Day 4 / Diversity of Voices, inspired by Fratelli Tutti, Chapter 6: “Dialogue and Friendship in Society” / February 25, 2021
From Loretta Sanchez
Related Media
II. General Natures of Race and Racism
with Gisela Reyes, St. Mary’s University alumna and Ph.D. candidate at Northwestern University; José Medina, Ph.D., Walter Dill Scott Professor of Philosophy, Northwestern University; Charles Mills, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the Graduate Center, CUNY
Personal/Spiritual Reflection Questions
Take a few minutes to reflect on the discussion and how it affected you. Take stock of how things made you feel. What was your general feeling listening to the discussion? Were there parts that you reacted to more strongly than others? If so, what are those parts? Once cataloged, ask yourself what those reactions might reveal to you, and why you may have reacted as you did. How do you think other people reacted to various parts of the discussion, why? Talk about these and how they help us appreciate the depth to which racism shapes our experiences of the world, all of us. What other examples, beyond the panel, can you speak to about how we tend to react to things differently in relation to race?
What connections do you see between the two panels? Do any of the philosophical notions of racism in the Race and Racisms panel sound familiar? In what ways?
What did you learn about race and racism in San Antonio from the panel focused on San Antonio? Did the panel give you a different perspective on our city?
Pope Francis notes in Fratelli Tutti that “If we want to encounter and help one another, we have to dialogue,” and both of these panels take the form of conversations. In what ways might “persistent and courageous dialogue,” as the Pope puts it, serve to create a more just world?
In the Race in San Antonio panel, the panelists discussed how the histories of Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) is in important ways unlike those of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Where HBCUs have traditionally discussed race in campus affairs and had broad representation of minorities in faculty and administration, the same is not often the case for HSIs. To what extent has your experience with StMU been informed by its being a Hispanic Serving Institution? Can you point to ways in which the institution does well in that capacity, places where it falls short of living up to that promise? What efforts should the university and members of its community take to do better in and around embracing both its own history and in doing justice to the lives of people? In your experience, does the university or people within the university tend to place more emphasis on marketability than on what Dr. Medina (in the Race and Racisms panel) calls activism? How might the University’s priorities be judged in relation to imbalances in where and how it chooses to spend its resources?
Conference on Justice and Social Concerns
The Conference on Justice and Social Concerns provides our campus community with the opportunity to engage with issues of social justice, faith, and personal and communal responsibility to the common good.
The 2021 Conference on Justice and Social Concerns, sponsored by the St. Mary’s University Center for Catholic Studies, is inspired by Fratelli Tutti: Encyclical Letter on Fraternity and Social Friendship by Pope Francis. Pope Francis’ third encyclical is centered on the major themes of service, charity, economic justice and political love, and is framed by his close friendship and experiences with the Grand Imam Ahmad al-Tayyeb of the Islamic university and mosque Al-Azhar in Egypt.
Each day of the Conference will feature pre-recorded presentations and panel discussions centering on the themes presented in Fratelli Tutti and linking them to the Marianist mission and charism. Panels will premiere on the University website each morning and are pre-recorded unless otherwise indicated. The Lin Lecture will be presented in real-time via Zoom and livestream.
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