MSU Extension

Opening Doors and Understanding Resistance

For more than 20-years over 1800 participants have experienced the Opening Doors three-day social justice and equity retreat. This educational process utilizes a holistic approach, focusing on both participants’ cognitive and affective growth. It also provides an opportunity for participants from all walks of life to gather together in a supportive and challenging learning environment to better understand themselves, each other and the historic and contemporary systems and social constructions that continue to separate us and move us away from partnership, the way out.

As one of ten national facilitators for this workshop from New York, North Carolina and Michigan, we have documented and shared what we have noticed as barriers for participants (and our own) learning when it comes to issues of social justice, power, privilege and differences. Our work on identifying these forms of resistance has been informed by the work of psychologist; Dr. Beverly Tatum who documented points of resistance in her classroom when talking about race/racism (https://equity.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Tatum-Talking-About-Race.pdf) These barriers have appeared in many different situations or interactions during our workshop process and can serve as a helpful guide to notice them and how and when these issues become impediments to the overall learning process.

 Negative experience in a past diversity workshop: Some of us have attended other workshops that operated on “blame and shame” rather than “teach and embrace.” These workshops left us with feelings of anger or guilt, and didn’t fulfill our true desire to live more completely with others. These experiences may prevent us from seeking out or participating in other opportunities to learn about diversity.

Taboo about discussing differences in mixed groups: Most of us learned not to talk about difference, especially in mixed groups. The fear of creating tension has been passed on to us and now makes us uncomfortable.

Acceptance of a dominant cultural norm that devalues the naming, feeling and expressing of emotion as a part of a learning process. The push towards only engaging our intellectual capacities when dealing with issues of differences or complexity instead of being willing to engage our whole selves (mind, feelings and spirit), limits our ability to make meaningful personal attitudinal and sys­temic change.

Denial of prejudice: We all like to think of ourselves as not being prejudiced. However, we also know that we learned certain attitudes about different groups without asking for the information. All of us received some form of prejudice, unless of course we were raised in a harmonious utopian paradise. Our denial can take many forms, and it might sound like this: “My parents didn’t raise me that way,” or “I have friends who are___________.” Our denial of prejudice comes from having also inherited the idea that people who hold these ideas are “bad” people.

Thinking dichotomously: In the past we were only given two choices (i.e., to be racist or not racist, sexist or not sexist, homophobic or not). We now know that we are all somewhere on a continuum, and it is no longer about being labeled “good” or “bad.” Thinking dichotomously leaves us with either/ or, my way or no way, you are either with me or against me. It is not about being good or bad; it is about multiple truths and multiple perspectives. To avoid the either/or trap of thinking and speaking dichotomously, we invite you to speak to each other using the word and instead of but. An example of not thinking dichotomously would be: “Yes, I hear what you are saying, and yes, we were born into a divided society and we have diverse experiences within it.” This will change the dynamic of how we have discussions, welcoming many truths, instead of one.

This is not by any means intended to be an exhaustive list of barriers to our learning across differences. These serve as reminders that all of us can experience levels of discomfort when discussing difficult but necessary issues. If we are intentional and honest about what we are experiencing, we may be able to sit with the uncomfortableness that arises and navigate it in more healthy and productive ways for our transformational learning.

The Opening Doors workshop is held once yearly in Michigan and is co-sponsored by the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and Michigan State University Extension. If you are interested in attending the workshop in 2018, click on the following link for more information: https://events.anr.msu.edu/OPENINGDOORSJune2018/