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League of Women Voters presents forum on race relations Saturday 

How many people of another race or ethnicity do you know so well you can talk to them about issues of race in American society without worrying that hurt feelings and misunderstandings will result? 

Not too many? 

Ever wonder why these conversations are so hard? Ever think that maybe a community’s inability to discuss these issues openly could have a lasting negative impact? 

If so, you may want to be a part of a “community conversation” this Saturday, from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., at Rosa Parks Elementary School.  

Entitled “Confronting Racism: Finding Common Ground for Building a Stronger Community,” the daylong meeting comes after months of planning by the Berkeley/Albany/Emeryville chapter of the League of Women Voters. 

Inspired by the vision of the chapter’s new education committee chairperson, Marissa Saunders, an African-American woman and one of only about 20 minorities in the chapter’s 400-plus membership, League leaders decided this summer the time has come to confront racism head on. 

Nancy Bickel, president of the chapter, said the league has a long history of fighting for racial equality, dating from its advocacy for school integration in the years leading up to Brown vs. Board of Education (1954).  

During the chapter’s annual meeting this spring, members reaffirmed this position by making the fight to close the racial achievement gap in local schools a top priority for the year.  

But, surveying the Berkeley community (and her own organization), Bickel was dismayed by what she saw. Too many groups, committees, governing boards, et cetera were not integrated, she said, and there was very little cross-racial collaboration to address racial inequalities in the areas of education, housing or healthcare.  

No wonder there has been so little progress, Bickel thought. 

“When we were young, we thought we’d be much further along,” said Bickel, 60, a League member since 1977. “I don’t see that the situation in Berkeley schools is any better than when my kids were in the schools, and they’re 33 and 34 now.” 

Increasing activism around race 

It’s been a frustration shared by many in Berkeley in recent years. Berkeley PTA leaders organized a community conversation in 1999 to examine the question of why minority parents weren’t more active in the organization – particularly when the performance of minority students in the system was clearly a pressing issue.  

Rev. D. Mark Wilson, Ph.D. of the McGee Avenue Baptist Church, was a facilitator at that meeting. He said many African-American participants left disappointed that the meeting had not led to any concrete action plans. There was a perception among some, he said, that you “come and share your frustration but you never see anything change.” 

Last year, a group of concerned African- American parents decided to go it alone and formed the group, Parents of Children of African Descent. But after a year of pressuring the school board to do more to help struggling minority students, PCAD members decided they still weren’t being heard.  

In January, they packed a school board meeting with supporters and demanded that the board provide money to implement their own intervention program. The board approved the program, Rebound, for 50 students failing multiple classes (almost all of them African-American). 

Others have been inspired by the PCAD example. They have begun to confront the school district’s problems in starkly racial terms, breaking with what they see as a reluctance in progressive Berkeley – the first city to voluntarily desegregate its schools in 1968 – to call it like it is. 

“There is a lot of surface easiness among people in the city in terms of interaction between the races,” said Father George Crespin of St. Joseph the Worker Church. “But, when you look at Berkeley High School, the end product of the education system, its very clear that the racial groups are highly defined and pretty much segregated.” 

This summer, Crespin helped organize a community meeting in which school district leaders were invited to St. Joseph. They were asked not to speak, but to listen as Latino parents and students told how they felt the system was failing them. 

“It’s a question, I think, that no one wants to take on head on,” Crespin said. “Something is not consistent. Whenever you’re in a conversation in the Berkeley community, very quickly people get nervous and don’t want to talk about what the racial implications (of something) might be.” 

The search for dialogue 

It was against this backdrop of increasing racial activism that Saunders seized the idea of a community conversation on racism. 

Like many, Saunders, a 33-year-old single parent, entered the world of Berkeley’s racial politics by way of the school district. When the district opened City of Franklin Elementary School in 1999, Saunders transferred her daughter, then a third-grader, to the new school.  

Soon, Saunders became very involved. She worked as the school’s site coordinator, became co-president of its fledgling PTA, and joined both a Franklin budget committee and a districtwide budget committee. 

