Race, an ever-present issue in American life, will be central to the second of a series of campus dialogues on critical areas of human interaction. "Can We Talk?: A Dialogue across Racial Differences" will take place April 17 at 7:30 pm in Gamble Auditorium.
The dialogue about barriers and bridges to communication across racial lines will be led by the biracial team of Beverly Tatum, associate professor of psychology and education, and Andrea Ayvazian, director of the Northampton antiracism education organization Communitas. The two have led antiracism training seminars and consultations nationwide since 1988.
Tatum and Ayvazian show by example how to discuss race-related fears, prejudices, and hopes for interaction with someone of a different race, then encourage the audience to do the same in a safe atmosphere. These public dialogues, they wrote in Sojourners, are "an important and necessary beginning. Our goal is to move people along the continuum from uninformed to informed, from informed to concerned, and from concerned to active."
"In a community challenging itself to understand diverse perspectives, the ability to speak and be heard, to listen and to hear, is a part of the core values of the liberal arts education," said President Joanne V. Creighton. "Any discussion about critical issues, particularly forums like 'Can We Talk?,' helps bring us closer to our mission as a liberal arts college and to our vision of ourselves as a community of learners."
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