Whenever I thought about racial conflict, images of people screaming at each other come to my mind, but I learned that there is a different way to deal with conflicts of discrimination. Dr. Stevenson taught me that disputes can be won by first healing ourselves and then intervening in others. Understanding where we come from is the key.
His personal story of how he saw his birthplace described moved me, because I feel the same way about my country. When I listen to how they describe my country, something moves me, it seems that the place they are talking about is not my home. That is where this method comes in. When we accept our history and the difference with others, we begin to understand the importance of belonging, but not fitting in.
If we fit into the lives of others, we become dependent on the other and it is he who tells our story and how we live it. There are two predominant ways of dealing with a racial conflict, the spiritual and the physical. The spiritual one, which was practiced by Mr. Stevens' father, was to leave everything in the hands of God and the physical one, which means fighting for respect. Either way will always bring you one step closer to reconciling a racial conflict.
Mr. Stevenson was quite clear in saying, that we each have a different view of fighting. We will always speak from our own perspective, and so it is important to listen to each other in order to reach a better agreement. The first exercise he proposed was to find a partner and talk about some racial conflict we witnessed. My partner next door was clear and forceful, I had never had one before. His parents are of Irish descent but were always involved in the community, so race was not a matter of dispute for him. Instead, I told him that in Colombia we have always been forced to learn English as a second language.
My racial conflict, while not as serious as others we heard, did generate a great deal of mistrust. Having to learn another language, and besides, that it was only one specific language, always produced doubts in me. In the end, I told him that I spoke English, but that I later chose to learn a very different one. Dr. Stevenson`s second step was simple: identify where we felt when we told our story. I turned around and told him it was more about the head than the heart. While I was frustrated to tell my experience, it didn't hurt as deeply as it did other people. And so, the doctor's cycle closed a little bit.
This method is simple, tell the conflict and then identify where it hurts to heal. It sounds easy, but there is always the question of how to do it quickly. In the round of questions the answer came out, to do it quickly it is important not to relate the conflict to pain, but to learning. Every time there is a racist comment or moment, try to think of how to educate the other person not to do it again. In the end, we each carry a story behind us and we will never know if our phrase could change his mind.
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