Not Disney’s Brave
The way in which Arao and Clemens frame the issues around social justice dialogues as brave spaces was inspiring. I have for most of my adult life, loathed facilitated dialogues that were meant to solve the problems of the world, professional standards of conduct, or long time family issues in a 60 – 90 minute talk session. It’s as if Walt Disney had bestowed the facilitators with some magical wand, and bippty-boppety-boo we all walk away with a new, enlightened and single correct view of the issue that would inevitably lead to happily-ever-after. But real life exists well beyond the bounds of such a fantasy world, not everyone has nor should have the same “politically correct” view of the world, expecting such would be akin to expecting the Seven Dwarfs to be replicas of each other instead of the Grump, Happy, Sneezy, etc version that we know and love.
Now that criticism is not to say these dialogues are useless. We do in fact need to start having conversations, if as the authors noble cause suggests, we are cultivating a space that is conducive to new ways of seeing things. So we join Alice’s journey down the rabbit hole, through the looking glass and have a spot of tea. Once there, I was surprised and contented with the framing of the “common ground rules”. In particular, the controversy with civility was a framing that I have never come across. Having my own experiences of frustration with the agree to disagree disengagement tactics, I was never able to unpack why those situations felt so disingenuous and unsatisfying. Now, finally, thanks to the authors, it makes sense… “the conversation is halted… [the issue] is left unexamined”. This new rule goes in Mary Poppins’ suitcase for future reference.