AI and Anti-Racism Training
Deborah Lee Orlowski
Intercultural Link, Inc (USA)
Ann Arbor, MI United States
Date 01/01/2000
Annotation: Although this story isn't about a full blown AI, I think it shows the power and potential of AI.
My partner and I do diversity training. We were asked to lead a group in a dicussion of the video, The Color of Fear. The request for the workshop was an outgrowth of an interaction that occurred between two participants in another workshop. Both participants, women, one African-American and one White, wanted to continue, and ultimately work out, a somewhat heated and racially charged conversation that was begun during the first workshop.
The Color of Fear is a powerful video that follows a conversation among 8 men of various ethnicities and races as they explore how racism has affected their lives. The end of the video is healing, but getting to that end often produces anger, sadness, fear and sometimes more, in the participants watching it.
My partner and I wanted to set a different tone. Having just learned about AI, we decided to begin the workshop with an introduction question that had an AI bend. We asked them to find a partner and to tell the partner about a time when they had an interaction with someone of another race that was unexpected and positive.
The stories were amazing! We were supposed to spend about 45 minutes on this but took close to 90. By the time we got to the video, the atmosphere in the room was completely different than it usually would be. We found that, even in the tough spots of the video, with the background of having heard of the positive, energizing stories of racial interactions, people were more open to truly HEARING others' painful stories of racism. It seemed it was impossible to feel that the other people in the room were automatically "bad" once they had acknowledged having had powerful experiences with members of other races.
This was truly one of the best training experiences of my life. The participants felt the same way.
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