Ecclesaistes 3 notes there is a season for everything.
While not put exactly in these terms in scripture, part of that chapter deals with the more colloquially put, “There is a time for talking and a time for listening.”
How many of us take the time to stop talking and actually listen though? Probably not near as many of us as should.
This is what Starkville Oktibbeha Unity League hopes to combat in its upcoming dialogue series, “Coming Together for Racial Understanding.”
“We don’t have enough dialogue now,” said Rex Buffington, co-chair for the organization. “I think Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘We have too much monologue and not enough dialogue.’ I think that’s very true. We also have a lot of debates in our society but not a lot of dialogue. I think one of the great things about dialogue is that nobody wins. It’s not that kind of a setup. In dialogue, it’s all about learning and understanding and having the chance to examine your own thoughts and ideas as you talk to others about them.”
The sessions will see participants broken up into small groups that will meet over a period of six weeks and discuss matters pertaining to race relations and issues facing the community.
The group hopes that talking about the subject head on will open the door to action.
“At the end of that six weeks, each of the small groups will have an opportunity to talk about what we can do to be better in this area in our community,” Buffington said. “They will come up with recommendations of things that we can do. So, it’s sort of a dialogue to action program.”
Yulanda Haddix, a member of SOUL, a facilitator for the dialogue sessions and president of the Oktibbeha County Chapter of the NAACP, is excited, but she is also afraid those who really need to be at the sessions won’t attend.
Inequality issues today, she said, are based less today on color and more on “haves” and “have nots.” She said the real issue is people with power refusing to make the necessary changes.
“The people who have the power can decide yea or nay, and that’s where the whole problem comes in,” she said. “Those in leadership roles, who have the resources, have to make a decision. ‘Either I’m going to share and be a part of change, or be the way I am.’”
She said she supports SOUL’s efforts and is a group member. The dialogue series is a way to address the issues on the community level, but she said there need to be changes on the state level before any real progress can be made. This is the ultimate goal.
“When we say we’re going to leave everything at the door and be an open book, that’s when real change starts,” Haddix said. “I think it’s a great start, I really do. I’m excited about it, I just hope the people who should be there are there. The ones in leadership roles need to be there and they need to be real about it. And we need to be real about it. People can’t be afraid.”
Members of SOUL have been working to recruit people to participate in the sessions, and so far there are nearly 100 participants signed up.
“It was really encouraging,” Buffington said. “We were so happy. We didn’t know how people would respond to it and of course this is the first time for us and we are still learning. We are continuing to invite people. We’ll continue doing that up until probably the first week in February. At that point, we’ll stop and start putting the groups together.”
The program
The dialogue sessions being presented are part of a program developed by the Southern Rural Development Center at Mississippi State University.
Members of SOUL, during the COVID-19 pandemic, participated in a virtual version of the program and decided it would be perfect to enact within the community when in-person gathering was an option again.
“It’s a program that really focuses on dialogue in small groups where people can come together and really talk about the differences and the issues and how to build effective understanding and relationships,” Buffington said. “We felt really good about the experience that we had, those of us who participated in that dialogue virtually. It was kind of hard to do actually, and we knew it could be even better when we got to the point that people could get together face-to-face.”
The group is still finalizing dates, but there is a tentative start date of mid-February for the actual dialogue sessions.
Calls and messages to the SRDC were unreturned by press time.
To join a dialogue group or for more information on the program, email Andrea Myles at [email protected].
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Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 36 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.
