Page 373 - Mike Ratner CC - WISR Complete Dissertation - v6

Conversely, there was no hesitance among an African American man to voice his desire to

rush to scale by identifying a project that could begin to address the ills of the racial divide present

in the community, rather than letting the deliberative dialogue process dictate the outcome. His

approach to addressing issues of race and discrimination acknowledged the need to partner with

members of the privileged sector of the community, but did not include, nor value the dialogue

approach. His initial criticism of the dialogue process ranged from “I am more interested in solving

problems as opposed to discussing them” to “Through all the discussion, which in my mind

focused more on the history of race, rather than solving problems. It seems like we, there was

nothing at that point that was bringing us together, which I regretted”. By the second series of

dialogues this man indicated his understanding of the value of dialogue by commenting that “we

talked about how we experienced that [type of racism] in our day is valuable in building authentic

coalitions because both parties has expressed his or feelings about race and racism openly”

(P10MTRM). As the dialogues progressed and more stories were shared the act of listening

allowed privileged members of the group to hear and get in touch with the perspectives of those

less privileged and temporarily relinquish the role of knower for that of listener (Pease, 2010).

The evolving character of the space within dialogues devoted to the topic of race lends

particular insight into the possibility of mending the racial divide that exists and furthering theories

of civic and deliberative dialogue as an approach that can have lasting and positive outcomes. The

conversations during the first dialogue session (CC 2) were different from the conversations that

occurred during the third and fourth CC dialogues. Over the scheduled meeting period the topics

of conversation moved from stories and experiences of implicit bias as the original theme to racial

injustice and community practices that perpetuated racism to a focus on next steps and action.

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