More Diversity, Many Diversities

More Diversity,Many Diversities

Harris Sussman, Ph.D.

I’d like to dedicate this to my ping-pong partners — Bernie Mazel, Ella Mazel and Svetlana Adamova Sussman.

More Diversity, Many DiversitiesFirst printing: January 2005

Copyright © 1997-2005 by Harris SussmanAll rights reserved

Diversities

SensibilityGroup status

JudgmentEconomic/social class

Thought processPolitics

Birth orderEducation

HealthDNA Travel Humor

Physical appearanceNationality

BiorhythmsIntelligences

StressOccupation

LiteraciesLanguage

Work style Imagination Race/ethnicity

Personality typeHormones

Family Beliefs

GenderCultural connection

Sexual orientationQuality of life

Dog/cat Timeframe Age

LogicsPerceptions

Learning styleGenes

ValuesWorldview Aesthetics Strength Ethics/morality Historical trauma

(this list is incomplete and changing & there’s no particular order—it is meant to be like a kaleidoscope: it keeps turning)

4

Table of Contents

Introduction

Back in the 20th CenturyPage

January 1997 Q&A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11January 1998 Q&A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12January 1999 Q&A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13How the census’s sorting contributes to white hate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14Diversity is Still Unfinished Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16Selecting the Right Person to do Diversity Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2000

January Q&A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20Defining ourselves through the census lens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21February. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22Skip arithmetic: We’re all members of minority groups. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23March. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24April. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25May. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26June. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27July. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28August. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29September. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30October. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31November. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32December. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

2001

January Q&A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36February. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37March. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38April. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39May. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45______________________________________________________________________________________Special Section:

Teachable Moment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48Lesson Plans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 499-1-1 Emergency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50______________________________________________________________________________________

November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51State of Emergency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

5

My Life and September 11 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54On Alert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55Thanksgiving Meditation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58Christmastime Test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59Raw Material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60Mixed Messages. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61Crossing the Threshold. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

2002

January Q&A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69Thinking Like a Consultant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73Making the Workplace Open to All . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77When meetings are work and vice versa . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83Letter from USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86

2003

January Q&A . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88Letter from USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90Letter from USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 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. 94April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95Letter from USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97Too True . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100Letter from USA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102Back to Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109Stuck/Unstuck . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110‘Tis the Season . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113

6

2004

January Q&A. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116Living Our History Lessons. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118March . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119Taking Service to Another Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120April . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121May . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122Making a Difference: First, Begin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123June . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124July . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125How in the World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126August . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127September . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128Better Sooner than Later . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129October . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130November . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131Starting Backwards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132December . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133

2005

February . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136The World in Your Backyard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137

“ ”I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

— E.B. White (1899-1985)

8

INTRODUCTION

We live in different worlds in the same world, a world of changing complexity and configurations. This is an orientation guide for visitors, travelers, and residents. My handbook, How Diversity Works, was published in November 1995, before I had a web site, if you can imagine such a thing. This collection skips over the months that followed, slips past my trip to Samoa to speak about ecotourism, continues while I was designing the first course on diversity offered by the National Fire Academy/FEMA, and tries to get the 21st century off to a good start. Soon after, all hell breaks loose. That was September 11, 2001. I was in Bermuda that morning, for a meeting that ended as soon as it began. I couldn’t get home, couldn’t leave the island for five days, stranded like a wayward sea turtle. Not much of an inconvenience, considering.

For the next year or two or longer, people didn’t travel much, meetings and conferences were cancelled. I thought September 11 would get people more interested in understanding other people and the world we live in, but that happened pretty selectively. I thought it would make work on diversity issues more urgent, more central to everyone’s activity. But it seemed that some people wanted to shut the world out—as if they could.

I kept writing my monthly column in Managing Diversity (which I started in 1991). In early 2002 I started writing for College Services. I won their award for commentary in 2003 and again in 2004. Beginning in the fall of 2002 I wrote a monthly “Letter from the USA” for a magazine in India for a year.

As we are involved in interpersonal encounters near and far there is Diversity with a big D and diversity with a small d and there are what I call diversities. These pieces examine those perspectives. I hope you find something interesting, stimulating, or helpful. You will see a recurring note—I was always hoping to engage readers in a larger exploration.

Meanwhile, I speak, give programs, teach, consult, whenever and wherever I can. I think there are important matters at stake. I hope you do, too.

I notice several repetitions here or there. I guess I really wanted to get a few points across.

–HS

[email protected], 2004

PAST – 1999

“ ”the 20th century is almost over, almost over,the 20th century is almost over, all over this world…

— Steve Goodman, John Prine

11

JANUARY 1997

Q: Do you have a thought for the new year?

A: A new year begins every day. There are many times a year when we observe a beginning, a new start, and when we review the past year. We do it at tax time, at our birthday if we keep track (not everyone does), at various anniversaries, public and private. Each occasion gives us a way to make history, a marker of our personal life or the life of our relationship in a group.

“As life is action and passion, a man should be involved in the passion and action of his time at peril of being judged not to have lived,” wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes. (He wrote “man,” I’d say “person.”) I’ve liked that quote since I was in high school. The passion and action of our time includes the heightened state of our sense of who we are and how we relate to each other.

All over the world, anthropologically, biologically, diversity is a social and political issue. That mixes and mingles some powerful forces.

A new year begins every day. That’s celestial mechanics, astronomy. That’s spirituality, metaphysics. That’s mundane detail, circadian rhythms.

I pay attention to the equinoxes and solstices, the anniversaries of my closest relationships, the national and cultural holidays which I like best--Passover, the Day of the Dead if I’m in Mexico, Chinese New Year, fir trees and Father Frost when I am in Russia.

This becomes a combination of numerology, superstition, personal practice, and socialization. It gives me repeated opportunities for renewal and restoration according to some philosophy of cycles and repetition and second chances, turnings and returnings. It is built into the orbits and trajectories of my planet, my life, my culture, my associations. It is, I suppose, partly inherited, partly chosen. It isn’t completely arbitrary, nor is it completely my doing.

The Roman/Christian calendar changes a digit in the unit column and we are at 1997 C.E. or A.D. This is one way of counting, recording where the solar system intersects our heartbeats.

It is time for a new fiscal year and budget or a new resolution and goals. It is time to see what we have learned or accumulated or lost or forgotten. It is time to make our mark or to draw up a will.

I don’t know much about who’s been reading this space every month or what effect it’s had on anyone. I hear from very few readers; I know how people on public radio must feel. I have written for a number of reasons--to see how ideas move, to see whom I can reach, like lighting fires from one hilltop to another.

I like the format, asking myself questions. It’s good for an introvert who thinks aloud in public. It is a style that is characterologically Jewish. It is a kind of call-and- response, a way of making conversation. It’s a dialogue with myself and with you, whoever you might be. It is a dialectic within a political movement, a school of social philosophy, an ongoing correspondence, our sixth year together, Q&A, a changing relationship.

I’ve been interviewed by a bunch of reporters recently--they use one sentence out of a 45-minute conversation. I have more control here, as long as I keep within my box.

Sometimes I compress too much, I know. I’ve got more to say and my space runs out. I’m trying some new things. I’ve been giving out an email address and I’ve referred you to the Internet. I’m doing public seminars for the first time (January 15 in Phoenix).

Recently I gave a program about diversity for senior executives without using the D-word at all, with the prior consent of the diversity managers who invited me; the response to the program was better than they expected. This is worth exploring.

We’d better explore what we’re doing with more breadth and depth. (What is the influence of evolutionary psychology on your work?) We’d better be more effective leaders in our organization and in our society. This is not a time to be a wallflower. This is our time, our history, our action and passion.

Happy New Year.

12

JANUARY 1998

We’ve got to let people express themselves as people with multiple identities, changing identities, and as people of difference. What people have in common is that they are each unique; everyone is a minority of one. There has been such emphasis on grouping people with categorical, abstract strangers, and not on helping them define themselves and their actual experience, communities and relationships. A lot of diversity work has been impersonal. Let me give an example--myself. As a rough guess, some people would call me a white male.But remember Sussman’s first principle: you don’t get to tell people who they are, they get to tell you. I admit, it’s going to be awfully difficult if you only give yourself two choices--person of color or white. Who said those were the only choices anyway? We back ourselves into a corner, and become ridiculous in most parts of the world, when we do that. Then we say that white is the dominant culture and the majority culture in the U.S., or at least in many institutions. Then we say that anyone who is white is part of the ruling class, the power elite. And that goes double for white men. Would it surprise anyone if I said that I can’t think of any way in which I am or have been in the majority in my life as an American? For instance...

I have a Ph.D. degree--which is true of less than 1% of the population. I have a passport--less than 15% of the population. My Myers-Briggs type is shared by less than 2% of the population. I've been a farmer--less than 2% of the U.S. I'm from a Jewish family--2% of the population. I'm self-employed--less than 8% of men in the U.S. are. I'm not a Baby Boomer or a member of the Sandwich Generation. I have an international/bilingual marriage--not common. I'm a vegetarian, mostly--are you? I went to a one-room school--less than 1% of population.

When I was in Russia and someone asked me if I am a typical American. What was I supposed to say? They all thought I was; it was obvious. Several times, a person looking for someone to lead a program on diversity has told me that I would have nothing to offer because I was a white male. A person looking for someone to lead a program on diversity in Texas told me that I would not be a good match because I am from the Northeast--which, among other things, selectively ignores the years I lived in Appalachia and Arizona. Reality is a tough concept for people who are stuck in their ideological tracks. But the reality is that life is varied, mixed-up, and far more interesting than most diversity programs give it credit for. We need to create places where people can be who they are. And that can't happen until we find out something about them. In their own terms, not in order to fit some predetermined code. Otherwise, this work is sterile and stalemated. I've said it before and I'll say it again. You can't value or manage diversity until you can experience diversity and you can't do that until people will reveal, disclose or express themselves, and they won't do that if you won't let them. We've got ourselves tied into knots over this. So, can you take a new look at how you and your organization approach the work of becoming more open to a greater range of diversities? Can you go beyond pigeonholing, stereotyping, and labeling people? Can you move into new territory by opening yourself first? How can the organization change if you can't? And while you're at it, happy new year.

13

JANUARY 1999

Q: Where do you go from here with this work?

A: I traditionally give a new year’s perspective, so let me tell you the things I expect to concentrate on for the coming year.

I see diversity proceeding along two interrelated tracks-1) healing and reconciliation in human relations, and 2) developing and actualizing individual, group, and organizational capability. I think this is the next assignment for human resources and personnel functions, or for others who want to provide the leadership that is needed.

Awareness training was the agenda for the last ten years. For the next phase, I am interested in bringing together groups that want to address how the U.S. can heal from its history of wounds, conflicts, and misunderstandings. This involves addressing the burden of pain, grief and trauma that is woven into, defines, and limits interpersonal and intergroup relations. I think this is the next level of work for diversity teams and councils, or for anyone who wants to take responsibility for this endeavor. We need to make diversity real in the workplace, in schools, in all our relations, and this requires doing work that is different in the U.S. from what is needed elsewhere in the world.

This also puts diversity advocates on notice that if they don’t do this work, someone else will. I don’t want diversity to become empty rhetoric, but of course that’s what has happened in many places already. Diversity needs to be revitalized, to develop new commitments, missions, and directions. In some cases, this means rescuing it from its present sponsors.

I like to speak of worldwide capability, meaning that if you are a citizen of the planet, you can’t be small-minded. You need to broaden your horizons, enlarge your repertoire. This is especially true for people whose lives put them in contact with people from everywhere-which these days could be anyone.

So, I’d say every organization needs a VP of worldwide capability, which encompasses what has been called diversity work and goes even further. It applies what we know about developing and releasing creative energy, human assets, intellectual capital, and all the other names it’s been called. An organization that does this will reach new levels of its potential.

In order to help people do this work, I want to develop an archive of resources for diversity work from the last fifty years. There is much experience and knowledge from many sources which have not been identified, cross-referenced, and made available. This includes not only best practices but the tools, models, and keys that are the underpinnings of best practices. They cover many fields of activity. I am looking for partners who want to help with this, to gather materials, in a physical location and on websites. I will conduct briefings for people who want to learn the far-ranging knowledge base of this work.

I want to keep my focus on the future of diversity. This is 1999 after all, the last count of the countdown. But what comes next? Are you ready for a year that starts with 2? If not, isn’t it time to get ready? That means learning from the 20th century and moving on from there. We still have to use our rear-view mirror as we move ahead. This is a wonderful opportunity to make a quantum leap in our knowledge, understanding, and capability.

This is not easy. Everyone who is now an adult is a child of the 20th century, with all the impact it has had on us. But our children are heirs to the 21st century, with its terms yet to be defined. We need to do our part so we don’t pass our unfinished tasks on to them. As much as possible, we should do what we can. Otherwise, we are abandoning the efforts we didn’t have the courage or the willingness to handle.

We may have to redefine our work. Do we want our legacy to be how many deals we made, how much product we sold, or how we made peace with our humanity and with the human community in our time? It’s time to make some resolutions that we can keep.

Happy New Year.

14

HOW THE CENSUS’ SORTING CONTRIBUTES TO WHITE HATE

It looks like hate crimes will continue in the months just before and after 2000. It looks like the perpetrators will be Christian, white, men. The timing or the location will be symbolically patriotic, such as the Independence Day weekend murders in Illinois and Indiana, or the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The target will be people who are not white or the government which is blamed for allowing them to become more prominent in the US. The reason will be that the US is not a country where white, Christian, male, domination is assured. If this is not clear to you, you should look at each element more closely. White domination is not assured, because the white population is declining in proportion to the nonwhite population. Christian domination is not assured, because non-Christians are increasingly visible and numerous. Male domination is not assured, because gender geopolitics has shifted, people’s sexual identity has become more ambiguous or confrontational. In the next five years, “Hispanic” Americans will outnumber African Americans (with about 13% of total US population) and “nonwhite” will outnumber “white male” (with about 34% of the total). As a result of the 2000 Census, there will be a large increase in Native American, Latino, and African-American heritage, if people acknowledge their cross-over identities honestly. So white males will be less than 1/3 of the US population in 2001-2005, white females will be slightly more than 1/3, and people of color—people with Asian, Latin, African, and Native heritage—will be about 1/3. Then from 2005 to 2050, white males and females combined will go from 70% of the US to 50%. And by 2051 or 2052, white people (people from Europe, people with two Anglo parents) will be less than half the US as a whole (which is already the case in thousands of localities). Thus endeth the White Ages in American history. We are seeing the White Rage (fear, anger, paranoia, grief) that accompanies the end of that era. The way we officially classify, categorize and label people is a key to this predicament. The US government reduces the 6000 cultures in the world to 5. We count people according to what continent they came from, or which one their parents came from. We’ve imposed labels on each other, we’re sorting ourselves for some kind of global comparison. And then we’re shocked when someone takes aim at someone from another continent. Do human societies need a caste system, a pecking order? Do we need to sort the world into people like us and not like us? Do some people need to feel special or superior? Apparently, this is a biological fact. Low status is accompanied by low seratonin levels. Christian white male nationalism is part of the political platform of some politicians. It also works with two out of three—there is white Christian nationalism, shared by men and women. There is male Christian nationalism, seen in the Promise Keepers, among others. We have seen varieties of nationalism in the Balkans recently, in Bosnia and Kosovo. We have seen what happens when people turn against their neighbors. We use foreign terms when it occurs in other countries--putsch, purge, ethnic cleansing. When it occurs in the US, it’s called hate crimes or domestic terrorism.. We are told that the boys who killed their classmates at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, targeted athletes/jocks and blacks. The man who shot Hasidic Jews, a Korean, and a black man over July 4th weekend in Illinois and Indiana was a member of a white supremacy church. When we label and count people the way we do in the USA we are playing demographic roulette. We should stop it. Why do we want to know what a person’s family tree is? Why do we want to record the genealogy, the bloodline? Why do we keep it impersonal, never getting to know the individual, but only looking at the continent someone came from, or the general color of their skin, or what their spiritual observance is? What difference does that make to anything, least of all to being American?

15

You know the US Department of Agriculture’s idea of the 7 basic food groups? We’ve taken this to the point that we ask people, who do you know from the 7 basic continents? We use a measure of diversity according to how many continents the people you know or meet each day come from. In a typical day, do you have contact with someone with a background from Asia, from Europe, from South America, and from Africa? You would have a score of 4 out of 7. Or you might know a person from Australia. And then there is Antarctica. Penguin power.

(The Philadelphia Inquirer, July 15, 1999)

16

DIVERSITY IS STILL UNFINISHED BUSINESS

Many U.S. companies have tried to conduct diversity programs in the last ten years. It's been a case study in how not to achieve social change.

Some places never intended to do more than have one session with an outside speaker. Some didn't have any mission or agenda for a follow-up after an initial "roll-out."

Some people fed the fallacy about white men disappearing from the workforce. They used scare tactics to get the attention of (white male) management and when they couldn't explain why their doomsday scenario didn't occur they lost credibility.

Some people who believed in pursuing the work didn't have any authority or support to do so. Some organizations don't know how to treat themselves as a social system or their endeavor as a social (much less socially responsible) activity.

Some places didn't know they should be developing internal resources and capability beyond attending an outsider's sessions.

Some companies obviously are not equipped to address human relations in any significant way-their personnel departments exist primarily to process people through the system, not to leverage "human resources," "intellectual capital," "knowledge work," or "human assets."

Some places were not willing to adjust their management practices. Some managers saw no reason to change and were not persuaded by any argument inside or outside of their operation.

Some companies treated diversity as a way to dodge Affirmative Action and Equal Employment guidelines, used "diversity" as a synonym for "minorities," and continued doing business as usual.

Some companies ran out of steam after the first pass-nobody told them there was more to it than that and they never figured it out.

