Francis Marion University



337185053340000I am a 67-year-old white male from Maine, the whitest state in the nation. I applied for a job at Francis Marion University in 1995 because I wanted to work as a college professor, winter in the south and have summers free to return to Maine. I got that and a lot more when I came to this university where the students are approximately 50% black and 50% white. I didn’t think a lot about race at first but, I wanted to be careful not to say the wrong thing and be thought racist. Thus, I initially taught my classes in a color blind method not alluding in any way to the racial mixture of the room. Later, I began to acknowledge some differences such as racial disparities in hypertension and stroke in my health psychology class. That was received well and I began to gradually embrace the diversity in front of me. Having daily contact with students and staff of color I began to shed the stereotypes and biases I didn’t even know I had. I encountered the concept of implicit bias. It was painful to me to see myself as racially biased but, I really wasn’t that surprised because I have lived my whole life in a mostly segregated society. I also live in a society that has had struggled with racism for 400 years. I was able to read books and watch videos that helped me feel less ashamed of my biases and willing to acknowledge them so I could try to change them. Books like Thinking Fast and Slow, Blindspot and The Righteous Mind helped me to understand how the mind works and why biases naturally occur. But, how could I change my racial biases? One thing that was helpful was to read Black History. I cannot say strongly enough that everyone should read Black History. Some of my favorite books are: Devil in the Grove, The Other Wes Moore, The Warmth of Other Sons, Harriet Tubman: The Road to Freedom, and Mirror to America. However, my own journey has been helped the most by the many students and staff at Francis Marion University. Having contact with hundreds of delightful people who do not fit the stereotypes offered up by society allows me to outgrow those stereotypes. As I realized how many of my favorite people were people of color I could see that my world was expanding and getting richer. It was a natural high.The violence following the fatal shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO troubled me. I happened to be around white people who asked rhetorically “why are they rioting and destroying their own community?” I wanted to shout “Why not ask them?” I came to believe that part of the ongoing problem with race in America was the fact that the majority culture was not asking those questions. Inspired by my experience and the Mellody Hobson video (Color blind or color brave?) I wanted to start a microaggressions group for black and white students. The idea was to use principles of group psychotherapy to establish a safe environment for the discussion of race. The main point was that over time, the same people meeting each week would develop group cohesiveness which would allow them to take risks in discussing this difficult subject. I held the first group with a precocious black undergraduate student as my co-therapist. The group was a big success and I was able to do it two more times. However, the participants were all volunteers doing it for personal growth and validation but no course credit. Thus, attendance was a problem. This year I was able to offer the group as a 3-hour semester-long class. I retitled it The Racial Discovery group as it proved to be a more accurate description. This group with eleven undergraduate students and graduate student Hadiya Manners as my co-leader has been a tremendous success. We all enjoy the class, find it empowering and are inspired to be color brave. I have great respect for this group of students and feel fortunate to have had such an experience. ................
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