Unedited - Ch 6 outline of the Group Conversation Method

Outline of Reducing Social Tension and Conflict

Chapter 6: Uniting People for Community Needs

I.      We need equal opportunities for all people as we work together to solve our problems of living together.

1. The Group Conversation Method is unique because it can be used with other methods to enhance its productivity in individual’s unique social roles – the home, school, church, and place of work – to relate to the same goals.

1.      I take this to mean group conversation can provide a path to get opposing sides to unite and get on the same team to fight a common enemy.

a)     I also think it would be cool if after uniting as humans, that participants could use their differences to supplement others who are lacking insight or skill in a given area

·         Kind of like different positions on a baseball team working together VS fighting over which position is better!

2. Many projects [] are being conducted. So often, however, these projects do not tend to move communities forward as a whole, for they have been too fragmented and unrelated in their social action activities.

1.      I can see this in programs that have a common goal, like fighting blight and poverty in an area to go about it totally different ways.

a)     One group or organization could hold an black tie event

b)     Another organization could organize a food donation program or something more hands on.

2.      While this is happening, the two groups operate in separate factions while trying to achieve the same goal. Their lack of social connection and the walls it creates form a barrier to unity and clarity.

·           Although this is a simple example and situations seem to be more complex most of the time, it illustrates how lack of a whole, or to use Ken Wilber's term “Whole Parts”. Projects that have common goals without "constancy of purpose" (Dr. Deming's term for one of the 5 deadly diseases...link on other post) are bound to fall short. The different parts need to bee interdependent. I may have to have a separate post explaining this in detail as an intro to my endeavors in communications.

3. Local leaders will realize that the use of Group Conversation is a part of an ongoing process of aiding individuals of various kinds of backgrounds to believe in one another as persons, so that they will make the attempt to work together more productively, whether as community workers, volunteers for social action projects, talented suburbanites, welfare recipients, or concerned parents.

II.    Motivating Social Action Volunteers

·           In the past posts I have left out some of the examples and case studies to just get to the root of the concept. However, I feel that the study in this chapter will give some needed context and clarity to the subject matter in this out line. So here it is word for word.

SITUATION: The Ecumenical Task Force in a Northern city set up a committee to prepare themselves and others to use effective ways to involve mainly middle-class whites and blacks in becoming active as volunteers in the civil rights struggle and other social action programs in the community.

First step: training workshops in the use and follow-up of Group Conversation. Thirty persons of different races, sexes and backgrounds – Catholic nuns, Protestant pastors, public school teachers, and housewives.

Second step: follow-up. After their training, each team of two recruited their own participants for a five-session, weekly series of meetings in their own homes, using Group Conversation followed by discussion, This let to the involvement of many participants as volunteers in several social projects.

TOPICS (used in the home meetings, with one session on each):

1.      Becoming acquainted.

2.      Our own prejudices – to recognize them in or past and present experiences.

3.      Institutional racism – to understand how the system works and what it does to us.

4.      Black consciousness and Black Power – to understand and respond creatively.

5.      What we can do – to see institutionalized racism where we are and to design strategy to overcome it.

LEAD Questions:

Our own prejudices. Introduction by leader: psychologists generally agree on two main causes of prejudices, one being simply that most children tend to imitate the prejudices of their parents and other adults. Later these persons may throw off such prejudices when they move in other kinds of social worlds or acquire facts showing the untruth of their prejudice. The second cause of prejudice is more serious, for it fees demands of a personality frustrated in childhood to such an extent that it gains satisfaction in bruising others by action out their prejudices. (Note to leader: Postpone the discussion of these theories now; look first at their own experiences.)

1.      Earliest memories of being given a sense of importance by grown-ups. Did any of them seem to pick us out and give us praise for something? How did we feel?

2.      If we did not get such praise and attention, do we recall doing something on or won to gain attention? Were we punished for any of this? Did we feel we were unjustly punished?

3.      How did we treat other children, siblings or neighborhood friends? Ere we ever the bully, or were we at the mercy of a bully?

