Paper for MSC Parish Conference
Adelaide

November 4-7, 2003

A mouse looked through a crack in the wall to see the farmer and his wife opening a package; what food might it contain? He was aghast to discover that it was a mousetrap! Retreating to the farmyard, the mouse proclaimed the warning, "There is a mouse trap in the house, there is a mouse trap in the house." The chicken clucked and scratched, raised her head and said, "Mr. Mouse, I can tell you this is a grave concern to you, but it is of no consequence to me; I cannot be bothered by it."

The mouse turned to the pig and told him, "There is a mouse trap in the house." "I am so very sorry Mr. Mouse," sympathized the pig, "but there is nothing I can do about it but pray; be assured that you are in my prayers."

The mouse turned to the cow, who replied, "Like wow, Mr. Mouse, a mouse trap; am I in grave danger, Der?"

So the mouse returned to the house, head down and dejected to face the farmer's mousetrap alone. That very night a sound was heard throughout the house, like the sound of a mousetrap catching its prey.

The farmer's wife rushed to see what was caught. In the darkness, she did not see that it was a venomous snake whose tail the trap had caught. The snake bit the farmer's wife. The farmer rushed her to the hospital. She returned home with a fever. Now everyone knows you treat a fever with fresh chicken soup, so the farmer took his hatchet to the farmyard for the soup's main ingredient. His wife's sickness continued so that friends and neighbors came to sit with her around the clock. To feed them, the farmer butchered the pig. The farmer's wife did not get well, in fact, she died, and so many people came for her funeral the farmer had the cow slaughtered to provide meat for all of them to eat.

So the next time you hear that someone is facing a problem and think that it does not concern you, remember that when the least of us is threatened, we are all at risk.

Church on social justice
Vatican Council and recent popes have urged us to contribute as much as possible to the public conversation about building peace and justice in our societies. Deny that religion is only a private affair. We know well how the prophets and Jesus insisted that worship/prayer that ignored the oppressed and disadvantaged is a sham in God’s eyes. Jesus was uncompromising here: if we do nothing to feed the hungry and clothe the naked, we can have no place with God. [cf. Last Judgment]. We can have no place with God unless we are committed to the well being of those who are suffering, disadvantaged and sick.

We have heard the accusations about church involvement in politics. They are really declarations that religion is a private affair and has no place in the public forum. Church: this work of social transformation is not an optional extra, but originates in God’s own passion [heart] for the marginalised and suffering.
It is lay people, the grass roots from which change comes. Bottom-up thing. This is where we derive our hope, I believe. The work of social transformation is essentially the role of lay people acting on their own initiative and responsibility in their fields of work and living.

We have the resources to reduce disadvantage, intolerance and poverty in Australia, and the world. In the past we did this through schools, health care and welfare activities, not to mention our personal care.

John Paul II in At the Beginning of the New Millennium (#33), calls us to the task of ‘shaping history’ a commitment that is energized by prayer and worship. Contemplation and social action are part of the call for fresh social engagement by Catholics. And, ‘we must reject the temptation to offer a privatised and individualist spirituality which ill accords with the demands of charity' (#52).

There is stunning silence over many of the great questions of our time. We are morally complicit by our silences.

Experts assure us that we have the resources and expertise , if we had the will, to eliminate hunger entirely from the planet and eradicate the worst forms of poverty within a matter of decades. If this is the case, we have a most serious moral obligation? But there is silence. Is this silence not an acquiescence in the needless deaths of millions of people and a huge toll of human suffering? What is it that prevents us from engaging with these issues? Is it fear? Is it concern about being disturbed.

So, in terms of our engagement, we are morally complicit by our silences. Though many groups have a strong sense of social conscience, this has been far from adequate as is clear from the reaction to the people seeking asylum on the Tampa, refugees, sanctions against Iraq [according to accounts some 500,000 children have died due to the sanctions, without much of a whisper of criticism or debate. Would such a toll been tolerated in a Western country], indigenous issues? Despite considerable efforts of some groups, are we visibly and seriously engaged in debates over the great issues such as international development, remission of the debts of the most impoverished countries [disinterest in the plight of many countries in Africa when we enjoy unparalleled prosperity; the decreasing levels of quality foreign assistance, and tied to our own business interests], distribution of wealth and opportunities in Australia and overseas, ecology, not to mention the issues of international governance, war and peace? There is stunning silence over many of the great questions of our time. We are morally complicit by our silences. History and those who come after us may well judge us harshly.

