Page 321 - Mike Ratner CC - WISR Complete Dissertation - v6

prepare my reaction and my response.’ I need to be more open to that thought myself.”

(P14FAA)

“I pretty much thought racism was a thing of the past, but it kind of made me understand,

maybe not, but I don’t know the details of everything.” (P16WM)

“I think that the reflections are that I have is to be more willing for a conversation and not

like, ‘Oh I know what you are going to say as the white person on the other side so let me

prepare my reaction and my response.’ I need to be more open to that thought myself. I

think that sometimes, as an African American, we think that well, we were treated the

worst, everybody knows it, we are still treated the worst so you can’t tell us anything

different. Or, I am not going to feel sorry for you because you were raised to be mean. You

don’t necessarily have to do either of those things, but you have to be willing to listen and

understand in order to have other people listen and gain an understanding from you.”

(P14FAA)

The Facilitation Perspective

The second section of the analysis presents impressions about the Community

Conversation series in Albany NY from the facilitator’s perspective. Facilitators interviewed

during the data-gathering phase discussed the degree of care and responsibility they had for their

role in creating a caring container (Isaacs, 1999) for healing, and bridging the social and racial

divide. It should be noted that only about half of dialogue tables on average at the remaining three

meetings had assigned trained facilitators and this is important because it can affect the quality of

engagement if discussions get out of hand without someone guiding the process against one person

dominating or interrupting. Understanding facilitation begins with an awareness of the difference

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