But the more involved she became in school politics, the more frustrated Saunders became with how much that system seemed to be dominated by the voices and concerns of Berkeley’s white, affluent community. 

“What I’ve seen in the couple of years that I’ve been active is that it didn’t feel like I have a voice that was even going to be heard,” Saunders said in a recent interview. “No one that is part of that structure: none of them look like me, none of them act like me, none of them think like me, and none of them can represent me. And yet they continue to make decisions for me.” 

It also seemed to Saunders that her willingness to talk openly about her race concerns sometimes lead to her being further excluded from the process.  

Despite having won the strong backing of outgoing Berkeley PTA Council President Mark Coplan last year, Saunders was prevented, on a technicality, from running in the election that would determine his successor. It turned out City of Franklin PTA did not have a formal charter, which, according to PTA bylaws, meant its members could not run for office in the Berkeley PTA Council.  

Coplan, for one, was appalled to see relatively obscure bylaws take precedence over an attempt to diversify PTA leadership.  

“For us to be inclusive, we need to start the process of looking for new leadership way before the election,” he reflected in a recent interview. 

When Saunders became the League’s Education Committee chairperson, she decided to use her new position to push for what she felt was a long-overdue discussion of racism. She wasn’t sure what such a conversation would look like, but she didn’t let that stop her.  

“It’s just something that is needed, so it will work,” she remembers thinking. 

Planning a conversation on race 

Of course, there’s an ocean that lies between saying you’re going to have a conversation on race and actually having one. 

“We’re shaking ourselves up a bit, and we’re a little nervous about what’s going to happen,” Bickel said in a planning session last month. 

But, as it turns out, leading conversations on race has become something of a cottage industry in recent years. Police, corporations and universities around the nation have hosted the conversations to build a greater sense of inclusion in their respective communities. As recently as September, the city of Richmond hosted what it hopes will be the first in a series of annual Symposiums on Racial Harmony. More than 200 people turned out to talk about ways to improve communication between Richmond’s distinct racial and ethnic communities. 

Following the lead of other conversations on race, Bickel, Saunders and other planners for the Berkeley conversation hit on the solution of hiring professional mediators to oversee the daylong meeting. It will fall to these professionals to lay down clear ground rules and help ensure that people feel “safe” expressing their feelings on the sensitive topic of race. 

The lead facilitator, Roberto Almanzán, has a wealth of experience as a diversity consultant and seminar facilitator, where he’s worked with corporations, public agencies, educational institutions and nonprofits. In an interview last week, Almanzán said his own experience on a 1993 weekend retreat made him a believer that something as seemingly simple as a conversation on race can change a person’s life.  

Almanzán was one of six men – two Latino, two black and two white – invited on the retreat. Their discussion of race and racism was filmed and became the documentary film, “The Color of Fear.” 

“That’s a powerful experience: to feel that you’ve been heard and seen for who you really are,” Almanzán said. “I don’t think we can really get past the inequality and the sense that some people have about being discriminated against unless we have these conversations.” 

In communities, as in families, there is a tendency to sweep divisive issues under the rug, Almanzán said. But wounds not brought into the open will only resurface later in the form of anger, he added. 

Simone Young, a concerned Berkeley resident who will be one of 20 small group facilitators Saturday, put it this way: “You cannot solve a historical problem in one day, but you can open up some of the pain. ... And from that you might get some understanding.” 

For many Berkeley community leaders supporting the League’s effort, there is no time like the present to bring any festering racial tensions out into the open. Darryl Moore, who represents Berkeley on the Peralta Community College Board of Trustees, said if the Berkeley community doesn’t do more to reach out to minority groups and make them feel welcome, its cherished diversity could become a thing of the past. 

“Ten years from now, I guarantee if things keep going the way they are Berkeley will be less diverse,” Moore said, pointing to a recent wave of gentrification in west and south Berkeley. 

Those who want to participant in the league’s community conversation this Saturday must pre-register by calling 898-7625. Participants will divide into small groups and then into pairs to discuss their experiences with racism before being brought back into the larger group. At the end of the day, lead facilitators will talk about common themes that come out of the day’s conversations. Sandwiches and drinks will be provided for lunch.