‘You in Mizzou’ brainstorms solutions to racism

Students, staff, faculty and community members met in Memorial Union on Tuesday to ask the question, “Do racial stereotypes still exist today?”

This dialogue was part of the monthly “You in Mizzou” series, which is sponsored by the Chancellor’s Diversity Initiative. The discussion topics for these meetings are chosen from suggestions from last year’s participants.

“It’s a venue for people to come together and discuss issues that the students want to discuss,” said Noor Azizan-Gardner, MU Chancellor’s Diversity Initiative director of diversity programming.

At the beginning of the meeting, after getting their free pizza and drinks, the participants were divided into groups led by facilitators to discuss the night’s topic.

Each participant was given an index card and asked to write, “I’m ‘blank,’ does that make me ‘blank’?” The cards describing racial stereotypes were then collected and passed around the groups at random to start the discussion. Some of the answers were “I’m a middle aged black man, does that make me dangerous?” and “I’m white, does that make me entitled?”

“Race is kind of a sensitive topic for a lot of people and the basic purpose of this program is to create a safe space where people can come in and feel free to talk about diversity related issues,” student coordinator Yuan Gao said. “It’s difficult to open up a conversation like this, but you’ve got to learn something and express different opinions.”

The small groups discussed for about an hour and then came together to review what they learned.

“I really liked it,” freshman Robert Green said. “I just wish there was a little bit more time because the discussions were quite interesting. We learned a lot of different perspectives and viewpoints.”

The advertisements for the event said participants would explore their differences and discover their similarities during their discussions.

“The point is to educate or to hear other perspectives and to learn to respect,” Gao said. “I don’t expect people to really change something fundamentally in the way they go on with their life.”

Azizan-Gardner said dialogue could lead to personal change and then to action.

“We think that students are amazing, and they are powerful and also very enlightened,” Azizan-Gardner said. “They can listen and think about an issue and many of them can come up with really creative, positive solutions to the problems we have at Mizzou. Dialogue is powerful. We can foster action.”

Gao said a goal of the discussions is to raise awareness.

Some solutions to racial stereotypes were offered at the discussion.

“I think we need to have more diversity programming, and people need to learn more about each other’s cultures and just get to know each other better,” Green said.

“You in Mizzou” was started in 2006 and has met monthly since then. It is held the first Wednesday of every month at 7 p.m. This particular discussion was rescheduled after it was canceled because of the snow days.

“This is, I think, an important enough topic that students really wanted to discuss it,” Azizan-Gardner said about the reason the event was rescheduled.