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How do you get white men at your org to shut the fuck up and make space for other people? (hexbear.net)

submitted 3 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've had a few events so far where the discussion/feedback part had 1-2 white guys doing longgggg monologues about something unrelated to the main topic. Last time had some stoner guy ranting about the confusing service at airports here (the event was about Gaza). Before that it was some boomer guy trying to explain Madonna to the non-white teens in our group (the event was about trans rights). Sometimes it's just two white guys monologuing back and forth. It's super counter productive and cringe.

I'm just thinking of a hard rule. Like "if you're a white guy, you're welcome, but please try to listen more and keep unrelated monologues to a minimum."

For the record, I am a white dude.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 months ago

In my local org we have chaired meetings and a timer.

At the start we quickly decide which member will be the chair. Doesn't really matter who. If someone wants to say something, they have to raise their hand and the chair has to call on them before they can talk. Then they have 3 minutes to say their piece. The chair keeps track of the timer and also decides who speaks next, so if two people are dominating the discussion by going back and forth, the chair can choose to wait a moment to see if anybody who hasn't spoken yet wants to raise their hand. We do this for like 40 minutes and then go into informal discussion once it feels like we've run out of things to say.

At first I found this rigid and uncomfortable, but as soon as I attended a different org's meeting where they didn't have this policy, I wouldn't have it any other way. (Somebody talked about veganism for 45 minutes with long personal anecdotes, and everyone was too polite to tell him to shut up. And he wasn't even vegan.)