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Temple Beth El Blog

“Seven Guided Conversations” Discussions Are Illuminating 

05/18/2021 08:30:56 PM

May18

by Erica Serlin and Lynn Silverman, group facilitators

Following a year of “racial reckoning,” TBE has begun a number of initiatives to help people on their journey toward understanding our own biases and the societal structures and history that perpetuate racism. One of these initiatives has been the use of a program developed in Madison called “Seven Guided Conversations on Race,” to engage Temple members in small-group discussions on race.

This spring two groups met for seven weeks to discuss topics such as “what is race?,” “how is whiteness a privilege?,” “why is racial representation important?,” and “understanding assumptions and stereotypes.” Prior to the meetings, members were asked to read a short text or view a brief video as a basis for our discussions. These materials were engaging, illuminating, and frequently entertaining. The groups were a safe, nonjudgmental place where people could express their thoughts and feelings candidly and share their experiences.

The goal was to increase our awareness of our own assumptions and biases, to increase our ability to view the world through a racial lens in order to help us better understand and empathize with people of color, and to be able to engage in conversations about race more effectively.

Members of both groups expressed significant appreciation for the materials and facilitated discussions, and our exploration and connections with each other definitely deepened over the seven weeks together. As one member commented, “The trust that was formed in our group allowed me to express feelings of regret in a way that I believe will help me do better in the future.”

Some challenging issues emerged from our dialogues, including the question of whether implicit biases can be significantly altered without close personal or professional relationships with people of a different race. Maybe the best that can be accomplished, some wondered, is to enhance conscious self-awareness of these natural and understandable biases in order to prevent acting on them in automatic, reflexive, and potentially harmful ways. However, we learned that we all have implicit biases that need to be examined compassionately and without judgment.

As one group member so eloquently summarized one of the lessons from the class materials, “It is imperative that we become conscious of our own biases and recognize the automatic reactivity of the fast brain (limbic system) so we can shift to more deliberate, rational pre-frontal cortex thinking in order to modulate our responses and hopefully prevent further racist injustice.” (Interested congregants may wish to take the Harvard Implicit Bias test themselves.)

Several group members also recognized the need to be aware of how language impacts our perceptions and that we make snap judgments based on the value judgments we attribute to people’s speech patterns. Another group member remarked that after completing this process, she “looks at herself with different eyes and is more aware of how others perceive her.”

For a group of well-educated, relatively “woke” individuals, it was surprising for many of us to not only acknowledge our white privilege but to recognize and openly disclose implicit biases of which we were previously unaware.

Hopefully, if this program is offered in the future, it will interest an even broader range of Temple members to further enhance possible conversations. Please contact Aleeza Hoffert if you think you might be interested, or contact Erica Serlin or Lynn Silverman to learn more about this program.

April 25, 2024 17 Nisan 5784