FOUR AGREEMENTS OF COURAGEOUS CONVERSATION From: “Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools” (Chapter 4 pp. 58-65); Glenn Singleton and Curtis Linton Corwin Press, 2006.
To participate in effective interracial dialogue about race, the first step is to commit to the Four Agreements of Courageous Conversation. By committing to these, participants agree to
Stay engaged
Experience discomfort
Speak your truth
Expect and accept non-closure
Embracing these agreements will allow educators to engage, sustain, and deepen interracial dialogue about racial identity, racism, and the racial achievement gap that exists between White students and students of color. The racial climate and culture in our country and our schools equip us with well- developed skills for disengaging from racial issues. Consequently, we have created lasting and hidden racial conflicts that impact all of us. These agreements, however, secure in participants the commitment and persistence needed to address these conflicts as they surface during Courageous Conversation. As described by Frederique Wynberg, a White staff developer and proponent of equity work in Vallejo, California,
“It takes Courageous Conversation to get to the point where you can actually think about race-as a White person-without feeling defensive. Or, for people of color, without feeling both defensive because you're now part of a White institution and also very angry because of what is going on in society and what's institutionalized.”(Singleton, 2002)
For both White educators and educators of color, committing to the Four Agreements is the first step required to counter the problematic norms that occur during interracial dialogue about race. At the end of this chapter, you will have the opportunity to commit personally to these agreements and to try leading others in making the same commitment. With this accomplished, you will be ready to begin Courageous Conversation, assured by an understanding that all involved ip the dialogue are fully committed to the process.
Stay Engaged Participants in Courageous Conversation must stay engaged. This is a personal commitment each person makes, regardless of the engagement of others. Staying engaged means remaining morally, emotionally, intellectually, and socially involved in
1 the dialogue. To stay engaged is to not let your heart and mind "check out" of the conversation while leaving your body in place. This may be more difficult than it sounds because educators traditionally do not talk about race unless the racial challenge is unavoidable. Many White Americans have been conditioned to not talk about race. While Whites maintain this silence, many people of color--in the United States and beyond--converse about racial matters daily; if only among themselves. Consequently, little "before the crisis" interracial dialogue about race ever takes place. Collectively in the United States, racial topics tend to be "hot button " issues that either cause people of color to become vocally angry or make White people silently defiant or disconnected. Given this accepted pattern of interracial disengagement among the vast majority of Americans, it is no wonder so many racial challenges continue to exist. Collective disengagement also exists in schools. When a dramatic racial achievement gap persists, the children of the school pay the ultimate price for the adults' unwillingness to engage in difficult interracial dialogue. Whenever the topic turns to race, many educators seem to disengage by (a) redefining the conversation to focus on poverty, family structure, or any of a number of diversity issues other than race or (b) becoming silent, perhaps staring off into space, and letting out a deep and drawn-out breath to signal lack of interest or discomfort with the conversation.
Reflection Can you think of a time in a personal and/ or professional circumstance when race became a topic of conversation and you either actively changed the subject or avoided the conversation altogether? What did you believe caused you to react in this manner?
The challenge is to resist the natural inclination to move away from the conversation. In our experience, most educators will not want to talk about racial issues. School leaders need to be aware of this as an initial step in creating the necessary safer space for staff to stay engaged. If this safety is not created, those at the table will stand up and walk away, whether literally or figuratively. By individually committing to stay engaged in Courageous conversations about race, educators can guard against the learned tendency to disengage. By collectively making this commitment, they can fully embrace the conversation and ensure that it deepens their focus on eliminating racial achievement disparity and propels their efforts to do so.
