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Were there techniques you used to help you maintain your impartiality?
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Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
Anything more you can tell us about maintaining objectivity and
impartiality?
Answer:
Well, what I want to emphasize is the extraordinary difficulty for mediators who have any
sense of justice to come into a community conflict where racial, or civil rights issues are involved
and remain objective when they see clear violations of people’s rights. We’ve already said
there is no need to be neutral, but yet you want to be seen as objective and impartial by the
parties, certainly by the establishment party who is accused of perpetrating this violation of
rights. This is very hard, especially for younger, newer mediators. But with the passage of time
and by being Mediation in our behaviors, we tend to assume less, listen more carefully and
empathetically, get a better understanding of where parties are. It becomes easier and more
natural to be able to understand where a police chief, a mayor, or a school superintendent is
coming from. There’s not always malice as you sometimes tend to feel coming into a situation,
where there has been abuse of a youth in a school or by police. By understanding the broader
dimension of what that the police officer is facing, what that police chief or school
superintendent is facing, without excusing the behavior, but understanding it better and their
dilemma, wishing it hadn’t happened. That makes it a bit easier to be objective and at least
project yourself with greater objectivity.
| Leo Cardenas
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
did you
ever have a problem with maintaining your own objectivity, impartiality? I'm thinking in terms
of if you were ever involved in cases with hate groups, KKK, something like that? Were there
times when it was difficult for you to be involved?
Answer:
Yeah, the very nature of who we are, a majority of our staff are minorities and we
hire them for that and we all come with a baggage. Baggage because we held offices with
certain organizations, or we've been ministers in some cases, and teachers.
Question:
I'm sure there were cases where you weren't able to pull in other people to assist you all the
time. So what types of things did you do? What techniques did you use to maintain your
impartiality when you weren't able to just bring someone in and have them take over?
Answer:
I think the general route that we would take is that we would begin to withdraw as quickly
and honorably as we could. There comes a time when a light goes up and it says I can no longer
be of service, and we will begin to identify other people that can serve that dispute.
Bob Hughes
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
In this particular case did you ever have a
problem maintaining your objectivity or impartiality?
Answer:
I'm sure I did.
Question:
Do you remember specifically on what issues?
Answer:
Not offhand, I just sit there and bite my tongue. As I point out to them, in the role of the
mediator, I may have some feelings, I may have some strong feelings about the right and wrong
of what one side is doing. If I state what that is and act in such a way in chairing these sessions,
if I seem to be favoring one side or the other, then the other side has one more person on their
side and there's no mediator. Therefore, regardless of my feelings, I am of use only if I try to be
as objective as possible, and my personal feelings don't have anything to do with
it.
Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
Did you ever have a problem retaining your
objectivity when you were involved in a conflict?
Answer:
I probably did, but I do not remember it happening. If it happened it was not often. Maybe
if my skin was a different color, or my experience was a little different I’d have more difficulty
maintaining my objectivity, but I can’t remember a case where I lost my objectivity.
Question:
What about the Nazis?
Answer:
No, that was not a problem. I never took them that seriously as a threat to anything. I tried
to be empathic. I had no sympathy for them or what they were doing, but it never prevented me,
I think, from doing my work objectively. That doesn’t mean I didn’t try to advocate a just
resolution by helping to empower a racial minority group by, for example, helping it to prepare
for a negotiation when they wanted that kind of counsel and if I thought it appropriate.
Question:
Would you work this hard to help the Nazis?
Answer:
I doubt it. That was an exceptional case. I think you obviously lean and bend with who you
are, and people in CRS are compassionate and have a high sense of justice and an outrage at
injustice, so that’s going to effect your behavior. And yet you have to find that middle ground,
if that’s what it is where you can work. If you can’t work in the middle, you have to do other
kinds of work to fill your needs.
Question:
Aside from Skokie was your impartially ever challenged?
Answer:
Oh I’m sure. I don’t remember.
Question:
To your face? Were you accused?
Answer:
Not in a formal mediation, but I can’t imagine that over the years and all the things I
interacted with that someone wouldn’t say, You aren’t fair, you’re not impartial.” But that
happened often. It may well have happened more with my staff, but we fought those things out
internally. That’s natural, I think. Everybody had a high sense of justice and we were all torn
by the need to bring about justice and to have the group get what it could, maximize its gains.
Nancy
Ferrell
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
Did you do anything else to deal with power disparities between groups?
Answer:
This was something that I used to talk about with all the parties. The CRS mediator became
the fulcrum on this power beam, and I may need to move toward one group or another to keep
the balance. We used pre-mediation for coaching and guiding, so as to make it productive when
we did get together. This way, we had some substance there and not just emotions. I don't ever
want people to think I'm diminishing their emotions. Those are a significant part of it and they
need to be shared. But, if you're going to create systemic change, you have to go beyond that.