Some places sponsored an interpersonal exercise without looking at how power is distributed in their systemic and historical practices. They settled for anything that was politically easier than addressing institutional change.

Some places assigned one person to diversity, without a budget, without a mandate, without a prayer of accomplishing anything.

Some places stalled for years by defining diversity as irrelevant to their work. Others spent years trying to define diversity and rejecting every definition. Others spent years studying what to do and then gave up.

Some companies never had any commitment to diversity but went through the motions because it was expected that they should look like they were doing something.

… Add them all together and we had a lot of false starts, dead ends, and empty gestures. I keep hearing from people who were caught in such mixed messages and double-binds.

• Diversity is many things-a bridge between organizational life and the reality of people's lives, building corporate capability, a multi-dimensional effect, the framework for interrelationships among people, a commitment to the humanity of our enterprises, a learning exchange, a strategic value, open-ended, dynamic, our lens on the world, a pathway to "liberty and justice for all."

• Diversity is the great noble calling of America. It remains the great unfinished business of the American workplace. For many companies, it is obviously harder than rocket science--we've been to the moon a number of times, but we still haven't dealt with the larger ramifications of diversity.

November 5, 1999

17

SELECTING THE RIGHT PERSON TO DO DIVERSITY WORK

Whether you’re looking at people from inside your organization or from outside, you need some criteria to apply to select candidates. How can you recruit and select people who will be effective facilitators of the many groups they will be working with?

I don’t believe that asking for formal educational credentials or years of experience is useful. In many cases, it’s irrelevant. People in many arenas do excellent group facilitation. They are in health care, churches, conflict resolution centers, community organizations. You want to find people who would be as close to your ideal as possible.

Here’s what I suggest. In the statement of qualifications, ask applicants to indicate their experience with the following:

Marriage encounter weekend or similar personal growth program Outward Bound, Project Adventure, or similar group Interfaith/interracial dialogue Facilitating group discussions Addressing controversial subjects in public Dealing with interpersonal conflict situations Cross-cultural relationship Being multilingual Participating in civil rights/human rights activity Volunteer with soup kitchen, shelters, Habitat for Humanity, etc. Peace Corps, VISTA, AMIGOS, AFS, or similar Taking course or workshop in cultural diversity, mediation Teaching workshop or class with wide range of students Attended leadership training program Active in community organization Involved in organizational change processGiving or getting counseling/psychotherapy

You can give one point to each item on the list, then set a cut-off level. (I think 6-8 is reasonable, but it’s not scientific.) You could assign a different weight to different items and come up with a minimum score. I have great confidence that a person with some combination of the experiences on the list will be able to do the kind of work that is needed, with guidance, orientation, and support, of course.

I think there is a correlation between these kinds of experiences and the ability of someone to do good intercultural diversity work. The more of those experiences someone has, the easier and the shorter the training process will be, or the more effective a consultant or employee will be.

2000

“ ”We know what is required for the 21st century:

We need to strive toward social cohesion, ecological integrity and effective decision-making.

We need to replace the goal of a high standard of living with that of a high quality of life.

— Robert Theobald (1929-1999)

20

JANUARY 2000

Q: Well, it’s 2000 -- do we keep doing what we’ve been doing?

A: Do you mean, after all the 2000-talk, are we going to take the idea of a new era seriously? Then we should do some new thinking about diversity. For example, I don’t think diversity should report to HR or personnel administration. Conceptually, it should be the other way around. Diversity is the overarching premise for exercising human capability. HR needs to be reconfigured around our understanding of that. It is a moral vision and an empirical necessity. We need leadership which makes it a core value and a governing principle.

The politics of diversity have not served us well. Whatever changes there have been in personal features, the operating systems of many organizations have remained much the same. I have always been more interested in the deep structure, the institutional dynamics, the architectonics that are at work while we tend to skate along on the surface. Whatever form diversity takes in your situation, I suggest it could go much further. We have been restricted by the traumatic cultural history of the USA. We have not addressed, much less healed, our historical traumas. Instead, we have applied an inadequate version of industrial psychology to the workplace, calling it OD or diversity training. We have not achieved our goals or our potential.

In a world where people are looking for examples of successful coexistence, where does the U.S. stand in providing this leadership? Where does your organization stand? Here is the test: are you ready to send a team anywhere in the world to serve as a model of diversity practices and values? Medecins Sans Frontieres has won the Nobel Peace Prize for doing just that.

I don’t think diversity work in 2005 should still be based on U.S. EEO categories from 1965. I think we should expand EAP programs to include social relations. The work has to move into new generations and developmental stages.

Diversity work is a civics lesson. It is a public policy issue. It is also about interpersonal contact and connection, and repairing relationships. In the U.S. more than in many other countries, employers make social policy. Each workplace is a society. Since diversity is fundamental to democracy, to the extent that we are not cultivating and utilizing diversity, democracy is deficient.

We should assess the state of the social environment for this 21st century on a worldwide scale. What is the agenda, the task, before us? What do we need to do to accomplish it? What combinations of qualities and disciplines do we need to bring to bear on this work? What kind of courage and honesty do we need?

I do not hear this discussion taking place. I see mechanical, reactive measures being followed. So I am asking you to have a discussion that will turn diversity around, inside-out and upside-down. This is what our newly-numbered calendar calls us to do, and it is what I am here to help you do.

So, happy new year every day. Try to see not just the newness but the continuity. Now the years begin with 2. It looks like we’re in this for the long haul.

It was 1948 when President Truman issued an Executive Order which stated, “It is hereby declared to be the policy of the President that there shall be equality of treatment and opportunity for all persons in the armed services without regard to race, color, religion, or national origin.” The order also established the President’s Committee on Equality of Treatment and Opportunity in the Armed Services. Is there a need for such a committee in your organization, 52 years later? Some places call it a Diversity Council. It should be carrying out its mandate cognizant of the weight of history, past and future.

We have been at this for some time. It was 1955 when Rosa Parks did not give up her seat on the bus. Are we where we want to be? Are we doing the best we can? What is new about this year from the perspective of your life and work? Maybe it’s time to ask new questions, to take a different approach. I hope you will.

21

DEFINING OURSELVES THROUGH THE CENSUS LENS

The Census is coming. It will give us a statistical report of the country’s population. Some people still base their impressions of diversity in this country on studies that used 1980 numbers. Because the Census figures are used for allocating federal funds as well as for social analysis, we should pay attention.

The Census, for the first time, does not restrict people to choosing one answer from the available list of which government label of their humanity applies to them. People can check more than one identity-heritage category; they can admit to multiple ancestries. This will be a test of people’s knowledge of their backgrounds, their honesty, and their willingness to disclose information about their race, ethnicity, national origin, skin color, language group - which are not the same things.

Much of this is not clear or simple. Are people from Spain - other than the Basques, of course - Hispanic? Are Spanish-speaking people Hispanic? The people of the Philippines aren’t. Are people from Hispaniola Hispanic? Haitians aren’t. Are Haitians African-Americans? (This is a trick question.) Are people from Russia Russians? Jews, a separate nationality, are not. Chechens are not Russians -- yet Russia is killing Chechens in a war to confirm that Chechens are Russian citizens.

A nation used to be one nationality. In parts of the world, it still is. Of course, the United States is a nation of all nationalities and cultures. This is our post-modern distinction. But we’re not quite sure what to do about it. We keep having issues of democracy, inclusion, and equality. Heritage is what is inherited, but it gets complicated because we have various kinds of inheritances. Some are defined or discovered by a person in his or her lifetime, some are ascribed to her or him by others. Some change, some continue.

We are 275 million people, the third-largest country in the world. Almost all of us are displaced people. Except for descendants of indigenous people still living in their original homelands, none of us is where we used to be. We have moved, or our forebears did, from another continent - voluntary and involuntary travelers. Many Latinos are native to the territory that is now the US; they were here before the Anglos arrived to plant their European flags. There were intermarriages that some families don’t acknowledge.

The story of population is full of complexity. This is the real Continental Divide of America.Identity varies. People are different when they’re home from when they’re traveling or relocated.

People are different at different periods in their lives - identities can come and go. You don’t get to tell people who they are; they get to tell you. This Census is an exercise in people telling who they are.

People are several things at once, a prism or kaleidoscope of selves, a mixed bouquet. They can move among their identities, from one to another. If we want to know about ourselves and each other, we need to allow this movement, to tell its story. Diversity is really about giving people permission and safety to tell the truth about who they are.

The Census will give us plenty of numbers to analyze. When the results are reported over the next couple of years, we’ll have a partial reflection of ourselves. It will be incomplete because there are many things the Census doesn’t ask about or show any interest in - a wider, deeper range of diversities that accompanies each of us. It will be up to us to put the pieces together to get a whole picture.

The Census gives us percentages and fractions of 275 million. It will tell us about everyone, but it won’t tell us about anyone.

--The Christian Science Monitor, February 8, 2000

22

FEBRUARY 2000

Q: We’re having a hard time keeping going. How do you do it?

A: This is my 100th Q&A column. That’s 100 training or therapy sessions, 100 public statements, 100 variations on a theme, 100 heartbeats, month after month. I find the subject fascinating, stimulating, and important. Plus, I’ve been living with these issues all my life, year after year. I keep going because the subject of diversity is intertwined with the rest of my life. They are inseparable, indistinguishable.

I think that is true for diversity in any work situation as well. Not everyone sees it that way. This gives me plenty to talk with you about. It also means that sometimes it would take longer than the space I have here to develop my thought. That’s why I welcome the chance to talk with you in person.

You say it’s hard to keep going. The problem may be not that you’ve run out of diversity, or that diversity disappeared, but that the way you conceive of diversity is so limited or flimsy that it’s too easy to treat it like a bookkeeping routine. Add up all of these units, subtract those units, find the fraction of the total, and that’s it. Wave your hands, shake hands, clap your hands, and that’s it. But that’s not it.

Doing diversity work in an organization involves dealing with the state of consciousness of the people who are there, the guiding force, the ethos, the residual ways of operating. It means making and maintaining relationships. It’s about peace-making and peace-keeping, which takes stamina, skills, and discipline. It involves trust and respect, which are not always automatic. It involves healing, rectifying injustices and injury, which is not achieved instantly. It requires building, developing, and modifying structures and procedures that are enacted throughout an organization, which is a longterm process. It’s about the arbitrary and systematic status of elites. It’s about hypocrisy.

The work on behalf of cultivating diversity that we are engaged in calls for repeated, perennial, multifaceted efforts. It is the work of building a society, a social system, with its intricate self-regulations, checks and balances, dynamic tensions, and chaotic energies. This doesn’t happen just once and then stop. It needs to be continually renewed and revitalized. It’s about persisting.

So I write this column every month. I expect you to be keeping up with me. All together now: one-hundred, one-hundred-and-one….

Q: What efforts can we get involved in?

A: Here are two projects that have my support-go to their websites: Healing the Trail of Tears is a walk across the country that reverses the direction of the Cherokee

forced relocation from North Carolina to Oklahoma, with opportunities for participation along the way--(www.whitebison.org)

Reframing the Dialogue on Racism invites white Christian ministers to go beyond the familiar rhetoric of integration, inclusion, and diversity, but it’s also a model for others--(www.sussman.org/Reframing)

You could sponsor or host a roundtable or a staff development workshop for people in your community to look at the future of diversity in your lives, to pass the baton from the 60s generation to the next generation of diversity advocates and activists. You could have a year-long sequence of programs that focuses on the horizons and challenges ahead.

You could join or create a Diversity Action Network. It’s time to connect with others. Diversity work has been, paradoxically, too isolated, proprietary, compartmentalized. Can we link up with strangers and colleagues and form new alliances, coalitions and support systems? I hope so.

And of course you can get in touch with me. If I have a legacy, this column is part of it, but I wish you wouldn’t wait until it’s a thing of the past to make contact. Think of all the things we could be doing together.

23

SKIP ARITHMETIC: WE’RE ALL MEMBERS OF MINORITY GROUPS…

In this season of the Census, in this era of diversity, we should understand that white males are a minority. Less than one-third of the U.S. population are white males of all ages. Less than one-fourth are white men in the workforce. Under fifty percent makes them a minority. That should be a simple fact to absorb. But we play a demographic shell game in which such arithmetic takes on political and emotional weight. It’s a new idea and it changes how we look at each other. If white men are a minority, how come they don’t realize it? If white men are a minority, how come other minorities treat them as the majority, as the “dominant culture?” If white men are a minority, how come they’re a majority in your company? The answer is that your company doesn’t reflect the country, or your state or city. It’s time for a reality check. If white men are a minority, how come they have most of the positions of power? The answer is that we have white minority rule. What difference does it make? In this country’s cultural history, it has made a big difference whether some individual or group is a minority or not. When we say “minority,” we usually have meant “non-white” or “people of color.” It’s a little more complicated, since many women are in the habit of calling themselves a minority when in fact females outnumber males in every age group after infancy. The country is more than fifty percent female. We are used to speaking of “women and minorities” as a category of the workforce, which leaves white males as the other category, implying that white males are the majority. They’re not. The language of Affirmative Action and Equal Employment relies on Census figures. But we’re not analyzing the numbers very well. What we mean when we speak about dominant white males is their cultural, psychological, ideological, and physical power, since their predominance in positions of power is out of all proportion to their actual numbers. For many people, the term “white male” refers to a form of white male fundamentalism which includes colonialism, suppression, oppression, and domination of other people, including nonconforming, deviant and dissident white males. In some cases, all white men are labeled white males, even if they don’t fit the mold or the psychographic profile. That’s been our shorthand for describing the cultural dynamics of our society. But it isn’t accurate, it isn’t fair, and it isn’t constructive. Are we fighting over the status of who gets to be a minority? For 160 years (after Native Americans were displaced and “disappeared”), African Americans have been the primary minority in the country, but that position is about to be taken over by Latinos. Of course, the largest minority group are people covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act. It goes counter to our habit to call white men a minority. But we need to look again. There is no majority. Minorities all, any group is a fraction of the whole. It’s not helpful to create factions, to set one group against another. If we are going to live up to the best potential of diversity as an expanded community, we need to stop calling each other names, even if those names are government-approved. We’re shortchanging our humanity, we’re leaving out the multiplier effects of working together, across categories and labels. It’s time to move on to a higher level than arithmetic.

--The Philadelphia Inquirer, March 30. 2000

24

MARCH 2000

Q. What’s going to happen with Census 2000?

A. Since Census figures are what so many programs think Diversity is all about, we should pay attention. We will be getting an update on the social kaleidoscope of U.S. society, which will be far more mixed and complex than ever. I believe we will find that most diversity goals are way behind the times. The Census will be a reality check and a call for accountability. The story of the U.S. is whether it is being reconfigured and reoriented from European patriarchy and patrimony to something else. We can predict that many people will feel that too little has been done to change the dominant and dominating caste system and cultural model. I think many diversity offices will be embarrassed by how out of touch they are with the basic demographics. This Census will be the cultural audit they need to understand. That’s especially true if you operate on a national scale. And if you have a worldwide scope of activity, most places haven’t even begun to face the situation. We should also look beyond the Census, at what I call deep diversity. Human Resources, OD and training should facilitate human capability. It’s time to move past personnel administration (which can be handled by software) into issues of increasing collaboration and creativity, relationship and reconciliation. The 21st century in many parts of the world will see the oldest societies ever. This has ramifications for anyone looking at work, productivity, social policy, or human development. What are you doing about workers, customers, clients, students, or citizens over 55, 65, 75 years old? This will challenge managers’ theories and preconceptionsabout human performance, knowledge, and skills. The facts and impacts of diversity will increase. The Census will be a measure of how we’re living up to core democratic values. You can either prepare for the results or be taken by surprise.

Q. Why don’t diversity programs get beyond their slogans?

A. Respecting individuals and renorming organizations take more effort than some diversity programs devote to their mission. The training sessions to increase awareness and sensitivity often begin and end with labels. The language is often based on government terminology which oversimplifies its statistical classification of people. It becomes stiff and divisive. It sounds canned and impersonal. No wonder it is dismissed as being insincere. “Valuing differences” or “leveling the playing field” need to be translated into operational conditions, actions, regular practices. The intention, not just the phrase, needs to be institutionalized and eventually internalized. Of course, this entails new behavior, changing how people work and what their work is. How much credibility and integrity does the diversity function have? What does it mean when “celebrate diversity” posters are ripped down? What does it mean when white men aren’t advocates for diversity principles? How inclusive or diverse is the very concept of diversity where you are? What does it include and what does it leave out? You should pursue such questions. It may lead you to reformulate your charter. That’s good. It’s time to find new arguments and approaches and a new vocabulary beyond clichés and slogans.

25

APRIL 2000

Q. How much diversity is enough?

A. Diversity is about opening the system. On a scale of closed to open, how open do you want to be? A larger variety of types, styles, voices, ideas. Kindness toward everyone. More perspectives, points of view, frames of reference. More of a mixture, a more interesting menu. Greater range of frequencies, more bandwidth. Full-spectrum light. How open are you? What filters and screening devices do you put in place? What do you know about the correlation between your method of selection, the nature of your work environment, and your desired outcomes? Diversity is a measure of your deliberate and inadvertent exclusion of individuals and populations from working with you, doing business with you, having any relationship with you. How do your systems and procedures, your mechanisms and culture, favor some people over others? How do they arbitrarily or routinely separate certain people or certain kinds of people from others? And what effect does that have on your ethos, your multiplier effects, your operational results, your social conscience? Diversity is a subset of the capacity of the system to work well, to be high-performing, high-functioning. It’s rare to value diversity for its own sake. Diversity for the sake of increasing value might be taken seriously, though not as seriously as Six Sigma statistical process, for example. Why not? I think we’re missing something. Diversity is worth a Baldridge Award. Diversity work means developing an ecology of talent capability, a broader deeper exploration of the population. People from different communities have different beliefs and knowledge. Presumably, you want them assembled, available, mobilized for you. You want to release the creative energy of the species. That is the business case and the measurement scheme for diversity. You get to decide how clearly and intentionally you cultivate this (it is what “human resources” could mean), but you’re going to have some degree of it no matter what, if you deal with human beings. How open are you to a fuller range of human reality and experience? How much can you take?