Speak Your Truth Speaking your truth in Courageous Conversations about race requires a willingness to take risks. Speaking your truth means being absolutely honest about your thoughts, feelings, and opinions and not just saying what you perceive others want to hear. Too often, we don't speak our truth out of fear of offending, appearing angry, or sounding
2 ignorant. But until we can become completely honest, the dialogue will remain limited and ultimately ineffective. When it comes to racial matters in our society, we have learned to not say what's on our minds-to not speak our truth. This, however, often leads to deeper confusion, mistrust, and misunderstanding. Many beliefs concerning race are based on misconceptions and half-truths. This can occur when a member of one race believes that a member of another race agrees with or supports her simply because the other person said nothing. Without speaking his truth, the educator who has remained silent has allowed his own beliefs or opinions to be misinterpreted or misrepresented. Lisa Delpit (1995b) has labeled this phenomenon the silenced dialogue; in it, teachers and parents of color tend to get quiet in the presence of more verbal White educators. In her essay, "The Silenced Dialogue: Power and Pedagogy of Educating Other People's Children," Delpit suggests that this silence occurs because educators and parents of color often feel their racial experiences are deprecated or invalidated by White educators. She goes on to write,
[White educators] do not perceive themselves to have power over the non-White speakers. However, either by virtue of their position, their numbers, or their access to that particular code of power of calling upon research to validate one's position, the White educators had the authority to establish what was to be considered "truth " regardless of the opinions of the people of color, and the [educators and parents of color] were well aware of that fact. (p. 26)
This silence is likely to occur in faculty meetings, in the principal's office, and even during informal conversations when people of color describing a racist experience or situation are told, 'aren't you exaggerating it a little?" "that (White) person really didn't mean it that way," or "you probably just misunderstood them." As this happens time and time again, people of color grow silent, refrain from sharing their stories and opinions, and no longer speak their truth. This silence, however, is now seen as implicit agreement; others believe that the educators and parents of color actually agree with what is happening in the primarily White institution. Delpit (1995b) writes that when educators of color are silent, then "the White educators believe that their colleagues of color did, in the end, agree with their logic. After all, they stopped disagreeing, didn't they?" (p. 23). For example, if only one Latino educator sits on a bilingual committee at a school, but-caught in the silenced dialogue-that educator says nothing as a policy is pushed forward, the school claims it has total sup- port. Then, should the Latino community protest, the school points out that the Latino serving on the committee never said anything against the policy, which must be an indication that he or she supported it. What White educators in this and similar situations fail to take into account, however, is that the silence does not necessarily mean that the Latino educator agreed with the policy or felt safe to express his or her true feelings about it. It only means that he or she was silent. The silenced dialogue can also occur among Whites. Henze et al. ( 2002 ) explain why educators may be afraid to address conflicts or tensions that have racial dimensions in an honest, forthright, and truthful manner:
3 They may be afraid that doing so will lead to an increase in conflict or that they will then be targeted by the original perpetrators. They may simply not want to raise the issue because it is too painful to talk about or they know that other people will be uncomfortable. Many schools have a code of silence about race and ethnicity, a value system that says it's best to be color blind. In a color blind school, there is no safe place for someone [of color]. (p. 46)
In this "color blind school" where silenced dialogue is practiced among White educators, there may be a perceived lack of racial problems, but this is typically only because racial issues are redefined, ignored, avoided, and/ or dismissed. As Lena Williams (2000) writes in It's the Little Things, Whites often don't speak their truth in regard to racial issues because they are afraid of making a misstep and having to defend what they say, their actions, or their race. Consequently, White people may rarely share their own authentic racial stories and opinions, but rather they may talk about what happened to a White friend or tell a colleague of color what they believe he wants to hear. White people need to speak their own personal truth, as this is the only way for them to fully engage their racial consciousness. Even though they may fear appearing racist at first as they expose inner thoughts, speaking honestly is the way that White people can first become more fully cognizant of their own racial experience and subsequently develop deeper understanding of the racial perspectives and experiences of others.
Reflection Can you recall a time when race was the topic of conversation and you became silent and/ or shared something that was less than your truest feeling in fear of what other's response might be?
All educators--Whites and people of color--must share the responsibility to engage and speak their truth in Courageous Conversations about race. In fact, people of color will be more likely to open up when White people simply validate their experiences without shutting them down, interrogating them, or redefining their experience into more familiar diversity terms. A White person can never "own" the experience of a person of color, just as a person of color cannot "own" the White experience. We are only experts in defining our own experiences and personal realities. Part of our struggle is rooted in our inability to search for meaning in the racial perspective of others, no matter how different another's experience may be from our own. When it comes to dealing with race, one of the greatest challenges in American culture and especially in our schools is that both White people and people of color don't share their honest feelings about race. For a Courageous Conversation to occur, we need to break our silence and speak our truth.
