What Is Courageous About Courageous Conversations? Inter-Group Dialogue and the White Problem

Abstract

This essay examines how university inter-group dialogue programs function, arguing that a common dynamic in dialogues about race is that members from privileged, majority groups (e.g., white, cis-het males) turn to members of so-called “minority” groups to disclose personal experiences. This paper examines four dialogue models and describes preliminary data from the Diversity Dialogue Project, a unique social justice dialogue program at a state university in Pennsylvania. Creating all-White groups where participants can probe the White problem may prevent burdening people of color with the role of educator. Campus dialogue programs that emphasize the need to be courageous when talking about race may unintentionally entrench White power.

1. Creating Dialogue

Campus dialogue programs that emphasize the need to be courageous when talking about race may unintentionally entrench White power. Based on a literature review of social justice dialogue programs and two focus groups studying a dialogue project at a state university in Pennsylvania, I argue that dialogue projects should focus on problematizing majority identities, especially whiteness. Some traditional inter-group models of dialogue (IGD) may unintentionally burden members of minority groups and foster uncritical, one-way listening from members of majority groups. I suggest that a possible solution to one-way, uncritical white listening is to embrace the framework of “the White problem”. The notion of the “White Problem” emerged in the Africana Existentialist literature to refer to a need for White people to be self-critical about their own racial identity, rather than treating race as something that the “other” has. The methods employed in this paper include analyzing the existing literature on campus dialogues, a brief empirical look at one dialogue program, and some speculative thoughts about possible new directions for dialogue programs. The mixed methods used here reflect my experience as a person trained in philosophy who became a director of a campus dialogue program and started reflecting on how to create dialogues that would not result in White folks going silent when talking about race. I focus on a few ways dialogues may go sour, noting that in any real-time, open-ended dialogue situation, there are many variations and outcomes.

“Is anyone here Jewish? I’d like to know how a Jew feels about this”. Several years ago, when co-facilitating a dialogue session in a nursing home, this question made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. The topic was antisemitism, and the question was sincere. Yet, I sensed a potentially toxic dynamic unfolding. Charitably, the question only assumed that Jewish people might know about the nature of antisemitism, having perhaps experienced it firsthand. However, when I eventually said, “Well, I’m Jewish”, and all the eyes in the room fell on me, I felt what existentialists call “the gaze”. By turning to the one Jewish person in the room and soliciting my opinions and personal experiences, the group was implicitly saying antisemitism was something that mainly concerned me—a Jew—and thus should be discussed, dissected, and fixed by me—a Jew.

My purpose in studying the IGD literature is to give a snapshot of competing models of existing campus dialogue programs so that educators might reflect on how to facilitate dialogue inside and outside the classroom. In places, I offer rather schematic descriptions of dialogue situations, with the caveat that any future dialogues have the potential to reveal new insights and new problems. I offer a brief of types of IGD programs, noting that some dialogue programs aim to teach participants from majority identities (e.g., White folks, cisgender folks, heterosexuals) about the experiences of those from non-majority backgrounds. The review of the IGD literature reveals that a common dynamic in dialogues about race is that members of majority groups turn to members of minority groups to disclose personal experiences. Their testimony is taken as representative of the experiences of other members of the minority group. Members of the majority group listen sympathetically as the “other” talks.

Placing minorities in the role of educators is, in Audre Lorde’s words, “an old and primary tool of all oppressors to keep the oppressed occupied with the master’s concerns” [1] (p. 110). When the majority of individuals, especially Whites, turn to minorities to be the voice of the oppressed, they often re-inscribe their power. The philosopher Frantz Fanon noted that “[A]n individual who loves Blacks is as ‘sick’ so someone who abhors them” [2] (p. xii). Fanon’s comment suggests how even positive attitudes such as that of “love”—and we should add courage, bravery, and sincerity—can be corrupt. Fanon’s point, as applied to dialogue situations, is that White people who turn to non-White others—especially Black people—to educate them are evading the harder work of self-evaluation and moral responsibility for collective harm. The harder work is for Whites to think critically about themselves as racial agents. Whites should treat their experience as White people as a source of knowledge about race and racism rather than pleading that as White people they have no experience with racism.

While there is a documented pattern of the majority of individuals turning to the “other” to solicit knowledge, there are also subtle ways in which people of color, including mixed-race individuals, respond to being placed in the role of educator. I do not mean to suggest that students of color typically accept the role of victim or educator. For example, some who are placed in the role of educator may resist this role by choosing what they reveal about their lives, their community, and/or their experiences with the hegemonic culture. Individuals with mixed identities might be familiar with navigating multiple, conflicting cultural perspectives, and this skill of having one foot in the dominant culture might be a resource for protecting oneself while also speaking the language of whiteness.

