have.

The author writes about the trope of the “Angry Black Woman”. She explains how the anger is legitimate but that the anger has to be suppressed every day in order to function in our society. She then writes about how that suppression extracts its cost on a person’s health, both physical and mental.

We concluded when Jonathan gave us two takeaways:

1. How would we be affected by being in an uncomfortable space where we were not accepted and where we weren’t allowed to express our discomfort or anger?
2. Much of the struggle to overcome racial barriers comes from a discomfort with and fear of the “other”. How can we use love to overcome our differences?

Session 3, 9/17/20

This week we discussed Chapter 3 in “Anxious To Talk About It”. This chapter discusses racial identity and perceptions.

The author began by introducing the concepts of racial identity and racialization. She defines racial identity as how an individual defines their own racial identity whereas racialization is how society in general categorizes that person.

Think of the forms you have filled out that ask for demographic information such as gender, income level, and so on. Many of those forms will offer the option of Caucasian, Black, Hispanic, or Other. A person with a mixed race background has to choose one. That’s their racial identity. However, unless the person is very light-skinned, society will categorize that person as black.

Our discussion of this issue brought out the reminder that each person we meet, regardless of their racial identity or society-driven racialization is an individual whose life experiences are unique. Everyone, regardless of race, has a different family, different income level, different education, and different personal history.

Following this the author outlined the different stages of racial identity growth for a person of color and a White person. Our discussion focused on two specific stages: Encounter Stage for a person of color and the Reintegration Stage for White person.

The Encounter Stage happens when a person of color first suffers from racial discrimination (racialization). It could range from name calling to being excluded from activities or any number of other actions. We talked about how this is different from teasing or bullying because bullying and teasing eventually ends, but skin color does not change.

How difficult it must be to learn that one simply has to find a way to live with an personal racial identity that is defined by others and that results in discrimination. That something that we as Whites can never comprehend. The best we can do is to work towards being part of the solution instead of part of the problem.

The Reintegration Stage happens when a White person first begins to understand the breadth and depth of racialization and the way that it is a constant discriminatory and negative presence in the life of a person of color. The White person can start denying that they are part of the problem and fall back into typecasting people of color with the negative stereotypes about people of color, stereotypes with which we are all familiar.

We ended the session with a discussion about how becoming a White anti-racists is a journey that proceeds in fits and starts with forward and backward steps. The important takeaway is to keep moving forward and never take our eye off the ultimate goal: to be an anti-racist actively contributing to a society free from the evils of racial discrimination.

Session 4, 9/24/20

This week we studied Chapter 4 in “Anxious To Talk About It”. This chapter describes how our personal interaction with Law Enforcement differs depending on race.

There was a particularly harrowing traffic stop experience narrated by a Black man. We contrasted that experience with traffic stops and other interactions with law enforcement that we had experienced. No one’s experience came close to what the Black narrator had experienced. And that particular traffic stop was only one of several that he had experienced.

His experiences were terrifying and we discussed how those experiences would affect anyone’s physical and mental well-being.

The author heard this experience during a Truth and Reconciliation Oral History Project that took place in Texas several years ago. During this project people of color were interviewed by college students who were a mix of all races. The value of this project came from people being able to tell their stories to people who were actively listening.

This segued into a discussion about how protesting comes about because people find that they are not being heard.

We followed with a discussion regarding the prevalence of fear in our society. There’s quite a bit it such as Blacks fearing police; Whites fearing Blacks, and on and on and on. That fear is wide spread and there are many people happy to work on increasing that fear.

We ran out of time before being able to discuss the author’s observation that we, as Whites, are much more likely to be the victim of a crime perpetrated by another White.

Why do we have more fear of Blacks that Whites?

How can we overcome that fear?

The author recommends starting with 1 John 4:18, “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.”

This is the love that comes from God and the love that we should all strive to learn, to live, and to share.

Session 5, 10/1/20

 This week we studied Chapter 5 of “Anxious To Talk About It”. As a group we struggled with this chapter.

We weren’t quite sure what the author was trying to convey and questioned the illustrations that she used to make her points.

The chapter revolved around the concept of gratitude. The author wrote that we have gratitude to the Lord for His free gift of salvation, which we have done nothing to earn. She seemed to want us to apply gratitude to experiences of racial hardship relayed by Black Indigenous People of Color (BIPOCs).

As group we concluded that humility, rather than gratitude, was a more appropriate approach to take when eliciting these experiences from BIPOCs.

Our discussion then turned to the subject of making assumptions about people based on their appearance. The author confessed to doing that when describing how she approached people in the book. We agreed that was very honest of her and that we all make assumptions when we approach people for the first time.

The key is to be aware of the fallacy of our assumptions. If we’re aware of those fallacies then we can overcome our biases and interact with people openly. We can truly hear and understand what they have to say.

The author had a couple of examples where her assumptions about people proved incorrect. She was able to overcome her assumptions and hear what they had to say.

By the end of the discussion we concluded that we need humility to overcome our assumptions; i.e. to realize that we don’t know everything and that we have plenty to learn from others. We should be filled with gratitude towards God for His priceless gift. That gratitude is what drives our impulse to achieve justice.