Speaking our Suffering
Catherine of Siena (14th century): ‘Speak the truth in a million voices. It is silence that kills’. People who have not suffered trauma directly often act in ways that keep the suffering ones silent. When others voice their pain [grief, loss, despair] we believe we should fix it or make it go away. We believe we must come up with a solution rather than just listening to the signs of the times or listening to others.

We want to make life smooth and comfortable. We have forgotten how to walk through life - with its great cycles of darkness and chaos followed by rebirth and light--together. [Rituals and AIDS Memorials]

We don't save others by being silent. We actually create more trauma in those we are trying to spare. Parents who keep quiet in order to shield their children end up creating deep emotional scars in them. In research done on the second generation of Holocaust survivors--the children of those who survived the death camps--the impact of silence became clear. If parents had spared their children and never told them the details of the horror they had experienced, the children grew up depressed and, in some cases, suicidal. Children know the secrets of their parents. They intuit that something very important is not being shared. They have no means to interpret the feelings that something is terribly wrong. So, as children do, they assume responsibility for these bad feelings. As they mature, this self-loathing manifests as depression and, sometimes, self-destruction. The antidote for these children is to hear the stories, to break the silence. If they are adults and their parents have died, they need to hear the stories from other survivors of their parent's generation.

There are other reasons why we must find ways to break the silence. When people tell their stories, they are capable of healing themselves. The act of telling our story, and feeling that we are being listened to, is one of the simplest ways to heal.

That's all we need to do: listen. Not judge, not recommend, not fix. Just listen, bearing witness, keeping our hearts open. Parker Palmer said beautifully: "The soul doesn't need to be fixed or saved. It needs to be received."

NOW TAKE 5 MINUTES TO SHARE WITH THE PERSON NEXT TO YOU:
What can we do to receive those among us who are suffering? What can we do to invite them to tell their stories and reveal their sorrow?

The story is what it is. It does not require interpretation or comment.

At the end of the story, we can express our gratitude that it was shared.
If we are able to be good listeners, we will discover that it is possible for people to heal themselves.

This was made manifest during the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in South Africa where a young man who was blinded when he was shot in the face at close range by a policeman, say: "I feel what has brought my eyesight back is to come here and tell the story. I feel what has been making me sick all the time is the fact that I couldn't tell my story. But now it feels like I've got my sight back by coming here and telling you the story."

May the silence be broken so that those most wounded may heal.
Could you encourage them to just keep telling you their version of things, their side of the story?

The words of Catherine of Sienna, "Speak the truth in a million voices. It is silence that kills" are haunting words as we notice how much silence there is, and how it is growing. Others are noticing too.

At an international peace conference in Croatia, participants were asked: What keeps you from speaking up for peace?

At an educator's conference in the U.S., a well-known champion of public education confronted his audience with three important issues that no one was talking about, behavior he dubbed as "our great silences."

In Europe, many people express remorse that their nations stayed silent as war in the Balkans escalated. Why didn't they act to prevent the atrocities and massacres of the Bosnian war?

In Africa, both Europe and the U.S. failed to intervene in Rwanda to stop the slaughter of millions.

In a rural Kenyan village, a young African woman dying of AIDS wonders why America is so silent on the AIDS pandemic. She asks her sister who lives in USA: "Does anybody know that we're dying?"
Children overboard
MV Tampa
Lies about the invasion of Iraq
People living in concentration camps in Guantanamo Bay

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Why is silence moving like a fog across the planet?
Why is it growing even as we learn of more and more issues that concern us?
Why do we fail to raise our voices on behalf of things that trouble us, and then regret what we didn't do?
Why do we resent, or ridicule, or dismiss the few who do raise their voices?