One important goal of campus social justice dialogue programs is fostering critical listening skills. However, when members of majority groups “go silent” on topics of race and engage in “one-way” listening, they may be harming themselves and others [3] (p. 83). One-way listening is bad for White listeners who, instead of thinking about themselves as racial agents, might equate “race” with “minority”. The White agent may have a lot to learn (or unlearn) about themselves in dialogue since being White is an identity laden with ideology and mystification. The White agent is in a curious position of knowledge and ignorance with respect to White identity. In the dominant culture, they are not encouraged to question what it means to live as a White person, and indeed they may think of their whiteness as an ordinary, boring, and uninformative aspect of how they carry themselves in the world. However, because being White is a way of living a racialized identity, White people who live in White-dominated societies know, in fact, a lot about race and racism, even if they suppress this knowledge beneath a myth of colorblindness. Members of racial and/or ethnic minority groups may be harmed by one-way listening because they may be placed in a victim role, expected to be experts about the nature, causes, and solutions to racism, and most of all, they may be expected to reveal personal stories, for instance, about being harmed by or overcoming racism. One-way White listening in dialogue groups may be stressful for minorities who are expected to disclose stories about their race, identity, and self, although in some cases it may feel empowering to be asked about one’s experiences with the dominant culture.

“Amira, we’ll be talking about the Holocaust today. Is there anything you’d like to share?” With these words, my daughter’s fifth-grade teacher was making a sincere, but ultimately toxic, effort at being “inclusive”. Like me, my daughter is a White Jew. Because neither of us are visible minorities, we escape the minoritizing racial “eyeball test” that often leads sincere teachers and dialogue facilitators to treat people of color as sources of knowledge about diversity, multiculturalism, and race. While my daughter and I were placed in the role of victim by the question, “How does a Jew feel?” a better question would be, “Why has it fallen on Jewish people to be the historians, sociologists, and philosophers of antisemitism?” It is not a form of honor to place the burden of educating the majority on members of a cultural minority. Such a burden reinforces the power dynamic that sets up a “minority” in the first place. While the case of Amira being called out in front of her class is particularly cringe-worthy, a similar dynamic takes place in many college dialogue programs dedicated to talking about race, despite the best intentions of sincere, well-trained dialogue facilitators. While some students from non-majority backgrounds may like having the spotlight on them, others may feel themselves unpleasantly objectified by the White normative gaze.

2. The IGD Movement

Educators interested in facilitating dialogue among their students have a wealth of existing models to choose from. Since the 1980s, critical dialogue programs have been an important part of diversity efforts on college campuses. There is a large literature on Inter-Group Dialogues (IGD) [4] (p. 128). The basic similarity of all IGD programs is that campus staff and/or faculty organize dialogue sessions in which students meet with other students to talk about race, gender, sexuality, identity, and other social and political issues. The underlying assumption of these IGD programs is that communicative phenomena are a crucial element of how power works. That is, our communication patterns are important because how we communicate (especially about race) may reinforce domination, or it may do the opposite and challenge domination. A basic familiarity with existing dialogue models may help educators find ways to create or improve dialogue programs on their campuses, whether inside or outside the classroom. The “inter” group aspect of the IGD movement is based on the idea that it can be transformative to engage in dialogue with people from a range of backgrounds, experiences, and identities. Many IGD programs take dialogues about race and racism as their focal point, while others expand the topics of conversations to gender, sexuality, ethnicity, identity, etc. A point of consensus is that educators and students alike have difficulty engaging in productive conversations about race. In this article, I am interested in how campus dialogue programs often frame conversations about race, ethnicity, gender, and other topics as “difficult” and sometimes “dangerous”. Several recent models of campus dialogue emphasize that a certain element of personal “courage” is needed for participants to get the most out of these programs. One of the initial motivations of IGD programs was the thought that if students allowed themselves to be emotionally vulnerable when talking about difficult social issues such as race, then dialogue sessions might help reduce racial conflict and racial bias. The critical dialogical approach was part of a larger movement by progressives that took as its mantra, “Americans need to learn to talk about race”. Some prominent models of dialogue measure their success in terms of bias reduction, while others focus on exposure to new viewpoints, active listening, and perspective-taking.

The psychologist Derald Wing Sue has written widely about a phenomenon he calls “race talk”. Sue has found that the fear of talking about race is widespread within university communities. [5] (p. 668). White students experience fear of talking about race in the classroom and group dialogues. White teachers experience fear and sometimes act evasively when talking about race in the classroom. According to Sue, often when there is race talk, teachers and students alike react with silence, diversion, dismissal, restriction, bystanding, and tabling discussion [6] (p. 79). Given the widespread fear of talking about race, it is important to explore how educators can devise new approaches and techniques for creating meaningful dialogue, inside and outside the classroom.

Sue and IGD researchers have explored why White people fear talking about race [6] (p. 669). According to Schreiner’s study of the “Race Relations Project” at Penn State University, “White students had a nearly universal fear of stating their opinions on race, being viewed as a racist, and, by far the most common response, a fear of offending a member of another race” [7] (p. 65). Out of research on White people’s fear of talking about race has come the suggestion that campus dialogue sessions help “break the silence”, and that a certain form of courage is needed for dialogues to be successful. I argue that the emphasis on “being courageous” when talking about race may unintentionally foster uncritical, one-way White listening and place minorities in the position of “educating” non-minorities. The courage model was developed as an effort to break away from certain dead ends of “race talk”, especially silence and evasion. However, the focus on the need to be brave in talking about race may ironically reinforce White power.

