When Steve Ray first read the email asking if he wanted to participate in a weekly discussion group about race, his curiosity was more than piqued.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I saw the email, I immediately thought \u2018I have to be part of that,\u2019 because conversations about race \u2014or race talk\u2014are just fraught with all kinds of difficulty in the academic setting,\u201d said Ray, a University of Tennessee at Chattanooga professor and associate head of the Department of Performing Arts.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the first things I said in the group was, \u2018I don\u2019t want to walk on eggshells. I want to be able to have tough, difficult conversations in a way that students learn and grow from\u2014and I learn and grow from.\u2019 We can\u2019t be scared to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/08\/book.png\")
‘Race Talk’ is starting point for discussions on racism.<\/p><\/div>\n
When Jonathan McNair came across that same email, he knew he had to participate, too. Southern-born and raised in a predominantly white culture, he said he had been on a personal journey regarding attitudes about race and interacting with persons of color.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith all the protests around the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and others, this is a subject that\u2019s not going away. And thankfully, this conversation is not going away,\u201d said McNair, the Ruth S. Holmberg professor of American music at UTC.<\/p>\n
When it\u2019s come up in the past in class, he has seen white students upset by perceived accusations of being racist and students of color frustrated by feeling they\u2019re not being heard, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the racial discussion comes up in the classroom and it starts to get heated, what are you going to do as a professor? Are you going to clamp it down and stop it? I don\u2019t want to be that guy,\u201d McNair said. “Are you going to clamp it down and stop it? I don\u2019t want to be that guy,\u201d McNair said.<\/p>\n
Ray, McNair and nearly 40 others on campus seized the opportunity to actually talk about race.<\/p>\n
****<\/p>\n
Not long after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May, Michelle Deardorff emailed faculty and staff, asking if they needed help navigating a sensitive issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cAre you thinking about how you will be navigating discussions on race in your classes or with students this fall? Would you like to join a small group of colleagues who are similarly wrestling with this challenge?\u201d asked Deardorff, Adolph S. Ochs professor of government and head of the Department of Political Science and Public Service.<\/p>\n
Forty people said \u201cYes;\u201d 38 completed all seven sessions.<\/p>\n
\u201cI only sent out one email,\u201d she said. \u201cThe people who took me up on the offer\u2014faculty, staff, some administrators\u2014came from all over campus. I have a list of other people who wanted to do it, but four groups of 10 was about all I could manage and do all the COVID-related stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
She proposed a weekly Zoom discussion group to read and discuss Derald Wing Sue\u2019s Race Talk and the Conspiracy of Silence: Understanding and Facilitating Difficult Dialogues on Race.<\/em> Sue is an educational psychologist who encourages readers to wrestle with their own relationship to race and recognize how their discomfort can impact the way they discuss the issue.<\/p>\n\u201cThis book is basically about why is it so hard to have these conversations and what does that mean for people who teach,\u201d Deardorff said. \u201cAs he says, for a lot of white people, they\u2019re very afraid of being seen as racist, so they\u2019re afraid to talk.\u201d<\/p>\n
****<\/p>\n
Krysta Murillo, a UTC assistant professor in early childhood education, said race is always part of the conversation for almost everyone, in class, on campus and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s important to say that as a person of color, race and racism are almost always forefront on one\u2019s mind,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen you are interacting with others, it\u2019s almost always, at the very least in the back of your mind, \u2018Is this a safe space for me? Is this a space where I will be seen and heard and respected?\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cGeorge Floyd\u2019s murder before the entire world was bad enough, but I think that was the catalyst to make every person of color take pause and say, \u2018This is really bad and we have to do something.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The COVID-19 pandemic became the straw that broke the camel\u2019s back, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was very impactful for me to see that despite COVID, despite all of the warnings to remain socially distant, taking to the streets to protest a system of oppression that has made us feel as Black people that we don\u2019t matter\u2014we are taking back the narrative and saying, \u2018We do matter.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Murillo said race conversations are tied into people\u2019s ability to actively listen and carefully consider and internalize some of the perspectives of those who are very different from them.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese talks have never been shy. They haven\u2019t shied away from very difficult conversations about where we have come historically as a society in terms of race relations, as well as confronting all important issues here,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
****<\/p>\n
Darrell Walsh has seen different political climates during his time at UTC. Walsh has been a part of the UTC community for the better part of 35 years, receiving both his bachelor\u2019s in 1988 and master\u2019s in 1996 from the University. A former admissions and financial aid officer here, he has been an assistant professor of sociology since 2005.<\/p>\n
As a person of color, Walsh has seen different political climates while being part of the campus community. He said the opportunity to have a voice has always been there, but the question of whether his voice was heard might have met some resistance<\/p>\n
\u201cFor people of color, engaging in race talk exposes all of us to microaggressions that we all bring to the conversation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I have learned is I didn\u2019t realize that people who have white skin pigmentation didn\u2019t realize their own silence and tendency to avoid having conversations. And I didn\u2019t realize that the deep fear is sort of connected to these broader historical processes that we\u2019ve all been affected by.\u201d<\/p>\n