Is it because we don't know how to talk to each other anymore? Even in nations where there is a strong tradition of citizen participation, people have stopped talking to one another about the most troubling political issues. Political correctness has made people fearful of engaging in conversations about refugees, etc. and how to deal with diversity and inclusion. AS reasonable, moderate people and media fail to talk about the issues that matter, right wing groups have developed, marketing fear-based, exclusionary solutions. The silence of thoughtful people creates a vacuum filled by extremism.

Or is it because we're overwhelmed by the amount of suffering in the world? There seem few true solutions. Many solutions only result in more complex problems. Acts of compassion are countered by more acts of aggression and greed. The sheer number of problems, their unending nature and global scale, have pushed many of us into silence. Being too much to bear we choose numbness over involvement.

Why is that people feel more powerless now than at any time in recent history? We feel powerless to change things as we feel governments do not represent us. Decisions are being made in our name about things we disagree with.

Are we afraid of what we might lose if we speak out? Local government organisations, the churches, do not support for fear of losing government funds. Universities and schools - "our great silences" - fear the loss of funding or favors if they question current policies. We fear, thereby forfeiting our integrity and principles, in order to stay on the good side of those in power. We want to see change, justice, peace, but delude ourselves into thinking these can occur with no cost to ourselves.

Have we convinced ourselves that what is happening elsewhere doesn't affect us? Our interconnectedness is denied. We believe things happening far away do not threaten us.[cf. story of the mousetrap above; Martin Niemoller’s statement, Bali, WTC bombings and poverty in the developing world].

Let us ask ourselves, do I consciously notice when I am silent, when I choose to be silent? Silence is not the absence of action, but another form of action.

" The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do nothing." Edmund Burke –18th century history

Summary:
• In today’s world of the four second clip, it is more expedient to find people to blame, to drop a few barbs, rather than to step into the pain.
• It is not easy to sit with personal or communal pain – or to find people willing to listen as we endeavour to articulate it, to share it, to experience it together.
• When things happen that are overwhelming, when the need for healing, reconciliation and peace are threatened, and we know not how to proceed, it is important to go back to what we know in our hearts works. It might mean doing nothing for a while and being there. Listening is one of these realities. Remember the story of the mousetrap. Let us remember our interconnectedness where everything takes form from relationships.

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

by Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945

Why is being heard so healing?

"You can't hate someone whose story you know."

Everybody has a story, and everybody wants to tell their story in order to connect. Failure to listen creates fragmentation, which is the root of much suffering. Listening creates relationship. "You can't hate someone whose story you know."

‘ Things change when we create the slightest movement toward wholeness, moving closer to another through patient, willing listening’

We can all play a part in the great healing that needs to occur everywhere. Think about whom you might approach - someone you don't know, don't like, or whose manner of living is a mystery to you. What would it take to begin a conversation with that person? Are we able to ask for another’s opinion or explanation to sit quietly to listen to their answer? Are we able to stop ourselves from arguing, or defending, or saying anything for a while? Are we able to encourage them to just keep telling us their side of the story? Such conversation takes courage. Things change when we create the slightest movement toward wholeness, moving closer to another through patient, willing listening.

‘DISTURBANCE’

Connected with listening as I see it, I would propose some other areas that we need to look at. To explore the unknown or discover the new world, we might need to notice the presence of some essential but unusual companions. Such a friend and very strange ally is - disturbance.
We are less certain about any move or any position. Certainty changes and speeds off at great velocity in this networked world where information moves so rapidly and "truth" mutates before our eyes,.

It is not easy to surrender the certainty of our positions, our beliefs, our explanations. These lie at the core of our identity and define us as us. We do not have to let go of everything we believe and know, but we do have to be willing to let them go. We have to be interested in making our beliefs and opinions visible so that we can consciously choose them or discard them.

‘ We all see things differently’

Certainty must also be surrendered because we live in a dense and tangled global system - a complex and interconnected world, where everyone has a different vantage point. Whilst we readily accept that no one is exactly like us, we are less sensitive to the fact that we all see things differently. We need more colleagues, not fewer, to describe what they see, what it looks like from their perspective.

We can either see this complexity as a new Tower of Babel, where we can't hear each other because of so much diversity, or we can see it as an invitation to come together and truly listen to one another with the expectation that we might hear something new and different.

