Leo Adam Biga's My Inside Stories

After eliciting a firestorm for a phrase I used in a recent article that some found offensive, I was a bit wary when offered the following assignment to write about a race-ethnicity dialogue series. But it’s subject matter I know fairly well and so here is a preview of this new piece that will soon be appearing in The Reader (www.thereader.com). Omaha Table Talk is one of many attempts to bridge the racial divide, in this case by inviting people of different races and ethnicities to sit down and break bread together as a welcoming and disarming framework for discussion and dialogue about the things that often never get said or asked in mixed company. I would prefer to attend a Table Talk and do a story based on what I observe and hear, but this assignment called for me to do an advance story for the October 20 Table Talk, and thus I had to rely on interviewing organizers and participants for their takes on these forums.  I do plan to attend the next Table Talk.

Everyone’s welcome at Table Talk, where food for thought and sustainable race relations happen over breaking bread together

©by Leo Adam Biga

Appeared in The Reader (www.thereader.com)

The uneasy place race inhabits in the collective American psyche leaves most discussions of the subject to academics, activists or attorneys. But its lived reality permeates much of the every day social-cultural fabric.

Rhetoric about race is common. Conversation, less so. In these politically correct times, with a topic so tinged by the emotional weight of the past, no one wants to offend, therefore often nothing is said at all. Except for brief times in U.S. history, race has not been at the forefront of a national dialogue. Keeping it at bay only adds to the existential angst, be it white guilt or minority outrage. In Omaha, where the geographic and socio-economic gulf between races is great, opportunities for exchange may be even fewer than in more diverse settings.

Given this weird dynamic, it’s not surprising then a formal apparatus exists for bringing people together over the very thing that often divides them. Omaha Table Talk (OTT), now in its seventh year, is a forum for individuals, couples, friends, acquaintances and complete strangers to share personal testimonies, discuss issues, watch films and hear presentations that touch on race.

It’s not alone, either. Since 2009 Progressive Omaha, First Unitarian Church, Nebraskans for Peace and other sponsors have sponsored Black-White Dialogues.

Table Talk’s free, October 20, 6:15 to 9 p.m. signature event will find hundreds gathering at homes, community centers, worship sites, companies and restaurants to talk openly about race-ethnicity over dinner. The idea is that breaking bread with The Other allows you to get to know someone beyond assumptions or roles.

Valerie Hankins signed up for a 2009 Table Talk to represent how a black woman like herself can be a professional and should not be reduced to some media image.

“I shared that as a person of color I find myself often proving I am intelligent, that I can speak using the King’s English, because there are stereotypes associated with being a black woman and I don’t feel that is fair to any individual, no matter what they are,” she says.

Hankins, staffing specialist at Sterling Computers, got about what she expected at the confab. “I truly felt there were people from diverse walks of life.” She says it was evident certain biases she and other black guests described dealing with were revelatory to some white participants. “I felt as if a lot of the things we discussed that night were things they were unaware of — they were oblivious to it. A lot of times people just don’t know what they don’t know.”

An average of eight to ten participants attend each dinner. There’s a host and a facilitator. A few set questions, such as Why are you here? and Have you experienced a racial incident? act as conversation starters.

Phyllis Brown has become such a Table Talk advocate she now serves on the nonprofit’s board.

“It just turns out each time I’ve attended, hosted or facilitated it was a great experience, it really was,” says Brown, Single Parent Displaced/Homemaker Coordinator at Metropolitan Community College.

She enjoys the liberating forum OTT provides.

“There’s things we may want to ask, things we may want to say, and you can really say it and do it in those settings,” Brown says. “Some of the subject matter is very heated. There’s some defensiveness. There’s yelling sometimes. But if you have a great facilitator who reminds people what we’re there for, you will walk away a changed person, you’ll take something away from that table. And if you don’t, you at least had that opportunity to have that dialogue.”

Yes, tempers can fly, she says, “but at the end of the day whatever that commonality is that brought us all together we end it on that. That’s the beauty to me.”

OTT executive director A’Jamal-Rashad Byndon is convinced the program makes a difference.

“Though it may seem insignificant there’s great things that come from these events. We just have to figure out how to measure that. The end result of this is, How do I build a relationship with the people in the room and how can we maybe continue this? Our tag line is, You come in as strangers, you leave as friends. It doesn’t take a lot but a meal to break the ice.”