Q. How should we approach training?

A. Have a senior-level retreat and briefing. Describe the new levels of management accountability and expectations that arise from the training. Map out what will come after the training. Don’t offer training unless you have first put a support and response system in place to sustain the lessons of the training. Train yourselves to facilitate the likely consequences of the training. Insure that the messages of the training are reflected in all your operations and activities. Build in ways to get better information on your development steps. Conduct follow-ups with the individuals who attend and with the groups they’re in. Debrief the trainers about their observations of the people who attend and the culture of the system.

Q. How can we focus our programming this year?

A. This year has been declared the International Year for the Culture of Peace by the United Nations. There are activities around the world to help individuals and societies move from a culture of war to a culture of peace through intercultural understanding and dialogue, human rights, pluralism, and other efforts. What guides your diversity activities? Is it a search for common ground, a meeting place, providing tools for collaboration and coexistence, facilitating reconciliation, enhancing democracy, increasing energy and joy, making life richer, fostering the future of democracy, making peace with the demons of our history and psyche. There is plenty to choose from. Whatever you do, it should add to your enthusiasm and ability to connect to the wider world.

26

MAY 2000

Q. Why won’t diversity happen on its own?

A. Left to itself, the dynamics of a social system are likely to be self-replicating and self-perpetuating. There was social cloning long before there was biogenetic cloning. Favoritism, nepotism, patronage, and preferential treatment are common. Ethnocentrism is natural. It’s the friends and family network, a cultural centrifugal force. Home is where you’re taken in, said Robert Frost--but what about people who are left out? What about making new connections? Who are we going to encounter in our work-home these days? How will we feel at home in the larger world? In organizations, we redraw the borders of home. We have different house rules, norms, and neighbors. For some people, diversity does not feel natural. It is a forced fit. It is an extended community that crosses lines of turf, comfort, and familiarity. It challenges the privileges of an in-group, an inbred group. It’s artificial, it’s a political construct. It’s not surprising that many people don’t have the system-shifting appetite and tools and skills for such new social arrangements and possibilities. So they rely on old methods. The emphasis of many workplace diversity efforts has been on addressing people’s attitudes about people (and, sometimes, about themselves). It’s good to have good interpersonal relations, but we also need to monitor processes, structures, practices, conditions, and environmental factors that go deeper. Yes, there have to be ongoing, constant provisions to help people mix and mingle, interact and collaborate, constructively and productively. We also may find that we need to counter the heritage, tradition, policies and practices of the system--which will threaten the existing pecking order. So there will be resistance, if only from the inertia of past memories. I don’t see enough systems being tweaked, or reverse engineered, or modified, to cultivate and benefit from new dimensions of diversity. This is not just a matter of individuals’ biases, perceptions and attitudes toward each other. It is not only about an individual’s personal knowledge or understanding or appreciation of someone else. It is about the cultural dynamics built into the system, the forces behind the way the system works. These are forces which each generation of people who occupy the organization can affect--but not until they realize how those forces affect them. We want to create a culture of peace. But you know the saying, “no peace without justice.” There must be mechanisms, resources, reinforcements, for creativity, cooperation, safety, and other aspects of working at full capability. How does such a culture get developed and sustained? Do we know what full capability can be? Furthermore, redirecting those forces is beyond the reach of the average employee. That is why I am told by groups I speak to that I am speaking to the wrong people, because they’re just small fries, they don’t operate the control panel of the system. They tell me I should be speaking to people higher up in the organization, people with power. Here’s the catch: people at every level tell me that. Even people at the top of the organization say they can’t, or don’t know how to, change the culture. So they decide to go through an exercise in participatory management. They delegate the issue to a Diversity Council or a diversity manager.

Diversity awareness training is given. Rhetoric is delivered on time and on budget. Posters go up and come down. Diversity gets a bad name when it is conducted in bad faith, but what if people really don’t know how to do this kind of work? The people who have the job description of doing diversity work are either not using an effective approach or they are not permitted to do what would be required to do anything meaningful. How many see their work in terms of Human Ecology, Systems Thinking, Group Dynamics, Process Facilitation, Culture Change, Teambuilding, Wellness, Identity Politics, Ethnic Conflict, Action Research, Liberation Theology, Power, Family Systems Therapy, Democratic Institutions, Ecopsychology, Peacebuilding? There are so many ways to do this work to make a difference. We should utilize them. We work for diversity so it can work for us.

27

JUNE 2000

Q. Why is there so much harassment?

A. Harassment occurs if it is permitted, tolerated, and acceptable. And if it occurs without opposition, it is being endorsed and encouraged. Obviously, harassment is not being addressed effectively. Many places treat it as a personal problem rather than a systemic problem. Harassment produces and is a product of hostile environments and abusive organizations. Sexual harassment, hazing, hostility at work are variations of domestic abuse at home. Abusive behavior poisons the atmosphere. It diminishes trust, cooperation and morale. It reduces unit cohesion. It is the same as molesting, fragging, and assaulting people. It creates a threatening, unsafe environment. It requires collusion and complicity to allow it to continue. It is amazing that some places devote time to promoting teamwork and yet don’t do anything about harassment. Teamwork is critical to the success of many organizations and harassment undermines teamwork. If you have both, you’re working against yourself, creating an unstable level of stress. You also give the message that you’re not serious about either teamwork or harassment A violence hierarchy keeps people in their place. Harassment is a way of acting out the pecking order, laying down rules of dominance. If people get away with this, that reinforces its strength and legitimacy, until it becomes the norm of the system, and you have a culture of harassment, which is a culture of violence.

Q. What’s the story with white men?

A. There is a difference between white men who are White Male-ist and white men who are not. The more White Male-ist a social system is, the more toxic it is for people who are not, including white men. Not all white men are White Male-ist. I’m using this term for a basic pattern of racism and sexism, white supremacy and male supremacy. I think only a fraction of white men are White Male-ist. But some people don’t make that distinction and they equate all white men with White Male-ist tendencies, if not ideology. Many white men are sympathetic to ideals of liberty and diversity but are largely passive. Fewer are committed to change and are working actively to change the system. “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,” Edmund Burke wrote. White men benefit from the caste system. They have to decide whether they approve of the system, to accept it or to overthrow it.

Q. What’s the bottom line of diversity?

A. No more playing with a stacked deck, with loaded dice. It’s the end of the System as we’ve known it, the de-whitening of the system, the end of colonization and of primogeniture, of unearned, hereditary, head-starts and fringe benefits. It’s the end of assuming a birthright of power over other people. Which means, everyone gets a fair and equal chance. That’s a declaration of democracy. Which, in a system that’s not democratic, is revolutionary. It upsets the apple cart, it rocks the boat. Diversity work that doesn’t address this isn’t doing its work. Diversity opens the system to those who were outside. And in the process it topples some pedestals. What follows is a period of disorder, re-shuffling, new rules. We can see this happening now. The old dynasty is no longer assured of perpetual control, not in the USA, not anywhere in the world.

28

JULY 2000

Q. What kind of program gets results?

A. The best program is both intensive and extensive. It combines a 4-7 day session offsite with elements that go on for years across an organization’s operations at all levels. All groups need periodic check-ups and booster shots. They need to look at their interrelationships with each other and with the world outside themselves.

Q. What does Diversity do for us?

A. For many people, diversity is part of their happiness and their comfort level. It expands peoples’ networks. It is interesting, stimulating, and pleasurable. Diversity makes people smarter, increasing their knowledge and understanding. For individuals and organizations, it’s a reality check in a diverse world, a measure of sanity.

Q. Why is a global view of diversity so important?

A. The whole world is present in the USA in numerous ways--through trade, e-commerce, telecommunications, the media, through micro personal relationships and macro international relations. You don’t need a passport or a visa to hear a news report from another part of the world, to see a foreign movie, to eat food that was grown in another country, to meet people of different nationalities. Cultural, religious, political issues from around the world are brought to us by tourists, students, travelers, immigrants, refugees, diplomats, and our own histories. Our contact with the world comes through all sorts of channels. The USA is 4% of world population. People who are part of a huge population outside the USA might be a small fraction within it. People who are a large group in the USA could be microscopic in the world as a whole. Let’s have a sense of proportion. In an interconnected, hyperlinked world, these perspectives matter. We live and work across languages and time zones, currencies and worldviews. Is our knowledge keeping up? Is our understanding growing? Diversity is basic courtesy, elementary geography, shared genetics. We should think of it as Humanity 101. Unfortunately, many diversity programs take a much narrower view. They address only a contrived subset of experiences. They are selective about which diversities they want people to consider. They leave out more than they include.

Q. How should we do sexual harassment training?

A. Be sure to have any outside trainer train an internal group of people who will monitor and facilitate things after formal training sessions are conducted. They will serve as ombudsmen to the organization on harassment. They should also help the trainer(s) design and carry out the formal training of everyone in the organization. This gives you ownership, internal capability, accountability, access to a wider range of resources, checks and balances, and the ability to sustain the message. You should never have anyone just give one-dimensional training.

Q. How can we use the new Census?

A. Use it to assess people’s frame of reference, their level of diversity complexity. Do they feel more bonded to one particular geographic cultural lineage than to an extended human community, or vice versa? There’s a 40-50 year age range between people in the workforce so there are different generational perspectives. Census 2000 will have enormous impact. We will see that “Americans” are interwoven with the several hundred countries and several thousand cultures on the planet. Some people see themselves as “citizens of the world,” others don’t see themselves that way at all. That gives you a diversity index to work with.

29

AUGUST 2000

Q. Is it too late to get involved in diversity?

A. Not at all. An organization is a social system operating within the wider world. That’s all the justification you need to put diversity on your agenda, strategically and operationally. Your organization’s mission revolves around and depends upon your diversity repertoire. Diversity is actually the axis of your activity, the fulcrum of your future. It doesn’t matter what stage you’re at, there’s diversity work to be done. That might mean periodically doing a scan of yourself, scanning everyone you have contact with, and comparing the connections and the gaps. It could mean redefining the talents you bring to work. Oh, there are plenty of routes to take.

Q. Who should be trained first?

A. I think it’s most effective to have training for your staff functions first--HR, training, OD, financial, legal, IS, strategic planning, etc. This should include identifying a core group who will monitor and facilitate the diversity work in the organization. Then you should have training for your executive-level group, customized for them. Only after that has been processed should you decide what kind of training to have for other employees and managers. Unfortunately, many times when the decision is made to do training, everyone is sent randomly. This is not based on any sound reasoning. You need to have people who know what impact the training will have and what opportunities and problems it will reveal. You need to have an informed and committed group of people to support and pursue the issues and lessons of training, individually and organizationally. You need leadership. Otherwise, people will not know what role they have in reinforcing the message about diversity. When training comes along, it should make a difference. This can happen only if you think it through.

Q. Is diversity a recent movement?

A. No. People have been engaged with diversity issues in organized ways since before the USA became a country. Indeed, that’s how the USA became a country. It’s a misconception that “the diversity movement” started in our lifetime. We inherited it from generations of people who addressed social justice, equity, equality, inclusion, parity, pluralism, discrimination, coexistence, collaboration, prejudice, power, class, gender, rights and freedoms, in their lives and work, in many societies around the world. There is very little that is new about diversity. It remains unfinished business which each group needs to address in effective ways. Finding those ways may be new for you, but luckily there’s a lot of help and historical precedents.

Q. How will we know there’s more diversity work to do?

A. As long as you’re still having “firsts,” you’re breaking new ground. If someone is the “first” of any description, there’s a wider horizon ahead of you. And as long as anyone is being hampered from working with you at their full capacity, there’s more to do. Just as we test a building for asbestos or lead paint, we need to test organizations for toxic particles in the atmosphere.

Q. Can we get your back columns?

A. The last 40 columns are on my website, along with recently published Op Ed pieces on Census 2000 and links to 200 other sites on diversity. Keep clicking.

30

SEPTEMBER 2000

Q. Why pay attention to diversity?

A. Here’s one way to see it: Your children (and maybe you too) will have contact with people outside your family, clan, tribe--people with different religion, language, nationality, economic level, educational level (culture, values, beliefs) from yours. That’s pretty shocking and unusual in human history. Wars are usually fought to keep that from happening. But in our time and society, that’s becoming normal. Doing diversity work is our attempt to avoid the part where everyone kills each other--even within your own circle. Let’s note that almost all of the 40-odd wars in the world are between ethnic groups in the same country. Wars are about differences, not being able to coexist. People fight to get dominance, equal status, recognition. We are trying some alternative, peaceful, democratic ways. It’s an ambitious project.

Q. Does Diversity belong under HR?

A. I think they both come under Organizational Capability, but few organizations have such a concept yet, though I have seen the term capability management emerging. Few places have a Diversity Office with the appropriate portfolio. Some places still treat Diversity as an EEO compliance function. Diversity should be connected to Intellectual Capital, Customer Service, Market Research, Competitive Analysis, Professional Development, Collaboration, Ethics, Global Savvy. In my idea of a hyperlinked organization, they would all cross-reference each other.

Q. What’s an issue we should be looking at?

A. Look at gaps between people and groups of people, gaps in life expectancy and in age, as well as gaps in wealth and health. The median age in some countries is 16; in some countries it’s 40. (In the U.S. it’s almost 36.) The oldest countries are Japan and many in Europe. The oldest group in the U.S. are Euro-Americans, the youngest are Latinos. This tells you about the structure of the population for the next 50 years, and gives an indication of tensions, conflicts and social dynamics. The lowest life expectancy countries, under 40 years, are in Africa. The highest are over 80. Some people get twice as much lifetime as others. This gives you some perspectives to work on.

Q. What can we do about anti-Semitism?

A. Studies say that the most anti-Semitic people overestimate the size of the Jewish population and are least likely to know any Jews personally. Of course, this is true of many biases. We should be concerned about any anti-ism. Any group should look at its ethnocentrism. If we don’t want people to be prejudiced about us, we shouldn’t be prejudiced about them. Jews are fewer than 2 1/2% of the U.S. population. (Some people think they’re more than 10 times that.) Many Jews do not consider themselves “white.” (Some people are surprised to learn this.) As with any group, there are many internal differences, between Ashkenazi and Sephardi, between Orthodox, Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist. Your task, as usual, is to get past labels and generalizations and connect with the human.

31

OCTOBER 2000

Q. What is the future of diversity?

A. More. There will be more diversity, it will be more important in all our activities, and it will be more complicated. We will look more at internal diversity, not external diversity. Our perspective will be more international. We will pay more attention to economic and political diversity. We will stop talking about different races, since there is no such thing. We have just begun to explore the range and significance of diversity. The real work is ahead of us.

Q. How should diversity programs operate?

A. Don’t dumb down diversity while at the same time you’re talking about a knowledge-based culture. Diversity is far richer and more complex in people’s lives than it is in most workplace diversity programs. So there’s a credibility gap right away. Too many programs are one-dimensional, simplistic, binary, divisive. That puts them at odds with any efforts to promote organizational learning, teamwork, integrity, social responsibility, morale, productivity. There are too many mixed messages--”do as I say, not as I do”--and not enough leadership. We should be promoting ideal work conditions. Then if we fall short, we’ve still got outstanding work conditions. Most diversity efforts have too little vision, too little time. Diversity is not a program, it’s a commitment. Most diversity offices are underfunded, understaffed, and underutilized. Diversity needs to be owned and promoted throughout an organization.

Q. Our plant managers are all white men. How can we change that?

A. Apply different criteria. In your plant, workers speak many languages. You could require that your managers should each speak a language spoken by more than 15% of the employees (including sign language). You would get a different distribution of managers without focusing on skin color and gender.

Q. In health care, what should we be looking at?

A. What are the variables that affect clinical outcomes? Is there a cultural component to clinical effectiveness? What preconceptions and biases are built into our practice model? What are we missing? (The same questions can be asked in education, law and other areas.)

Q. What are the fastest growing groups in the U.S.?

A. Prison inmates. People over 85. People with mixed ancestry--interfaith, interethnic. People who speak Spanish.

Q. How should we celebrate Columbus Day?

A. It’s an opportunity to re-educate ourselves. Columbus believed he had sailed to China and Japan. It makes no sense to teach our young children that Columbus was the Founding Father of the U.S.A. Teachers should not organize dramatizations of Pilgrims inviting Indians to eat with them. Indians fed the starving Pilgrims--Pilgrims and their heirs should give thanks to Indians every Thanksgiving. Columbus was sent back to Spain in chains for authorizing the torture and killing of the natives of Caribbean islands. Why is Columbus Day a patriotic holiday in the U.S.? In order to make diversity programs necessary. Latin America is more honest--they call it El Dia de la Raza, when the continents made contact.

32

NOVEMBER 2000

Q. How much time should we spend on diversity?

A. That’s hard to say, because diversity is part R&D, part productivity enhancement, part human relations, part OD, part customer relations, part management development, part knowledge management, etc. You should make a cross-functional, cross-organizational map of everywhere that diversity is a factor in your activities. Make a conceptual chart that cross-references any aspect of diversity. This is a good project for your next Diversity Team meeting.

It”s a matter of understanding the interrelatedness of diversity in all its dimensions. If you follow the dynamics of diversity where it leads you, how much time will that take? Be sure to add the time it will take for everyone to communicate with each other and to follow up on the issues they raise. If it begins to look like an ongoing process, you’ve got the right idea.