3. Is Talking About Race Dangerous? Four Approaches to Dialogue

In response to the problem of race talk, dialogue programs have been introduced at many colleges and universities in the United States. While such dialogue programs are of obvious interest to scholars in the field of communication, educators in all fields can benefit from studying how we communicate about race. I examine four dialogue models: two based on the idea of “courageous” dialogues, one based on “dangerous” dialogues, and the last based on “difficult” dialogues. Although I offer criticisms of each model, it should be noted that the scholars who developed these programs have offered important contributions, and each model has its own merits and differences. My hope is that by mapping out a few crucial elements of each model and discussing possible shortcomings, educators will be in a better position to develop dialogue models that work for them in their institutions. Each of these dialogue models has a framing metaphor, ground rules, and intended outcomes, and is indebted to IGD. I explore how these models deal with majority identity, problematize whiteness, attend to the racialization of listening skills, and how they frame White growth.

Glen Singleton’s “Courageous Conversation” (CC) approach begins from the observation that “when race surfaces as a topic for conversation, educators quickly become silent, defiant, angry, or judgmental” [8] (p. 31). The CC model is designed as a “field guide” to empower educators and students to be able to talk about race, given that “educators have not been willing to enter into discussion about this extraordinarily complex and emotionally charged topic” [8] (p. 6). The CC model takes a critical stance towards whiteness, noting that White people are often unwilling to listen to and learn from people of color [8] (p. 6). The CC model is designed to foster critical listening, “insisting that all readers, White, Indigenous, and of color, develop greater proficiency in learning from a Black person” [8] (p. 8). The ground rules for CC are to “stay engaged; speak your truth; experience discomfort; expect and accept non-disclosure” [8] (p. 31). Singleton’s model is of practical use for educators and activists. It spotlights critical listening skills and takes a relational approach to White identity by noting how Whites listen to non-White others. Two concerns about the CC model are that it may encourage Whites to be one-way listeners and it may re-center whiteness by treating the skill of talking about race as a form of courage.

A second approach to critical dialogue is the “Dangerous Discussion” model proposed by Venegas, Scott, LeCompte, Moody-Ramirez, and Zhu [9]. The dangerous dialogue (DD) model has been developed with an awareness of the fact that traditional dialogue programs burden minorities, transferring the costs of White growth onto people of color. In classroom sessions, “students of color…felt that being honest and open in discussing issues of race and gender put them at risk” [8] (p. 3, emphasis added). The DD model holds that for dialogue to be successful, we need to address White attitudes, specifically the ideology of colorblindness. Without addressing whiteness, dialogues may foster a false sense of antiracism, blame people of color, and fail to embrace institutional approaches. The DD model may circumvent one-way White listening by making one of the intended outcomes for White participants a reckoning with the ideology of colorblindness. The framing metaphor of “danger” is seemingly at odds with this outcome, since it is only from within a colorblind worldview that White people should think of race talk as dangerous.

Arao and Clemens recommend “brave spaces” (BS) as an alternative to “safe spaces” for framing social justice dialogues [10]. Like Venegas et al., they argue that traditional assumptions about group dialogue are problematic, namely, insisting on safety is a concession to White power. The BS model suggests a shift from “safety” to “bravery” as a way to solve this problem, since “the language of safety may actually encourage entrenchment in privilege” [10] (p. 140). The idea of safety burdens people of color who are expected to “constrain their participation and interactions to conform to White expectations of safety” [10] (p. 140). Instead of safety, the BS model emphasizes the riskiness of dialogue and the need for individuals to be brave in confronting risk. However, we must ask: risk to whom? The BS model holds that bravery is needed for members of the majority who experience pain when confronting privilege. One concern with the BS model is that it may not move far enough away from the problem of the safe space model; if the language of safety reinforces White people’s privilege, so might the language of “courage” and “risk”. The BS model holds that Whites should be brave in dealing with the emotional pain that comes with the experience that there is little positive content to White identity.

Similar to Arao and Clemens, Tim Wise critiques the “safe space” model for dialogue. [11]. Wise argues that the appeal to safety is implicitly about White people’s safety. Dialogue models that make safety a ground rule and bravery a virtue may be inadvertently ethnocentric. Wise argues that the White demand for safety is hypocritical since Whites are “members of the most powerful group on earth” [10] (p. 140). Wise argues that for White people, “our search for safety before we are even willing to discuss racism, let alone challenge it, is the ultimate expression of white privilege in many ways” [10] (p. 140). While Wise does not address the BS model specifically, by extension, his critique would be that for White students and White teachers, whatever “bravery” it may require in a controlled setting to talk about race, this danger pales in comparison to the dangers of everyday life for people of color navigating racist societies. The point is not to compare suffering, but to note that for White racial agents, their racial agency—being White—does not put them at risk for interpersonal, physical, or emotional violence. The profound fear of race talk felt by Whites is very real. From a subjective, first-person perspective, fear is fear. However, if White fear is taken at face value and not analyzed as a product of ideology and ultimately White supremacy, our dialogue programs will fail to be genuinely critical.

