Dr. Ximena Zúñiga, a faculty member at UMass Amherst in the College of Education, is a leader of social justice education in higher education. Dr. Zúñiga’s article, co-written with Biren (Ratnesh) Nagda, is titled “Fostering Meaningful Racial Engagement Through Intergroup Dialogues.” Within this article, intergroup dialogue is defined as “a facilitated, face-to-face encounter that strives to create new levels of understanding, relating, and action between two or more social identity groups who have a history of conflict or potential conflict.” 

For the integrative experience aspect of the Spanish major, I decided to enroll in a civic engagement course. On the UMass Amherst Civic Engagement & Service-Learning web page, there is a list of all the different courses that fall under this category. When I was browsing this list, the Education 202 course named, “Social Issues in Intergroup Dialogue” caught my attention because it was offered through the education department. When I was a freshman, I explored the possibility of majoring in education. Although I did not end up going down that path, the prerequisite classes to the education major through the education department that I took were some of the most interesting and engaging courses I have taken at UMass. Therefore it really excited me to see that the education department offered civic engagement & service-learning opportunities. Additionally, the course description talked about exploring cultural differences and common ground. Since culture is often discussed in my other Spanish courses, I thought this specific civic engagement & service-learning course would be the most helpful as my integrative experience. 

To be openly candid, I consider this course to be one of the hardest courses I have taken throughout my college experience. The physical work – papers, homeworks, etc. was not what made the course so challenging. Instead the challenge for me came in the participation aspect. From the very beginning of the course we were asked to share very deep and personal experiences regarding our racial and social identities. The first few weeks of the course were focussed on understanding what intergroup dialogue was, and how dialogue differed from discussion and debate. We learned and practiced skills used in dialogue such as: empathetic and active listening; using silence; and “calling in” instead of “calling out.” After adding these new skills to our arsenals, we began to dialogue about different “hot” topics. For example the two topics I felt like I gained the most from were “Diversity at UMass” and “Diversity Across Different Majors.” After dialoging about these topics with a racially and ethnically diverse group of UMass students, I felt as though I walked away with a better understanding of the environment and community I am currently a part of because I listened to my peers’ opinions and perspectives. 

In addition to meeting once a week, Educ. 202 has one Saturday session. Prior to this day-long session, we were each required to prepare a “testimonial.” A testimonial is basically a way for us to convey our own stories in our own words. We were allowed to write and share about any personal experiences we had throughout our lives that shaped or influenced our understanding of ourselves as people of our races and ethnicities. During the Saturday session we each read these testimonials out-loud to the group. Preparing my testimonial allowed me to do a lot of self reflecting and examine certain memories that influenced how I think about my racial identity. Reading my testimonial to the entire class made me nervous, however when I finished I felt proud of myself. Additionally, I felt proud of each one of my classmates. All of us shared very personal experiences and thoughts. It was inspiring that we were collectively learning about one another and the individual experiences we had with our own races and ethnicities. 

Another large assignment of this course is the “Intergroup Collaboration Project.” The course instructor creates small groups of about 3-4 students. These groups are a mix of students of different genders, races, and ethnicities. The groups were given freedom to make the project geared toward a topic they are interested in and take actions that excite them. My group decided to address racism in Zoom classes. All the members of my group, including myself, were interested in learning if members of the UMass community felt as though there was privilege and oppression in online learning spaces. This topic was also interesting to us since practically all classes at UMass last semester and the prior semester were online. We interviewed undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty members at UMass with a list of questions about online learning that we had collaboratively created together. We then presented what we found in our interviewees answers to the class in our final Intergroup Collaboration Project presentation. I found these presentations insightful. It was interesting how other groups navigated their projects and what they discovered. 

The last meetings of this course were devoted to how to make changes going forward. Throughout the course we dived into the meaning of privilege and oppression, and we discussed how institutions in society play a role in oppression of certain racial groups, while lifting other races up. It can be overwhelming thinking about how difficult it can be to make a change in the cycle of privilege and oppression. Therefore, our course instructors helped us understand that it all begins with small changes and how those small changes still hold great impact. I believe for me, the first step in working towards change was enrolling in a course like Educ. 202 to become fully aware of my understanding of my own race, along with privilege and oppression of other races. 

As Spanish and Portuguese majors, I believe we are more inclined to work in careers and situations post-graduation in which we are communicating with people who are from a different country or practice a different culture from our own. After taking this course, I now feel as though I can communicate more compassionately and effectively in these types of situations, even if the subject of communication may be difficult or controversial. I do not believe taking a course on intergroup dialogue is only beneficial for language majors – I would recommend this course to any UMass student regardless of what major they are pursuing. 

Although this civic engagement course pushed me outside of my comfort zone, I am so grateful for the skills, confidence, and relationships I gained from it. I am more confident in my abilities to talk about race, ethnicity, and other topics that are considered difficult or uncomfortable to talk about. I encourage all students to enroll in the Intergroup Dialogue course to become more comfortable sharing opinions and ideas on their own racial identities and how privilege, bias and oppression affect these identities. This ability to engage in open dialogue is a timeless skill.

Here is the link to the UMass CESL courses: https://www.umass.edu/cesl/courses#/classes