Discover those whose insights are the most different from ours

Ilya Prigogine: "The future is uncertain. . . but such uncertainty lies at the very heart of human creativity." It is uncertainty that creates the space for invention. To discover anything new, we must let go, clear the space, leap into the void of not knowing. The need for certainty is destructive to human relationships and our relationship with God. So much more is possible if we can be together and consciously look for the differences. Rather than looking for safety in numbers and noting who seem to be allies, what might we create if we seek to discover those whose insights are the most different from ours? What if, at least occasionally, we came together in order to change our mind?

If we are surprised by some statement, it indicates we assume that something else is true. If we were disturbed by a comment, it indicates we held a contrary belief. Noticing what disturbs me/us is an incredibly useful lens into my interior, deeply held beliefs. When I'm shocked at another's position, I have the opportunity to see my own position more clearly. When I hear myself saying "How could anyone believe something like that?!" a doorway has opened for me to see what I believe. Moments of true disturbance are great gifts. They make our beliefs visible and allow us to consciously choose them again, or change them.

We could learn something new if we listen for the differences rather than the similarities. What might we see, or learn or create together if we become the kind of listener who enjoys the differences and welcomes disturbance? We have this opportunity many times a day.

We learn that we don't have to agree with each other in order to explore together.
We do not need to be joined at the head, as long as we are joined at the heart.
We are/can be brought together by our differences.

When willing to be disturbed by newness rather than clinging to our certainty, when we are willing to truly listen to someone who sees the world differently, then wonderful things happen. We learn that we don't have to agree with each other in order to explore together. We do not need to be joined at the head, as long as we are joined at the heart. We are/can be brought together by our differences rather than separated by them.

Another's way of interpreting the world actually is essential to our survival.

This changing world requires much less certainty, and far more curiosity. It does not mean letting go of our beliefs but we become curious about what another believes. As we open to the disturbing differences, sometimes we discover that another's way of interpreting the world actually is essential to our survival. [Indigenous people]

The first step to becoming curious is to admit that we are not succeeding in figuring things out alone. If our solutions do not work as well as we would like, or our explanations about events do not feel sufficient, we can take these as signs that it is time to begin asking others what they see and think.

We are pretty comfortable with our lives. Sometimes we hesitate to listen for differences because we don't want to change. If we don't listen, things can stay as they are. We have to be willing to move into the discomfort of uncertainty and confusion. I expect to be disturbed, even jarred, by what I hear from you. I expect to feel confused and displaced-my world won't feel as stable or familiar to me once we talk.

Change always starts with confusion and we cannot be creative if we refuse to be confused. It is scary to give up what we know, but the abyss is where newness lives. Yet if we move through the fear and enter the chaos, we rediscover it creates newness.

Summary:
Healing requires risk and trust and produces creative newness:
• To be able to tell our stories to willing listeners
• To be open to being disturbed
• To be willing let go of long held beliefs
• And an ability to be comfortable with uncertainty and to appreciate difference.

" Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has."
Margaret Mead

Choosing Hope over Experience
How can we feel hopeful, as aggression and violence move into all relationships, personal and global, and decisions are made from insecurity and fear? The Psalmist wrote, "without vision the people perish." The events of our world force us to think about hope. We need to go beyond that thinking. We need to choose hope over experience. Our experience everywhere is of grief and suffering.

How can we reverse this descent into fear and sorrow and restore hope to the future? In the past we had the illusion of being in control because things seemed clear and predictable.
We might consult with people who have endured dark times. They can lead us on a journey into new questions and thus from hopelessness to hope.

It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out.
Havel

Vaclev Havel helps us to become further attracted to insecurity and not-knowing. "Hope is a dimension of the soul. . . an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. It transcends the world that is immediately experienced and is anchored somewhere beyond its horizons. . . . It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out."

Hope and fear are inescapable partners. Buddhists teach that hopelessness is not the opposite of hope. Fear is. Anytime we hope for a certain outcome, and work hard to make it happen, then we also introduce fear - fear of failing, fear of loss.

‘start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. . ‘
Merton

Thomas Merton, to a friend, wrote: "Do not depend on the hope of results . . .you may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite to what you expect. As you get used to this idea, you start more and more to concentrate not on the results, but on the value, the rightness, the truth of the work itself. . . .you gradually struggle less and less for an idea and more and more for specific people . . . .In the end, it is the reality of personal relationship that saves everything."