4.      Did we have normal or above normal feelings of being lonely of frustrated? What did we do about it? (Note to leader: Do not allow participants to voice any informal analyses of other participants. This is NOT group therapy.)

5.      Can we admit any prejudices we may have now toward groups of people? Have any of us succeeded in overcoming prejudices? What societal frustrations hit us today: Vietnam war? Escalating prices? Racial crises? Can we share any personal frustration of disillusionment?

6.      What is meant by scapegoating?

CLOSING: What is it that helps us to live with our frustrations, rather that hurting others? Can we share our philosophy of life, some inspiring words, or special hope for the future?

Institutional racism. Introduction by leader: Without defining racism at this point, let us look at the main institutions we have been a part of since birth – home, school, church and business.

1.      What was or earliest contact in our home with people from other races, religions, and countries? Were these contacts on a basis of mutual respect, equality, even of appreciation and love? As a child did  we feel differently about these contacts that did our parents our other adults?

2.      What experiences come back, showing that as children we were “open” to the different person or the stranger? Do we express these feelings? Or did we conform and finally come to feel the same way as so many of the adults around us felt? Can we ask similar questions about our experiences in school, church, and business world?

3.      Black consciousness and Black Power. To respond creatively is to strive to restrain, at least temporarily, whatever adverse feelings we may have toward anyone, to try to put ourselves into his shoes, to feel with him. If we can do this as whites in or relationships with blacks, perhaps some new, creative ideas about black consciousness and Black Power may be engendered within us, Because music and poetry are so effective in strengthening these positive and potentially creative feelings, we utilized such recordings as these:

Big Bill Brooszy Sings Folk Songs, FA2328A and FG3586B, Folkways Records (165 West 46^th Street, New York, N.Y.).

The Glory of Negro History, Narrated by Langston Hughes, FC7752A, Folkways Records.

Tapes and recordings of sermons and addresses of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., available from Martin Luther King Speaks, Inc., 260 Audubon Avenue, Suite 32G, New York, N.Y. 10033

What can we do? How can we prepare ourselves? Do we need to deepen our spiritual roots to understand and control our own feelings, especially anger?

DISCUSSION RESOURCES: These thought- and discussion-provoking materials were given to the Ecumenical Task Force leaders for suggested use with their participants. Additional sources of similar materials will be found in the Bibliography.

1.      Statement of Jesus: “I am the vine, ye are the branches.” What other biblical statements assure us that all peoples are a part of one organic whole, and therefore when one part suffers, all parts suffer? How is this universal truth expressed in other faiths- Judaism, Buddhism, Taoism? Teilhard de Chardin rejoices that, because combining of individuals and races, “The only climate in which man can continue to grow,” he observes, “is that of devotion and self-denial in a spirit of brotherhood; in truth, at the rate that the consciousness and the ambitions of the world are increasing, it will explode unless it learns love.”

Are we trying to radiate these or similar spiritual truths to all around us in words which they can understand? This may demand special efforts to share these truths as never before with our close friends and relatives. Can we engage strangers on buses, on sidewalks, in parks, or anywhere in such conversations?

2.                  When our white friends express anger against all blacks because of the violent actions of some blacks, it is wise to permit the anger to be expressed, but to try to redirect it against the true causes of our frustrations and anger today – the war, high taxation, inadequate incomes to meet family needs, social injustices of all kinds, How can anger be channeled for personal and societal growth via “righteous indignation”?

Whenever we bring friends and acquaintances together in formal or informal groups, perhaps in purely social gatherings in our homes, we can utilize the occasion to help them develop a better understanding of the plight of our Negro, Puerto Rican, Indian, Mexican, and Oriental citizens. We should forearm ourselves with facts and present them in whatever ways are most natural and effective for us to use.