The last model I examine comes from Sherry K. Watt, who suggests a framework of “difficult dialogues” [12,13]. Unlike many traditional models, Watt treats the notion of “difficulty” as relational. By relational, I mean she examines how members of privileged groups, especially Whites, have emphasized their own “difficult” self-growth at the expense of others. She notes that as a Black, female teacher leading dialogues on race, her students often “undermine” her [12] (p. 116). Watt’s notion of “privileged identity” can reframe dialogues so that White fear and White courage are understood in relation to non-majority members of dialogues. One important question becomes: Who bears the costs of White self-growth in an inter-group setting? Watt emphasizes that identity formation and exploration are ongoing, and a difficult dialogue is a part of “unlearning social oppression” [12] (p. 119). Watt notes that White defensiveness is normal and identifiable. Those with various types of privileged identities may react defensively when asked to confront their racism, sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, and/or ableism. Watt’s notion of difficult dialogues is important because it focuses on the relationality of White, privileged identity; it measures the costs of White growth, White fatigue, and White defensiveness for Black and other non-White teachers and facilitators. Watt is one of the few authors whose notion of the “difficulty” of dialogue includes a relational view of privileged identity.

4. Is Talking About Race Courageous?

From my brief survey of campus dialogue models, we can see that there is a common concern that well-intentioned dialogue projects may reinforce White power by placing Whites in the role of one-way listeners and non-Whites in the role of educators. Solutions to this problem will require experimenting with different framing metaphors, ground rules, and expected outcomes for campus dialogues. I contend that one important step is to move away from the implicit logic of the “Jewish problem” and “Negro problem” towards the frame of reference of “the White problem”. What I mean by implicit logic is that while contemporary dialogue programs do not outright invoke the old idea that so-called racial “minorities” constitute a “problem” to be solved, these programs may still rely on the idea that “minorities” are a “problem”.

What Africana scholars such as W.E.B. DuBois, Richard Wright, and Lewis R. Gordon have called “The White problem” is a philosophical orientation that reverses the oppressive tactic of pathologizing those populations who are lumped into the category of “not-White”. Focusing on Black, Jewish, and Indigenous people as the “others” to White people is not arbitrary but corresponds to the history of such ideas as “la question juive” (“the Jewish question”) in France, “die jüdishe Frage” (“the Jewish question”) in Germany, and “the Negro problem” and the “Indian problem” in the United States [14]. “The White problem” is a conceptual framework that first emerged in Africana existential thought. It treats whiteness as a problem of reality, knowledge, and value. Whiteness allows Whites to invert reality, evade knowledge of themselves and others, and flee from moral responsibility for White violence. In Darkwater, W.E.B. Du Bois asks, “But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?” Frantz Fanon writes, “Let us have the courage to say it: It is the racist who creates the inferiorized” [15]. In Lewis R. Gordon’s variation, whiteness is a kind of death: “The white problem…is that there doesn’t seem to be any salvation for whites in a racist world once racism is admitted to be oppressive” [16] (p. 27) Formulations of the white problem appear in the work of many existential philosophers, including Jean-Paul Sartre, James Baldwin, Simone De Beauvoir, Steve Biko, Angela Davis, Mabogo P. More, and Richard Wright [17] (p. 153). In Beauvoir’s explicitly feminist version of the White problem, it is two majority identities—masculinity and whiteness—that should be confronted: “Women’s entire history has been written by men. Just as in America there is no Black problem but a white one… just as anti-Semitism is not a Jewish problem, it is our problem, so the problem of women has always been a problem of men” [18] (p. 222).

Problematizing whiteness and exploring White-on-White dialogues are alternatives to the traditional IGD models. As Watt reveals, White growth can be understood relationally. Instead of placing the burden on “minorities” to speak about race and racism, dialogue programs can emphasize how Whites have experience with race (their own White racial identity) and racism (everyday forms of White power) and have an ability and responsibility to be critical towards White power. Reframed around the White problem, engaging in social justice dialogues would not primarily entail teaching White folks about Blackness, Jewishness, or teaching straight people about queer identity, etc. The focus of dialogues would be generating critical attitudes towards majority, privileged identities, especially whiteness.

The CC and the BS models both acknowledge the need to be critical of White identity. However, in evoking the “courage” needed to talk about race, are these models conceding too much to the White fear of race talk? Is talking about race in a controlled dialogue setting brave? Is the emphasis on bravery helpful for accomplishing the goals of social justice dialogues?

Likewise, I believe that for most White people, in most situations, talking about race may be difficult and may create intense emotions, including fear, but it is not dangerous. Watt’s model is convincing on this matter. By emphasizing bravery, we are taking White people’s fear of talking about race at face value, which reinforces the idea that there is something dangerous about race talk. The literature surveyed above shows a difference in what Whites and non-Whites dislike about race talk. According to Sue, there are two things White people fear most when talking about race in campus dialogue programs: offending non-White members of the group and being perceived as racist by non-White members of the group [5] (p. 668). At its worst, White people’s fear of talking about race is a reflection of White people’s fear of non-White people. However, perhaps Whites should not be considered brave because they are able to talk about race any more than they should be considered brave for talking to Black, Indigenous, or Jewish people. Even if, for the purposes of self-growth, we acknowledge that Whites need to overcome their fear of non-White people, it might be counterproductive to draft non-Whites into campus dialogue programs in order to help Whites through, as it were, exposure therapy.

