Why don't you believe me?

This past weekend was probably some of the best four days of my life. How cliché, I know; just bear with me. I participated in Common Ground, a free, intense, community-building retreat sponsored by the Center for Race Relations. Common Ground aims to unify a diverse group of students and facilitate open, honest and meaningful discussion about a range of topics relating to race, gender, sexuality, faith, socioeconomic status and ethnicity. Some participants shared questions, confusion and pain pertaining to their own identities, while others challenged their prejudices. Everyone who was there felt something is very wrong with how the Duke community (and our country) deals with difference.

Duke is definitely diverse; however, it is also very segregated. In the recent issue of the Princeton Review’s Best 357 Colleges, we rank 13th on the Little Race/Class Interaction list. It’s also hard to forget that a few years ago we were ranked first in that same manual as a school where alternative lifestyles were not an alternative. Participants in Common Ground are disgusted by facts such as these and hope to break down barriers to understanding and interaction.

I don’t want this column to be only a shameless plug for applications to the next Common Ground retreat. Everyone who reads this will not be so lucky to have the opportunity to go on this retreat and I am not so naïve to believe that everyone who reads this will even want to go. As I have already discussed with many of my friends, there really is no way to put our experience this past weekend into words. I can explain to you the activities we did and the discussions we had, but that would not only cheapen our experiences and accomplishments, but it also couldn’t possibly impart on you an understanding of what we did.

Right now, though, I feel so passionate about what happened and what we can do in the future, that I can’t let it go without preaching at least a little bit. Although everything that we heard, shared, questioned, saw, felt, cried about and yelled about covered a multitude of topics, one idea consistently finds its way into my mind.

If someone tells you that he feels a certain way (oppressed, scared, angry, hurt, etc.,) it does not matter whether you think that feeling is valid or justified. Regardless of whether you personally that he should feel that way, he does feel that way and that is all that matters. It sounds so simple, almost obvious, but I cannot tell you how hard it really is to do and what a difference it could make.

When we watched a video dialogue among eight diverse men, David, a white male, could not accept the anger and frustration Victor, a black male, felt because of racism. He refused to believe that Victor’s feelings were valid until he was asked what it would mean if Victor’s feelings were true.

As humans, I think that we have a natural tendency to invalidate others’ complaints or try to defend ourselves against them as opposed to attempting to understand the sentiments and their causes. Listeners rarely have a true understanding of what someone has experienced. During the retreat, people sometimes voiced feelings that I couldn’t relate to. As a white female, I had trouble comprehending others’ feelings of anger, hate and frustration, often directed at me. When people opened up to us about their lives, however, it allowed me to understand where they were coming from. We should, though, be able to accept people’s feelings as justified without them baring their souls.

How does this relate to us? If women claim that they feel unsafe on campus, it doesn’t matter whether we believe they are safe or not. If they feel unsafe, there is a problem that needs to be addressed. If Middle Eastern students feel they are being ignored by the administration, a problem exists. Black students feel they are being treated unfairly by DUPD and DPD? Then there is a valid problem. If someone feels hurt, oppressed, stereotyped, misrepresented, scared or whatever, then there is an issue that needs to be taken seriously. If we don’t accept others’ feelings and experiences as valid, then how will we ever progress? How can we create a community?