As long as we're together and feel others supporting us, we persevere. Irrespective of violence and hard times, joy is still available, not from the circumstances, but from our relationships. A Zimbabwean woman, in her darkest moment wrote: "In my grief I saw myself being held, us all holding one another in this incredible web of loving kindness. Grief and love in the same place. I felt as if my heart would burst with holding it all." Thomas Merton was right: we are consoled and strengthened by being hopeless together. We don't need specific outcomes. We need each other.

Science teaches us that what is true at one level is true at other levels. So if processes are true at the individual level, we will find they also work at the level of community, organization or nation. An example: these processes were at work at the national level in South Africa with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The process began with the whites saying that they felt the truth would be distorted for the advantage of the victims/survivors of apartheid. The whites felt that they would have no control over the process. What happened? As the victims of torture came forward, as mother after mother spoke about the loss of her child or husband, it became a shared national experience of listening to people's human stories. And over time it allowed the whites to see the humanity of black South Africans, to see that they experienced the same sense of loss, the same grief as they did. To see them as human was a profound shift in the national sensibility, because any form of terrible treatment such as apartheid depends on denying the humanity of the victims.

This teaches us that first of all we need to listen to one another's stories; to acknowledge the other's experience as it is presented to us, and from there emerges the possibility of a different relationship. When we are aware of the other's humanity, so much becomes possible in terms of working with each other.

We assume that by moving closer to suffering we would spiral down, but it can be an amazing source of inspiration when faced together. There has been so much avoidance of being together in our humanity in our organizations that we don't ask the questions.
When people are able to tell the truth of their experience to each other, it addresses the questions of who we really are in an organization and that we are really learning. When we begin to tell the truth to one another, including our mistakes and confusion, It can be truly transformative. We summon something deep within us when we speak together about the truth of our experience of being human.
Whenever we can truly encounter one another in all of our humanity, we get past the illusion that everything works according to plan and we never feel uncertain. This is the great imprisonment we're trying to find our way out of. And one way to do it is to speak truthfully to one another about our experience. Then we experience a great recognition of being in the presence of other human beings. Whether it's through suffering or joy, what we're really seeking is that moment of recognizing another human being.

When we are willing to expose our defects, we expose some kind of heart to other people. Curiously enough, people respond more to our honesty about our imperfections than they do to our perfections. When we're honest about our difficulties with a project, or with another individual, or whatever, everyone in the room sort of resonates with the bravery of someone who's courageous enough to express their pain.

The experience of really listening to another human being is the source of our willingness to love them. The difficult issues in our society will not be resolved until we can listen to people's experience, e.g., racism, and sexism, just listening without trying to defend ourselves or provide answers. A young black South African woman taught some of my friends a profound lesson about listening. She was sitting in a circle of women from different countries, and each had the chance to tell a personal story. The South African woman told a story of true horror - of finding her grandparents slaughtered in their village. The predominantly Western women, in the presence of such pain, instinctively wanted to do something - to fix, make it better, anything to remove the pain of this tragedy from such a young life. Though feeling their compassion, she also felt them closing in. She put her hands up, and said: "I don't need you to fix me. I just need you to listen to me." The first thing that arises when we open up to each other is a great sigh of relief.

Often we are blinded to the power of honest communication because we fear it might take us down the road of guilt and accusations; that relationships will fracture rather than be healed
We realize we are not the only ones who feel bewildered. When we hear that nobody knows the answer any more, or that the old ways do not work, and that we don't know what the new way is, confusion has a higher value than certainty. Then comes the possibility of courage.

The root of suffering is the illusion of our separateness. We have forgotten that we are all interrelated. This is the root of suffering in this culture. This culture has torn us apart from one another and only supported us in our individual quests for things that are not in themselves satisfying.
In fact, many people do know how to be together, but this is not considered important or given any status in our society. It's actually been dismissed as insignificant and soft and fuzzy. So courage is what we need, and the source of that courage is recognizing that the questions, doubts and desires that move in ourselves, move in everyone else as well.
People are thinking bigger. Unpredictability and interdependence are truths that people are more and more able to hear. Hearts are more open to the fact that life is an unending surprise. With the Y2K bug, for example, we began to realise that unpredictability is the norm. It becomes a higher value than security.

