Civility in Our Conversations About Race and Culture
/Excerpts from the Article
By Judge Mary I. Yu
...The practice of civility permits us to listen with our hearts to the experiences of others; to comprehend the feeling of alienation and of being an outsider. Civility calls us to step outside of our own lived experience and to engage in a sincere exploration of another through the simple art of listening before speaking. Civility challenges us to reflect and ponder upon what we have heard before making a judgment. Civility calls us to a state of compassion and empathy. An active and civil engagement about a difficult topic such as race would also permit us to reveal our own biases, share our unfamiliarity of traditions and practices, and expose our ignorance of certain facts without causing personal pain to another...
About the Author
Judge Mary I. Yu has been on the King County Superior Court since 2000. She is the Washington State Superior Court Judges’ Association representative to the Judicial Division of the American Bar Association, a member of the Superior Court Judges’ Association Civil Law and Procedure Committee (for which she was chair from 2005 to 2008), and past-president of the Judge Dwyer American Inn of Court, Seattle Chapter.