He is optimistic that the discussion will continue nationwide.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are some areas of our country that we need to remedy and improve, and I think this is where I\u2019m encouraged,\u201d Walsh said. \u201cWith the George Floyd incident, people witnessed the inhumane treatment that was applied to another human being, and when you watched that video, that\u2019s when we realized, \u2018Wow, we\u2019re having a problem.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
****<\/p>\n
Libby Santin, director of the UTC Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, teaches two classes in the center. These discussions on race and racism taught her that perceptions aren\u2019t always realities, and that she needed to be aware of her own biases and privilege, which she\u2019d never considered.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went to a high school in the \u201980s that was part of the big white flight, so I started in a school that was 80% white and ended up in a school when I graduated that was 80% black,\u201d she said. \u201cI always thought, \u2018I get it. I understand it.\u2019<\/p>\n
\u201cI always perceived that people of color took me at my word and thought that I was being honest and fair. I thought that I was. But I now realize that because of their experiences over time, that may not always be the case.\u201d<\/p>\n
****<\/p>\n
When she started the discussion groups, Deardorff hoped to transform them into a community of people who could trust and reach out to each other for ideas and feedback.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wanted people to build community and get comfortable having conversations and get comfortable having harder conversations. And as you go through the book, the conversations get more complicated,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
She wanted each group to become a community of people who could trust and reach out to each other for ideas and feedback.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was not a book group, but real discussions where people started asking themselves, \u2018Why is this so hard?\u2019 Engaging with people, working with people and giving them the tools they need to do this hard work is how you change cultures.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Conversations on racism and racial disparities not always comfortable.<\/p>\n
Continue Reading <\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1493,"featured_media":33108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_slider":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_featurette":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[61,3,7712,12777,64,12778,8288,12776],"tags":[8250,99196,99197,99193,99194,8263,99195],"class_list":{"0":"post-32856","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-college-of-arts-sciences","8":"category-community","9":"category-faculty-and-staff","10":"category-music-college-of-arts-sciences","11":"category-news","12":"category-political-science","13":"category-school-of-education","14":"category-theatre-speech","15":"tag-department-of-sociology","16":"tag-derald-wing-sue","17":"tag-difficult-dialogues","18":"tag-early-childhood-education","19":"tag-race","20":"tag-sociology","21":"tag-talking-about-race","22":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\nFacing the fear of talking about race | UTC News Archive: Jul 2007 - Oct 2025<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Conversations on racism and racial disparities not always comfortable.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Facing the fear of talking about race | UTC News Archive: Jul 2007 - Oct 2025\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Conversations on racism and racial disparities not always comfortable.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/2020\/09\/thirty-eight-faculty-staff-members-engage-in-frank-discussions\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"UTC News Archive: Jul 2007 - Oct 2025\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/UTChattanooga\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-09-14T13:00:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2020-09-30T13:40:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blogarchive.utc.edu\/news\/files\/2020\/09\/racetalk.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"288\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"223\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Chuck Wasserstrom\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@UTChattanooga\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@UTChattanooga\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Chuck Wasserstrom\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogarchive.utc.edu\\\/news\\\/2020\\\/09\\\/thirty-eight-faculty-staff-members-engage-in-frank-discussions\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogarchive.utc.edu\\\/news\\\/2020\\\/09\\\/thirty-eight-faculty-staff-members-engage-in-frank-discussions\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Chuck Wasserstrom\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogarchive.utc.edu\\\/news\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/ba12ddef664be78c31809fda10eae4e5\"},\"headline\":\"Facing the fear of talking about race\",\"datePublished\":\"2020-09-14T13:00:45+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2020-09-30T13:40:06+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogarchive.utc.edu\\\/news\\\/2020\\\/09\\\/thirty-eight-faculty-staff-members-engage-in-frank-discussions\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":1388,\"commentCount\":1,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogarchive.utc.edu\\\/news\\\/2020\\\/09\\\/thirty-eight-faculty-staff-members-engage-in-frank-discussions\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogarchive.utc.edu\\\/news\\\/files\\\/2020\\\/09\\\/racetalk.png\",\"keywords\":[\"department of sociology\",\"Derald Wing Sue\",\"Difficult Dialogues\",\"early childhood education\",\"Race\",\"Sociology\",\"Talking about race\"],\"articleSection\":[\"College of Arts and Sciences\",\"Community\",\"Faculty and Staff\",\"Music\",\"News\",\"Political Science\",\"School of Education\",\"Theatre and Speech\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/blogarchive.utc.edu\\\/news\\\/2020\\\/09\\\/thirty-eight-faculty-staff-members-engage-in-frank-discussions\\\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogarchive.utc.edu\\\/news\\\/2020\\\/09\\\/thirty-eight-faculty-staff-members-engage-in-frank-discussions\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/blogarchive.utc.edu\\\/news\\\/2020\\\/09\\\/thirty-eight-faculty-staff-members-engage-in-frank-discussions\\\/\",\"name\":\"Facing the fear of talking about race | UTC News Archive: Jul 2007 - 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