A’Jamal-Rashad Byndon

He says Table Talk off-shoot “groups are starting to get together.” Miriam Aviva Datya facilitates one called ALLIES. It grew out of a 2010 Table Talk she facilitated that, she says. “was such a positive experience…we decided we wanted to continue the discussion.” The topic-oriented group meets monthly. Datya says, “Some of our previous topics include white privilege, use of the N-word. We also watched a documentary, The Color of Fear. What makes the group successful is we are willing to challenge each other in a way that’s courteous.”

Phyllis Brown says a dinner she hosted at her home led some women guests to invite her to join their book club.

“I now am a member of a great book club,” she says. “We do outings together. Some friendships have been forged from it. It’s probably a group I would never have connected with on any other level. I’m telling you, it has just been a beautiful experience. There’s some other groups I meet with that are spinoffs from Table Talk.”

These sprouts, say Brown and Byndon, are evidence the spirit of Table Talk can and does find new expressions. “If you come with an open mind it can just lead to some wonderful things — whatever you really want to do with it,” says Brown.

There is a preaching to the choir element to it all, as OTT attracts progressive, educated folks who already embrace racial harmony and support inclusion. Some, like Byndon, an activist and educator, work on the front lines.

Ironically, OTT itself has lagged in diversity says Byndon. “Our goal was to have one third to one half of participants be people of color, and that has not always been the case. That’s one of our biggest shortcomings.” He says African-Americans comprise the vast majority of racial minority participants, followed by Latinos.

Numbers aside, everyone is there to affirm interracial-multicultural unity.

“You don’t have non-choir members coming to these things,” says former OTT board member Frank Partsch. “Now, it would be nice if you could, it would be nice if you could go out and find the worst racist in town and get that person to come to Table Talk.”

Terri McFarland concedes “there is that perception you’re only preaching to the choir,” but adds, “Maybe you’re going to have a conversation you didn’t know you could have or you’re going to learn how to handle a conversation in a more meaningful manner. You maybe now have a different comfort level addressing issues.”

“In some ways,” says Mcfarland, “you might be preaching to the choir, but you never had the chance to find out there’s other people in the same choir, right? You didn’t know there were other choir members from around the city at the same table. Omaha’s perceived as a city of towers, but when you come to the table you find out there are other people that don’t see that the city has to be that way, and that you can make a difference in your neighborhood, at your grocery store, on your block.”

Inspired by a column syndicated journalist Leonard Pitts Jr. wrote about the Dallas Dinner Table diversity program, Table Talk began as an outreach of the Catholic Charities of Omaha social justice committee in 2004. Byndon, then senior director for public policy with Catholic Charities, joined fellow committee members McFarland and Partsch and chair Kathleen Jeffries in forming OTT.

Before going public, Catholic Charities staff and invited guests convened a trial dinner.

“And we had a delightful time,” says McFarland, operations director with Estate Strategies Group. “We had an opportunity to ask some questions and share some ideas that we didn’t feel comfortable in a different setting to discuss.”

That first dinner led to a couple more and before long OTT became a citywide event with ever increasing participation. While the numbers are no longer doubling as they did the first few years, Byndon says a record 500-plus folks met to eat and opine last year. He expects more participants this year.

As many as two-thirds who participate today are repeats, says Byndon, who followed the program when it left Catholic Charities in 2009 to become a freestanding nonprofit housed at the Neighborhood Center, 115 South. 49th Avenue.

What makes OTT a draw, he says, is the non-threatening framework it offers for addressing things that too often remain silent.

“Omaha is a very racially divided, silo community with our north, south, east, west divide. We’ve had a lot of issues and incidents, you name it, and people repeatedly say they want this type of venue or platform to share some of their positive and negative experiences. There aren’t a lot of organizations and entities who bring people from the grassroots and the treetops levels together to break bread and have conversations. As a city we need to do a much better job of bringing communities together”.

Byndon, whose late mother Lerlean N. Johnson was among a group of Omaha parents who brought the law suit forcing the city’s public schools to implement mandatory desegregation, says he was reared to promote integration and racial accord.

“I think Table Talk is a small way for some people to do that — to walk the talk.”

“I think there’s probably an unmeasured but very great hunger in this and every other community to do the right thing, and this is a painless way to do the right thing,” says Patrsch, retired Omaha World-Herald editorial page director.