Fanon’s analysis of “Negrophobia”—literally, fear of Black people—is instructive in explaining why the White Courage model is questionable [19]. Fanon observed that the White “love” of Blackness is as problematic as White hatred since it involves fetishizing, romanticizing, and essentializing Black human beings [2] (p. 96). The Negrophobe exhibits what existentialists call “bad faith”, or self-deception; she or he projects the qualities of dangerousness onto Black individuals but denies that these fears are based on projection. Since Negrophobia is systematic, not just personal, according to Fanon, to some degree, all-White people who live in anti-Black societies like the United States suffer from it. Obvious instances of Negrophobia are when a White person clutches their purse tightly in the presence of a Black person or when a White family locks their doors when driving through a Black neighborhood [20] (p. XXXIII). In a dialogue setting, Negrophobia is the fear that Black people will be offended by what I, as a White person, say and will judge me as a racist. If Fanon is right about White self-deception, then we would expect a certain amount of incoherence in White attitudes, which we indeed find, according to the literature on dialogue programs. Whites in dialogue settings simultaneously assert that they know they are not racists, but they are afraid they will be perceived as racists by non-Whites.

5. Moving Away from the Contact Hypothesis

Recent IGD research suggests the need to move away from certain implications of what has been called “the contact hypothesis”, which holds that racial prejudice is reduced when the majority of individuals come “in contact” with minorities [21]. Many IGD models are based on the contact hypothesis, which was developed by the American psychologist Gordon Allport during a period of intense racial segregation in the United States. Research in the last ten years shows that the contact hypothesis has led to designing dialogue programs in which non-White students are called upon to educate Whites. Lewis communicates that research on race and dialogue is insufficiently attuned to the role of Whites as racial actors since dialogue projects are aimed at White opinions about others, not about White racial subjectivity [22]. The contact hypothesis may burden Black and other non-White people to educate White people about racism, bias, and privilege.

Diversity dialogues guided by the contact hypothesis can harm non-majority students, who are expected to give a voice, disclose, educate, and be spokespeople for their group. Paluck has found that in dialogues where Whites discussed their biases, non-Whites felt worse leaving the dialogue and were less willing to interact with members of majority groups [23] (p. 590). Richeson and Shelton indicate that interracial contact has negative health consequences for minorities and majorities [24]. As Sue, Capodilupo, Torino, Bucceri, Holder, Nadal, and Esquilin have shown, nearly all interracial encounters are prone to racial microaggressions [25]. Stewart and Peal conclude that students of color “no longer accept the responsibility of educating majority students…We have too often put them in the position of having to testify to their personal experiences with racism and discrimination in order to help white students realize that students of color do not share many of their experiences” [26] (p. 25).

According to Maxwell and Chesler, many IGD models indebted to the contact hypothesis create an expectation that non-White participants will educate Whites about race [27]. They found that White students feared saying something that would offend people of color and were thus more comfortable sharing their experiences about race in White groups. However, the same White participants said they could not “authentically” learn about racism from other Whites [27]. In his study of the Race Relations Project at Penn State, Schreiner found a similar pattern. White students were silent and fearful. They reported learning the most by listening to non-Whites tell personal stories [27]. Maxwell and Chesler also found that non-White dialogue participants were uncomfortable with the role of educator. Being placed in the role of educator during dialogue sessions caused stress equivalent to racial microaggressions. The power dynamic between White and non-White students in dialogues was asymmetric: “White students retained the power to be hidden (and safe) while requesting openness from students of color who they expect to educate them” [27] (p. 8).

Some of the most extensive work critiquing traditional IGD assumptions comes from Srivastava and Francis, who suggest that some social justice dialogue models harm minority group members and perpetuate inequality [28]. Dialogues that encourage Whites to listen and non-Whites to talk “exact a heavy toll on tellers”, especially queer and transgender youth of color [28] (p. 275). Encouraging non-majority individuals to share personal stories for the benefit of majority individuals may be harmful as it results in dialogues becoming “a theatre for…women of color to tell their stories” [28] (p. 285). In dialogues, the asymmetry between those who talked and those who listened “allowed white and/or straight participants to be passive or un-implicated while people of color and/or queers are objects of interrogation and display” [28] (p. 276). Srivastava and Francis confirm that dialogues based on the contact model encourage “non-whites…to disclose stories of racism, while whites share their feelings of being shocked, affronted, racist, or non-racist and so on” [28] P. 276. Being treated as an object of knowledge is “especially painful for non-white participants” [28] (p. 284). The IGD model may thus “benefit some participants at the expense of those doing the teaching; unequal relations of race and sex are reinforced” [28] (p. 285).

Srivastava’s and Francis’s critique is inspired by Gloria Anzaldúa’s insight that White feminists have placed women of color in the role of racial educators. Anzaldúa rejects a politics where people of color and/or queer people become objects of knowledge for Whites, cis-gendered people, and/or straight people. Lorde has also powerfully argued that it is not the role of women of color to educate White people about oppression. Lorde writes, “Women of today are still being called upon to stretch across the gap of male ignorance…Now we hear that it is the task of women of color to educate white women” [1] (p. 110).