4 Experience Discomfort Because of the problematic state of racial conditions in our society, Courageous Conversations necessarily create discomfort for participants. Rather than experience the discomfort in interracial dialogue, people often put an emphasis on how we are all alike instead of addressing our obvious differences. Typical diversity trainings are focused around not getting participants upset or too uncomfortable. Traditional diversity training, however, has been unsuccessful in helping schools close the racial achievement gap. The Courageous Conversation strategy, on the other hand, asks participants to agree to experience discomfort so that they can deal with the reality of race in an honest and forthright way. In our work with school systems across the nation, we have challenged educators to deal openly and honestly with their racial challenges. On occasion, we have been accused of "dividing the staff." The reality is that we have simply brought into the open the troubles that already exist but have not been discussed. If educators experience division as they deal with issues of race and equity, we suspect that they were already silently divided. Although discomfiting, giving voice and meaning to this divide can begin the process of healing and transformation. Likewise, it is disingenuous for school systems to address the achievement gap in a cursory or "feel good" way. Educators need to engage in this dialogue authentically. To do so, participants need to be personally responsible for pushing themselves into a real dialogue--the kind that may make them uncomfortable but also will lead to real growth. Such conversations require that people open up and examine their core racial beliefs, values, perceptions, and behaviors. But as people speak their truth, tremendous emotion and fear may surface, thus creating personal and collective discomfort. For White educators, discomfort unmasks their fear linked to offending people of color when expressing perceived biased or unsympathetic racial views and perspectives. On the other hand, educators of color most often avoid uncomfortable dialogue out of fear of expressing intense anger and being misunderstood, ignored, or even punished by their White colleagues. To develop authentic interracial relationships, we must break our collective silence. Staying within the parameters of the Courageous Conversation strategy, however, allows participants to safely manage this dialogue. As they increase their tolerance for the discomfort, they will also increase their ability to address the most challenging institutional circumstances associated with racial achievement disparity.
Expect and Accept Non-Closure
The Fourth Agreement of Courageous Conversation encourages participants to recognize that they will not reach closure in their racial understandings or in their interracial interactions. The normal way of dealing with challenges faced by schools is to search for the "solutions." In Courageous Conversation, however, the solution is revealed in the process of dialogue itself. Simply put, we cannot discover a solution to a challenge if we have not been able to talk about it. Furthermore, the magnitude, complexity, and longevity of our racial struggle and strife in the United States rule out
5 any possibility of discovering a "quick fix." In this conversation, the solutions discovered are ever forming and ever changing. Therefore, participants must commit to an ongoing dialogue as an essential component of their action plan. This is how to manifest the agreement to expect and accept non-closure. Typical professional learning opportunities offer educators a binder in which specific steps and goals are listed. These seem concrete and may even appear sequential. The suggestion is that by the time each exercise or activity in the binder is completed, a solution will be found to the challenge being addressed. If such a binder existed for addressing racial achievement gaps, we would happily present it. This, however, is not the case. Rarely has the issue of race been addressed in the traditional professional learning opportunities for educators, and it has never been presented as essential learning. We believe that much of this neglect is due to the fact that no neat and tidy tasks, processes, or timelines with guaranteed solutions exist. Courageous Conversation, however, triggers a moral, intellectual, social, and emotional shift that allows participants to revisit their many professional development binders of previous trainings with a newly developed racial lens and language. If people expect and accept non-closure in racial discourse, then the more they talk, the more they learn; and the more they learn, the more appropriate and promising will be their actions and interventions.
Reflection As you reflect on the Four Agreements of Courageous Conversation, which do you believe will be the most difficult for you to embrace and practice? Why is this so? Which will be the easiest?
The strategy of Courageous Conversation is difficult but rewarding. Given that everyone enters this dialogue at a unique place, some will take longer to arrive at a basic understanding of what race is and how it impacts their lives, not to mention the time and readiness to talk about how race impacts student achievement. Others may be ready almost immediately to begin examining how race impacts the classroom, program, department, or schoolwide policies. Everyone, however, must stay collectively engaged throughout this continuous, challenging, and always evolving dialogue. The Four Agreements of Courageous Conversation require commitment by each individual involved in the school improvement effort. These agreements prepare educators to authentically engage in Courageous Conversation. Furthermore, they allow stakeholders to manage the conversation as real change begins to occur. Some school systems engaged in race and equity work have added additional agreements to supplement these four. We encourage you to consider the culture of your school system and determine what other agreements might help your colleagues remain committed to Courageous Conversations about race.
From: “Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools” (Chapter 4 pp. 58-65); Glenn Singleton and Curtis Linton. Corwin Press, 2006. 6