Nurturing dialogue
Gathering in OKC focuses on social justice
Editor’s Note: This is part of an occasional series of stories in The Oklahoman aimed at fostering healthy conversations about race and community relations. It is part of an initiative called United Voice Oklahoma, whose mission is to bring local media outlets together to give Oklahoma a united voice in promoting healthy dialogue on race.
Who are the people invisible to you from the “palace” made of your comfort zone?
Who is “us” and “them” in that palace?
The organizer of a social justice conference recently challenged an Oklahoma City crowd to ask themselves those questions to help confront bias and encourage compassion for people who are different.
“Because we’re building a palace for our own comfort, I’m going to challenge everyone’s palace,” the Rev. Clarence Hill told people gathered for the 2018 “Crossing the Bridge” conference. “When you look out of your palace, who are the peasants?”
About 180 people attended the annual conference in April at the Northeast Health and Wellness
Campus, 2600 NE 63.
Hill’s Stronger Together OKC group coordinated the event, and they initially thought to close registration at 150 people. However, he said there was such a demand that they allowed more people to register and are considering a simultaneous broadcast of next year’s event so that people may join in the conference sessions via satellite.
Hill said he was pleased with the turnout, which he attributed to organizers’ commitment to nurturing dialogue about race and community relations in a safe and informal setting.
The conference included several general sessions and some breakout sessions where participants were encouraged to listen and discuss issues like implicit bias, poverty and other social justice concerns. Hill said the sessions were designed to present attendees with a real face or real-life situation to help them understand different perspectives.
“There are people in Oklahoma that genuinely care, and their values call them to care, but a lot of times that care doesn’t manifest because of their political persuasion so when they come here, they get to hear some more of the story that oftentimes their political views deafen their ears to,” he said.
“They get to talk to human beings and hear their stories from a different perspective.”
Hill said some of the attendees had been to previous conferences, and the more they began to wrap their minds around social justice issues, the more they began to see ways they could confront racism and other cultural ills.
“The thing that’s beneficial with a conversation like this is that you have to keep at it even when people aren’t listening, when you get the cold shoulder or you get the blank stare,” he said.
“Sometimes people who have heard the message the first time have come back around and said ‘now I get it.’ Just because now, with the conversation on their mind, they were at least aware of some things to look for and then they see it for themselves, they say ‘OK, now I understand it. Now I want to do something about it.’”
Confronting implicit bias
Breakout sessions and general session speakers included Lt. Wayland Cubit, director of the Oklahoma City Police Department’s Family Awareness and
Community Teamwork (FACT) program; the Rev. John-Mark Hart, pastor of Christ Community Church; Caylee Dodson, director of Restore OKC; Lee Roland, retired school principal, author and educational consultant; and Kenny Deason, pastor of The Parish OKC.
Others included Karlos K. Hill, University of Oklahoma professor of African American and African Studies; Brad McMullan, chief executive officer and president of bfac.com (Buy From A Christian); Taylor Doe, founder of 3 East; and Shannon Welch, director of community health for the Oklahoma CityCounty Health Department.
In Cubit’s breakout session, the police officer had attendees watch a clip from the 2004 movie “Crash,” which wove together stories that focused on several issues, including racism and stereotypes. Cubit also had the group take a visual perception test where they were asked to pick out images like black faces, white faces, guns, vases and camera that were “crime relevant.”
Cubit told them that he trained his fellow police officers on implicit bias after going through the training himself. He said biases often are unconscious or implicit, and unless people are aware that they exist internally, they don’t ever think about them.
He said everyone has to determine if and how they are going to confront and overcome their own implicit biases. One way to confront and overcome implicit
bias, he said, is to establish relationships with people who are different.
“This increases our exposure to people who don’t match what our mind says it will,” Cubit said.
“This exposure is to counter stereotypes, when we have a relationship and increase our exposure to people who don’t match what our mind says it will.”
Two college students Calvin Smith, 18, and Jacqari Richardson, 19, said they found the topic and discussion interesting.
“Some people might always see the bad in you based on first impressions,” Richardson said. “But it’s about self confidence and knowing who you are — portraying to people that you are better than the statistics.”
Meanwhile, Hill said he hopes people left the conference with the realization that people who may think differently than them are not their enemy and that racism and race relations may be discussed without resorting to extremes.
“It’s a paradigm shift. It’s a way of thinking that has been ingrained in us to think either you believe that racism exists or you believe that people are just complaining and pulling the ‘race card.’ And those are the only two extremes that produce that language that we have around this conversation,” he said.
“So we bring a different language that says no, just because someone thinks differently than me it doesn’t mean that they don’t care. People are starting to catch that message.”