Aboveis the PowerPoint I made to help facilitate the discussion between myself and the 8 Opening Doors Learning Communities Peer Mentors I work with. The ODLC Peer Mentors work within our freshman seminar course as a resource for the students to help connect them to campus activities and services. Because so much of the work they do is one-on-one outside the classroom, I felt it was important we have a discussion about diversity and social justice and the challenges we will face dealing with the current political climate. Since this was more of a discussion, the PowerPoint really just puts items to raise out there, so I’ll try to talk you through the bullet points here.
First, on the slide showing Clinton and Trump facing off, I had to get the picture from an Indian news site, since all the pictures I found showing a faceoff from American news sites had one or both candidates looking stark raving mad. I highlighted this as a criticism of the polarization of our news media: Right wing sites used an unflattering picture of Clinton, Left wing sites used an unflattering picture of Trump, and some sites used unflattering pictures of both.
On the discussion page regarding the election, much of that is self-explanatory, with one exception. The question “Are you voting for the good guy or the socialist” was a question one of my students in my Freshman Seminar course asked me last semester. By the “good guy” he meant Donald Trump. At this point in the presentation I disclose to the peer mentors that I am a Democrat who has voted for Republicans at the local level, but never for President. I say that since the college cannot endorse a particular candidate, I would not disclose that fact in class directly and thus had to be careful about how I answered this question. Further, if I disclosed that I was supportive of Bernie Sanders, it might change the students’ willingness to listen to me if he is in a politically polarized mindset (as his question would seem to indicate). Therefore, I answered the question by saying that every candidate is “the good guy” to their supporters, and it is important to try to look at things from multiple perspectives.
When discussing the #Blacklivesmatter and #Alllivesmatter issue, the main point here was to talk about challenging discrimination in both its overt and covert forms, while educating students and not turning them off to listening. We discussed overtly racist things that have happened on our campus, such as a White Power affiliated student going to a Jewish professor’s office hours and praising Hitler’s extermination of her ancestors. In the short video clip, which I preface heavily, we see two of our former students who, on their YouTube channel, go up to people of color in their neighborhoods, businesses, schools, etc, and attempt to provoke them by saying racist things. They then film the reaction. The clip I show is in our cafeteria, and the reason I show this is to make very clear that overtly racist incidents do happen on campus, because some of the mentors who have not experienced them may not really know. When we talk about covert prejudice, I talk about #Alllivesmatter, emphasizing that while All lives do matter, the hashtag is used not to express that sentiment but to try to ignore the issues surrounding the #Blacklivesmatter movement. It is important for us to challenge both overt and covert prejudice, but it is important to understand that those engaged in covert racism may not understand the reasons why their actions are racist, and may not consider themselves racist like the aforementioned White Power student would.
When talking about marriage equality, I emphasize that it’s important to understand that some faith traditions will never perform same-sex weddings, and that it’s OK to support them practicing their faith for themselves. What is not OK is for a student from one of these traditions to attack a gay person for being gay, because a gay person has as much right to express themselves as a religious person does. The underlying idea to emphasize here is mutual respect of the person while acknowledging that the ideas will never agree.
About half of the hour was a very frank, open, and honest discussion about feelings, about history, and about the importance of listening. One of the mentors raised the point that discussion is only possible if each side respects the other and treats the other person as an intellectual equal. As a white, heterosexual, cisgendered man, working primarily with students of color, I felt it was important to make sure that the students’ voices were heard rather than imposing my views, so after outlining the challenges and posing the questions, I basically let them talk to one another. They did an amazing job of looking at issues from all sides, examining why a person might be attracted to a viewpoint that they don’t share, and practicing choosing their words in a way that would express without shutting down discussion.
I’m really indebted to Jeffery Dessources, AKA Mr. JeffDess, from NJCU, as he wrote so many wonderful haikus and reflections regarding the violence of the past few weeks, that it was really hard to choose just two for the PowerPoint. Jeff sponsored a phenomenal student leadership conference in March, and if he does it again next year (and you’re near enough to Jersey City to take your students) I really recommend it. My students were really taken by it.
I hope this helps as you grapple with these issues on your campuses.
Best,
George J. Hill
Peer Mentor to Peer Mentor 