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Date: 4/13/2022
LONGMEADOW – In the auditorium at Longmeadow High School (LHS), a group of a dozen people stood around Ron Jones – actor, director, writer and social activist – long after his presentation had ended. They intently listened as he spoke earnestly one moment and cracked jokes the next, all the while making the connections he had espoused from the stage.
LHS’s student-led Anti Racism Committee invited Jones, executive director and artistic principal of Dialogues on Diversity, an award-winning social justice and diversity theater company, to speak at the school. After working with students on April 11, Jones presented a program titled, “Putting the Civil Back in Civil Discourse,” that evening to a few dozen members of the community.
“I love every single one of you,” Jones began the night by saying. “You are my countrymen.”
Jones went on to say that during his time as a teacher he noticed there was a disconnect in the way students in wealthier places and students in economically-disadvantaged districts viewed one another. Despite being similar beyond resources and location, they saw each other as inherently different.
In the years since then, Jones said he has seen a similar shift in how people from different ideological, religious, racial and gender groups view one another.
“Civil discourse is getting worse,” Jones said. A large part of that stems from an unwillingness to discuss uncomfortable truths.
“If we don’t make ourselves more receptive to learning about the problems,” he said they will not get better. Dealing with discomfort is “foundational to this national experiment working,” Jones said. “It’s not good. It’s necessary.”
How to engage
Once people make the decision to have a conversation, there are pitfalls but there are also key points Jones laid out to make discourse more civil.
• What do you want from this interaction?
Jones said people either want to vent and complain, to be right, to learn and understand or to influence and inspire someone else. It is important to know what kind of conversation one is in at the beginning.
• Know thyself and know the opposition
Assess who is saying what and why before becoming upset about something, Jones advised. He said ideas range across a spectrum and neither side is right nor wrong. The best way to engage is to learn about each other’s views.
“Your ideas don’t threaten me. It’s just an idea, and the only way to combat bad ideas is with better ideas.”
He also said people approach topics differently.
“Do not bring facts to a feelings fight. That’s a liberal thing. Liberals love their facts,” Jones commented. He explained that when a person’s deeply held belief is challenged, they “calcify” and become more entrenched. He continued, “And don’t bring feelings to a fact fight. People will just think you’re a conspiracy theorist.”
• Come Correct
Jones explained it is essential that people know the constitution and what rights are guaranteed by law. He recommended researching what elected officials are accomplishing in office and to check back frequently. He also pointed to think tanks and experts, politicians and the media as sources of information, although he emphasized that not all experts are created equal.
Another major step is acknowledging internal contradictions and hypocrisies.
• There are no angels or demons
Early humans needed to categorize things as friend or foe, but Jones said, “we have to grow beyond it.” In today’s world, Jones said, “Nothing is absolute.”
Jones spoke about the impact living in the digital age has had on people. He said the world is at people’s fingertips, “and it makes you soft.” When there are endless choices about what to watch and read, Jones said it encourages people to focus on what is most comfortable.
“You can self-select and pick your reality. That’s a problem,” he said. The confirmation bias of hearing only what you already think, “reinforces fragility,” Jones said. And when that worldview is questioned, people push harder into their comfort zones.
“I don’t want just the view I like. I want to know what other people are thinking,” Jones said, adding that, “Too many people have abdicated critical thinking to the media and politicians.” He said when people listen to “narrow views,” they “find threats where there are none.”
He noted, “Your being is not antithetical to mine.”
• Assume best intentions until you cannot
“Social upheaval is inevitable,” Jones said, “and a natural response when the world shifts under your feet, you get mad.” Instead of becoming defensive in those times, Jones said to enter conversation from a position of love. “You’re just me coming from another direction,” he said.
Jones played an audio clip of Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking before the Montgomery Bus Boycott. King said, “Let us never fight with falsehood and violence and hate and malice, but always fight with love.”
But it is important to know how to choose battles. If there is no progress being made or someone is unwilling to genuinely talk, walk away, he said.
• Build bridges across people and organizations
“You are an undiscovered country and I want to be a tourist,” Jones said about the willingness to learn what is inside others.
“Oppression is not a one-way street,” Jones said. While it may be more obvious to see oppression against people of color, minority religions or based on gender or LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, asexual and agender) identity, Jones said others are “oppressed of spirit” and have “closed down to us being the same.”
Jones said people must make an emotional connection to others for there to be real dialogue. “I don’t look like you, I don’t sound like you, I don’t pray like you, but I bet I hurt like you,” Jones said. He said one must act as a “societal caregiver” and speak to others as though they were children. A member of the audience disagreed and said they should be spoken to as though they were family. Jones thanked the man for finding a “more eloquent way” to get the idea across.
Jones cited a famous quote from Mahatma Gandhi, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” He added, “If you want more compassion, be more compassion – and it’s hard.” But, he said, “You change yourself and the world changes around you.”
• Treat this work like exercise
Jones talked about the preparation done by civil rights protesters in the 1960s. He said they would put each other in positions that they knew they would face, so that they could face them with their best face forward.
Similarly, he said people must prepare and practice discussions with those who have opposing viewpoints. He recommended talking to friends first and then using those skills to engage with others.
• Pace yourself
Real change is slow, Jones said. “Change should not be radical, because nothing radical can sustain itself for long,” he said.
Jones noted that when people are given the chance to talk out viewpoints, “They talk themselves smarter.”
Change requires work from all sides of an issue. “Problems have to be expressed from the marginalized side first. And change can only come when the dominant culture makes the change first,” Jones said.
Conversations
During the program, Jones encouraged members of the audience to ask questions. One person asked about the Black Lives Matter movement and how their money is used. Jones differentiated between the national movement and the local organizations under that banner. He said the national movement used the money it receives for programs, but also for merchandise. “I may not like it, but there is nothing illegal, immoral or wrong about it.”
Instead, Jones said, his issue with Black Lives Matter is that it is a “conclusion statement” that does not explain the ideas and circumstances behind the movement. “We put way too much importance on slogans and talking points.”
Another member of the audience said Black Lives Matter is about “human rights. The right to raise your kids.” He said any people who are oppressed should be supported. “We got to love more people.”
Yet another member of the audience said, “Our young Black and brown boys deal with microaggressions every day. We need to hold our peers accountable.”
Jones pointed at the man and addressed the rest of the audience, “This is a parent speaking to other parents about the state of his kids that he can’t change on his own.”
Jones said there are three types of people: those who know and care, those who care, but do not know and those who do not care to know. Of the last group, he said, “I pray for those people, but I will not get dragged into a manufactured crisis.”
An audience member mentioned an education law recently passed in Florida that prohibits teachers from instructing students in Grades K-3 about sexual education and gender. It has become known among critics as “Don’t Say Gay.”
While Jones said the issue is between parents who want to have a say in their children’s education and a school’s mandate to instruct children as professionals, there is “no line” on which one side is right and the other is wrong. He said teachers have given years of their lives to become professionals in how to teach children. Teachers should be partners in raising children, he said.
“Passions should lead belief. Knowledge should lead action,” Jones said. “This country is too essential not to build a bigger and better union. I won the planetary lottery by being born on this real estate. I’m invested. You’re my family.”