One-way listening may be bad for people of color and White people. Placing Whites in the role of one-way listeners reinforces “the wishful myth that Whites are ignorant when it comes to race” [28] (p. 288). Productive discussion requires vulnerability on the part of Whites. If people of color are turned into “objects of knowledge”, then Whites may escape self-criticism and critical attitudes towards whiteness by refusing to access their embodied racial agency. Dialogue programs that focus on majority identities may allow space for majority individuals to speak about their personal racialized and gendered subjectivity. Rather than treating race as something that the other has, dialogues focused on majority identities can stimulate a discussion that moves away from the ideology of colorblindness and the vestigial assumptions of the contact hypothesis and the so-called “Black/Jewish/Indian Problems”.

6. Diversity Dialogue Project

In this section, I discuss my experience co-directing a dialogue project and reflect on some preliminary data in which White participants reported that they “had their eyes” opened by listening to stories told by non-Whites. While far from conclusive, the data suggest that despite my and my team’s best intentions in developing a dialogue model that benefits all participants, we may have created dialogues that put minority students in the position of “educating” Whites. For the past ten years, I have co-directed the Diversity Dialogue Project (DDP) at East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania, a state school in Eastern Pennsylvania. The DDP is a social justice dialogue program, indebted to the IDG model and the Race Relations Project at Pennsylvania State University. There are two main differences between the traditional IGD model and the DDP. First, the DDP does not intentionally create mixed-identity groups. A basic premise of IGD is that members of different identity groups should be placed together to learn from each other. This is the “inter” of the inter-group dialogue. In our groups, undergraduate students are assigned randomly. Second, participants in the DDP do not meet more than once or twice a semester. Unlike models where multiple dialogue sessions are held, often over the course of a semester or year, due to limited budget and staff, our participants typically attend one, one-hour session per semester.

Some preliminary research conducted by the DDP research team at my university suggests that it may be helpful to move away from the traditional IGD model towards a dialogue model that explicitly focuses on questioning majority identities. Our research team conducted two focus groups in which student participants in the DDP were asked open-ended questions about their experiences in the sessions [29]. In the focus groups, we looked at traditional outcomes of IGD, including perspective-taking, voicing, active listening, increased capacity for anti-racist action, and bias reduction. We found that participants reported that participation in a dialogue session “opened their eyes” to the experiences of others, especially when people of color told personal stories; but participants did not feel that the dialogue session helped them confront personal biases or help them become confident in taking anti-racist actions. Overall, participants were extremely positive about the dialogue sessions, which they said were a comfortable environment for voicing, listening, and understanding the perspective of others. Many students used the phrase “eye-opening”, especially with respect to hearing personal stories from others. The participants had their eyes opened by personal stories, especially the stories of non-White people. However, our participants did not feel that the sessions reduced their bias or led them to increase their capacity to take anti-racist actions. Although the purpose of the focus group was not to examine whether White power was being reinforced by creating a dialogue dynamic in which Whites take on the role of one-way listener and non-whites take on the role of telling personal stories about racism, looking at the results of our focus groups, we can conclude that this dynamic was in place during DDP sessions.

When subjects were asked if they believed that participating in a dialogue session caused them to confront personal biases with respect to racism, sexism, or other social identities, overwhelmingly they reported that the session did not help them reduce a personal bias. “I don’t have a personal bias”, as one participant put it bluntly [29]. This sentiment was common. Participants reported that the session did not help them with bias reduction for a specific reason: they were not biased people to begin with. Participants said the following: “I don’t think it really changed how I feel drastically because I was just an open person”. “I was already very open”, and “I’m not prejudiced personally” [29].

At the same time that participants said they came in with an open mind, they felt that the session opened their eyes. Students made comments such as: “It did help me open my eyes even more so than what it did prior to him or her speaking”, and “I respect you for speaking your piece, but then if they really change my perspective on things…one person’s testimony is not going to change everything that I have learned or seen” [29]. Two participants referred to their personal identity as the reason they already knew about discrimination. One participant said, “I am kind of already aware of it [racism] being African-American, but it was nice to hear” [29]. Another participant, who identified as a White female, suggested the following: “I was of course already aware of my own discrimination based on race, gender, and age, but I think this discussion helped me to realize like other races [face] discrimination as well” [29].

This preliminary data presents an interesting question: If the participants reported that they were already aware of discrimination and racism, what did they feel they were learning from the personal stories of other people? One comment gets at this ambivalence: “I do not think it helped me reduce anything or change like a complete view or harboring anybody or anyone or anything but certain people’s circumstances and their stories may have” [29]. Four White participants noted that listening to people of color helped open their eyes to discrimination [29]. It was personal stories from non-White participants that had the most effect. “I think it helped me see that even if something did not happen to me. It does not mean it did not happen to someone else. So when people told stories” [29]. One African-American participant reported that the session did not open his eyes to racism, since he was already familiar with it: “Black people [are] fighting race every day together”; yet this participant said that the session would be helpful for “people of other races” in order to “get them on the right track to hopefully end this problem” [29].

In the preliminary DDP focus groups, we learned that White participants did not feel that the session helped them confront or reduce personal biases because they believed they did not have any personal biases. Putting aside the obvious implausibility of the claim that they were not biased, the interesting question is why Whites were so positive about dialogue sessions and what they believed they were learning when they got their “eyes opened” by listening to the personal stories of non-White people.

