Page 305 - Mike Ratner CC - WISR Complete Dissertation - v6

deal of sincerity and heartfelt compassion and everybody was able to be genuine.”

(P03FTRM)

For some participants, there was a descriptive understanding of the Metasphere meeting

face-to-to-face and this deep personal sharing proved to be therapeutic. One respondent recalled:

“Yeah, at least for me it was totally effective. One of the reasons why I wanted to go was

to express; to have a venue to talk about the things that I face and I did that. So, I think that

one of the things, being one of the only African American people who works at my job I

don’t have anybody to go and talk to at work about these issues that face me every day. I

have to put on the face at work of you need to keep your job and you need to keep it

together. So, it was really effective for me just to be able to let it out. I went to all the events

but session three helped me the most and was a little bit of free therapy.” (P06FAA)

While dialogue #3 really flowed, all Community Conversations offered a forum for

attendees to express and share personal stories and develop awareness of implicit bias, at times the

interactions produced tensions. Tension and disagreement peaked among the third session of

dialogue group participants however it was experienced within the context of a safe environment.

Co-constructing safety. Two respondents noted that guidance from the facilitators

contributed to a sense comfort and security among dialogue group members. While Metasphere

was not a word used at the Community Conversations, part of the facilitator’s role was to inform

participants about the order of the process and sense of space for the CCs, as retold by a respondent.

“Well it started first with sharing, and the fact that we needed to be respectful, we needed

to understand that my experience is not your experience. It went from there into an

overview of some things that we might be experiencing after looking at the video. We saw

286