I was thinking of something smaller—I don’t see people talking about a social group or organization which was both diverse and safe (or perhaps even just reliably safe for non-privileged people), even if it was just for a short but extraordinary period.
Uh.
This might be an outside context problem.
I see people talk about that plenty—I’ve been within groups and organizations that tried, in varying ways and with varying success, to realize that idea. They’re usually support groups or nonprofit organizations that provide services to marginalized populations, and the idea of broadly-safe space as a core goal is built right in.
Also, we may be talking about somewhat different things—do the groups you mention talk about it as a goal, or do they ever talk about having succeeded, even for moderate periods of time?
The groups in question had it as just a basic matter of operating policy. It was often a balancing act, and it wasn’t without hiccups, but it worked pretty well. Example: A support group at which I facilitated for a while; the going approach was “safer space”: they knew they couldn’t ensure it was safe, full stop, for everybody in all situations—safety in this context being construed as “a buncha different people from a bunch of different backgrounds with varying experiences of oppression need to use this space, and they won’t always speak each other’s language about that, and we want to minimize the sense that this place is a hostile environment.”
It usually ran pretty smoothly. I can only recall one person who really ran afoul of it, and they did blatantly insult about half the group in the space of a couple minutes on their first visit, and escalated badly in response to people saying something about it.
I can think of some reasons why what you saw was different from what I saw, and it’s pretty much that you had a self-chosen group which was meeting in person and had work the members wanted to get done.
Uh.
This might be an outside context problem.
I see people talk about that plenty—I’ve been within groups and organizations that tried, in varying ways and with varying success, to realize that idea. They’re usually support groups or nonprofit organizations that provide services to marginalized populations, and the idea of broadly-safe space as a core goal is built right in.
It could well be an outside view problem.
Also, we may be talking about somewhat different things—do the groups you mention talk about it as a goal, or do they ever talk about having succeeded, even for moderate periods of time?
Hey, sorry it took a while to reply.
The groups in question had it as just a basic matter of operating policy. It was often a balancing act, and it wasn’t without hiccups, but it worked pretty well. Example: A support group at which I facilitated for a while; the going approach was “safer space”: they knew they couldn’t ensure it was safe, full stop, for everybody in all situations—safety in this context being construed as “a buncha different people from a bunch of different backgrounds with varying experiences of oppression need to use this space, and they won’t always speak each other’s language about that, and we want to minimize the sense that this place is a hostile environment.”
It usually ran pretty smoothly. I can only recall one person who really ran afoul of it, and they did blatantly insult about half the group in the space of a couple minutes on their first visit, and escalated badly in response to people saying something about it.
No problem with the delay.
I can think of some reasons why what you saw was different from what I saw, and it’s pretty much that you had a self-chosen group which was meeting in person and had work the members wanted to get done.