Q. What do you look for in an organization? A. Do people know they are working in a system of diversities--do they believe it--do they think and act as though they are? For some groups, the idea of diversity is new to them, or they don’t believe it applies to them, or they don’t want to accept it, or they don’t like the idea. This gives you an indication of what needs to be done, diagnostically, clinically. What is the state of consciousness of individuals and (a separate question) what are the governing principles of the system? Are the answers to the two questions compatible, harmonious, congruent, or are they dissonant? If your argument is that diversity is a form of knowledge, learning, and creativity and it is combinatorial, then you want to develop a sustainable environment for such phenomena to thrive. Is diversity considered central and critical? Have people looked at their endeavor with sufficient complexity (breadth and depth)? Do people see their organizational positions one-dimensionally or multi-dimensionally, actively or passively? Do people see the organization as a living, adaptive, self-governing system? Are functions compartmentalized or interoperable? Your answers reveal a lot about life in the organization, including attitudes and behaviors about the realm of issues we call diversity.

Q. How diverse are we?

A. I met with a group who were impressed at how diverse they were, because they spoke 5 languages—all from western Europe. I know individuals who speak 5 languages. I’ve been in groups where people spoke 23 languages. It depends on your perspective. What seems like a wide range of differences to some people is hardly noteworthy to others.

We ought to ask why there isn’t more diversity in election coverage and debates. Why do we allow ourselves to be reduced to two symbiotic parties? There are multiple points of view in many different parties which don’t get much attention. This is inconsistent with a commitment to diversity.

Q. We just had tacos for Hispanic Heritage Month—what does that have to do with diversity?

A. Many places say they celebrate differences by featuring stereotypes during official occasions. I think we should go beyond tacos.

33

DECEMBER 2000

Q. What’s your definition of diversity?

A. I’ve said that diversity is whatever makes someone different. Or, diversity is a person’s uniqueness. To me, diversity means being in transition, a work in progress. It is the opposite of being static and uniform. It is also the opposite of isolation. It means that you are not only alive and in process, but also in contact with other life and interacting, co-evolving, with it. Diversity is a measure of a person’s or group’s capacity to relate to the full range of humanity. A person or group experiences itself through belonging to our species in an ecosystem of all the rest of the world. This will take some exploration, some learning, some risks. Isolation removes interconnection, it removes the context and dynamic of relationships. Isolation leaves people on their own. There are many kinds of isolation—professional, geographic, social, emotional, political. Some groups wall themselves in, others are walled in by outside forces. Don’t let your search for a definition hold you back or tie you up in knots. Your definition of diversity should be formative, developmental, adaptive. It should leave room for things about yourself and other people that you don’t know yet. Make it loose and playful. The main thing is you need to test it out. In each column I try to expand and apply my definition of diversity. It is always finding new forms.

Q. How can I increase my diversity?

A. Go where you haven’t been, near and far. This might mean looking at Web sites in other countries, or walking in different sections of your town. If you don’t have a passport, get one. Talk to people you don’t know. Work on a Habit for Humanity house. Look through a different magazine. Tutor someone. Meditate.

Q. What kind of diversity could we focus on?

A. Look at the things that are not obvious about people. Sometimes I ask people to write down three things about themselves that are not on their resume. You can do an exercise about jumping to conclusions about people, what assumptions you make about them, and then have them tell you some things you didn’t guess. The point is to see people as multi-dimensional--and to realize how much we use our own filters and blinders. And then it will be time to re-examine what you thought was obvious.

Q. Why don’t we move faster?

A. There’s a lot of fear and timidity, isn’t there? Despite all the talk about leadership, I don’t see much. There’s some discussion about spirit in the workplace, but I also see a lot of unethical behavior. We need to promote conditions where people will speak their minds (& hearts). We need to see solidarity with people who are being harassed, but too many bystanders don’t get involved. We need witnesses who will come forward, who will not be accomplices to their organization’s mistreatment of people. We need an honor system and a buddy system. People need to create more safe space for each other and for outsiders. We need to develop a culture of peace out of fostering new norms and making our visions into reality. We should continue getting together with people who can support each other.

How are you addressing institutional bias? What do you do for a follow-up to your annual Diversity Day or monthly theme? Does your Diversity Team need to go on a retreat? What is your strategy for continuing this work? In this 10th year of this column, I need to do more, but it can only be as your partner, at your invitation. If I can be of any help to you, let me know.

2001

“ ”We cannot put off living until we are ready. The most salient characteristic of life is its coerciveness: it is always urgent, “here and now” without any possible postponement. Life is fired at us point-blank.

— Jose Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955)

36

JANUARY 2001

Q. How do we move ahead if we’re so divided?

A. The 2000 election showed our disunity. That made it starkly clear, quantifiably clear, how disunited we are. I think it shows that honoring our diversity is what could unite us. That’s what keeps a disunited society and country together. Instead of seeing the election results as not providing any mandate to a winner, we could see them as a strong mandate to communicate across dividing lines and to find connections. The results do not automatically mean we are deadlocked or polarized. They give us empirical evidence that we need to learn how to live and work with people of different persuasions. In a photo-finish, there is mostly overlap between the finishers.

Working with diversity issues is a combination of idealism and pragmatism, since there’s no avoiding the reality of diversity and probing its implications, manifestations, ramifications. It is fundamental to human experience and activity, it addresses issues of human community. For some people it’s a matter of managing for social justice and social responsibility. Either way you approach it, idealistic or pragmatic, will take you to the other one.

The fatal flaw in wrestling with “the business case for diversity” is discussing it as if the realm of business were non-human, as if the social dimension were an alien activity. In fact, the business case for diversity is that there are other people in the world; you are not alone. That’s it. There are other levels to this, such as asking whether business can be conducted according to principles of democracy, or environmental ethics, or spiritual values.

Some people have rationales for how to make more money by broadening the range (the “cultural diversity”) of their marketing or recruiting. “The business case” is often described without reference to a moral and ethical basis, as if there were no such thing. I find this deeply disturbing. There’s an old expression, heard in many movies—“this isn’t personal; it’s business.” But what if we see that business is personal and interpersonal and social, and is governed by questions of ethics and morality?

Business is indeed a cultural and political activity. It involves interactions between people. That makes business a subject for social science (as well as the humanities—look at all the books offering management principles from history and literature), and it makes diversity a natural, basic part of any discussion of business. People who don’t “get” the business case for diversity leave out their own humanity and the humanity of their work.

One of the key questions you should be asking is, what happens to transformatives in your organization? Maybe, as a transformative yourself, you have been living with the answer. You can use your experience to guide your diversity agenda. If you don’t know about Paul Ray’s work on Cultural Creatives over the past 15 years, learn about it (through his new book and Web site). You may be a Cultural Creative yourself, and you certainly want to know people who are. There are many authentic cultural communities in the U.S. If you are not familiar with the Jain, Dunkard, Melungeon, Gullah, Romani, Bruderhof, Creole, Lubavitcher and Hutterite peoples, it’s time to learn. There are many others--do you know the ones in your region? There is a group, members of the Baha’i faith, that is based on accepting the diversity of people. You should find out what you could learn from them. This kind of learning will not only deepen your understanding of yourself, it will provide you with resources for doing diversity work and for living in a democracy. I wish that more diversity programs pursued such efforts.

Diversity is a prism. There are many routes, angles, vectors, pathways, in and around it. There is a spiritual track and a political track and they keep connecting. It is amovement of inclusion, empowerment, recognition, participation. It is a solidarity movement with the alienated, marginalized, suppressed, excluded, harassed, forgotten. It is advocacy and acknowledgment. It is restoration, recovery, restitution. You can’t have vitality without a vibrant, life-affirming environment. From our November election, we have powerful new motivation to look into these matters. In this 10th year of this column, I will continue to try to develop our thinking along these lines, with your help.

Happy new year.

37

FEBRUARY 2001

Q. How can we make diversity interesting?

A. Look at the experiences that shaped you and are still shaping you. Follow your path back to its sources. The important inspirations and influences in my life have come from many different cultures, languages, religions, parts of the world. If you pursue any thought or feeling, you are experiencing diversity, without calling it that. In our media age, people are exposed to images, ideas, and stories from all over, but caring about something enough to study it takes you deeper.

Look at whatever is personal, or intellectually stimulating, for you. For example: if you look at Martin Luther King you find Gandhi, Tolstoi and Thoreau, among others. They were all writers and spiritual/political activists, concerned with the quality of life and with challenging systems that confined the spirit. Their concerns and work spoke to me, touched me, moved me, as a teenager and now. They help me make sense of my humanity.

This wasn’t a deliberate attempt to honor diversity, although obviously these four men are very diverse by many measures. You have a Southern Baptist preacher who connects to a Hindu in India and South Africa (who translated the “Bhagavad Gita” when he was in prison), a religious Russian aristocrat who freed his slaves and wrote landmark novels, and a New England transcendentalist who spent a year in the woods and a night in jail. We can see that they are related, that in order to appreciate King’s advocacy of nonviolence we must see his journey through history and philosophy. Likewise, if you ever deal with any of the subjects they dealt with--war and peace, love and death, the world and nature, prayer and politics--you’re on your way.

Choose some issue and explore it. People are more developed in some areas than others. Groups use all sorts of scales and assessments to find a common vocabulary and frame of reference. You can use anything that shows a distribution of attributes, talents, abilities or different manners, habits, and customs. The point is to figure out how to recognize differences to begin with. Then you can talk about respecting them and how to blend them or bounce off each other creatively.

But many people don’t know about themselves in some ways, so they can’t compare themselves to others. As an example, most people don’t know if they have perfect pitch in music. Discussing this would lead in some very interesting directions which are at the heart of any diversity education. What makes people different, how do they develop some part of themselves, can anyone do it?

I’ve found that most people haven’t really thought about the conditions under which they learn or work best. People don’t know their baseline or their optimum state without having some way to gauge it. Too many diversity discussions are conducted from a base of ignorance and prejudice, or spontaneous reaction It is important to dig out from the labels, clichés and slogans. It’s bad enough that diversity programs continue to talk about race. They talk about tricky subjects without any acknowledgment of subtleties, complexity, real life. What happened to informed discussion or intellectual honesty? Is anyone looking at the work of Anne Fausto Sterling or Sarah Blaffer Hrdy on gender or others in any given field?

Look through the new book, 1000 Families by Uwe Sommer. It’s a dense photo album from every continent, an anthology of one race, one species. It’s easy to put yourself into the poses and know that at some level we are part of each other’s family. Recall the famous first sentence of Tolstoi’s novel, Anna Karenina. “All happy families are alike, all unhappy families are different in their own way.” You can explore the dimensions of your life as you go.

You know about the cave paintings that are 35,000 years old. They seem very modern to me, or perhaps something in us is very old. This is mysterious and paradoxical as most things in diversity are. If this interests you, it’s time you discussed cave paintings in your diversity program. “Nothing human is alien to me,” is the classic line. If you adopt that sentiment, it leaves you with an endless choice of possibilities.

38

MARCH 2001

Q. What’s something we could focus on?

A. Help people to facilitate and release each other’s potential and creative energy. This would involve figuring out what is keeping people from functioning at their fullest and best. In the process, you will learn what conditions people need and what the similarities and differences are among people. You can do this with any group who work together. I think this is the unspoken goal of most diversity efforts anyway, but groups rarely get to accomplish it so I suggest identifying it as your theme up front. This is the most useful way of acknowledging differences, bypassing rhetoric, being grounded in the reality of people’s lives. You’ll have immediate payoffs from applying your discoveries. In fact, any time you look at increasing collaboration or creativity or decreasing conflict you are dealing with aspects of diversity, and it’s not only people in diversity roles who pay attention to these things. I think diversity advocates should join in such efforts. You know the saying, it’s surprising how much you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit. Most people bring less than 20% of themselves to their work--sometimes much less. People utilize a fraction of themselves. Some people say their real selves come out in areas outside of work. In some cases, I’m afraid their real selves don’t have a way to come out at all. When I work with groups, often the people who respond to me are people who are in pain and who are in touch with their own unfulfilled process. They have a hunger for living which is not satisfied during the long time they spend at work. It means that their humanity is on hold. This is a core diversity issue. The life-force of many people, certain people more obviously than others but ultimately everyone, is thwarted, suppressed, rejected. They are penalized for their vitality, their identity, their way of knowing, acting, and being. This is happening at the same time that HR managers and organization executives are saying they value people, or people are an asset, or they believe intellectual capital, human capital, and social capital are important. The culture is a complex system that homogenizes differences, exerting pressure to operate within regulated terms. The officially defined limits and boundaries begin to look like an informal code of conduct so that the source of the social force field is obscured. This is how discrimination, harassment, hostility, hazing, occur. We tend to see this through a lens that looks for equity issues and disparate treatment of protected classes or “minorities,” but it also explains how people function at sub-optimal levels, which includes everyone. It’s basically the same phenomenon, but we have compartmentalized our perceptions so we don’t usually see it that way. So what you want to focus on is how people can help each other be who they are. You need to practice doing this. There is a social compact that says, I won’t ask you to be more of yourself if you won’t ask me for more of myself and things deteriorate from there. There is another rule which says, I can be more of myself but you can’t be more of yourself. Either way, there’s a problem. And, of course, an opportunity. Q. In this period of lay-offs, isn’t diversity going to be less important?

A. Actually, it’s more important. We are seeing 26,000 people lose their employment from DaimlerChrysler, 52,000 from GE/Honeywell, as well as Office Depot, Xerox, AOL, Lucent, Amazon, Dell, etc. This includes but goes beyond the issues of adverse impact on various groups of people. It means paying attention to “survivor” issues. And it means reconstituting the environment for effective work. When a company reduces the numbers of people, it has to find a new formula for high performance. This will involve a new mix of diversities. Identifying and nurturing that is critical. And for both those who were and those who weren’t laid off, it might be good to anticipate what the diversities for the future may be. Meanwhile, the social fabric, the workforce, and the economy become more diverse with so many laid-off people moving within them.

39

APRIL 2001

Q. Do you work with groups like ours?

A. I’ve recently led an in-service staff day at a technical college, a corporate senior management retreat, a professional development day for division heads of a city government, court-ordered sexual harassment training, sessions with a diversity council that was stuck, and a project to develop institutional cohesion at a Catholic college. I was a speaker in an interfaith program for Martin Luther King Day, at a union/management conference, at a synagogue, and at an evangelical Christian college. My approach to diversity is to be diverse. I work with groups in all sectors and time zones. I like to work with groups that are willing to work on themselves. That way, we both get something out of it.

Q. How can I respond to people who said they didn’t know what the point of our session with you was or where it would lead?

A. This often happens when there isn’t ongoing professional development, when there is no habit or culture of being a learning organization. One response to this comment is that this is an ongoing process and it should lead to more discussions, conversations, dialogue.

Q. How can we keep the focus greater than race, our usual black/white agenda?

A. I appreciate your concern about this. You should not be on the defensive about it. The U.S. is certainly not a black/white society. There is anti-racism work that can be done. There is work against discrimination and hostile environments, but that should address a number of variables including physical appearance, age, sexual orientation, religion, speaking English with an accent, citizenship status, and any other examples that people experience. Or to state it positively, there is work on developing democratic institutions and environments where people can be creative and collaborative. It should be seen as a way to increase the comfort and inclusion of people who feel alienated, excluded, ignored, marginalized, outcast.

“Race” is only one term and it is tricky, since there is no such thing as race, though there is racism. In the U.S., we often do not distinguish among culture, class, nationality, religion, ethnicity, and skin color. We tend to call variations on them “race.” If people are concerned about race issues, they should include more than black/white descriptions. There are many other combinations. Black/white leaves out any clarity or accuracy about history and culture. It is a shame when “diversity” is used as a codeword that is divisive.

Q. What can we do after having the program with you?

A. You have a calling to make available tools, resources, terminology, and a climate where people can learn about themselves and their relations with each other. Without this, people can’t get any work done. You should not avoid this task because you feel things would get out of hand or you would be “backed into a corner” by people with anger, pain, grievances, loud voices, etc. If anything, such concerns should guide you to develop the institutional capacity to have forums, dialogues, exchanges, interactions, mechanisms, etc. Your Executive Team itself should be one such forum. And it would make sense to create a Task Force to consider how to deal with issues after our program.

I love your phrase “the future is the conversation.” Rather than looking for resources “to implement a solution” you can locate resources to continue the process. You will need some people to facilitate group dynamics. This allows you to encourage people to keep up their interest in small core groups. You can indicate that you’re interested in any suggestions or recommendations that come out of their discussions that have a bearing on institutional activities and practices. You can invite people to continue the momentum of our initial program in constructive and creative ways.

40

MAY 2001

Q. How should we read the Census 2000 results?

A. Remember, all the reports and analysis you will be seeing in the next few years are based on data recorded as of April, 2000, so the population has already changed. In that sense, the figures are already outdated. You need to understand the trends and the rate of change so that you can adjust accordingly.

In Census terms, Hispanic origin is “separate and distinct” from the 63 possible racial identities. For the first time, people could identify themselves in more than one category of the choices offered. You need to look at the combinations. A much higher proportion of people in some groups identified a mixed heritage than people in other groups. I believe there are many more people of mixed heritage than people reported.

We have to be careful how we read the numbers, which are at www.census.gov. How white is the US? The tables show that 77% of people reported white alone or in combination with another race. For non-Hispanic white, you get 69%. Some 48% of Hispanics said they are white. We have to be more careful how we talk about ourselves as a country; we’re more complex than some of the terms we’ve been using imply.

Hispanics/Latinos now outnumber African-Americans, as separate categories. Immigrants (people born in other countries) are 11% of the population. Over 15 million people said they were some other race than the choices given. This gives a lot of latitude for talking about diversity. I think it also gives more reasons to distinguish between 1964 EEO and Affirmative Action and conditions in 2001.

There’s a difference between statements about the population overall and sub-groups. A projection about the US as a whole may already be true for significant segments of the population. For example, the portrait of people under 18 is different from the summary of everyone. The younger the group, the less white/European and the more likely to identify themselves as multi-ethnic, multiracial, multicultural.