You need to determine where those emotions are coming from and what systems can be managed
or changed in order to create positive emotions. I may need to move closer to one group or the
other, but that's why I'm doing it. The only danger is if you don't let everybody know that you're
doing it, then one group hears about it, and thinks that you're advocating or becoming aligned
with that group. You have to be real careful that the group doesn't perceive you as an advocate,
but that they know you're coaching and helping for the purpose of everybody. You're offering
that same level of service wherever it's needed.
| Leo Cardenas
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
How did you retain your impartiality while helping to level the playing field, or prepare the
parties for negotiation?
Answer:
We identified neutrality (impartiality) as part of the process and a part of the services that we
provide. We began using the word impartiality, if my memory again serves me, at about the late
1980's when we began to focus more on table negotiations and looking more at written
negotiations. Up until
that time, we were doing shuttle diplomacy. We've always felt very comfortable about what we
were doing and we had that innate ability to maintain neutrality with both parties. It is only
when we looked at it more deeply and we were looking at table negotiations we decided that it's
really not true that we're neutral. You're neutral for the
process, but you bring certain skills and talents and in certain cases, even your race, and that
cannot be neutral.
What we say in our training is that if you put a vehicle in neutral, it doesn't
go anyplace. It's only when you put it in reverse or put it up on drive that it goes. So, we have a
history on this issue. In table negotiations, we explain to the parties that if at any
one time they feel that we have crossed the line of impartiality in any way whatsoever, then they
need to point that out to us. Once we do that, it doesn't come into the picture that often, or if it
comes into the picture, it is on a one-on-one basis. Because they happen to have a different
agenda. And so, we're
able to quickly learn that it was not our impartiality that was an issue. It was something else that
was an issue.
Efrain
Martinez
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
And just like you were
saying, "I'm Hispanic, right," so the other side would think I'm
biased toward Hispanics. But it was a way of asking the question
that does not convey a bias. It's a neutral question and it
comes back with what information you need. Instead of saying,
"Oh that's a beautiful sky, the sky is blue and it's got some
white." Well that's my opinion, I would say, "What do you think
about the sky?" Or, "A lot of people think the sky is blue." So
it's not me anymore, it's a lot of people, it's somebody else.
Then I'm still clean as to my position. It encourages that
person to give you their perception without my influencing what
he/she is going to tell me.
And even just the other day I was dealing with some Native
Americans in Houston, talking to one of the tribal leaders. I
thought I was being cautious, but then my friend, who is Native
American and who I've been working with, was with me and he told
me later I should ask the question and then wait for the answer.
Don't interrupt. Because those elders are on a different time
frame so they're thinking about the response they're going to
give you. If you get too anxious for them to talk or if you feel
like you're wasting their time, then it takes them off what they
were going to say. So you can never get really what they're
going to tell you or the answers to whatever you're asking them.
More than anything when you deal with different cultures, you
have to understand how they absorb information, what is the pace
that they work in. So he told me I should wait for the answer,
and I should not look at them so much, because they're not going
to look back at me. And just let them answer, don't interrupt
them.
I remember meeting with the Vietnamese back in the fishing
days, but much later, a new guy had taken over leadership of the
fishermen. But they were having problems with the FCC. The
Vietnamese were communicating in the emergency channels and
playing music and talking in Vietnamese. The problem is that
some of the channels are tied into repeaters, which can broadcast
all over the gulf or into the Indian Ocean through repeaters and
relay's. So the Vietnamese were jumping into those and they were
talking locally. But they're being heard in Russia and India,
and jamming the emergency channels. The FCC complained so we talked
to the Vietnamese about that and we came up with a training
program. I met with the Vietnamese fishing leader. Had a dinner
with him and a friend, who had helped me with interpreting and
translations for many years, and I told this fishing leader that
we were going to have a seminar and we needed to invite the
previous Vietnamese leader, who I worked with a lot.
The next day my friend calls and says that the new leader
doesn't want to invite that old leader. I said, "Well, I already
called him and left a message for him that we're going to have
this workshop and that he should be there." He says, "No, he
doesn't want him there." I said, "Why didn't he tell me? We
were there having dinner talking about it." He says, "He
considers you too much of a friend to upset you and contradict
whatever you're saying. Because it's discourteous to disagree
with your friend." In our culture, friends say anything
they like. You can tell him/her whatever. There you respect
your friendship, and I said, "Now I'm in hot water, I've got to
disengage myself from already inviting the other guy. If he had
told me then I would not have even started the invitation. What
should I have done?" He said, "You should've explained the
problem the way you saw the problem and asked, would a workshop
be okay? Who should be invited?" In other words he would come
up with who should come. But in that culture, the friendship got
in the way, and it should be the opposite. So we learned.
Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
Do you portray yourself as neutral when you talk to the groups?
Answer:
No one expects you to portray yourself as neutral if you come into a situation where
everybody knows there are inequities. It’s not necessary if you can project yourself as
objective, understanding, and empathic. We were called upon to help communities resolve
problems, and empowering is part of that. You could do that legitimately and appropriately
without violating your objectivity or impartiality. You bend and you lean, but I think everybody
understands that.
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