Diversity Dialogue

I thought the Diversity Dialogue Circle was a great experience.  It was informal and unstructured enough that I felt comfortable opening up and didn't feel put on the spot, yet it was structured enough to generate a productive discussion.  It seems that this type of conversation would vary drastically depending on who is participating.  Though our life experiences are clearly all different, our backgrounds as white, college-educated women are all relatively similar.  I think doing the Diversity Dialogue Circle at the prison will be a completely different experience, since there will be more diversity in the responses.  This may make me less comfortable than our first circle because worrying about offending people or saying the wrong thing will be more of a concern in the back of my mind.

My favorite part of the Diversity Dialogue Circle was how it got us to think about our own unique life experiences and how those experiences have impacted how we think about ourselves and others.  While I understand that socialization plays a big role in determining our outlook on life, I didn't realize how many both subtle and explicit messages we get about who and what is good or bad and how we should be in the world.  I think sharing the messages we've each received throughout our lives helped me piece together some of the social constructions that have always seemed really abstract.

I also liked the part of the discussion in which we talked about stereotypes of ourselves and others.  This wasn't the first time I'd been asked to list stereotypes of other groups of people, but I think it was the first time I'd had the tables turned and been asked to name stereotypes of myself.  Doing both exercises helped me see that the divisions that exist between people aren't the result of individual hatred or bigotry but are symptoms of larger problems with the way we are trained to treat those who are different than us.