Good morning. I’m David Curley, a member of the Black Lives Matter ministry action team. Today I want to talk about the role of listening in building a diverse, multicultural Beloved Community. And I want to talk particularly about how to “stay in the room” when we are listening to stories about injustice.
We can practice with the first of the first of the formal statements that are meant to explain why an eighth principle is needed. “Whereas white supremacy perpetuates the assumption that white people and their culture are superior to other races, and those in power use this assumption to dominate others and to serve their economic, political and social interests.”
I was in college. It was 1966, a hot summer night on the South Side of Chicago, and I was walking with a friend in in acity park. A group of young Black men approached us. One of them asked us to stop, said that he just wanted to talk. We stopped, not sure where this was going. He asked: “You go to the University of Chicago, right?” I said I did. He said, “I live here. I get A’s in my high school. Our teachers, our school are so bad that we can’t get into college.”
He may have said more, but in any case, I felt afraid ofemotions of frustration and anger. I remember that he insisted, “You are smart, tell me what I am supposed to do.”
Here is what I wish I had known to do. I wish I had taken a deep breath, relaxed my shoulders, and asked them all to tell me more. I wish I could have said, “Do you have time to talk for a while?” Instead, I said, “I don’t know, I don’t know.” and we left.
All of us have established habits of response that tend to shut down conversation. At the BLM program on Difficult Conversations led by Kaitlin Davis we learned about twelve of responses that tend to say “end of discussion.” I’ll list a few: of course, shaming or blaming, but also, agreeing and praising(that’s great!); advising, providing solutions (“what I do is”);interpreting “What you really mean is . . .” You will see the whole “dirty dozen” list on this week’s BUF news. Jayme and I are trying to learn new habits.