7. White-on-White Spaces and New Whiteness

In the remaining sections of this essay, I turn to some philosophical speculations about how educators might design campus dialogues that provide participants from majority identities—especially Whites—with tools for critical self-analysis. From ten years of personal experience co-directing a campus dialogue program, I would suggest that one of the important elements of an effective dialogue program is creativity. One of the main purposes of this current article is to share some strategies and ideas with other folks who are interested in creating dialogue programs, in order that they might have a palette of ideas to inspire them in their own endeavors. I also believe that knowing about “race talk” and various ways to get productive dialogues in place can benefit nearly all educators, from those in the university all the way to K-12 educators. Many of the lessons sketched out here apply not only to dialogue programs but also to classroom discussions.

One of the provocative suggestions about diversity dialogues emerging from the literature (and from my own experience directing the DDP) is the possibility of creating all-White groups where participants can probe majority identities. Although there are certain limits to all-White groups, such groups may prevent burdening people of color with the role of educator. If there are no people of color from whom to solicit personal stories of experiences with racism, then at least one type of one-way White listening will be circumnavigated. As noted above, in mixed-identity groups, sometimes Whites/majority folks go silent, preferring to listen to the “other” speak about their personal experiences with race, gender, sexuality, etc. In a setting where there are no “others”, and all members share at least one element of a majority identity (race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.), the majority of individuals may listen to each other talk through the lenses of a shared identity. The idea is to create a sense of “we-as-Whites” in the group, such that dialogue participants feel they are exploring a type of power/identity that they all have access to and experience with. True, nothing guarantees that all members of the group will speak instead. Even all-majority groups have the possibility of creating silent participants who just listen and do not speak. One way to address the issue of one-way listening is to explicitly make it a theme of discussion among majority-identity groups. Educators may want to explore dialogue prompts such as “Is it harder or easier to talk about race with others who share your race?” Other possibilities include prompts such as “Is there such a thing as White culture? If so, what are the components of White culture?” Or invoking DuBois, one might simply ask, “How does it feel to be White?” Currently, there does not exist significant empirical literature on dialogue programs that focus on White self-criticality; hopefully, in the future, this work will emerge.

8. Exploring the Possibilities of All-White Dialogue Groups

But can Whites learn about racism, power, and privilege from other Whites? Should Whites in such dialogue groups work towards a new, transformative vision of White identity? I turn here to some important discussions about White dialogue groups.

Maxwell and Chesler found that not only do traditional IGD groups exact a toll on people of color, but they also found that in White groups, participants learned just as much about privilege, racism, power, and oppression as in traditional IGD groups [27] (p. 5). In fact, participants in the all-White dialogues may have better understood White identity than in mixed settings. Maxwell and Chesler conclude the following: “Since white students can gain significant learning in the all-white environment…the all-white setting” might be “the first step in the white students’ racialized education” [27] (p. 8).

In her 1978 book White Awareness Judith Katz treats “racism as a White problem” by exploring White responsibility for racism as well as racism’s negative effects on White people [30] (p. 20). Moving away from dialogues in which “the victim, and not the victimizer, once again becomes the target for change”, Katz suggests that White groups can be effective spaces where Whites can “explore their racism without exploiting minorities” [30] (p. 19). Katz proposes that Whites analyze how whiteness, which manifests itself as a delusion of White superiority, hinders the intellectual and psychological development of White people. Noting that in “inter-racial group exercises…the functioning of the groups may itself be racist”, Katz submits that in White dialogue groups, the responsibility for understanding and reducing White power can be placed on Whites [30] (p. 17).

Linda Martín Alcoff agrees with Katz on the need to problematize whiteness and the potential for all-White groups to be a source for change. However, she is skeptical of anti-racist training, which may reduce racism to a psychological problem that can be addressed through behavioral modification alone, without the redistribution of material resources. Further, Alcoff contends that anti-racism efforts are hampered when White identity is treated only as negative. In The Future of Whiteness she maintains that in addition to teaching newly critical White people the full, racist “genealogy of whiteness”, it is important to insist that White identity is open-ended [31] (p. 212). Alcoff recommends the existentialist notion of White double consciousness as an appropriate goal. White double consciousness is the process by which Whites come to understand themselves “through both the dominant and the non-dominant lens…recognizing the latter as a critical corrective truth” [31] (p. 140).

Like Alcoff, the authors Robert Terry, Henry Giroux, and Robert Reason argue that educators and anti-racists ought to offer a new vision of whiteness that can inspire Whites to see themselves as anti-racists. They contend that the framework of the White problem in which whiteness is presented as a form of death will debilitate Whites and lead to unproductive guilt. In For White’s Only Terry suggests that while White responsibility for racism should become the focus of anti-racist dialogues, whiteness must be given “positive content” in order to create buy-in from Whites [32]. Giroux conveys that when presented with the full history of American White supremacy, “it becomes difficult for White youth to view themselves as both White and anti-racist at the same time” [33] (p. 294). Giroux worries that “White students may well feel traumatized” because, in social justice dialogues, they will feel White racial identities are “on trial” [33] (p. 294). Echoing Giroux, Reason speculates that traditional dialogues have not given White students a language for “re-articulating whiteness” [34] (p. 130). Reason says the “difficulty” of talking about race for Whites is that they experience emotional pain when they realize the full scope of White responsibility for White supremacy, racism, and colonialism [34] (p. 129).