What’s the lesson? The USA is a pluralist nation. Some people intermix. Some people live in very different social orbits from others. The spirit of America is to be pluralist, open to pluralism even if pluralism is not evident in some particular way in a particular place. Look at the Census 2000 results and prepare for a new social dynamic, a new map and story of who we are.

Q. What should I think when someone says that those who are different should learn to live in the “American” culture?

A. You could suggest that the American culture is a dynamic jigsaw puzzle. Pieces of all shapes and patterns fit in. It’s exactly the opposite of what someone who makes such a comment is saying. Some people have a narrow frame of reference, a limited idea of American culture. They have never stretched or ventured or peeked over the edges of their experience. You reported that “resistance to dealing with diversity seems to be the norm; individuals don’t want to change or grow.” But no. Resistance to diversity is not the norm. Many individuals do want to grow and change. Give your group a different orientation, a different set of assumptions and perspectives and you’ll transform your outlook, your social system, your culture--American culture.

Q. Can you suggest any books?

A. Ella Mazel compiled a 160-page treasury of quotes, And don’t call me a racist!, three years ago when she was 80. The book is available free to nonprofit and educational organizations, but only in multiples of 36 copies. Don’t ask for just one. You can get it by writing to Argonaut Press, 1 Militia Drive, Lexington MA 02421 or by phoning 781-862-4521. Private companies can get the book by making a contribution to its printing costs by arrangement with the publisher. Vera John-Steiner, Creative Collaboration, Oxford, 2000. There’s a good case study, “Steps Toward an Inclusive Community,” by Maggie Potapchuk, from www.jointcenter.org or 202-789-3500.

41

JUNE 2001

Q. Why do you think our efforts are still missing the boat?

A. Because they don’t go far enough, they don’t make the connections between diversity and other areas of activity, or between talk and action. Diversity-in-action redraws the lines of inclusion and representation, who’s in, who’s out, who is listened to, taken seriously, respected, consulted, followed, given credit….

Diversity ties in to ethics, to different forms of governance, different modes of knowledge, different ways of conducting meetings. It’s strange that diversity programs don’t have a larger vocabulary and toolkit for democratic pluralism, interdependence, coexistence, collaboration, and participation.

A Diversity Team or Council should be promoting and sponsoring new forms of pluralistic thinking, decision-making, dialogue, and knowledge exchange. It goes beyond having a Hispanic Day, especially if it’s run by non-Hispanics full of stereotypes of Hispanics,--or if it’s run by Latinos catering to the prevailing stereotypes. When are we going to see some program push the envelope, break out of the mold? It’s sad that the diversity program doesn’t have more of a multiplier effect throughout the operation of the organization and its contact with the outside world. This is why diversity programs and councils get caught in a dead-end. Diversity lets itself be marginalized, while Total Quality Management and Knowledge Management get attention, when in fact diversity drives quality and knowledge. Diversity of perspective, ideas, talent, drive any organization, and these diversities are accompanied by others. Diversity is not just a vehicle for cultural sociology, psychology, politics, and -history, although it is that. It is not just a means for talking about reconciliation, equity, and the redress of grievances, although it is that, too. It is about developing a sustainable social system, a social ecosystem. That requires thinking about what such a system would be, how it would function. What would its features be?

There is a large body of theory and practical examples that I think ought to be applied to diversity work and issues. This includes the fields of social construction and relational practice as they have developed over 35 years. It includes sociocracy and the sociocratic method, evolving for more than 50 years, starting in the Netherlands and now in many countries. There is terrific work being done to promote and assist dialogue, outside of Diversityland. What impresses me is that any of these approaches and methods achieves far-reaching diversity results as a byproduct of their effort. Diversity workers should borrow from and make use of this work.

Q. Should we change our targets because of Census 2000?

A. Yes, of course. Whites are already a less-than-half minority in the 100 largest cities. When a company is looking at representation of minorities, where are they looking? (Whites are not a minority in the suburbs.) Do organizations leave out the cities when they do their sampling? What lengths will companies go to in order to justify having a mostly-white workforce? Because the future is gaining on us. Soon, more than half of the youngsters in America will be children of color (this is already the case in a growing number of places). Then, will an employer say the country as a whole is still mainly white? And then in 2046, when the country as a whole is not mainly white, will companies be ready, willing, and able to reflect the new profile overnight? Of course not. It takes time. There is a pipeline, there is a transition period. Organizations need to be moving in that direction now in order to reach that destination later. What Census 2000 makes clear is how far behind most organizations are. Years ago I wrote that in order to reflect the population of the society in the near future, employers should be aiming for 60% females and 40% people of color. Now, in the tenth year of this column, I would say that if an employer hopes to reflect the population of the country 30 years from now, it should be going for 60% females and 55% people of color in its hiring and promotion practices. “People of color” includes immigrants, guest workers, green card residents. We are part of the global community. It’s not only the future but the world that is gaining on us.

42

JULY 2001

Q. Should we continue to use the word “diversity”?

A. You should consider using other terms. The word doesn’t mean the same thing to people in different countries, even in English-language groups, and it certainly is translated into other languages differently. It has a different twist in the US, where it is slang and shorthand and code for particular cultural politics, cultural history, social relations, and demographic readings. The phenomenon of diversity, people’s experience of it, is complex and is changing, whatever you mean by it. The context in which the term is used has changed and has been changed by the way it has been used. There is a kind of “diversity fatigue” in some places. As with many words, there has been such loose usage and overexposure that it doesn’t have the power or clarity that it may have had.

I also would tie this initiative to other aspects of your values and behavior. It is important not to make it seem that your diversity initiative is separate and different from social responsibility, ethical business practices, employee/customer relations, etc. I think your strategy needs to internalize and operationalize cultural capability along with your other fundamentals. Whatever you do, it should be thoughtful, holistic, systemic, and done with humility.

So I suggest you consider using other terms for a diversity initiative--for example, Cultural Capability or Global Pluralism (or Global Capability/Cultural Pluralism). Especially if you operate in many countries the English word “diversity” may not travel well. It is important that any diversity initiative coming out of corporate headquarters does not sound as if it were suitable only for the mindset of people in corporate headquarters. Just because you read this publication does not mean that you have a monopoly on using the word “diversity” or that other people in your organization would have a similar understanding of it.

Q. What’s happening to this country?

A. People live in different kinds of countries, nations, cultures, social and political identities. People live in virtual countries and cultures, in metaphorical, metaphysical, and metamorphic countries and cultures. A country can be an environment, an administrative unit, a political boundary, an emotional ego. Some people say, “what’s happening to MY country?” and feel disoriented. This is threatening to them. Some people think a country is a physical place, others experience it as a feeling. Some people like stability and continuity, or at least the idea and illusion of it, so instability and discontinuity are beyond their comfort or understanding. Some people equate change with diversity with the reordering of their world and worldview—and in many ways they are right. You could also ask, “what’s happening to this world?” We have a perspective on the planet that earlier generations never had. The feedback systems, the monitoring and imaging and data collection, the communications systems, have done something to our outlook and inlook. I think these forces influence our perspectives on diversity.

I heard Ray Kurzweil say that, at the current rate of progress, the 21st century will be the equivalent of 20,000 years, and the 20th century was the equivalent of 25 years. This is quite a claim. It is based on his understanding of an exponential rate of change. So the next 100 years will see 200 times the change we are now experiencing and the last 100 years were one quarter of what we now take as our baseline experience. He looks at technology but not in the usual way, as we see in his new book The Age of Spiritual Machines. I wonder what this means in sociological and psychological terms, in personal and interpersonal terms. I think this is something we should be factoring into our work. So much depends on a person’s way of experiencing change. And on one’s view of oneself or one’s group in an environment of change. This is a dimension of the reality of people’s lives that is often overlooked in talking about diversity. I don’t think we pay enough attention to it.

43

AUGUST 2001

Q. How do we introduce diversity?

A. Actually, diversity introduces itself. Or I should say, diversity needs no introduction. Diversity is the primal soup as well as the spice of life. It’s our biology, genetics, environment, equilibrium. It’s our mental state. You begin with the acknowledgment that diversity is normal, natural, healthy, and universal. See where it leads, follow the chain reaction in all directions. How far can it take you? Upside-down, inside-out, and beyond. If this is true, you’re not bringing diversity into your world, since it’s there anyway. You can do a lot to keep it healthy and strong—or to hurt it. I think this is the basic error of so many diversity initiatives. They act as if their job is to “introduce” diversity. No, their job is to facilitate the multiplier effects of diversity, to make sure that nothing (and no one) in the organization is introducing any interference in the unfolding and expression of diversity. On this note, you could introduce people in your group to each other’s diversities. Or to being good custodians and stewards of diversity. Or to the many ways their organization’s operations may be sabotaging diversity. These are worthy efforts. A diversity initiative can address personal diversity issues or impersonal diversity issues: It can look into the social dynamics of the people in your operation; it can also look at the dynamics which operate behind the scenes. These are different agenda items. Most diversity offices speak about human relations, dealing with organizations as theaters of social activity where individual and interpersonal attitudes and behaviors are played out. Then there are the inner workings of the organization, the subroutines, the systems that are programmed to run the operations regardless of the particular people in their present positions. Organizations are made up of both kinds of phenomena. Diversity work should look at both.

Q. Why isn’t our policy statement in support of diversity working?

A. Any group has a social policy. It may be tacit or implicit, unspoken. It’s clear nonetheless. Indeed, that’s how the group knows who it is and not some other group. Diversity can seem like an invasion by outside forces, undermining/transforming the group from one social formulation to another. Of course, many places have explicit statements about the value and importance of people. Then the question is, do they live up to their statements? What if some people actually take those statements seriously? How far would they get? Diversity changes the range of members who have the entry code. As of June, Wal-Mart has been charged with denying equal opportunity and fair treatment to its women employees. Wal-Mart is the largest employer in the U.S. The class-action lawsuit challenges its social policy, which is a matter of equity or openness to diversity in its treatment of women. Commitment to diversity--putting it into practice--makes discrimination impossible. So you need to look at how congruent your words are with your actions. That could be your whole program for a year. What would you find? Some individuals try to block one form of diversity or another. Some group cultures try to block it. And most organizations block it by being compartmentalized and subdivided and fragmented. There are micro-kingdoms and decentralized cost centers, a maze of operational blind alleys. Diversity is ignored, suffocated, and ambushed, caught in a political and administrative cross-fire.

The mission of diversity efforts is to humanize your worklife. It’s hard to maintain your humanity in a dehumanized system. Diversity is sometimes a mantra that helps keep people on course. A statement supporting diversities is a good reminder that you can always go further toward being true to your real self, true to the humanity of any and all social relations. You could meditate on your institutional statement once a week or so. Sponsor an essay contest. Print it on your business card. Then you have to actually live it. And that’s where your rhetoric, or your behavior, may need to be revised. That’s when the work begins.

44

SEPTEMBER 2001

Q. Why doesn’t HR understand the work that needs to be done?

A. In 1987, the HR function in American organizations was caught off-guard by the “Workforce 2000” report. Since then, half-heartedly in too many cases, it has sponsored thousands of diversity awareness sessions, most of which were barely skin-deep. This was reactive, a day late and a dollar short.

Most places haven’t become proactive. (Have you?) Few HR offices today have an R&D or think tank component. Few do environmental scanning. Few have incorporated mediation, dialogue, or facilitation training. Few people responsible for HR and personnel have been developing their staff ’s roles as ethics officers and counselors. They are still likely to be taken by surprise by new insights into human resourcefulness.

Diversity should be a guiding principle by now. Diversity operates in the realm of ecological systems, HR usually doesn’t, so HR usually isn’t capable of dealing with diversity. HR often comes to diversity with inaccurate assumptions, inappropriate models and inadequate tools. Some organizations have realized this and have diversity report directly to the CEO.

Many HR offices have become an Audio-Visual shop, showing videotapes and calling it training and development. Institutions and companies are not well served by such a low level of functioning.

The fact is that personnel or human resources ought to be routinely concerned about people’s relations with other people, about the conditions for optimal individual and group functioning, about organizations as dynamic social systems--developing in-house expertise in those areas--and they are not. So, most of the critical aspects of diversity--thinking abut the future, circulating knowledge, collaboration, social capital, sustainability, social accountability, creativity, new relationship skills, power politics--take place outside the domain of personnel.

HR should not allow itself to become tangential to what the organization needs. Personnel should not let itself become a minor, marginal function, most of which can be handled by software or by outsourcing. What cannot be outsourced, because it is integral to the work that people do, are the dynamics among and within people, the fact that work is a complex social activity. If HR doesn’t concern itself with learning about the deep dimensions of diversity, if it treats human and organizational systems as fringe elements, then it will become ever more irrelevant. Avoiding this means it has to fundamentally re-invent and re-organize itself. Personnel has gone through repeated periods of professional embarrassment when they were regarded as bureaucratic obstacles to the work of the organization, as a group that just doesn’t get it. The experience with “Workforce 2000” was a wake-up call, another last chance to demonstrate an understanding of the story of people power in our society. Many departments seem to have dozed off again. Here’s a guideline: if your HR office hasn’t made diversity a permanent feature of its activity, if it isn’t providing leadership on Census 2050 projections, if it’s not conducting itself as a learning laboratory, if it isn’t concerned with humanizing worklife in a changing world society, you’ve got a problem. I think the saying is, “lead, follow, or get out of the way.”

Q. What should we be monitoring?

A. The United Nations named 2001 as the International Year of Mobilization against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. The UN is holding a major conference in Durban, South Africa, Aug. 31-Sept. 7. (As of the day I’m writing this, the US says it won’t attend if reparations for slavery or a resolution equating Zionism with racism are on the agenda.) More at un.org--click Conferences, E-Press, Fact Sheets. Also, look at these Web sites: religioustolerance.org, socialwatch.org, conservationeconomy.net, earthgreen.org, edunow.com, unityfirst.com

45

OCTOBER 2001

This is my 120th monthly column. Happy birthday to us, to all the readers and subscribers over these 10 years. I’m available for anniversary parties. I plan a national tour of my greatest hits. I will sign balloons or business cards if you’ve been a reader since the beginning--and if you’re new, welcome, you should know there have been about 300 Questions and Answers already, enough to get you off to a good start.

Q. What should we do about Columbus Day?

A. For years, many children in the U.S. were taught that Columbus discovered America. The implication was that he discovered the US of A, which would make him the Great-Grandfather of our country. My theory is that those of us who learned that in grade school grew up a bit confused and will need diversity readjustment training thirty or forty years later--and then might resent finding out that their teachers misled them, which they will take out on the people in their diversity program...resulting in the situation we have now.

One of the problems is that the “America” associated with Columbus is not North America. On his way to the Indies of Marco Polo, Columbus, thinking he was in Asian waters, made four excursions into the Caribbean area of Central America and even touched a corner of South America. (This is how the West Indies got their name.)

Columbus believed he had been to the islands off Cathay and Cipangu--China and Japan. He was prepared to meet the Great Khan, which is why his translator was a Jew (who had to convert to Christianity the day before the ships sailed) who spoke Arabic and Hebrew. At one point, after his third trip, he proposed to sail the river west of Trinidad to the Red Sea, taking him to Jerusalem to find the Holy Sepulchre. I find the story more interesting each time I look at it.

The Western Hemisphere as we know it includes several Americas, and some people in one country, the United States, think that they live in the America of Columbus’s voyages, though they do not. (If you want to visit Columbus territory, start with Cuba and Haiti/Dominican Republic)

So, basically, our teachers and politicians mostly got it wrong. There is no logical, geographical reason why Columbus Day should be a holiday in this North American nation. The best thing we can do is to make sure no more children are taught the way we were. It’s our best hope to eliminate the need for remedial diversity training.

Q. What’s love got to do with it?

A. At least two summer movies, “Planet of the Apes” and “A.I.,” were about interspecies relationships, one with our primate relatives and one with our robot relatives.

Most post-modern people have more daily contact with robots than with primates. Which seems strange, since human experience with robots is barely 50 years old, while experience within our primate family is at least 5 million years old. Maybe some people would be glad to have more robots to deal with. This is the trend, anyway. (There are 60 computers in some Mercedes models.)

Maybe work on human diversity gets us in shape for further ranges of diversity. On the other hand, maybe our experience with our own species is the most challenging. “Earth’s the right place for love. I don’t know where it’s likely to go better,” wrote Robert Frost in “Birches.” Does this sound old-fashioned to you?

Beyond differences there is oneness. Of course, beyond oneness, there are differences. A criticism of diversity consciousness is that it doesn’t pay enough attention to the healing/wholing of oneness consciousness. A criticism of oneness consciousness is that it doesn’t take into account the opportunities and injuries of differences. Where is your energy focused? Do you try to balance the two perspectives? Whether you go to the movies or not, you are likely to encounter differences and similarities in people’s philosophies, belief systems, world views, and values. This is how diversity is a branch of ethics. So maybe what I’ve been doing all these years is offering advice about ethical issues. Maybe this is a column about love.

SPECIAL SECTION:SEPTEMBER 11, 2001

“ ”There are moments in history when the fabric of everyday life unravels, and there is this unstable dynamism that allows for incredible social change in short periods of time. People and the world they’re living in can be utterly transformed, either for the good or the bad, or some mixture of the two.

— Tony Kushner (1990)

48

TEACHABLE MOMENT

While there is an urgent need to promote peace, this is also an opportunity to promote diversity. Indeed, they are related.

It is a good time to look at ripple effects and connections:

More than 1/3 of the people killed in the World Trade Center on September 11 were not Americans. They were citizens of 70-80 other countries. Hundreds were Muslims. More than 40% of residents of New York City are foreign-born.

