Pamphlet Announcement: Personal Communicating and Racial Equity by John Stewart (from CRTNet)

Personal Communicating and Racial Equity by John Stewart

One of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's analyses of cultural conflict was, "People fail to get along with each other because they fear each other.  They fear each other because they don't know each other.  They don't know each other because they have not properly communicated with each other."

Personal Communicating and Racial Equity offers a brief, accessible, plain-language, 8-step guide for "properly" communicating with people whose cultural identifiers are different from yours.  It's based on classic and contemporary interpersonal communication research, current interpersonal neurobiology, Whiteness studies, and input from over 30 authors and laypeople of color.  It can be a supplement for intercultural communication and race-class-gender courses, the basis for a racial equity workshop, and a personal guide, especially for White allies.

The book began in a conversation when an African American friend challenged me, "OK, maybe you can help people learn to develop relationships.  But exactly how can better relationships build racial equity?"  I thought of King's insight and sketched the following steps (each gets a brief chapter):

Start by attending to the two communication activities we're always engaged in, Taking In (including expectations, nonverbal, and verbal behaviors), and Giving Out (including topic relevance and appropriateness, nonverbal, and verbal behaviors).

Then understand the two ways our brains empower us to Take In and Give Out:  Impersonally (analytic, objective, literal, grouping) and Personally (holistic, engaged, metaphoric, recognizing uniqueness).  The terms "impersonal/personal" are neurobiologist Iaian McGilchrist's inThe Master and His Emissary:  The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, and the characteristics significantly sophisticate oversimplified "left/right brain" distinctions.

The third step is to commit to helping make your communicating "as personal as possible."  This doesn't mean wearing your heart on your sleeve or prying into someone's private life.

It means--and this is step four--getting on the table between  you and your conversation partner relevant aspects of the four capacities that help make you (and her) a person:  choices, reflections (awareness of awareness), emotions-spirit-personality (ESP), and mindfulness.  The task is to Take In relevant aspects of your partner's choices, reflections, ESP, and mindfulness and to Give Out relevant aspects of yours.

When you do this together, it's highly probable that uniquenesses will meet (step five), and this is the metric, the outcome measure.  When uniquenesses meet, your communicating is becoming as personal as possible.

Chapter 7 explains that in the 21st century U.S.A., all this occurs in a context of white privilege.  Those of us in power are often put here by systemic forces that we need to respond to not with guilt but with response-ability:  the willingness and ability to respond.  This chapter explains why the terms "Racial" and "Equity" are in the book's title, and sets up the three special considerations that facilitate relationship-building across cultural differences:

Curiosity is the first (step 6).  When you're genuinely curious, it's almost impossible to be defensive or threatening, and your curiosity needs to focus first on your own cultural identifiers.  When you've inventoried them, you're in a position to be curious about your conversation partner's cultural identifiers.  Examples show what this means.

Humility is the second of the three (step 7).  Humility basically means holding your own cultural identifiers and commitments lightly, rather than with white-knuckles.  You don't have to give up any of them, but just to remember--and behave as if--your own culture is not the only legitimate one.

Platinum Empathy is the final step.  Empathy and it's ethical anchor the Golden Rule is good, and treating others as they prefer to be treated is even better.

The final chapter, "Working to Put it Together," offers two examples where helping make communication as personal as possible facilitated multicultural understanding.

Personal Communicating and Racial Equity is only 63 pages long, 12-point type, and sells for $12.95.  You can use it for a unit of a larger course, a workshop resource, or a jumping-off point for the deeper and richer conversations about racial equity that its topics can prompt.  The publisher is Kendall-Hunt.  See bit.ly/PersCommRacialEq