One concern with the new Whiteness argument is that it reduces the complex process of White double consciousness and White identity formation to an oversimplified binary: either Whites will be taught that Whiteness is death, in which case they will be traumatized and immobilized, or they will be taught that Whiteness is multifaceted and open-ended, in which case they will be inspired to take anti-racist action. Terry, Giroux, and Reason have a non-dynamic concept of White identity, unlike Alcoff, who emphasizes the unevenness of White double consciousness. Terry, Giroux, and Reason also make the implausible claim that sheltering White people from the full truth of White supremacy will have a positive outcome. By contrast, in Visible Identities, Alcoff provides a phenomenological account of identity that is attuned to, among other things, mixed-race, class-based, and gendered experiences of being White. Alcoff’s notion of White identity is different from that of other new whiteness theorists because she does not advocate a revisionist history of Whiteness. Alcoff would agree that if race dialogues are to help us create a more humane world, we must first understand historically and in detail how whiteness has been and continues to be a form of death.

Most IGD models, even those that adopt the framework of the White problem, do not weigh the success of programs on whether White participants exit dialogues willing to take anti-racist actions. As Watt’s privileged identity model argues, if the baseline attitude for White people is colorblindness, a necessary part of a critical White consciousness is an understanding of how one’s personal identity relates to social systems. White people must come to see themselves as having a race. On Watt’s model, White emotional pushback—especially denial, deflection, and frustration—is part of a process and should not be taken as evidence that White people need to be shown a more positive idea of what whiteness can become [12] (p. 119). The DD model of Venegas, Scott, LeCompte, Moody-Ramirez, and Zhu also emphasizes that developing a critical consciousness of what it means to be White is a messy process that involves confronting the ideology of colorblindness. In a study of whether dialogue programs prepared White college students to become racial allies, Alimo found that participants were indeed overwhelmed with the “new information” about the “complexity of whiteness” [35] (p. 36). The phenomenological approach to White identity found in Watt, Alcoff, and Fanon emphasizes the incoherence of White identity. The experience of White double consciousness may or may not lead a person to become a racial justice ally. Since most White people enter social justice dialogues with a de-racialized, colorblind self-understanding, dialogue facilitators should expect participants who are seeing themselves as embodied White racial agents for the first time to experience a variety of emotions, especially shame, debilitation, grief, and anger.

Based on the above analysis, it would seem that all-white social justice dialogue groups are a good alternative to racially mixed groups. In these groups, White identity understood phenomenologically and developmentally can become the focus of discussion. White participants can work towards White double consciousness, understood as an ongoing process of reflection and action. The White emotional pushback documented by Watt might be expected and addressed so that its costs are not transferred to people of color. Dialogue facilitators should also expect White participants to express the feeling they cannot “authentically” learn about race, racism, and diversity without the presence of non-White participants. On the issue of whether a “new”, future-oriented concept of whiteness should be the focus of dialogue groups, Terry, Giroux, and Reason want to put the cart before the horse. How can White people work for a “new” whiteness when we have barely scratched the surface of understanding and challenging the toxicity and deadliness of the supposedly “old” whiteness? They want a version of the White problem without the sting of White responsibility for the collective harms of racism, colonialism, discrimination, and White supremacy. Finally, designing campus dialogues with a focus on “new” whiteness may or may not generate enthusiasm for anti-racist action; that is a question that would have to be explored through more empirical research.

9. Conclusions: Whose Courage?

Campus dialogue programs that emphasize the need for courageous conversations about race should be explicit about whose courage they are invoking. Who is the “we” in the injunction “We need to learn to talk about race”? It is mostly White people who fear talking about race, and hence White people to whom the idea of courage is directed. White people’s fear of talking about race is a mark of their power. Black people, Brown people, Jewish people, and many other cultural, ethnic, religious, and racial minorities in the United States cannot afford to not know how to talk about race. It may well require an act of personal courage for a White person who has never learned to talk about race to make themselves vulnerable in a social justice dialogue. However, dialogue programs should acknowledge that the “courage” of our “courageous conversations” is directed at overcoming White fears. To avoid the problem of one-way White listening and burdening non-Whites with the role of educators in mixed-group settings, dialogue programs should adopt a conceptual framework that treats whiteness as a problem. Dialogue programs can move away from the interracial contact hypothesis and the assumption that Whites can best learn about racism by coming into contact with and listening to people of color tell personal stories. The framing metaphor of “dangerous dialogues” can be reconsidered given that what is at stake for Whites in social justice dialogue programs is the fear of being vulnerable to the criticism of insensitivity, ignorance, or racism. Ironically, all-White groups may be the best spaces for Whites to explore how their White racial identities are relational. Fanon captures the relationality of White identity when he writes, “Not only must the Black man be Black; he must be Black in relation to the White man” [2] (p. 90). White participants in traditional dialogues often look for recognition from people of color in a sincere but ultimately toxic dynamic. Yes, even asked “lovingly”, questions like “How does a Jew feel about this?” can reinforce rather than challenge dominant structures of power.