The 4,500 dead and missing and 6,000+ treated at hospitals in New York City, and several hundred more at the Pentagon and in the Pennsylvania crash, have families and friends--if each one has only 10 family and 10 friends, that's 250,000 people directly connected to the injuries and deaths, in shock and mourning for their personal loss and grief--but of course the number is much larger. If there was a funeral every day, it would be 20 years of going to funerals.

Many Americans apparently do not know about the differences between Muslim and Hindu, or Arab and Muslim, not to mention Sikh and Coptic Christian, much less between terrorist and fellow-citizen. Many do not make any distinctions, do not care about making distinctions.

Americans are notoriously bad at knowing geography and languages, cultures and religions. Now, the situation cannot be understood without knowing about Kashmir, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and Iraq, for starters, not to mention the internal conflict in Afghanistan, the nuclear bomb tests by India and Pakistan, and how the United States, the largest weapons dealer in the world, provided missiles to the Mujaheddin in the Afghan war against the Soviet Union that some people fear may be used against the U.S.

I recall the corporate audiences in New Jersey who told me that more than 20% of Americans are Jews. The correct figure is 2-3%. Many African-Americans, part of a group that is 13% of the population, do not recognize Jews as a minority group. There are about 3.5 million Arab Americans and about 3-5 million Muslims (there's no accurate count) in the USA. Should it matter how large or small a group is for it to be covered by the Bill of Rights, by basic American principles?

I think we should volunteer to be resource people in local schools. Get people to look at globes and maps. Help people talk to each other.

The most powerful thing for me this week was a woman wearing a scarf who said she is not Muslim but was wearing the scarf to feel closer to Muslim women. This reminded me of the story of people in Denmark wearing a yellow star in solidarity with Jews, the scene in "Spartacus" when one man after another declares "I am Spartacus," the people in Billings, Montana, who put pictures of menorahs in their windows after a Jewish home was attacked in 1993.

People are using American flags as symbols for many kinds of feelings. A friend of mine was told to wear red, white, and blue ribbons by her co-workers, and then was strongly urged to go to church with them--though she is Muslim. Another company asked employees to wear red, white, and blue clothes to work. I imagine a confrontation between people with the American flag and people with the UN or Earth flag, all of them intense patriots.

Maybe patriotism is also learning to live and work (that is, to talk and listen) with people who are not like us, who do not wear the same cross around their neck, who do not cover their head with the same baseball cap--though, come to think of it, I heard that 44% of Major League baseball players were not born in the U.S. either.

September 22, 2001

49

LESSON PLANS

I’m concerned that a lot of important information is incorrect, left out or oversimplified. Here are some relevant and interesting avenues to pursue.

1. Names of countries. In the U.S., we often abbreviate the names-- Islamic State of Afghanistan Islamic Republic of Pakistan Islamic Republic of Iran Islamic Republic of Mauritania Federal Islamic Republic of the Comoros Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Syrian Arab Republic United Arab Emirates

2. Pakistan The name was developed by a group of students at Cambridge University who issued a pamphlet in 1933 called “Now or Never.” They came up with the term “Pakistan” as “composed of letters taken from the names of our homelands: that is, Punjab, Afghania (north west frontier province), Kashmir, Iran, Sindh (including Kachch and Kathiawar), Tukharistan, Afghanistan, and Baluchistan. It means the land of the Paks - the spiritually pure and clean. It symbolises the religious beliefs and the ethnical stocks of our people; and it stands for all the territorial constituents of our original fatherland. Although the suffix “stan” means country in Hindi and Persian, the students were able to fit the names of homelands to make an appropriate country name. Pakistan is both a Persian and an Urdu word. It is composed of letters taken from the names of all our homelands - “Indian” and “Asian.”

3. Flags • the United Nations flag (an Azimuthal Equidistant projection of the world centered at the North Pole showing an outline of the inhabited continents, in a circle of olive branches, adopted in 1947) • the Earth flag (from an Apollo 11 photograph of the planet from space, designed in 1969) • the peace symbol (upside-down semaphore signals of "N" and "D" for nuclear disarmament inside a circle, first used in 1958 for nonviolent demonstrations in England.)

4. Afghanistan has borders with Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Iran, China, and Pakistan.The first three were part of the former Soviet Union/USSR. Many central and south Asian states and regions end with the element ‘stan, such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Baluchistan, Kurdistan, and Turkistan. The ‘stan is formed from the Iranian root *st’, “to stand, stay,” and means “place (where one stays), home, country.” Iranian peoples have been the principal inhabitants of the geographical region occupied by these states for over a thousand years. The names are compounds of ‘stan and the name of the people living there

5. The Al-Qaed network of Osama bin Laden has been reported to have connections in 40 countries. The Sept. 11 airplane hijackers were said to be from Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Sudan, Yemen...it’s not clear yet, but it is incorrect to think they are from Afghanistan. Bin Laden and his group belong to the Wahabbi branch of Islam.

6. Also, see the Silk Road, Saladin, the Sunni/Shia split in Islam, and Pakistan’s ongoing dispute with India over Kashmir.

7. Recommended reading: Tournament of Shadows: The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia by Karl E. Meyer and Shareen Blair Brysac, Counterpoint Press, 2000 (paper)

September 28, 2001 –Compiled and quoted from various sources...

50

9-1-1: EMERGENCY

When hijackers coordinated the take-over of four passenger planes on September 11, they sent out a 9-1-1. It was truly an emergency call.

Emergency comes from emerge and emergence, from the Latin word for to plunge out--it means to rise from, to come out into view.

We have listened to stories of rescue and sacrifice. We have watched First Responders, the Fire and Emergency Medical teams that are first on the scene of a disaster. We have recognized so many people as the heroes they are. But it’s not over. There is plenty of emergency response work still to be done, over a long period of time, and this gives us all a chance to be heroes in our own way.

It was an airport security emergency and an air traffic control emergency. It was a national security emergency. It was a crisis management emergency. It was a belief and reality emergency--days later, I heard people repeating “It’s not real, it’s not real” and “I can’t believe it.”

It was a shock and grief emergency, and experts say the trauma will go on for months and years. Some people are already discussing rebuilding on the site in lower Manhattan, but who will want to have an office to do business on a mass grave?

It was a political emergency, and the government mobilized. It was an intelligence emergency--why didn’t we know enough to prevent it?

It was a religious and spiritual emergency--how can we understand the purpose of death and destruction on this scale?

It was a patriotic emergency-- how do we respond to an “Attack on America?” It was a peace and justice emergency

--do we have a repertoire of response that does not take the form of violent retaliation and retribution?

It was a democracy emergency--how do we preserve our principles in adversity? It was a tolerance and understanding emergency--how do we keep from turning against people from other religious and cultural groups, ethnic groups and nationalities that we identify with the criminals, the enemy?

It was an educational emergency--how much do we know about the perspectives and mentality of people who would do this? How much do we know about world geography and geopolitics, about religious passions that we don’t share?

Responding to these emergencies will take good ideas and imagination, coordination, and the ability to turn them into ongoing tasks. That 9-1-1 call was made to all of us. The phone is still ringing. We need to decide how we will answer it.

September 30, 2001

51

NOVEMBER 2001

[I write each column a month before the issue date. It is now three weeks after September 11, when hijackers crashed planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. I don’t know what will happen in the next few weeks before you read this. There has been much talk about how the events of September 11 changed everything. I don’t think they changed the central urgency and relevance of what we do, what I’ve been writing about here.]

I think we’re all being pressured by history. How many people have lost their jobs or are re-evaluating their work and lives? Those of us who work on issues of diversity, coexistence, reconciliation, conflict prevention, understanding and tolerance, peace and justice, will find our work gives us a firm ground to stand on. This is where the action is for the foreseeable and unforeseeable future. Clash of civilizations? War of the worlds? Global discord, intergroup ignorance, suspicion and fear. We were studying and addressing those questions before September 11.

Now the efficacy of tens of thousands of diversity awareness training sessions is put to the test. This is our performance review. What beneficial effect have we had in all these years? We have seen so many people rise to the challenge of the occasion. We have seen the cumulative effect of humanity shining through fire and smoke, we have heard so many people speaking about the importance of peace and understanding.

Two hours on that Tuesday morning are having enormous ripple effects. What if we called this the next level of diversity awareness training? How are we debriefing it? We need to continue. It is a case study for sensitivity training, for strategic planning, for risk assessment, knowledge management, religious understanding. I can’t think of an activity that is not affected. Groups may need us to convene and moderate the discussion, to provide guidelines for interaction, to be facilitators.

We have numerous opportunities. We can speak about the interconnectedness of people and cultures. We can help to define patriotism in a new way. We can offer ourselves as resources in forums, classes, religious services, panels, talk shows, to provide alternative ways of thinking and acting. We can assist people to learn and teach about different cultures, religions, nationalities. What have you been doing?

I have written about this as a diversity emergency and a teachable moment. In one fell swoop the importance of our work has been put into stark relief against the horizon. I hear about people who have just realized the truth of being a citizen of the world. We have been practicing this craft for many years. I think groups and institutions need us.

I think we need to help a new generation of people do this work. They are the September 11 generation, whose hearts and minds were opened or turned around in the wake of the airplane crashes. We should take on new volunteers, interns, trainees, and partners. We should reach out to colleagues across occupations, sectors, industries. We need more roundtable discussions, more sharing. I don’t think there are trade secrets in the area of human community.

How can we call on each other? We’re not organized to be cooperative or networked or linked in general, we don’t have an alumni association, we’re not exactly a movement with a phone tree of people to mobilize for action or support in a crisis. Maybe we should be. The people who were killed, injured, and displaced September 11 were from more than 80 countries. They have many millions of family and friends. The shock waves will be felt for a long time. There is plenty for us to do. People are newly mindful of the fragility of life. The suddenness of events. The value of relationships. The interdependencies of the world. In the meantime, questions multiply too fast for my usual Q&A format. We need dreams and visions, ideas and music. Not every question has an answer, but it’s important to keep asking questions anyway. They are the raw ingredients of our imagination. We rely on each other, on our energy and courage and determination. Thank you for all you have been doing, are doing, will be doing. Keep in touch.

October 2, 2001

52

STATE OF EMERGENCY

We are living in an ongoing crisis, a long-term state of emergency. We are at war all over the world (U.S. government officials tell us that Al-Qaeda operates in or from 60 countries). We have partial martial law within our country, most obviously in airports. Escalation has taken over. Killing has escalated. Fear has escalated.

This gives diversity consciousness a new resonance, a new bottom line. It gives people a renewed purpose. Diversity is the key to survival. So the logic is clear: diversity must be escalated.

“They don’t think like we do,” said a U.S. terrorism expert. “I could never imagine myself diving a plane into a building and killing people.” The response of some people shows their cognitive/imaginative threshold. Some people were conceptually blocked. “I can’t imagine how they could do that,” said many people after Sept. 11.

When we define some people as deviant, we can’t approach them in our usual way, it puts them beyond our reach, or else we would have to admit that their deviance is within our repertoire as well. The more different from our norm someone is, the more we are challenged to bridge the distance. When we live with great overlap and similarity, we don’t practice making contact with “the farther reaches of human nature” (the title of a book by Abraham Maslow), our own or someone else’s.

We talked about outsiders and outcasts in connection with the School shootings of the past few years. When I was teaching “Lord of the Flies” to a high school English class, students were quick to dismiss a character as nuts. They accepted only a narrow band of normal. We write off, avoid, demonize, pathologize, those who seem different. We homogenize our mental/emotional/political environment. We reinforce our norms and convince ourselves we are the most normal AND the most special people in existence.

Feminists are terrorists to a male-dominant world order. Someone who is considered deviant is by definition not accessible in the usual mode and is seen as a threat to one’s stability and security. “A physician has to enter the consciousness and subjectivity of the patient or he’s not a good physician,” says Dr. Oliver Sacks. Dr. Jerrold Post, George Washington University psychiatrist, has been giving interviews in which he says the terrorists are not psychotic. They have their own coherent rationality, which many of us do not understand or accept.

We see confrontations between people with the American flag and People with peace armbands, between the American flag and the UN flag, between the American flag and the Earth flag. But isn’t America for peace, for coexistence in the larger world, for life on the planet? “Divided we stand” may be a more democratic principle than “united we stand.” Some people have been living “under cover” most of their lives. It’s hard to “come out” into a hostile environment, a cognitively, aesthetically, emotionally, politically and morally hostile environment.

Robert Frost: “I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” A good American has a lover’s quarrel with his country. This is what HUAC didn’t understand fifty years ago. To be eternally vigilant as Jefferson declared means to be observant, to see things that are not good for liberty as well as things that are, and, being American, to talk about them, to work to change them.

We need cognitive diversity, people who can grasp different worldviews, mentalities, modes of thinking, feeling and perceiving, different ways of processing information, different thought processes. That’s what artists, healers, and spiritual seekers do. We need to understand people who feel marginalized, ignored, rejected, displaced. That’s what peacemakers do. We need to be able to hear and empathize with dissidents, who are not mainstream or conventional. That’s what valuing diversity is about.

We need people who see the light and people who see the shadow. A poet has empathy for a rock, sees a commonality between herself and other beings or nonbeings or states of being. Artists live in their own shadow enough to know one when they see it. We need to increase our diversity quotient as a source of ideas, emotional intelligence, and sustainable strength.

Sept. 11 was a watershed in the life of this country. It gives us an opportunity to learn about ourselves, all our disparate, complex, selves.

October 29, 2001

53

DECEMBER 2001

Q. How does Sept. 11 affect our work?

A. It puts things into urgent perspective. The pressures on everyone have increased. Some of the work should be crisis response and preparedness. A state of emergency continues. The shock waves and ripple effects need to be acknowledged. Naturally this will disrupt any old patterns, any attempt to do business as usual. People will be affected differently. We are reminded that we can’t make generalizations about people.

The U.S. is at war all over the world. U.S. government officials have said that one network of antagonists, Al-Qaeda, is in 60 countries. Now we can see why we need a broad perspective. Now we can appreciate why we should value people who speak other languages, who have had different experiences from ours.

We need to be attentive to cognitive diversity. And perceptual diversity. And expressive diversity. We need integrity in our diversity programs, so that the programs don’t get lost in irrelevance. We need to look closely at how what we do and how we operate humanizes or dehumanizes other people (and, by doing so, ourselves).

I’ve been saying diversity is a life and death issue. That’s not exaggeration, it’s not a figure of speech. We can dramatically reduce deaths by fire in this country by addressing diversity issues—by looking at substandard housing of immigrants, poor people, the elderly. We can reduce deaths from cancer by addressing “disparities” in detection, treatment, and outreach among different ethnic groups. (“Disparities” is a code word for disparate treatment, adverse impact, criminal neglect.) We can reduce the casualties of hostile environments, hostility, harassment, hate attacks by making diversity a priority. Maybe workplace diversity programs have gotten diverted into awareness exercises because they didn’t think the issues are that serious. There’s a new book, Race Experts: How Racial Etiquette, Sensitivity Training, and New Age Therapy Hijacked the Civil Rights Revolution, by Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Norton, 2001. The subtitle alone is worth a discussion.

Diversity seemed too abstract for some people. Not enough bottom line clarity. The bottom line is the survival, the existence, the recognition, of other people who are being ignored, dismissed, marginalized. Sept. 11 and all that has come afterwards provides a framework that we didn’t have before. The bottom line is how people treat people, how organizations treat people. It’s time to stop dancing around the issue.

It’s time to broaden the scope of what diversities and whose diversities we consider important. People killed in the World Trade Center were from some 86 countries: they were typical New Yorkers (more than 40% of people in that city were not born in the U.S.). That’s who an Attack on America kills--people from all over the world. That’s who we are.

Diversity efforts, whatever they are called, have a new importance. They are our safety net and lifeline. They are our map and compass. We need them to teach and lead us, to inform and connect us. This is a good time to recommit to those efforts and to refocus them.

Among other things, diversity programs are a social wellness and sustainability effort. They should be linked to EAPs (employee assistance programs)--this is an old refrain of mine. It is clear that diversity saves lives. It is organizational CPR. It is survival training, disaster preparedness, conflict avoidance, risk management. It is worth its weight in gold. That’s why I have such difficulty with most debates about the bottom-line value of diversity.

The fault-lines are religious, historical, political. There are ethnic groups, tribes, clans, we haven’t heard of. News reports are coming from Tashkent and Dushanbe. You know the old line: “war is how Americans learn geography.” Let me say again, the U.S. is less than 5% of global population. And America is global in ways we didn’t imagine.

Were you prepared for all this? Now is your opportunity to catch up with the rest of the world, and with the America you didn’t know before.

November 2, 2001

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MY LIFE AND SEPTEMBER 11

There’s been no peace in my lifetime as an American. I was born on the island of Manhattan. Signs and portents. I was born between Auschwitz and

Hiroshima. World War Two segued into the Cold War. I don’t know if fear of nuclear war had any effect on the Soviet Union but it sure affected me. The background radiation of the Manhattan Project has followed me everywhere.

Was I born with post-traumatic stress disorder? No, my mother said I was a happy baby. She must have done a good job distracting me. At least, I didn’t notice the Korean War.

But as a citizen of the United States, I’ve lived through one war after another. They were not all called wars. In my lifetime the American military has been involved in Iran, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Korea, Guatemala, Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq, Panama, Laos, Cambodia, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Oman, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, Libya, Bolivia, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Somalia, Yugoslavia, Bosnia, Haiti, Croatia, Zaire, Liberia, Albania, Sudan, Macedonia, Afghanistan, Cuba, and Vietnam. (We had repeated engagements with some. I may have left out some.)

In January 1961, President/General Eisenhower said, “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

We were in the Cold War more than 40 years. We have been in a war with Cuba for 39 years and counting. We have been in an ongoing war with Iraq for 10 years.

Economists talk about the peacetime expansion of the U.S. economy. There hasn’t been a time in my life when the U.S. was not involved in killing people in my name somewhere in the world. Yet this passes for peace. I think this is because U.S. military activity has always been global, mostly out of sight, away from home.