The by-registration only event allows participants to self-select what level of dialogue they desire — entry, intermediate or advanced.

“The people that come to the table have varying levels of experience and different levels of comfort in talking about racial issues,” says McFarland.

Partsch says, “I think one of the most important things this program does is to find and attract the people who maybe have felt a need to do this kind of thing but didn’t know how to do it, who had never done it, who’d be uncomfortable initiating something on their own. We take them by the hand and lead them to the table.”

He likes that the program meets people where they’re at on the continuum of race talk.

“The people who are having these conservations on their own at a sophisticated level aren’t going to go hungry because they don’t have a Table Talk. They may participate at Table Talk, because it’s yet another experience and opportunity for them to have those conversations, But the fact is we offer to certain people an opportunity they don’t think they have otherwise and the broader we can extend that opportunity the more important our work can be.”

McFarland says she long yearned to connect with people of color, who were not where she worked, shopped, prayed or lived. Table Talk gave her that entree.

She says it’s not so vital what level you sign up for as simply being willing to listen and share. “This is not a lecture system,” she says. “The premise of this is to allow everybody that comes to the table to have a voice, and that’s the purpose of the facilitator, to not let one person run the conversation and get on their own platform.”

“You have a facilitator to be sure the train doesn’t come off the tracks,” says Partsch.

If a facilitator does it right, OTT organizers say, participants feel they have permission to say what’s on their mind without censoring themselves.

McFarland says, “It’s really an opportunity for people to tell their personal experience, where they’ve been, where they’ve come from, and then ask other people about their experiences, and not judge them but actually have a dialogue. It’s an opportunity for people to take their coat off, loosen their tie and not be judged and have stones cast at them for asking some of those questions that are taboo. It gives people a chance to have a voice with that stuff and to share it.”

Cathy Nelson recalls everyone at the 2010 Table Talk she attended leading with their weakness, sharing some vulnerable moment from their lives, from the man who served time to the college student who came out to his family as gay. She appreciates how “authentically” people communicated that night.

Partsch says participants like himself are invariably “visibly affected” by the shares.

Organizers say there’s almost always a nervous admission by one or two guests that this the first time they’ve sat down to dinner with a person of another race or visited the home of someone of a different race, Others admit they are visiting a part of town they’ve never been to before. And for still others Table Talk may be the first occasion they’re discussing race outside their own home or inner circle.

Nelson says, “Race was the least of issues for me. Going to dine with strangers was more of an issue. Who wants to go have dinner with people you’re not really comfortable with or you don’t have experience with?” But the Blackburn High School teacher leader appreciates the importance of pushing beyond her comfort zone to learn new realities. “People have got to get out of their neighborhoods and see what this city has to offer. We have to be open to each other.”

In her case, Nelson says she’s “really comfortable” talking about race “because I have high school students who are multi-ethnic and they are happy to bring up issues of race and culture. They want to talk about them, they want to share their opinions, and they want to explore those things.”

So for Nelson Table Talk is an extension of her classroom. “For me, part of an education and part of our role in society is to try and be as least judgmental as possible and open to others’ experiences. I think when we judge we start to deny other people’s feelings. I think it’s important to see where the open wounds in our community are, and even if they make us feel a little skittish to really listen to what other people are saying.”

McFarland says OTT has a way of teaching tolerance. As a result, she says, “My world has way opened up.” Partsch says, “If it has changed me it has made me a lot more optimistic about the community and its future seeing the amount of goodwill that’s out there.”

Byndon says, “One of the things I’ve learned from doing Table Talk is to have patience. Back in the day, if you didn’t agree with me you weren’t right. But I’ve learned you can be from the same racial group or a different racial group and have a different lived experience, and we can validate that. If we come with that notion that there’s going to be different perspectives and different world views then we can move forward.”

OTT also allows Byndon and others to live out a calling to bridge the racial divide.

“I want to be able to say during my time, on my watch, I gave as much as I could to bring those worlds together,” says Byndon. “I think it’s a chance for people to kind of live out their mission. If we believe in equality and fairness and justice, we believe in opportunities for all, and part of that is being able to be in proximity to people who may differ from you.”

For online registration, visit www.omahatabletalk.com. For a schedule of OTT panel discussions, open dialogues and other events, call 402-561-7594 or email omahatabletalk@gmail.com.

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