Journal Article

Response to Mulvey and Richards

Parrillo, Vincent N.

2007

Overview

In this response to Mulvey & Richards assertions about the value of the Race Relations Project (RRP), the commentator argues that the approach of getting participants to move beyond the usual scripted responses & into unscripted dialogues in the world of race relations actually has layers of complexities of the impact what takes place. Although the commentator recognizes the difficulty of getting students to reconsider their position & recognize latent prejudices, the success of the RRP project in obtaining their goals rests heavily on the skills developed by the facilitators through training & channeling the discussion into productive conversations. The question of lasting impact of the projects on the participants after a single 90 minute session is related to the labor intensive project within the classroom & the challenge of reaching thousands of students. Perhaps the conversational approach of Mulvey & Richards will become more widespread as a means to get college students to understand one another more fully & stretch their cultural comfort zones. J. Harwell

• Publisher: Blackwell Publishing Ltd,Blackwell Publishing
• Subject: "The Forum" / Attitudes / Educational Programs / Group facilitation / Higher Education / Perception / Program Evaluation / Race / Race relations / Racial discrimination / Racial Relations / Racism / Students