LEWISTON — Consider the dialogue wide open.

Inside the Lewiston High School gymnasium Thursday night, a dozen people seated in a circle threw wadded-up balls of paper toward a recycling bin.

Most missed, but a few were right on target.

It sounds like goofing off at school, but the symbolism of the game couldn’t be more profound, especially when one took into account the position of those who managed to hit the mark.

“It was probably somewhat easier,” said sophomore Amanda Alberde, “for the people in the front half of the circle.”

The front half of the circle was nearest to the recycling bin, which greatly favored those who were seated there.

Welcome to the complex issue of privilege.

“Would you say that it was kind of unfair that I put some people in the front?” Alberde asked the group, composed of students, adults, whites, blacks and those of other races. “The people in front didn’t recognize that they had privilege, but those in the back recognized what they lacked.”

The analogy, like a few of those crinkled balls of paper, was right on target. The people in the group understood at once and the conversation began.

“Recognizing privilege would be the first step toward dismantling the system,” one student said.

Some people expressed frustration because the only sense of racial discrimination they had felt came from the fact that they are white. These people had privilege, they admitted, although they had not asked for it.

Alberde was ready for them. She gestured to those seated closest to the recycling bin, who had not asked to be placed there.

“They didn’t necessarily do anything wrong,” she said. “They were just working toward their goal.”

Murmurs of understanding rippled around the circle. The same kinds of conversations were underway among four other groups, each tackling a specific concept: privilege, discrimination, stereotypes and the weighty issue of “Black Lives Matter” versus “All Lives Matter.”

The interactive forum was organized and led by students. It came about in large part because of controversies in far-flung parts of the country. The killing of an unarmed black teenager by a white policeman in Ferguson, Mo.; the chokehold death of a black man by a white policeman in New York City; and the often-violent protests that sprang from those events.

“These things happened nationally,” said Paula Gerencer, a civil rights educator at LHS. “And the kids wanted to be a part of it. A community dialogue came out of that.”

There was dialogue, all right. Superintendent Bill Webster said when those controversies flared up around the country, he fielded dozens of emails and phone calls from within Maine and more than a few from without.

He began to notice one troubling trend.

“Regardless of which side they were on,” Webster said of those who contacted him, “they already had their mind made up.”

Those kinds of preconceptions were to be avoided Thursday night. With nearly 100 people breaking off into groups, Webster had some solid advice for them: Pay attention to what others are saying. Keep the mind open.

“If we can listen and understand what goes on around us,” Webster said, “we’ll be in a much better position to have a dialogue.”

Message received. At a table where a dozen or so were prepared to discuss the intricacies of discrimination, high school senior Muna Mohamed started them off with a series of questions: Have you ever felt bullied because of your race? Have you ever felt threatened? Targeted? Frightened? Have you ever felt you were privileged because of your racial background?

Every person in the group scribbled at least one check mark to denote an answer of yes. Some had scrawled as many as seven.

One Lewiston woman said she believed she was passed over for jobs because she is multi-racial. A white girl, a high school student, said she was comfortable with her race but not comfortable with the attitudes of some of her peers. Another student, a young Somali woman, said people of other races often assume that she doesn’t speak English. When it becomes clear that she does — and extremely well — they react with surprise and, in some cases, condescension.

A man who works at the library said he was often confounded by the level of racism he witnessed among students. Some blacks discriminated against other blacks who happened to have lighter skin. People from eastern parts of Africa were at odds with those from western areas.

Standing outside the circle, Tim P. Wilson, director of Maine Seeds of Peace, nodded knowingly.

“Every culture has the skin-color issue,” he said.

Mohamed has been involved in the conversation for a long time. In December, she was one of the students who created a poster carrying social justice messages that became controversial at the school.

The poster, in 10 parts, was the work of six students who wanted to prompt an in-school dialogue about social justice in the wake of the recent deaths of black people.

The students hung the posters without permission from school officials. They were told to take them down and the ensuing controversy drew the attention of the news media. Then Webster and Gerencer stepped in and a compromise was reached.

“That sparked a lot of conversation at our school,” Mohamed said.

Suggested solutions at Thursday night’s forum included understanding the history of other cultures, asking questions rather than making assumptions, empathizing, leading by example, seeking exposure to other cultures and sharing what you learn, and teaching acceptance to young children.

Not to mention learning from those children, who have not yet learned to make decisions based on racial bias.

“Look at kids,” one woman said. “They just go off and play with whoever is the most fun.”