Defusing Tense Situations

Today's topic for contention was race and ethnicity. It was heated indeed. While I believed there is a reason for allocating the entire lecture to one social construct, probably for more discussions, yet heated arguments that had some link (or at least how I feel) to personal issues came up, not once, not twice but thrice. Well, obviously the prof would be experienced in dealing with situations as such, and so with mediation, facilitation and wrapping up did the discussion end okay. But phew, the tense atmosphere... was too much to take, or at least too much in a class setting. Or perhaps I'm not ready for such situations - or I just didn't fancy it one bit.

Maybe I'm being watched or something so I shouldn't tread too much into the racial issue. But perhaps we can all take a step back to just reflect about what happened today, you know, sociological imagination, if I matched the correct definition to the correct term. Can we just have peaceful discussions for the last 2 days of lectures?
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Not Alone

I found out that I'm not alone with those short bursts of distractions. (: