Go to YouTube.com and view Sam Richards and Laurie Mulvey: World in Conversation

Question

Go to YouTube.com and view Sam Richards and Laurie Mulvey: World in Conversation - Conversations from Penn State at https://youtu.be/1udddFh-FBU. The 27 minute video features an interview of Richards and Mulvey, two professors who teach a class on race relations at Penn State University. After watching the video, research the topics in the . Reflect on your learning and write a 5-6 page reflection paper. Your paper must address the following questions, but should not be limited to them. 1. Do you find it difficult to talk about race? Explain and support your answer. 2. The professors make the point that White people have a more difficult time talking about race than Black people. Has this been your experience? Explain. 3. Do you think honest and open conversations about race change peoples’ behaviors? Explain. How do Mulvey and Richards respond to this same question? Explain. 4. Discuss at least three observations made by Mulvey and Richards that point to the value of these conversations. 5. What observations made by Mulvey and Richards resonate with you and why? Draw on your own career and personal experiences. 6. What are managerial challenges and opportunities both implicitly and explicitly discussed in the video?

Explanation / Answer

1) It is against the law to discriminate against anyone in the workplace because of their actual or assumed race. Employees are protected from discrimination at all stages of employment including recruitment, workplace terms and conditions and dismissal. Race includes colour, descent, nationality, ancestry or ethnic background or any characteristics associated with a particular race. Any white person living in the United States will develop opinions about race simply by swimming in the water of our culture. Yes, we will develop strong emotionally laden opinions, but they will not be informed opinions. Our socialization renders us racially illiterate. When you add a lack of humility to that illiteracy (because we don’t know what we don’t know), you get the break-down we so often see when trying to engage white people in meaningful conversations about race.Social scientists understand racism as a multidimensional and highly adaptive system—a system that ensures an unequal distribution of resources between racial groups. Because whites built and dominate all significant institutions, (often at the expense of and on the uncompensated labor of other groups), their interests are embedded in the foundation of U.S. society. While individual whites may be against racism, they still benefit from the distribution of resources controlled by their group. Yes, an individual person of color can sit at the tables of power, but the overwhelming majority of decision-makers will be white. Yes, white people can have problems and face barriers, but systematic racism won’t be one of them. This distinction—between individual prejudice and a system of unequal institutionalized racial power—is fundamental. One cannot understand how racism functions in the U.S. today if one ignores group power relations.We have organized society to reproduce and reinforce our racial interests and perspectives. Further, we are centered in all matters deemed normal, universal, benign, neutral and good. Thus, we move through a wholly racialized world with an unracialized identity (e.g. white people can represent all of humanity, people of color can only represent their racial selves).

2) Challenges to this identity become highly stressful and even intolerable. The following are examples of the kinds of challenges that trigger racial stress for white people:

Not often encountering these challenges, we withdraw, defend, cry, argue, minimize, ignore, and in other ways push back to regain our racial position and equilibrium. I term that push back white fragility.

This concept came out of my on-going experience leading discussions on race, racism, white privilege and white supremacy with primarily white audiences. It became clear over time that white people have extremely low thresholds for enduring any discomfort associated with challenges to our racial worldviews.

We can manage the first round of challenge by ending the discussion through platitudes—usually something that starts with “People just need to,” or “Race doesn’t really have any meaning to me,” or “Everybody’s racist.” Scratch any further on that surface, however, and we fall apart. Socialized into a deeply internalized sense of superiority and entitlement that we are either not consciously aware of or can never admit to ourselves, we become highly fragile in conversations about race. We experience a challenge to our racial worldview as a challenge to our very identities as good, moral people. It also challenges our sense of rightful place in the hierarchy. Thus, we perceive any attempt to connect us to the system of racism as a very unsettling and unfair moral offense.

3) Yes honest and open conversations about race can change people's behaviour. Before having conversations about race, explore the history of race-based privilege in this country and put your privilege in context. Privilege, loosely defined, is any unmerited or unearned advantage. In that sense, we all have experienced privilege. Part of the privilege associated with whiteness is the luxury of not having to consider one’s own race -- let alone the disadvantages faced by many people of color.The more we can face the reality and take the value judgment out of [white privilege], the more we can work together to eliminate it.”  Privilege can be present in any circumstance. It is important to name privilege wherever it exists. I am a mixed-race African-American male who was adopted at birth into a white family. (Shout-out to all my transracial adoptees!) To a certain extent, I indirectly benefited and still benefit from my family’s white privilege. That’s part of my story. Being white and benefiting from white privilege does not disqualify you from having a voice in the fight for racial equity. Privilege should not be a constant source of guilt. Rather, it should fuel action against the inequality that it breeds and sustains. Developing a strong understanding of race requires a combination of individual and group learning. We can all accomplish a lot on our own through offline and online resources.

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