Facilitating Racial Dialogue

Ineffective and Effective Strategies for Facilitating Racial Dialogue 

Racial dialogue represents one of the more challenging forms of discussion to navigate with attention to the aforementioned balance. The following suggestions are adapted from the work of Derald Wing Sue, Ph.D. (2016), and represent strategies for navigating racial dialogue effectively. However, these same strategies can be applied to facilitation of various forms of dialogue.

Five Ineffective Strategies 

Do Nothing: While instructors commonly opt for silence amidst heated race talk, exhibiting behavioral and emotional passivity communicates that such dialogue should be avoided. Feeling paralyzed, lacking racial consciousness, and experiencing confusion about how to intervene often leads instructors to a deep sense of personal failure.

Sidetrack the Conversation: Race talk can be uncomfortable and avoidance can appear in many forms. For example, a white female student raising the topic of gender, when race has been established as the topic of conversation, allows for avoidance and suggests that race is not important to discuss on its own. Ultimately, this results in a diversion from the issue at hand. 

Appease the Participants: Such a strategy may include allowing the conversation to be sidetracked, avoiding confrontation with the points being made by the participant, stressing commonalities and avoiding differences, and discussing superficial issues without exploring deeper personal meanings. Maintaining harmony can negate deeper explorations of biases, stereotypes, and deep-seated emotions associated with race and racism.

Terminate the Discussion: When an instructor is concerned that a racial dialogue may become heated, they may try to terminate the discussion. This may be unintentional, and may include: placing conditions on how the dialogue should be discussed (thereby quashing the natural dynamics involved); tabling the discussion and not carrying through on the promise to return to the issue; asking the parties involved to discuss the matter outside of class; and/or stressing that parties should calm down, respect one another, and discuss the topic in a relational manner. 

Become Defensive: In order to deflect perceived criticism or uncomfortable feelings, students may challenge the content of the communication or the credibility of the communicator. When confronted with a challenge by students, it is common for instructors to become defensive when they find their message being invalidated or their credibility assailed. However, defensiveness models such defensiveness for students and communicates that the topic is too challenging to discuss. 

Five Effective Strategies 

Understand your Racial/Cultural Identity: Understanding oneself as a racial/cultural being goes hand in hand with how well-grounded and secure one will be in racial dialogue. Instructors can facilitate the racial dialogue process by making the invisible visible: being well-grounded and comfortable about who they are. A lack of insight and awareness only perpetuates ignorance in the students that instructors hope to help. 

Acknowledge and be Open to Admitting your Racial Biases: On cognitive and socioemotional levels, instructors must be able to acknowledge and address that they are products of cultural conditioning, and having inherited the biases, fears, and stereotypes of (the dominant) society. Publicly and honestly acknowledging biases and weaknesses to self and others may lead to freedom from vigilance exercised in denying biases, modeling honesty to students, demonstrating courage in making themselves vulnerable, and encouraging others to approach dialogue with honesty.  

Validate and Facilitate Discussion of Feelings: Instructors must create an environment that allows for the expression and presence of feelings as a valid and legitimate focus of experience and discussion. Studies in classrooms suggest the following: allowing space for strong expression of feelings is important; participants talking about their anxieties or anger help them understand themselves and others better; and it is important to create conditions that allow for openness and receptivity to strong emotions. Students appreciated instructors who were unafraid to recognize and name the emotions emanating from discussion.  

Control the Process, not the Content, of Race Talk: Conversations among diverse individuals can seem to be taking place only on a content level, but it's taking place on a less visible level, too. Attending to both content and process can allow for deeper discussion that attends to individuals' positionalities. While some points made may be valid in terms of content, they are often communicating an underlying meaning or bias. For example, the following statement is valid in terms of content: "I resent you calling me white. You are equally guilty of stereotyping. We are all human beings."  However, attending only to the content would lead to the racial dialogue being sidetracked, diluted, diminished, or ignored. Thus, the subtext that generates this statement is critical for the instructor and students to deconstruct. 

Validate, Encourage, and Express Admiration and Appreciation to Participants who Speak when it Feels Unsafe to do so: It can feel threatening to engage in racial dialogue. Therefore, when someone is able to take a risk and demonstrate courage, openness, and willingness to participate in the dialogue, it is important for the instructor to acknowledge and appreciate that person for sharing. This will encourage others to feel safe when sharing and will communicate an appreciation of the risk-taking associated with engaging in such a challenging discussion.