The Dialogue Series is the brainchild of Molly Berry and will be held on a monthly basis where students, faculty etc. will caucus and engage in conversations on different topics.

Berry is quick to state the Dialogue Series isn’t a guest speaker or lecture. It’s just meant to be welcoming safe place where people can speak their minds.

In its first incarnation the topic was white privilege. Berry said “It was something I was passionate about and wanted a comfortable place where people could just come and talk about topics and discuss openly.”

She merely wanted to start the conservation. People might have different opinions on a topic, and that’s fine. This new forum would give people the chance to talk and bounce ideas off each other.

In the forum on Sept. 11, 2015 a video was be shown and acted as the catalyst to start the conversation. But first “Earth, Wind and Fire” played and was quickly followed up by Michael Jackson’s “Rock with You.” The mood was somber in the room as no one was quite sure what they had gotten themselves into. While they all waited for the video to load, it was noted that the room was mostly, if not all, filled with people of color. A shame especially since the topic was white privilege.

The first question of the day was, how do we define white privilege? One male student’s definition of white privilege was getting a cab by just snapping one’s fingers and it appearing instantly. Implying the cab materialized out of thin air just to pick up a white passenger. All over the room definitions began to immerge, one being that people don’t really accept it as fact and there wasn’t really an understanding of what white privilege meant. Another male student was quick to say white privilege is not just white versus black races.

White privilege is overt, obscure in a lot of ways that it plays out. People like to think racism and white privilege are synonymous. For example, if white privilege is brought up, it automatically makes you racist. That’s not the case, although racism blurs the line and takes the form of privilege and then blurs into white privilege.

White privilege is not earned, it’s given and it’s easily unrecognizable in a few select cases. In the video shown entitled “One Easy Thing All White People Could Do That Would Make the World a Better Place,” a black woman was shopping in Safeway with her daughter and her sister-in-law who is half-black and half-white but only had the physical attributes of a white person.

The sister-in-law got her groceries and paid for them no problem and stepped out the way to wait for her sister and niece. The sister – with a darker skin tone – had her items scanned and started to pay when the cashier gets out a book of bad checks to peruse to see if her check was bad. Two elderly white women were behind her in line looking on as if nothing was wrong. The woman’s daughter is near hysterics because she noticed that her aunt who looks white didn’t have to have her check cleared for potentially being a fake. The woman is at a loss at what to say, not only to her daughter, but to the clerk as well because she doesn’t want to perpetuate the stereotype of the “angry black woman.” Her sister- in-law stepped in and said, “Excuse me why are you doing this?” The clerk said, “This is protocol”.

Obviously it wasn’t, otherwise the clerk would have checked her check as well. The issue was the clerk and the two elderly white women felt as though nothing wrong had happened. The sister-in-law spoke up about the injustice happening to her sister, who was profiled unfairly for her darker skin tone, advantages any person of color is not given because they aren’t “blessed” with alabaster skin.

In the video it was clear to see certain systems ingrain their way into society and blend so seamlessly. At the end of the day white privilege succeeds, and no one thinks anything is amiss unless it’s brought up.

No one is absolved from the conservation of white privilege, it doesn’t matter if you benefit from it or not. At the end of the day every discussion in the room was very therapeutic.

The Dialogue Series truly provided an alcove where people could congregate and speak honestly. If you missed the first Dialogue Series, be on the lookout for the next one where there will be a new topic being discussed and will hopefully be as open and honest as the first one.