The opposite reaction of course is fundamentalism where people seek certainty, but the more positive message - the creative capacity of resting with unpredictability – is more striking.
We either become more fundamentalist and try to hold things together, or forsake the old ambitions and goals and live life as an experiment, making it up as we go along.

My question is how organizations can lead us not toward some predictable goal, but toward a greater and greater capacity to handle unpredictability, and with it, a greater capacity to love and care about other people?

" One of the things we need to learn is that very great change starts from very small conversations, held among people who care."
Gary Snyders

Gary Snyders advises us to learn from the flowers. "One of the things we need to learn is that very great change starts from very small conversations, held among people who care."
Talking about what really matters - the issues that really concern you - requires courage. "What are the things you really have deep, abiding concern for? What is it you really have some passion for? If you go into that question for yourself, you will find the energy to go forward." The conversation should not be based on complaint but based on passion and a sense of hope.

Asking "What's Possible?" and "Who Cares?"

So often we ask: "What's wrong?" and "How can we fix it?" We need to ask: "What's possible here?" and "Who cares?" The final question is an invitation to those who are also passionate about an issue. When we ask, "What's possible?" we open ourselves to unprecedented creativity.

"What's possible?" and "Who cares?"

Despite obstacles, it is up to us to find new ways of delivering our compassion. Collaborate around passion, not around fixed policy by asking the revolutionary but absolutely necessary questions: "What's possible?" and "Who cares?"

Claude Mostowik MSC
MSC Justice and Peace Centre
Erskineville NSW
November 2003

ADDENDUM

PRIVILEGES OF THE DOMINANT CULTURE.

If I need to move, I can be sure that the real estate agent will not tell me that the property I sought is already leased or sold because of my race.
I can be pretty sure that my neighbours will be neutral or pleasant to me.
I can go to the supermarket without being followed or looked upon suspiciously.
I can turn on the television or open the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented in a positive way and not put down.
When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization," I am shown that people of my color made it what it is. When I hear the words of the national anthem ‘for we are young and free’ this excludes Aboriginal people!
Whether I use cheques or credit cards, I can be sure my skin colour will not work against the appearance of financial reliability.
If I get a job in a restaurant it will not be seen as taking someone else’s job.
If I should swear, or dress in second hand clothes, or not reply to letters, or not be punctual, people will not usually attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
When I got to a hotel after having a booked a room I do not have to show some form of identity.
I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
When I speak out on an issue, I will not be expected to speak for all the people who belong to my cultural group.
If I should criticize the government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior I will not be seen as a cultural outsider.
If I am stopped by a policeman, I can be quite sure I have not been singled out because of my race.
I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help, my race will not work against me.
If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
I can choose bandages in flesh color and have them more or less match my skin.
I can catch the first available taxi in the street, without watching three or four pass me by.
If I go to a pub with some of my friends for a drink or to watch a football game on the big screen, it is unlikely that the police will be called who will watch us for the remainder of the game.
I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
I can be pretty sure that my children's teachers and employers will tolerate them if they fit school and workplace norms; my chief worries about them do not concern others' attitudes toward their race.
I can talk with my mouth full or have bad manners and not have people put this down to my colour.
I can remain oblivious to the language and customs of persons of color who constitute the world's majority without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
I can go home from most meetings of organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in, rather than isolated, out of place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
I can be pretty sure that an argument with a colleague of another race is more likely to jeopardize her chances for advancement than to jeopardize mine.
I am not made acutely aware that my shape, bearing, or body odor will be taken as a reflection on my race.
I can worry about racism without being seen as self-interested or self-seeking.
I can be late to a meeting without having the lateness reflect on my race.
If I have low credibility as a leader, I can be sure that my race is not the problem.
If a business that I own goes badly, I can be sure that it is not because of my race.
If you are an Aboriginal person in your community what would be the ‘put downs’ that you would experience.
When was the first time you noticed prejudice? Colour?

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