When I was my son’s age the U.S. government was killing Buddhists in the jungles of Southeast Asia. Now it is killing Muslims in the mountains of Southwest Asia. This is what this “Judeo-Christian” country keeps doing while pledging allegiance to its flag, singing patriotic songs, and invoking its variant of God, a Supreme Being.

These things go on simultaneously. The military activity is constant and continuous. That is why the military budget is so large, more than $350 billion this year. “Pentagon spending now accounts for over half (50.5%) of all discretionary spending,” says the Center for Defense Information. “Global military spending has declined from $1.2 trillion in 1985 to $809 billion in 1999. During that time the U.S. share of total military spending rose from 31% to 36% in Fiscal Year 1999.”

I live in a country whose economy is dominated by military activity, by a preoccupation with killing people in other parts of the world, which has become the formal occupation of many people and the informal occupation of many more. This is our routine activity, not only in the military, because of course it spills over into other sectors as well. It pervades education and corporate business. Organized religion in this secular democracy seems to have both military and civilian branches.

If this isn’t always on our minds that is an indication of how effectively we block it out. It is remarkable that concurrently with such government-administered killing, so much else goes on in the society. But it is precisely our insulation from the facts of this side of American life that accounts for the inability of so many people to believe or understand what happened on Sept. 11.

We are in a state of denial much of the time, it seems. We choose not to think about the thousands of nuclear warheads in our government’s arsenal, the radioactive nuclear waste, the chemical and biological weapons stockpiles. We’d rather not think about that, which means we leave the burden of thinking about it to others. “At the beginning of 1996, there were some 21,000 operational nuclear weapons in the world,” says Greenpeace.

And then Sept. 11 happens. Much of people’s reaction, I think, is their struggle with themselves not to think about these things. We hate what happened on Sept. 11 because it’s like the elephant in the living room. It’s impossible to ignore. When we hear that Sept. 11 changed everything, that means that it made it necessary for Americans to think about and deal with a lifetime of things they find unpleasant and try so hard to avoid. But it has caught up with us. The crematorium in lower Manhattan is still burning. It has become our eternal flame. My life has come full circle.

November 2, 2001

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ON ALERT “Our military at home and around the world is on high alert status and we have taken the necessary security precautions to continue the functions of your government.” President George W. Bush, September 11, 2001

“People have asked, what should we do, and I say, go to work, take your child to school. If you’ve got a softball game or a soccer game this afternoon, go to the game. The President is going to the baseball game tonight. America has to continue to be America. And what terrorists try to do is instill such uncertainty, such fear, such hesitation that you don’t do things that you normally do. And all we’re saying with the general alert is, continue to live your lives, continue to be America, but be aware, be alert, be on guard.” Gov. Tom Ridge, October 30, 2001

“We wage a war to save civilization itself. We did not seek it. But we will fight it. And we will prevail. This is a different war from any our nation has ever faced. A war on many fronts against terrorists who operate in more than 60 different countries. And this is a war that must be fought not only overseas but also here at home. I recently spoke to high school students in Maryland and realized that for the first time ever these seniors will graduate in the midst of a war in our own country.....Let’s roll.” President Bush, November 8, 2001

We have all been enlisted and mobilized for a long war. Reporters have repeatedly asked government officials to be more specific about what they mean

when they announce that Americans should be on a higher state of alert than before September 11. In the U.S. government, there is a scale of terrorist Force Protection Conditions (FPCON)—

“Threat Condition Normal: no threat of terrorist activity is present Threat Condition Alpha: there is a general threat of possible terrorist activity against installations, building locations, and/or personnel, the nature and extent of which are unpredictable. Threat Condition Bravo: There is an increased and more predictable threat of terrorist activity even though no particular target has been identified. Threat Condition Charlie: An incident has occurred or intelligence has been received indicating some form of terrorist action is imminent Threat Condition Delta: A terrorist attack has occurred or intelligence has been received that action against a specific location is likely.”

There is another scale of U.S. military alerts.

“Defense readiness conditions (DEFCONs) describe progressive alert postures primarily for use between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commanders of unified commands. DEFCONs are graduated to match situations of varying military severity, and are numbered 5,4,3,2, and 1 as appropriate. DEFCONs are phased increases in combat readiness. In general terms, these are descriptions of DEFCONs: DEFCON 5 Normal peacetime readiness DEFCON 4 Normal, increased intelligence and strengthened security measures DEFCON 3 Increase in force readiness above normal readiness DEFCON 2 Further Increase in force readiness, but less than maximum readiness DEFCON 1 Maximum force readiness. “In the event of a national emergency, a series of seven different alert Conditions (LERTCONs) can be called. The 7 LERTCONs are broken down into 5 Defense Conditions (DEFCONs) and 2 Emergency Conditions (EMERGCONs).”

I suspect that these scales guided what President Bush and Governor Ridge, Attorney General Ashcroft and FBI Director Mueller had in mind when they talked about heightened states of alert. But they haven’t said so, and since most of us don’t know these systems (I had to look them up), we are left trying to figure out what sound like cryptic, ambiguous and ominous statements.

“Let’s roll” is a call to action. It sounds convivial. It’s also code, a militarization of the idioms of our

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life. We’re not used to it. We are raw recruits. There are no precedents for this in American history except maybe when the British burned the

White House in 1814, before it was painted white. (It would be awkward to discuss that now.) I am reminded of movies about the democratic Resistance movements in Europe during the

Second World War, but that was not the same. They were civilians secretly operating against military forces from another country who were occupying their country. On September 11, the United States was attacked by guerrillas from an international ideological/theocratic movement, not by a country, as far as we know. For the comparison to be valid, we would be under hostile occupation now.

As an American, I am on a state of high alert much of the time. I tend to be alert to inequities, discrimination, intolerance, injustice, restriction of liberty. “Give me liberty or give me death,” was Patrick Henry’s cry. “Live Free or Die” is New Hampshire’s motto.

I am alert to affronts to democracy. My American nervous system is on alert, like a smoke detector, to tell me of dangers and threats. I have American sensors, receptors, antennae. They are set to pick up any trace of insults and injuries to the American way of life.

We Americans have a sensitivity to mistreatment of people, to bias, prejudice, abridgements of democratic principles. We’ve got 10 of them in our secular form of the Ten Commandments of Moses. But more than this bill of particulars, our Bill of Rights, we have additional rights. They include the Declaration of Independence’s “inalienable rights”--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (See Alienable Rights by Barry Sanders and Francis Adams, HarperCollins, 2003)

They probably include Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms--

“The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world. “The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world. “The third is freedom from want -- which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world. “The fourth is freedom from fear -- which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere in the world.” (Jan. 6, 1941)

In addition to such explicit statements, we are concerned about other rights that are implicit. And we are alert to them as well. Social conscience is one form of our patriotism.

A patriot of democracy believes in disagreement, in unpopular ideas, thoughts, and opinions. What is unpatriotic is mob behavior, complacency, conformity, when everyone does the same thing.

Dissent is at the core of Americanism. It is how we became a country in the 1770s. It is what distinguishes us from many other countries. We call it freedom. “With liberty and justice for all” is what we say every time we Pledge Allegiance to the flag, which also means to our ideals. It is a way of renewing our vows.

Terrorism is an assault on our ideals, on democracy, on peace. The high school seniors President Bush mentioned are looking at many years of antipathy towards America, antagonism, anti-American sentiment turned lethal.

In the human body there are levels of defense against attack. These have to do with antibodies mobilizing against antigens. It is our biochemical homeland defense. In DSM4 there is clinical discussion about individual defense mechanisms. That’s what is happening in our body politic.

There is also a “fight or flight” condition. One source says, “Once the fight or flight reaction is activated, our body will react in many ways. These are noticeable changes which include increase in heartbeat rate, coronary arteries dilate, higher blood pressure, increase in muscle tension (muscle bracing), the pituitary gland activates oxytocin and vasopressin, moisture on the skin, dilated pupils, dilation of the bronchial tubes, hydrochloric acid is secreted into the stomach, glucose is released from the liver, and the basal metabolic rate increases. The white blood cells are lowered also which decreases the effectiveness of the immune system, which may make it vulnerable to disease-causing microbes and degenerative disease.”

It takes a lot to penetrate our insulation, our national immune system, to get our attention. “Afghanistan ranks number one worldwide in maternal mortality. One in four Afghan children

will not make it to their fifth birthday. One in three Afghan children is an orphan. Almost 1/2 of Afghan

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children suffer chronic malnutrition. Millions face the threat of starvation.”--White House web site. In the name of consensus unity some people are not talking about their reservations and misgivings

about carpet bombing and cluster bombing in Afghanistan. There may be no bombing pause for Ramadan, one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Will there be a bombing pause for Christmas? What happened to “Peace on earth, goodwill toward men?”

Where do we go from here? Alert, alerter, alertest.

November 9, 2001

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THANKSGIVING MEDITATION

We are having a Ramadan Thanksgiving this year. Ramadan does not overlap with Thanksgiving very often, and this year the combination sticks in

our throats. Fasting and feasting. The secular American holiday, the holy Islamic holiday. Turkey dinners for American families, packets of rations and relief supplies for families in Afghanistan. War and peace. Life and death. This is not melodrama or exaggeration. It’s the news of the day.

The gap between the haves and the have-nots feels greater than usual. Distances between cultures have grown wider. All of a sudden, places on the planet seem farther apart. Afghanistan doesn’t have many telephones or televisions or Internet connections. Some people want a rest from the world that Sept. 11 brought to our attention, relief from having our lifestyle disturbed. Our national nervous system is so unaccustomed to such distractions that these past 9 weeks of stress is too much to endure. I heard that there is general mental instability in the U.S. as a result of Sept. 11, a rise in anxiety disorders, an increase in domestic violence and child abuse.

There will probably be people who say that if we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving with gusto, even with red-white-and-blue trimmings, the terrorists will have won. As if we could eat our way into patriotism.

Maybe this year we should do it differently. We need a Thanksgiving that looks beyond the usual national self-congratulations, beyond the United States, and certainly beyond Americans who will be eating well. The CDC reported in JAMA in September that 56.4% of Americans are overweight, 19.8% are clinically obese. Only one state, Colorado, has an obesity rate under 15%.

We could reflect on this. Many people are affected by the assaults of September 11, 2001. About 4000 people from 86

countries died, over 6000 were treated in hospitals, over 35,000 people had to physically run from death and injury that morning. In October, 79,000 people in New York City reported losing their jobs (NYT, Nov. 16). These people have family and friends, social and business connections, adding up to maybe 50 million people. Many more are affected by various ripple effects.

Many people are in shock and in grief. In many cultures a mourning period is one, two, three years. Modern societies have shortened traditional mourning periods. They say people need to get back to work, back to normal. But their psyches don’t always get the memo.

As a society and a country we are at war with terror, terrorism, terrorists. Terrorism is a deliberate calculated effort to terrify/terrorize other people. It is not a fair fight. It is the willful intent to destabilize other people’s lives, to unnerve them. It is a form of violence akin to torture. It is terrible.

Americ ans are using their flag as a tourniquet around their broken hearts, as a string around their fingers to remind them that the U.S. was attacked, as a banner rooting for the battle against terrorists in Afghanistan.

I keep hearing that Phase One is ending. As part of our effort to eradicate Al Qaeda in more than 60 countries we have attacked the Taliban group for sheltering and hosting Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. We are also trying to close the financial channels used by Al Qaeda. We are told this war--like the wars on poverty and cancer--could go on for many years.

Most Americans have been insulated from war, poverty, and hunger and know them only from movies and books. We need to talk about such things. More than 95% of the world are not Americans. We need to ponder that fact.

I attended a series of three weekly community conversations about Sept. 11. “Everyone is going to be pressured to act from their worst self,” one woman said. “The challenge is to act from our best self, or we’ll drag each other down.” Another woman said, “Life goes on.” She means life moves beyond trouble, gets back on track. But, I thought, life is not separate from grief, trouble, fear, trauma. Life includes it all.

“Love the next person,” someone said. Someone said, “If you fear, you can’t think clearly.” “We need heartwork to help us make choices,” said a woman.

Thanksgiving can be a time for heartwork. Let us speak from the heart before we eat, after we eat. When we go back to work let us work from the heart. Let us be a country that acts from our heart, lives from our heart year-round. Then maybe more people outside America can give thanks for us.

November 18, 2001

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CHRISTMASTIME TEST

It is Prince of Peace season and America is at war. Peace on earth, goodwill to men is the usual mantra and our nation is in the sixth or seventh week of bombing Afghanistan. In the Holy Land, more suicide bombers and missiles. Merry and Happy are the words on the greeting cards and tens of thousands of letters have been cross-contaminated with anthrax spores. Joy is the word in the hymns--are we singing along?

We seem to be subjects in a mass experiment in cognitive dissonance. Maybe this is the real malfunction, the Y2K disaster we were fearing.

“This is a test, it is only a test,” says the Emergency Broadcast System recording. “For the next sixty seconds, you will hear a tone that will be used to alert you in case of an actual emergency. Remember, this is only a test.”

This morning Tom Ridge was on television explaining that his announcement yesterday was to “remind America one more time that we are at war.” Without these reminders we might forget.

What did you do in the war, Mommy? I bought an SUV. Sport Utility Vehicle sales are higher than pickup trucks for the first time. Used primarily to go to shopping malls, our favorite sport. Also used to carry families, though the Census Bureau says that for the first time less than one-fourth of households are married with children.

“It is good to have the Marines here in Times Square,” Charles Gibson said on “Good Morning America” this morning, showing Marines in a “light armored vehicle,” which is a skinny tank. He said it can go 65 miles an hour. He sounded delighted. “Perfect for combat in the cities. It handles better than a Caddy,” says one website. “The Army hopes to buy 2,131 of the vehicles.” For the man who has everything, an LAV-III under the Christmas tree. Better than last war’s Hummer.

This conversion to a militarized lifestyle is happening all through our society. We are on alert. We are in a state of emergency. We are increasingly under martial law. Constitutional protections have been suspended for some people in some situations, or for everyone. Patriotism is most ardent when a nation is at war. Only Congress can declare war. Congress has not declared war, but we are most definitely at war. Peace flags are controversial. We should ask why. Does peace undermine war? Or does war undermine peace? It is not so simple, of course.

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function,” is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s line.

Terrorism/democracy. “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind,” is one of Gandhi’s famous statements, in a variation on what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5). U.S. government policy apparently rejects both Jesus and Gandhi in favor of the eye-for-an-eye equation. We have “blind” justice and “blind rage.” Albert Einstein said, “Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.” But American policy makers must believe they are smarter than Einstein.

James Park wrote, “Recent neuro-biological research has shown that you cannot think clearly without engaging your emotions. Thinking and feeling are inextricably intertwined, and many of the failings of our political process arise from our reluctance to acknowledge the implications of this fact. The question to be asked - about our public and private lives - is how well we manage the interaction between the two processes.”

Our hearts and minds are struggling, striving for an understanding of the right thing to do, the right way to live. Such striving is called jihad, the greater jihad, in Arabic.

Christmas/war. Ramadan/Hanukkah. It’s cognitive dissonance for sure. The countdown is on: almost three months from September 11 and the fire of the World Trade Center tomb is still burning. Twenty shopping days until Christmas, nineteen, eighteen....

December 4, 2001

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RAW MATERIAL

It is a serial, a real cliffhanger. It’s a fable. It’s about cavemen. Cavemen on horseback and in high-tech command centers. Stone Age meets Space Age, isn’t that what they say? Vice President Cheney is in a bunker in a mountain. Batman had a Batcave. Osama bin Laden is like that, like a bat, but he’s also a rat, scurrying into his fortified hole, leaving droppings, a videotape here and there. I’ve already heard songs about it, Country songs and corridas. I’m sure there are ballads in Arabic.

There will be epic poems, folktales. There are probably lots of limericks. There will be serious plays and ridiculous movies. It’s a religious lesson. It’s a morality play. It’s a pageant. It’s a costume drama. They are the Evil-doers. We are the Evil un-doers. Hooray. Boo, hiss.

We try to follow the narrative. We post-moderns know what the old bards knew--there are many narratives. Al Qaeda, a band of True Believers from around the world, gather in Talibanland, and with money from a dozen or a hundred sources storm the castle and citadel of the Super Power. The Twin Towers fall and fall and turn inside-out. Tolkien may be too tame for our tastes.

What is the ROI, the return on their investment? What is the multiplier effect? With $200,000* they caused more than $30,000,000,000 damage and another $50,000,000,000 in subsequent costs, losses and expenses, and then another $100,000,000,000 in military and aid responses, recovery, rebuilding. They lost 19 men who killed over 3000 people. Most of them were from Saudi Arabia, the dead were from at least 86 countries. They were all men, the dead are women as well as men. They are all fervent Muslims, the dead are of many faiths and no faith. How do we calculate the symmetry and asymmetry, how do we measure the moral equivalence?

The fire is still burning in lower Manhattan. (There is a coal mine in Pennsylvania that has been burning for 40 years.) There are fires burning in the hearts of people everywhere. There is snow on the mountains in Afghanistan. “Into the valley of death rode the six hundred.” (Tennyson, 1853.) There is major poetry here. Death from the sky. Avenging angels.

What is the story and the glory? How will the tale be told? There are heroes of different cultures and uniforms, of different worldviews and accents and time zones. They meet from the opposite ends of the earth, from Washington, D.C. and London, at the Khyber Pass, for God’s sake, and on CNN and al-Jazeera. Strike up the band.

The fighting is taking place where Alexander the Great, the British Empire and the Soviet Union gave up and went home. Now, the Western allies and the Northern Alliance, the United Front, the United Kingdom and the United States against Al Qaeda, the warlords of the Pentagon and the clans of the Stans, the tribes and the bribes, against the guerrillas, criminals, terrorists, fanatics, brigands, holy warriors all. It’s a melodrama. It hurts too much to laugh.

