This fall, Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) athletics implemented new trainings titled “A Long Talk About the Uncomfortable Truth” aimed at cultivating an anti-racist culture and strengthening department-wide community.
Created in 2020 by Kyle Williams, A Long Talk focuses on the simple formula that “information plus empathy equals action.” By semester’s end, all 550+ P-P student-athletes, as well as coaches and staff, will have participated in the A Long Talk training series. Centered around the 80-minute video “History of Race in America,” A Long Talk, which takes place over multiple sessions, employs presentations, discussions and response posts to combat widespread ignorance.
“It’s a real simple formula of connecting the dots between people who might have a good heart, but might not know about a bunch of stuff,” Williams said in an interview with TSL. “Or they might have read a book and got some information, but they don’t have the passion behind them to want to go do something. And so what we do is keep connecting the dots with people like that and put them in a community to do this work together.”
Dr. Danielle Lynch, P-Ps’ new director of athletics and chair of physical education, described how her doctoral research on Black male athletes from 2013-2023 — “the decade from Trayvon Martin to George Floyd”— led her to A Long Talk as a platform that could elevate the voices of athletes whose needs were being ignored.
“[Black] athletes were at the center of conversations about performance, protest and identity, but they were rarely the ones being listened to,” Lynch wrote in email correspondence with TSL. “They were asked to perform at the highest level and represent movements at the same time, mostly without support. A Long Talk is built on the opposite idea: that the work starts with creating space where people can actually talk and be heard.”
Last March, TSL published an opinion piece titled “Pomona College has a racism problem,” which began by outlining a pattern of racist conduct within the P-P Athletic Department.
A Long Talk aims to have their training not only promote anti-racism, but create a stronger athletic community. Williams, with a touch of humor, pointed to the national championship pedigree A Long Talk has influenced. A year after working with UCLA women’s basketball — the only Division I women’s basketball team to go through A Long Talk programming — the team won the national championship. UCLA is one of many championship teams to utilize A Long Talk. P-P hopes to be the next in the line of success.
“The impact of these conversations, whether they’re proactive or reactive, they’re putting down a foundation,” Williams said. “I think people have a chance to own it and say, ‘this, we like the way this feels. This feels way better than the other stuff. I want to focus on athletics. I want to focus on academics. I want to focus on relationships. And if we can get the rest of the bullshit out of here, then we can really focus and be really good.’”
Lynch said that the impact of A Long Talk goes well beyond just reforming anti-racist standards, emphasizing that the anti-racism training offers athletes and staff a “shared language” that carries over into their everyday interactions.
“What I value just as much is what it does for community more broadly,” Lynch wrote. “Teams are built on trust, and trust comes from people feeling seen and being willing to tell each other the truth. How we create space, who we invite into the conversation, and whether people feel safe enough to be honest are not soft skills. They are the work.”
“Teams are built on trust, and trust comes from people feeling seen and being willing to tell each other the truth,” Lynch said. “How we create space, who we invite into the conversation, and whether people feel safe enough to be honest are not soft skills. They are the work.”
Though mostly garnering positive reactions, students noted that A Long Talk did not come without its faults. In one training, the session leader attempted to engage in an example of their CPR — Clarify, Probe, and Redirect — protocol with a student-athlete. During the conversation, the mood escalated when a training leader made a “personal insult” toward the student-athlete’s appearance, which drew condemnation from both the other student-athletes in the room and the other training leader, according to P-P track athlete Rhiannon Root PO ’29. Root is a board member of Pomona-Pitzer Athletic Culture Transformation (PPART), a group of student-athletes who came together last semester aiming towards department reform.
Despite previously saying that the student-athletes should excuse themselves when CPR is unsuccessful in stopping ignorance, the leader defended himself, saying that “sometimes if the ignorant person isn’t backing down, you have to meet them where they’re at,” according to Root.
Root also said that some students felt like they were being forced to accept certain ideas or were having their opinions silenced, though she pushed back on that sentiment of silencing.
“I think this was how it was supposed to be,” she said. “Conversations about race and ignorance are not easy, but they need to happen. Many student-athletes at Pomona-Pitzer are ignorant because they’ve never had these conversations. The more ignorant you are, the harder it can be to learn, but that is what made A Long Talk so powerful.”
A Long Talk’s influence has begun to spread beyond the athletic department. This summer, the program began previewing similar training sessions with Pomona faculty. Pomona has since implemented A Long Talk for RA’s, Sponsors, Campus Advocacy Resource Education and Support advocates, Cultural Communities Mentor Program mentor groups and all first-year students.
“[CPR’s] easy-to-remember and low-confrontation approach makes it a great framework for many settings,” Brandon Jackson, associate dean of students for student development and leadership, wrote in email correspondence with TSL. “It’s also best used as a bystander framework, empowering community members with tools to identify and address concerning behavior within their friend circles and other peer groups, which can be effective in addressing bias in smaller, discreet settings before it spreads and causes more harm.“
CPR is the part of the A Long Talk training that was most impactful, according to multiple students interviewed by TSL. Root said CPR protocol made her question her conflict resolution skills, and when implemented, vastly improved her ability to notice and respond to difficult situations.
“I consider myself a pretty good speaker,” Root said. “I have lived in places with their very different political orientations and views, and I’ve learned how to talk to people around me who I don’t agree with. However, the CPR protocol brought something to me that I didn’t even realize I didn’t have in my toolbox, which was the ability to question and explain to others that I don’t agree with without attacking them.”
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