It was meant to be a friendly exchange--a panel discussion--at a local ethnic church. I had previously lead a panel discussion about single parenthood and it had gone so well that I was invited to come back and participate again. This time, as a panel member.
The topic was Public Safety. In our planning meeting earlier in the week, we discussed the possibilities of what could be covered under this topic. One point that the moderator made was that it might be interesting to ask how the racial segregation in churches can be problematic. I asked how this was a public safety issue and didn't get a satisfactory response, but in fact, felt shot down for asking. I pointed out that I had grown up in Jim Crow Mississippi during the sit ins and all of the issues that arose during those awful years, that our parents didn't allow us to stand up during the singing of Dixie, and that those were terrible experiences for us who weren't even major targets of discrimination. I pointed out that I am very interested in the topic of segregation in churches, but that I can't understand the connection to our topic. I did say that I would certainly follow the moderator however.
There were a couple of what I would consider to be non sequitor responses, and then some that felt like a rebuke to me. After a few more comments we wrapped up the meeting very cordially.. I couldn't explain what it was exactly, but something was terribly wrong and it wasn't possible to articulate what it was in any clarity when I tried to explain it to Sam that night. "I just didn't like something about the way we talked about things. Something isn't right."

It wasn't right.
In fact, I was so unsettled and confused about the way that public safety was to be discussed that I couldn't mentally prepare to contribute anything of substance. In thinking about public safety issues, I thought about the role of domestic violence and victimization, how these influence the safety that we experience in the family. In turn, this leads to a more violent community, particularly when we don't protect our vulnerable members. There is also the issue of labeling people as different than we are and subsequently becoming unable to relate to them as people and more prone to be discriminatory, exclusive, and abusive. I struggled to think of anything that was germane to public safety in the way that it was being conceptualized by the moderator.

I should have known that my intuition is almost always correct.

Yesterday's panel was an unmitigated disaster. After a rambling introduction, in which the moderator tried to make some points about public safety, he asked me to start off with some brief comments about public safety and quality of life. I briefly mentioned the victimization of individuals in the family. It was a cursory comment designed to get the others to speak up and share their comments. Instead, the moderator turned to the other individual and asked him to weigh in on an area of his interest. He did, too, at great length. Then the second panel member asked the question, "Why do we have segregation in our churches and why is that okay?"
It was asked so quickly and in such a low tone of voice that it was difficult to even hear what he was saying. There was a man at the microphone who had stepped up to ask a question who was recognized at that moment. He said quickly, "Well, I'm not going to address that but I did have a comment about a point that was raised earlier."
The moderator thanked him for his comment and things turned back to the topic of church segregation. I was thunderstuck. How could this be a public safety issue? It seemed as if this was the topic of interest and choice, but there was nothing of substance that I could contribute since I hadn't prepared anything on this issue. I tried to make a couple short illustrative comments, but everything felt like it fell flat, particularly since the moderator made very little effort to include me or ask my opinion about much of anything. Nor did he have the grace to thank me for my comments or to even attempt to tie them into the larger discussion. It turned into a conversation between the two men, with me sitting on the sidelines and making silly comments as we went. Whilst I sat there I was thinking of the cooking show, "Iron Chef". The original version of it is filmed in Japan, where the panel is made up of two or three very serious men and one silly acting woman. While they make comments about things like, "The piquant flavor of the chestnuts compliments the fondue beautifully," the woman gushes and says stupid things such as, "Oh! Look at how pink the onions are!" and she gasps appreciably. Totally idiotic and irrelevant.
What a sham and waste of intelligence.

But more than feeling stupid and uncontributory, it seemed an inappropriate situation and time to be discussing segregation in churches. There was no attempt to link it with public safety concerns. It took on a life of its own. Why was this "dead horse" chosen to be beaten at this juncture? Was this the only venue that they have to voice their ideas and concerns? Did they not see how confused the audience was? Did they not realize that they had completely excluded me from weighing in on the topic in any sensible way? What was the point of hijacking the conversation to what felt like rehearsed material? The problem was that it went on for nearly 45 minutes of an hour panel discussion that had been planned. I had very little to say or share. At the end of it all, the moderator turned toward me to ask for my thoughts, but the floor manager was signaling that we were out of time. I whispered that we were out of time and the moderator stumbled to a close.

At the end of the presentation I left as quickly as I could. The moderator and other guest hugged me goodbye and seemed quite pleased with the whole thing. But I was not.
OMG--Sam was beside himself with outrage. In the car, on the way home, he steamed about how I had been marginalized the whole time, I was the token White person and token woman, that what I said hadn't even been recognized and on and on...
I like when Sam is protective of me, but this was just an awful lot to take in.

After sleeping on it, I realized that there had been a complicit agreement to discuss racial segregation in congregations, and it almost seemed that I had been set up to be in the place of either someone who would argue back, or who would be silenced.
I don't know what drove these two men to do what they did yesterday. I almost expect to get an embarassed apology from the organizer of the event, or perhaps, one of my students who attended. But I woke up very disturbed by being put in that position.
I will certainly not participate with either of those two men again in any professional or personal activity and I have diminished interest in ever being in that particular congregation again.
The whole thing could have been avoided had these men gone with what the topic was to have been: Public Safety Issues and our Young People.

A larger question for me is whether or not I have ever marginalized someone the way I was yesterday. I am wondering if I have hurt someone, or if there is anything that I do in my current line of work that overlooks people whose ideas are vastly different from mine, or whom I don't understand. It would be crushing to think that I might do that to anyone.

So licking my wounds today, angry, reflective, exasperated (and listening to Sam blowing smoke about it). I'm deep in thought and observing my every comment to be sure that I am not behaving as those two men did yesterday. It wasn't a good thing and it felt even worse.