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Fishbowl Reflection

Fishbowl Reflection
Josh DeKlotz
LDRS 315
Gonzaga University Comprehensive Leadership Program
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Fishbowl Reflection
This Fishbowl discussion person of interest was John Heers, the founder of the First

Things Foundation. The First Things Foundation aims to “heal what ails wealthy westerners as a

mechanism for serving the poorest.” As a Peace-Corps-like foundation, First Things sends its

agents to foreign countries to live among the native people for an extended period in the hopes of

creating connection and relationship among people capable of stimulating local change. The

foundation was created in response to an observation of “White Savior Complex” or Noblesse

Oblige in the Ignatian sense. The foundation seeks to foster genuine human connection based on

humility and understanding, hopefully leading to networking that then leads to physical change

in the community, and spiritual change/healing in the agents.

Despite the seemingly overwhelmingly positive impact the founder of this organization

has had on others worldwide, my fellow CLP members were left unsatisfied and turned off to

Heers’ leadership discussion. Many people in the audience felt that a few of his comments about

race in America undermined their experiences of discrimination. I was genuinely surprised at the

end of the talk when I saw some of my fellow classmates in tears and stating that they didn’t

know why they were even in this program (this points to a bigger issue I discuss later on). While

I found a few of the things about race he said to be problematic, upon reflection, I realized I was

not holding Heers to the same standard I would someone I knew or expected to be sensitive to

racial considerations of American culture. While I think he was reductive and undermining of the

discrimination that occurs in America due to the tendency of people to primarily see and judge

people on their skin color and should have known his audience, I also think that he is entitled to

have a paradigm of race that expands beyond the scope of American norms.

Although I have the privilege of not experiencing difficult emotions when certain

comments are said, I think it is the job of all competent leaders to try to step outside the box and
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Fishbowl Reflection
meet other people as human beings even when you may be turned off to them or they say

something you disagree with, however hard it may be. I really did empathize with the members

of my class who were hurt by his comments. People are affected in a very intimate and identity-

centered way every day in America. I try to understand how people feel alienated and othered in

their everyday lives and try to understand how those realities affect people in everyday life. I

realize I am perpetually ignorant to how discrimination affects people daily, but I would still like

to be heard, and I would still like to do whatever I can to help my classmates and build an

inclusive culture in the CLP community.

It was clear to me that this speaker was not living the same American/PNW/Gonzaga life

as I am. To me, it felt like Heers had a completely different paradigm of what race means in

social structures than all of us have. It seemed like throughout his years traveling, living abroad,

and running his organization, he had developed a “more global” understanding of race, when all

of us are living an American reality of race based on our unique American history of race

relations over the last 300 years. It seemed like his political incorrectness and insensitive

comments did not stem from the intent to undermine, but from the culture and reality he lives

around the world. I do not and will never understand the cultural norms that Heers has lived and

how race is seen in other parts of the World. Heers stated that to him, race doesn’t matter/exist.

He stated that he thinks culture exists and is real, which is a combination of language, ethnic

group, and religious tradition among other things. Culture has existed for thousands of years,

while race (color) in America has only been around for 300. When he undermined the impact of

race in America, it seemed as if he was stating that the American understanding of Race (simply

viewing color) is wrong, outdated, and an incorrect way of thinking about social structures. In

America, race is reduced to color. On documents, there is not box that asks what your cultural
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Fishbowl Reflection
background is—you must check a box next to a certain color to identify yourself. Cultural groups

are based around color, rather than ethnicity, language, and religion, which is the way it is

structured in many other places around the world. It was apparent that Heers thought this notion

of race in America was silly, simply because he had experienced a different understanding of

cultural difference in his travels. He was not intentionally trying to undermine the discrimination

that occurs in America. Makenna herself asked this question and Heers agreed that he believes

that racial discrimination in America affects people in a very real and unique way, but he

stressed that this idea was bigger on the global scale. He seemed to dismiss American race

relations because he dismisses our understanding of race as primitive and silly. To him, race is

not a good indicator of a person’s Telos. Things like culture, religion, language, family, and

ethnicity are far better indicators, which is harder to understand in our melting pot America

where colors become cultures. Reflecting upon Heers’ words and who he is as a person and his

background, it made more and more sense why he was ignorant to the social norms about

discussing race in America. It seemed like he grew up in a place where everyone was white, and

no one cared to think about race. Growing up, no one was there to tell him that just because he

advocates for the MLK lounge at his school, loved black culture, and married a black woman, it

doesn’t give him the right to speak as though race doesn’t affect people in adverse ways. He then

spent most of his life abroad living as a minority in Mali, Haiti, etc. For all of this time, he was

away from America learning a different way of classifying people and experiencing a life so

different that I couldn’t even imagine. I don’t think white privilege works in quite the same way

in Mali and Haiti as it does in the United States (though I could be wrong about this). My best

guess is that Heers learned to be “colorblind” and not see color through the span of his life and in

his line of work, but upon returning to America and the PNW, it is clear that being “colorblind”
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Fishbowl Reflection
doesn’t fly here. In America, we strive to recognize differences and the obstacles that race can

present and seek to break down those obstacles by building relationship and allyship.

In conclusion, I don’t think Heers had the experience or credibility to lead a discussion

about race in America at our CLP fishbowl. Obviously, he did not plan to be discussion points

about race in America during his time with us, but it came up and his lack of understanding of

American norms showed. While I do think he should have tread more carefully around how he

discussed race in America, I don’t think his ignorance to norms in America discredits anything

he had to say about his foundation, his leadership style, or his general wisdom about the world

(which I think he has quite a bit of). I think a discussion needs to be had about why members of

CLP didn’t push back on his ideas. As leaders, if something is said that we don’t think should be

allowed to sit in a room, we need to meet the other as an equal, step out of the box, and address

it. In the end, these were words simply said by someone who wasn’t attuned to our cultural

norms and was politically incorrect by our standards. It reminded some people of the hurt, pain,

oppression, and otherness they feel every day, but what can we do in response other than discuss

and reinforce values of diversity, inclusion, love, comfort for our peers, acceptance, and work

towards a society in which racial othering and discrimination doesn’t exist. I think that is what is

going to happen and should happen at the upcoming discussions. One thing I want to learn is

why there were feelings so extreme that people wondered why they were even in CLP. I

understand that people felt extremely offended and undermined by the speaker, but I don’t

understand the sentiments of wanting the leave the program because of some things someone

said who is not associated with the program. I hope to gain some understanding in that regard,

but for now, that is about where I stand on this Fishbowl.