Speakers mostly delivered praise at a listening session Tuesday night following the Dublin Community Center, or DubHub’s, adoption of an antiracism policy. The forum was organized after the center’s Board of Directors received a “wide range of feedback from the community” after adopting their policy on antiracism on Sept. 8, according to May Clark, who moderated the hour-long session.
All but one speaker from among the 29 people attending the virtual session said they were glad the DubHub board had adopted a statement, and many expressed a desire to take antiracism efforts further in town. Dublin resident Grace Aldrich thanked other community members for participating in vigils for racial justice throughout the summer, and recommended they read an interview that writer Rebecca Carroll did with Yankee Magazine earlier in December about growing up Black in New Hampshire.
Other speakers expressed their desire that the statement and the town’s actions further emphasize harmony and unity, referencing the teachings of the Baha’i and Sikh faiths. Phil Gammons likened the statement to the foundation of the new DubHub addition: without it, the building would look very similar, but it would not endure.
“White privilege is a hard thing for people to recognize,” resident Sarah Doenmez said. “A lot of resistance gets generated by people feeling threatened and implicated. I agree… that we just have to begin, and I think this is a wonderful beginning.”
Speaker Margaret Gurney said she believed that most participants were in favor of the statement. “People in our town and the town over have experienced unpleasantness, which I find reprehensible,” she said, speaking to the negative experiences that local residents of color have described over the past year.
The listening session, which prohibited crosstalk, or directly responding to another participant, was punctuated with silences between speakers and ended on time. During one silence, Clark read a letter sent to the Board by Dave DeWitt, who didn’t attend the session but requested his letter to be read. DeWitt called the antiracism statement “Regressive, offensive, divisive, and a complete waste of time,” and announced he would never again vote to fund the DubHub at Town Meeting. Later in the meeting, after Clark encouraged any dissenters to speak, a participant identified as Rick described his skepticism upon first reading the statement.
“Why the community center chose to insert itself in this kind of discussion, when its purpose is to bring the community together, is beyond me,” he said. “You clearly have alienated a good portion of our community,” he said, describing the statement as “arrogant, condescending” and “offensive.”
Last year, Dublin residents approved $7,000 for the DubHub during Town Meeting, and $8,000 in 2019.
DubHub Board member Jim Guy said he was surprised to hear that some people thought the statement was political after they released it. “To call something that I consider to be true ‘political’ makes me think people are uncomfortable about what’s being said,” he said.
Other speakers said that, even though the work of antiracism is a human rights issue, the DubHub needs to acknowledge that the issue has been politicized and institutionalized.
“Whether the board intended it to be political or not is moot because a civil war was fought about it,” Allen Davis said, and that people taking offense to the acknowledgement of ongoing racial injustice “may be in denial.” He quoted James Baldwin, who once said that “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Participants later made suggestions for next steps the Dublin Community Center could take, which included a number of suggested readings, acknowledgement of Native American use of local lands, and hosting monthly discussions and activities aimed at helping participants recognize their level of privilege as compared to their peers. The DubHub board is scheduled to meet in early January, Clark said, and expected that they would discuss the listening session, which was recorded.
The statement on racism reads as follows:
“The Dublin Community Center recognizes and stands with the awakening recognition that violence – individual and systemic – towards Black people, Indigenous people and People of Color is unacceptable. We affirm that this is a human rights issue. We acknowledge that there is structural racism within our country, and as such, inherently present within our community. We acknowledge that privilege for our white community members exists at both the simple level of daily life and within our larger financial, governmental, educational and political institutions, and that this privilege, whether overtly or unconsciously expressed, is harmful for our BIPOC community members. We also recognize and respect that within our community there are differing opinions and expectations of how we move forward as part of this change that is happening in the larger world and here in our community. Recognizing that the strength and character of a community is not reflected in its harmony, but in how it addresses the complexity of its conflict, we pledge to serve as a safe space where healthy conversations can happen to address these conflicts and to support opportunities so that our community can consciously address and change all forms of racism.”