Listening allows one to hear the perspective of another. If one listens without empathy, then one is not actually listening, but rather waiting for their turn for rebuttal. A rebuttal without having truly heard the other person's point of view is not truly a rebuttal, but rather a self-satisfying temper tantrum. Without understanding someone else's perspective, one is left with only their own perspective. If that perspective is already biased culturally, ethnically, ideologically, etc., and no active listening is attempted, then no progress will be made. In order for positive progress to be made, active listening and understanding must be enacted.
Ways to know you are not listening: Instant defensiveness about one's own beliefs; References to tangential matters that do not connect to what the speaker is actually saying; Using one's personal identity and experiences as a reason to demean, distrust, or deconstruct the opinion of another, especially when that person's perspective is not connected to such past experiences.
In reading through many of these posts, there is not a doubt that race is still a matter in America that needs improvement. There is way too much ignorance, stereotyping, and political ideology related to the concept of race on here for any true progress to be made. This makes me concerned that many people on this message board, especially those who identify as white people, do not want positive race relations, which only begets more prejudice, inequality, and problems. If one's beliefs are ethnocentric, then there is a problem. If one constantly feels the need to defend 'white people,' as though all white people are being attacked, one may very well be a White Supremacist:
white su·prem·a·cy
noun
noun:
white supremacy; plural noun:
white supremacies
- the belief that white people are superior to those of all other races, especially the black race, and should therefore dominate society.
The current system is born from White Supremacy and cannot grow beyond that until such truth is admitted. So ask yourself, do you want race to be a continual issue for future generations and only fight for the sake of your own ethnicity, or do you believe peaceful race relations are possible, and thus seek ways to find communication and peaceful progress? If you answered the former, you are currently part of the problem, and that can be changed by you starting at any moment to begin active, empathic listening. If you answered the latter, then you may be working towards a better way of life for everyone, including yourself and future generations.
Try being less selfish and egocentric and really listen to what someone else is saying beyond your own prejudices and biases. If you are comfortable with your prejudices and biases, realize you are part of the problem that holds humanity back from a peaceful evolution.
This does not just mean you that is currently reading this. It means everyone. If it is you that is contributing to the problem, admit that and attempt to change that.
If anyone would like to respond to this, I hope that they may present their perspective in an educated and civilized manner. Cursing, belittling, and outright bigotry are signs of ignorance and a lack of a fully formed progression of thought. The following steps may help you in communication after listening:
1.Take a minute to process the emotion you may feel beyond the initial reaction of anger or disgust. The first thing you say may be defensiveness or may be derived from a lifetime of bigotry.
2.Think of alternate ways of phrasing that may avoid negative progression, and that may transcend the bigotry you may hold within yourself and could lead to positive discussion that could improve the situation.
3. If you still feel the need to respond with anger and/or bigotry, realize you are nullifying any positive contribution and proving the opposite of what you think you are trying to prove.
Slice of Pisces
Welcome to USMB.
Interesting choice for a first thread and well written, too.
I read all of your OP -
twice.
That being said, you really broach two topics:
1.) Listening Skills
2.) Racism
The one topic is about a learned skill. The other is about an attitude, if you will.
I personally think you should have separated them. Racism is an explosive topic and many people who maybe, just maybe, are not racists at all, feel attacked when constantly confronted with the topic.
Also, your OP is very long, which can make it hard to "listen". Granted, I am preaching to the choir here, because sometimes I have created huge, epic threads, but they are based mostly on statistical data.
Now, on to "listening". I submit two thoughts, thoughts that should be interesting to everyone on ALL sides of the political/economic/cultural/ideological/religious spectrum.
1.) Part of the problem with "listening" on a web-forum is that we are actually seeing printed material and not actually "listening," at least not in the sense of our ears perceiving sound waves in their vicinity. But it goes deeper, into the science of "Spiegelneuronen" (Mirror-Neurons):
View attachment 32548
Mirror neuron - Wikipedia the free encyclopedia
A mirror neuron is a neuron that fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another.[1][2][3] Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of the other, as though the observer were itself acting.
In other words, if I am in the same room with a person discussing something and that person says something that I should "listen" to, my eyes are, through mirror-neurons, feeding the brain a lot more information in addition to the information gained from my ears. Whether people like to admit it or not, in the company of others, we are listening with more than just our ears. Sucessful businesspeople know this fact all too well. The Germans have a saying about food that I find quite applicable here and now:
"Die
Augen essen mit"
(The
eyes eat with...)
The phrase means that our perception of how delicious food is going to be and also how much we want to eat of said food is definitely influenced by
what our eyes see on the table and not just what our noses smell.
So, in a "conversation" on a web-forum, the option to be able to "listen" with one's eyes is currently non-existent. This means that what some people perceive as an
advantage of being anonymous is also a
distinct disadvantage. Now, some of us older members know each other very well, for we have seen the writing habits of our friends and detractors over a long time and can detect certain patterns and read a number of emotions into what a person writes, but even that is not really completely reliable without actually being in proximity of (to?) the person we want to "listen" to. The graphic above actually pretty much says it all. Take a look at the graphic for about 12 seconds and keep watching the neural pathways as depicted, first from left to right, then from right to left. Forget everything else for about 12 seconds.
2.) Language structure plays a role. German is one of those languages where, in the case of more than one verb,
the other verbs after the first one stack-up at the end of the sentence, also in the case of separable-prefix verbs. The very structure of a language like German (among other languages)
forces the listener to pay more attention because the most important information of all is often found in the very last word of a sentence, and not in the middle, as is more often than not the case with English. it is my observation, now that I have lived full-time in Germany for 17 years as of this month, that Germans tend to interrupt each other a lot less in the course of a conversation or a debate, not because they are somehow more polite than we Americans (they are not), but they practically have no choice in the matter.
In order to overcome this unintended structural deficit (and this is something I have learned in my profession), one trick is to take a 2-second breath before answering someone, and to take that breath though an open mouth and not through the nose. In the course of a physical conversation, one can sense when the last sentence of a "paragraph" is coming. Breathe during that other person's last sentence. This may sound crazy, but actually it is quite brilliant, for during the time in which a person is breathing in, he cannot - for all intents and purposes - speak. This applies to verbal conversation, but merely the thought of doing this can be very helpful in written conversation.
I would wager that that very many people have often seen an OP title that has already "set them off" even before having clicked on the thread and actually having read the content therein. And then, many don't even read the content to it's end, having already made a judgement that they don't like what they read. Though I can understand that these emotions can be strong, they are not helpful in actual debate, for studies have shown more than once that extreme emotions, esp. the base-emotions, in intensive bursts, especially surprise bursts, literally cut off higher brain functions for a short amount of time.
So, my suggestion is three-fold:
-Try to "see" the member who has written something you are reading. Visualize that you are seated at a table across from said person and you can see his/her mouth open and close while you read his/her input.
-Breath through an open mouth for 2 seconds when you get to the last sentence of an OP or a posting. And then breath again even before starting to respond.
-remember that extreme emotions often cloud judgement.
NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) has a core-concept:
Overcome doubt by doing something practical.
For this reason, I just submitted three very practical things to do.
Now, as for the part about racism and white-supremacy, I really feel that should have been a separate thread all on it's own, but that's just my sense on the subject.
Again, welcome to USMB, hope you have a good time here.
