Stefanie Senior, left, was one of the students in Race and Racism in America. Gargoyle photo by Rachel Harmon (click to enlarge)

Mikhail Lyubansky addresses Uni students during the school's culture panel in October. Gargoyle photo by Anna Gooler (click to enlarge)

IT'S THIRD PERIOD on the first day of Agora Days. I’m late and sweaty coming back from Girls Basketball class, but I finally arrive in Room 109 for Race and Racism in America.

I am greeted by a classroom full of a lot of subbies and teacher Mikhail Lyubansky, standing at the front of the room with his assistant, Natasha Watkins.

I remember Lyubansky, a clinical psychologist and lecturer at the University of Illinois, from the Uni cultural/racial/ethnic identity panel in October, and I recall the sense of humor that he maintained while talking about an issue so serious.

We start off by writing about our fears, anxieties, and hopes for this class. The majority of the people don’t have a pencil or paper. Even though I am unprepared as well, I am excited to write about what I am already thinking.

After a few people share their comments and we have a brief introduction by Lyubansky, we start watching a documentary called “The Color of Fear.” I have never seen or even heard of this film, so my mind is wide open as to what could happen.

The “Color of Fear,” directed by Lee Mun Wah, features eight North American men of different races, in a room for a weekend discussing race relations and issues in America. The movie was released in 1994; however, I think it still has great relevance 14 years later.

When we walked out of that room on the first day of Agora Days everyone was a bit more quiet than when they had walked in. The documentary was stunning. Even if I didn’t agree with everything that was being said, it was amazing and shocking to see all of these ideas about racism brought up openly, with people who didn’t all belong to the same race.

I think what shook people up the most was the raw emotion in the verbalized frustration of one of the eight men, Victor. A black man, he began talking about “when white, American, and human become synonymous.”

At first he started off calmly, but as he continued he got angrier and angrier until he was yelling so violently that no one in the movie was moving; they were barely even breathing.

Neither were we.

The whole time he was yelling, I could feel my muscles contracting in the way they do when you feel fear, anger, or a combination of the two. I found myself inviting the anger in as something that had boiled beneath the surface within me and was now emerging, but not from me.

Some people didn’t have the same reaction. I remember someone being appalled, stunned into silence, but watching the film was an experience that, at least on me, had a definite impact.

What I loved was that Victor wasn’t talking in a quiet and silenced way; he was talking in such a way that people in the room couldn't avert their attention, no matter how much they wanted to.

This scene aroused a feeling of uncomfortableness that I think is necessary to discuss realistically and truthfully issues that are so “touchy.” This is what stood out to me the most about the class.

Periodically Lyubansky would pause the movie and let us raise our hands in discussion. He would ask thought-provoking questions that warranted an answer, even if we didn’t necessarily answer.

The class was nowhere near boring, and this was just the first day.

The next day was a little bit different. There was less writing and more talking; the remaining days continued in a similar pattern. We held discussions, we watched a great documentary, and never once were we told what to think about anything.

Lyubansky forced me to do a couple of things that I had never done; one of them was to define race. I never really came up with a coherent definition, but on that first day Lyubansky told us a story.

The story was about a chicken. The chicken was sent to a plastic surgeon and given the right feathers, posture, leg placement, etc. to look identically like a duck.

The chicken-turned-duck was then sent to a speech coach and taught how to quack like a duck. Then the duck was sent to a walking coach and taught how to walk and swim exactly like a duck.

Ignoring the questions of whether it could reproduce like a duck or if it was genetically still a duck, Lyubansky asked us if it was a duck.

I think that was his way of giving us a definition — and his way of keeping us thinking.