It could be pointed out, for example, that most race riots occur in city ghettos. Do we really know what it is like to be forced to live under ghetto conditions? We should have at our fingertips data such as these about Newark, N.J. (or other similar ghetto cities. Preferably ones as close to home as possible):

Newark has the highest grime rate, the highest tuberculosis and maternal mortality rate, the highest substandard housing rate for any city its sixe in the country, and the lowest per capita income. The unemployment rate is 8.2% as against 3.8% for the rest of the country. In the ninth to twelfth grades, the dropout rate is 32%. [These data worsened after Ecumenical Task Force sessions were held.]

Nothing done in the past twenty years has directly touched the plight and hardships of the majority of blacks – not civil rights marches, nor the recent enactment of civil rights laws, nor the several court decisions that have undergirded the legislation. These positive forces still have not removed the roots of the hopelessness and despair felt by blacks. We should not attempt to apologize for or excuse the episodes of violence; but we should explain the causes to our friends, and remind them that responsible Negro leaders assert that 95% of the blacks oppose rioting. Do we know the names of these leaders, read their writings, or printed interviews; go to meetings where they are speaking? Shouldn’t we seek such leaders out in our won communities and offer them whatever help they need and want from us?

3.                  In these discussions with our friends we should be prepared to present facts about valuable contributions blacks have made to American life and to western culture generally. Such examples serve to reveal the potentials which our faith in them and our giving them truly equal opportunities could release among blacks. Beyond citing outstanding Negroes, we can point to the fact that the unpaid labor of black slaves helped to transform the Southern wilderness into prosperous plantations some two endured years earlier that whites alone could have done it. We can also cite the musical contributions which have permeated our culture: spirituals, jazz, blues, folk songs, and much of the rock and folk-rock music of the younger generation. Many of the lyrics reflect a profound sense of social injustices and “establishment” hypocrisy, and often at the same time reveal great hopes for changes today and tomorrow.

4.                  Bring into the open our own fears as well as those of others, relating to major areas of life.

Work. So we unconsciously fear the economic competition when blacks and other minority groups are given equal employment opportunities? If so, we should understand that the chief causes of general unemployment are inadequate educational preparation for jobs, dislocations caused by automation which necessitate job retraining, the reduction of buying power caused by inflation, increased taxation, high interest rates for loans and home mortgages, etc. – all of which apply equally to white and black youth and adults.

Education. Do we fear the lowering of educational standards for our children when de facto school segregation is eradicated? Our far-seeing educators insist that this need not be so if we will give adequate financial support for enrichment programs, sufficient guidance counseling personnel, and remedial specialists to pull the disadvantaged students up to the level of the advantaged. This, they maintain, can provide good quality education for all pupils.

Marriage. Do we fear the possibility of intermarriage if blacks become completely integrated into all phases of American life? There is, of course, no biological reason to prevent intermarriage. Much race mixing has already taken place in American life, most of it prior to the Civil War. Statistics show that there is less now but sociologists observe that new attitudes toward intermarriage are emerging, particularly among the younger generation. It is both a cultural and a sociological problem. What is needed is more premarital counseling and better education in family life so that any marriage will have a better chance of being successful.

EARLY RESULTS (as reported by the coordinator)

Home groups often went on informally for hours after the evening’s Group Conversation was over. For many participants, this was their first experience in an interracial social situation.

One white woman, born in England and married to an American Negro, said, “I never knew people could be so nice. People have acted awful to me ever since I’ve been married.”

A black who grew up in Harlem told a group the story of his childhood. His sharing of theses memories was so effective that the group decided to start a Street Academy in their city in cooperation with the city’s Youth Board.

In the sixth week, all “home” group members were convened in a large meeting room, Almost immediately, 75 people signed up for local volunteer work; examples: some participated in the Street Academy; some surveyed pricing practices in local supermarkets; some helped to organize a center for welfare mothers. A leadership training workshop for volunteers won 30 recruits.

ONGOING RESULTS: A teenage coffee house; a series of Catholic-Protestant dialogues; a continuing Group Conversation training program in a Presbyterian church. [Most volunteers are still working in the various projects which they joined.]