This is great material. There are more than enough mixed metaphors. There is too much history. It is Grand Guignol and Greek chorus. It is 1492 in reverse, from the siege of the Alhambra to breaching the Pentagon. It is 661, with the split between Sunnis and Shi’ites still reverberating. It is the Old West and the new West. Wanted: Dead or Alive. Saladin meets Paladin. $25 million on his head, for his head on a platter or a spike. We are told, tellingly, Afghanistan is the size of Texas. And you’re supposed to know you Don’t Mess With Texas. This will be a musical soon, even an opera. I’ve always liked “The Desert Song” (1926, then three movie versions). But that was a love story.

“In the next war, the dead will be buried in cellophane,” Ernest Hemingway wrote, in a poem, not his war reporting. What an old-fashioned idea. The dead in New York became dust. An even older idea.

It’s El Cid, Lawrence of Arabia, Kipling, the Great Game, Marco Polo, the Desert Mystics. Take notes for the mid-term exam. “Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility,” wrote Wordsworth. Meanwhile, bombs are falling, fires are burning.

Christmas is a-comin’ and the geese are getting fat. People killing people, what do you think of that? Peace on earth as a vaudeville routine. It’s in such bad taste, but that’s the name of the game. Please, hold your applause. It’s not over yet.

December 11, 2001

* In October 2004, Osama bin Laden videotape said it cost about $500,000

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MIXED MESSAGES

We have a Christmas economy. We have a military economy. No wonder it’s hard for people around the world to figure America out. Christmas in the best of times has a split personality. There is a religious Christmas and a secular Xmas. The material side tends to drown out the spiritual. This year the political is upstaging, and incorporating, both of them.

The national psyche is shell-shocked. Even with the highest murder rate among fellow nations and being the largest arms dealer in the world, Americans are stunned by the blowback of September 11, actual attacks on their home ground, on the scale of special effects in movies. Decorative lights are red, white, and blue, in memoriam to the dead, in support of America’s war on terrorists.

Osama bin Laden and his band of men, mass murderers for their cause, have thrown the season out of whack. A few dozen men in one branch of one religion killed thousands of people of many religions and nationalities. They want Americans, men and women of many faiths living and working together--and therefore infidels in their scheme of things--out of Saudi Arabia. They want the world to follow their script, their reading of scripture. They will go to any lengths, to the ends of the earth and back, to achieve their purpose. We are reminded that history is geography is destiny.

Compare the two main figures of the season. Father Christmas or St. Nicholas or Sinter Klaas or Santa Claus is an older man from the Arctic Circle, part pagan, part Christian, who rides a horse or a sleigh pulled by reindeer and carries big bags of presents. Jesus is a Jew from Bethlehem, a younger man who has few possessions.

Both of them are legendary philanthropists; they emanate love for people, each in his own way. In the case of Santa, love is shown by bestowing gifts. In the case of Jesus, love is its own reward, a spiritual gift. This creates a certain tension about life on the worldly plane, between the claims of the Kingdom of God and human nature.

This year it’s a schism, a crisis. There is a revival of existentialism and of religious expression. Not all Americans celebrate Christmas. There are more Americans who are not Christians than there are African-Americans or Hispanics. You could call them the country’s largest minority. Those who are not adherents of Christianity are caught up in the seasonal momentum, which continues from Thanksgiving until trees shed their needles and are discarded. The Christmas experience, centered around Christmas Eve, may last for two months. Many stores do almost half their year’s business geared to Christmas and other businesses function exclusively for Christmas.

This year we are more aware than usual of the tens of millions of American Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Baha’is, secular humanists, and those who follow or don’t follow other beliefs. We are more aware than usual that America is a pluralist society where more than one-seventh of the population do not observe the birthday of Jesus. There is added reason to give different perspectives some room to breathe amid the crowd of Christmas activities and symbols. We want to see a government for Afghanistan that reflects its multiethnic population, women as much as men. We want them to be as free as we are.

Christmas assimilated Saturnalia and winter solstice observances to honor the figure revered as the prince of peace. Christians give gifts, primarily to children, as a proxy for giving birthday gifts to baby Jesus. “The Christmas season” generally refers to marketing and sales campaigns for people to buy more than they need as much as to a time of prayer. But the two become merged. It is a religious and political act to be a consumer. Christmas carols play in stores and restaurants. The political prayer is an American ritual, in Congress, in the pledge of allegiance to the flag, at public events. This challenges both democracy and spiritual practice, the Constitution and the Christian Bible.

Most American children do not need any extra things. They have enough. They have been indoctrinated to want more things but they don’t need them. For the most part, they have more things than anyone else, more than they know what to do with. What children need is love, support, guidance, nurturing, play, kindness, a good education, and, when in doubt, more of the same. They need physical security, food, health, shelter, clothing, air and water and sunlight.

A patriotic Christmas becomes a fusion of church and state. It toys with the First Amendment. It Christianizes America and politicizes Christian religiosity. It confuses the issues. Jesus is usually performed in movies by northern European Christians who will look more like Santa Claus when they get old, not

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by what we think of as young “Middle Eastern” or “Mediterranean” men. As with the protean Santa Claus, combined from many cultural traditions, Jesus takes on the local trappings of believers. This year, more than ever, the baby Jesus seems to be swaddled in the American flag while Santa seems to be choking on his laugh.

December 14, 2001

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CROSSING THE THRESHOLD

Call me Janus. Call me a chiropractor. You know how skaters and dancers snap their heads around when they spin? My neck hurts from being whipped back and forth, facing past and future, hope and horror. It’s supposed to be a new year, but the momentum from the last one is spinning out of control.

It was missiles and mistletoe for Christmas. Are we ready to toast 2002? “Next year will be a war year as well because we’re going to continue to hunt down these al Qaeda people in this particular theater, as well as other places,’’ President Bush said. ``Our war against terror extends way beyond Afghanistan.”

Most of us have no idea about the scale and scope of this campaign which sounds like the Hundred Years War or a lifelong clandestine operation. President Bush told us we will not know what or where or when or how or who. That’s it, as far as we are concerned. Should we carry on with what we were doing when we were so rudely interrupted September 11? Are we being told this dirty business of America is none of our business?

Let’s review. There was life as usual, then there was September 11. But what if there is a link between before and after? Maybe our first resolution should be to find that link. Otherwise the new year sends us through the looking-glass into a parallel universe. We are in World War III, on the home front and around the world.

We would like to believe that every moment of consciousness is an opportunity to increase peace. We squander the moments. We could be multiplying them. Create dangerously, said Camus. I have set before you life and death; choose life, says Deuteronomy. We have a peace emergency. We should teach peace as a lifetime learning project. You get good at what you practice.

How are thresholds crossed, when do we reach some critical mass, or adjust a trimtab, as Buckminster Fuller called it, or find a tipping point, as Malcolm Gladwell’s book describes it, or employ leverage, illustrated by Archimedes’ fulcrum? We use New Year as such a device. Janus, the Roman god of gates and beginnings, is a threshold figure, facing East and West, so January is a time to watch ourselves coming and going, to look at the year in review and to look ahead, around the next corner. For awhile, our head is swiveling between yesterday and tomorrow, two popular songs.

Homelessness, murders, hate crimes, went up in the U.S. in 2001. As the figure for Sept. 11 deaths have gone down, the number of civilians killed in Afghanistan keeps going up. We have passed the point of measured response, and yet we have barely begun. Dismemberment is our policy. Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth. Then what, until nothing’s left.

“We suffer from a kind of comfort addiction,” said Sean Penn. Are we prepared to break our addiction? There are no landmines in America. The Surgeon General’s December report says that obesity is now a greater health hazard than smoking. Maybe the problem is the level of our excess, which, like an addict, we confuse with comfort.

A new year is an opportunity for renewal of our energies and attention. It took September 11 to get people to focus on doing many things they should have done before. This includes:

• Appreciating public servants such as postal workers, fire and rescue service, police • Going after international terrorist networks • Pressuring governments not to shield or support terrorism • Learning about Islam • Learning about Arabs • Learning geography • Learning languages • Improving airport security • Having dialogues with a broader range of people • Reflecting on the meaning of one's life and work • Getting better news about the rest of the world • Finding out about perceptions of the U.S. around the world • Providing humanitarian aid to refugees

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• Supporting the United Nations • Developing alternatives to military action • Reviewing our foreign policy • Looking at quality of life in new ways

Apparently this does not include stopping the drug trade from Afghanistan which is expected to rise. It's not widely known that the UN's recommended guideline for foreign aid of its member states is

0.7% of GDP--and that most countries have not met that level. On the other hand, Target stores give back 5% of their pretax profits to their communities.

We are expected to get used to continuous war as background noise. More like background radiation accumulating in our bodies: babies are still being born deformed from Chernobyl, more than 15 years later.

Peace in the world, goes the song, or the world in pieces. "There is no way to peace," said A.J. Muste, "peace is the way." And how do we achieve peace? Do we want peace on earth, peace among all peoples, or a Pax Americana? America has less than five percent of the world's people and a military budget larger than that of all our declared and undeclared enemies combined.

This raises questions about what it takes for people and institutions to do things differently, to move out of their usual patterns and habits. Some people have for a long time been looking into how we can develop a sustainable future, groups like Factor 10, Worldwatch Institute, Rocky Mountain Institute, Redefining Progress, Co-intelligence Institute, People-Centered Development Forum, and dozens of others.

September 11 has stimulated a willingness to consider altering some previous behavior and attitudes, but how long will this last? Some people already want things and the world to "get back to normal." What if this is our new normal? Will we settle into a normal state of war or of creating a new life?

We can look at some of the chinks in America's armor. Now that fire fighters are heroes, it's a good time for them to look at the treatment of women and minorities within their ranks.

Some Americans have responded by becoming crazed avengers. "Many of the victims of the 92 hate crimes logged by the commission were cases of mistaken identity. A Latino man was attacked in the Antelope Valley and his assailants told him they thought he was Iranian. In Valencia, a Sikh merchant was beaten with metal poles in his store as his attackers yelled about terrorist Osama bin Laden." (Los Angeles Times, Dec. 21)

Americans have learned more than we intended about Central Asia, Muslim women, ethnic Uzbeks, Tajiks, Pashtuns, the cities of Jalalabad, Islamabad, Kanduz, Kandahar, Mazar-I-sharif. Who is ready to be a Sister City?

We don't like hate, prejudice, rage, despair, on general principles and we especially don't like staring into the eyes of those who feel such things toward us.

We need to guard against adapting to bread and circuses, defined as "offerings, such as benefits or entertainments, intended to placate discontent or distract attention from a policy or situation." In other words, being fat and happy.

We need to prevent ourselves from being insulated, sedated, alienated, from each other and the rest of the world. We need to avoid equating being good citizens with being good consumers. We seem to want it both ways, producers of war for others, consumers of peace for ourselves.

In some myths and tragedies, once you cross beyond a certain point, there is no going back. It's Macbeth who says, "I am in blood/Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,/Returning were as tedious as go o'er."

Happy new year.

December 27, 2001

2002

“”

Africans have this thing called Ubuntu: It is about the essence of being human; it is part of the gift that Africa will give the world. It embraces hospitality, caring about others, being willing to go the extra mile for the sake of others. We believe a person is a person through another person, that my humanity is caught up, bound up and inextricable in yours. When I dehumanize you, I inexorably dehumanize myself. The solitary human being is a contradiction in terms, and therefore, you seek to work for the common good because your humanity comes into community in belonging.

— Archbishop Desmond Tutu

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JANUARY 2002

Q. What should our diversity efforts be learning from Sept. 11?

A. I’d say the stakes have been raised, wouldn’t you? And the bar has been raised. And the scope has been widened. Nobody has to tiptoe around diversity or justify it or defend it these days. It’s been done for us, to us. We have had a national and international immersion in diversity issues since Sept. 11, though it wasn’t put in those terms.

Diversity work is many things. It’s patriotic; for people who didn’t see it before, being anti-diversity is anti-American. It’s practical; we’ve got to get good at it.

I’m not confident that people in the U.S. have a worldwide outlook. Diversity awareness sessions in the U.S. have mainly been about the U.S. The United States is involved in the world through immigration, government relations, commerce, tourism, media and entertainment, and U.S. military activity. The world affects the United States in just as many ways. On Sept. 11, the world paid a visit.

Look what it took to get our undivided attention. About 3800 citizens of at least 86 countries were killed by 4 airplanes. Their deaths presented a kaleidoscope of stories and ripple effects. But it wasn’t just the number of people killed, it was where and how they were killed and the questions about why they were killed, and by whom, that have made such an impression.

Some places may feel in the wake of Sept. 11 that their work on diversity has been too simple, too limited. Some groups may be ready to redraw their map of diversity, renegotiate their agendas. Diversity has been a marginal and transitory subject with many organizations. What does it take to get people to focus on these issues? How active or passive has your group been?

Too many people have been learning their diversity lessons by rote, through clichés and conventional formulas that were woefully inadequate. Many groups have given little time to history, human rights, the treatment of women, the invisible people in all societies and the invisible parts of everyone, or to how America is viewed in other parts of the world. There are places that have featured some ethnic foods during a Diversity Day event and left it at that. (I know that’s hard to believe. It’s even harder to explain to people in other countries.)

If you want to be a world-class operation, you need to have worldwide horizons and capabilities. You need a worldview that takes in the big picture. You need to honor your vision of peace and your humanity. But those things apply in various ways to any person who lives in the modern world, not only to a “world-class” class.

I figure that most Americans have been exposed to more information about Islam in the months since Sept. 11 than in their whole lives previously. Even though there is no agreement on how many people in the U.S. are Muslims (estimates go from 2-7 million), there are about 1.2 billion Muslims in the world, which is more than four times the U.S. population. We live in a world in which safety and security and well-being depend on human relations and social policy. What is the social fabric of our world environment? What is the social fabric of our organizations and institutions and our business and political practices? Our lives in the world depend on our mastery of our diversity. We are interconnected by direct and indirect paths, solid lines and dotted lines.

People who work on these issues should be among the best-prepared, the best-equipped people to help the U.S. process and learn from Sept. 11 and its aftermath. They are the most knowledgeable, the most skilled and experienced people for this task. Diversity workers of all kinds--those who deal with prejudice, cultural understanding, conflict, hostile environment, harassment and hate, valuing differences--are critical national (and international) resources to make the connection between these events and our lives.

That includes the readers of this newsletter and this column. You are the leaders for helping us move through these times. Happy new year.

November 27, 2001

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FEBRUARY 2002

Q: How can our work honor Sept. 11?

A: Groups should be studying and practicing peace. Diversity work is a form of peace work, and we might get further if we said so. Promoting conditions favorable to diversity is a way of creating the kind of social system we would like to live in -- democratic, sustainable, peaceable. Isn’t that what we are really saying when we say let’s celebrate and value diversity, inclusion, and pluralism?

It means there’s a quality of human community and social relations that we want to bring into being, help thrive, and maybe we don’t have it yet, so we are moving toward it and identifying the ways we can assist its existence and the ways we hamper it from flourishing. We haven’t been clear enough about this dimension of our work. A Diversity Task Force does more than market research or public relations. It is more than productivity enhancement. It is quality of life enhancement. It is living-in-the-world enhancement.

There is a commons, a shared planet. It is environmental, genetic, emotional, economic, philosophical. We are each other’s business. When a nuclear reactor is leaking radiation, it is our concern. When atrocities are committed somewhere, it is our concern. Prevention is best; intervention may be called for. This sounds like John Donne’s meditation, “Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.”

What must it be like for someone from another country to see our official statements of nondiscrimination? When an organization in America states that it does not discriminate on the basis of national origin, appearance, religion, race, sex, ethnicity, age, marital status, national or political affiliation or belief, sexual orientation, or disability, it must be startling to people who have been persecuted for just those reasons.

Being in America means accepting and assuming that such statements will be honored, that it is safe to be who you are. We often don’t realize or appreciate the profound nature of such statements. They are the underpinnings for diversity, a way of establishing the framework and environment in which those statements become real.

Q: Is there a way to measure how we’re doing?

A: Yes, there are numerous ways. One of the most powerful is to have people discuss how close their experience comes to their ideals. Remember that diversity is multi-dimensional so no one form of measuring is going to be sufficient. I can’t resist quoting H.L. Mencken, “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”

You should be familiar with the international SA8000 standard. You should be discussing diversity multiplier effects. Look at the USA TODAY Diversity Index. Look at the work on Factor 10 for sustainable development. Develop a welcoming/hostile environment matrix. Calculate net diversity utilization. You can determine people’s level of comfort with and without various kinds of diversities. I created HazSits, sociocultural hazard indicators, which has been used in some FEMA programs. Figure out your opportunity costs from not having various kinds of diversities available to you.

Michigan Psychologists for Social Responsibility put out a workbook called “Us and Them” which I’ve used for several years. One of the exercises is a Diversity Quotient self-test. It’s on the Web at www.rmc.edu/psysr/UsAndThem/quiz.html You can use a scale of homogeneity/heterogeneity. You can use some of the tests for tolerance, bias, and prejudice or for conflict/solidarity. There’s a clever self-test at www.tolerance.org/hidden_bias/test.html

There are experiential games and exercises for groups and teams, thick books of them. A counseling psychologist can show you some standard test “instruments.” People who work with couples, group process, organizational dynamics or social relations will have their favorite tools and techniques. It is useful and fun to try some of them with your staff, your diversity council, your management team, your customers or members. People like hearing about themselves and it’s helpful to have some baseline to chart change. And then you need to work with whatever information these measurements give you.

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MARCH 2002

Q: After doing diversity programs for so long, why do we still have the same problems?

A: You don’t have to begin with valuing and celebrating differences. That’s probably doing it backwards. That’s a destination, not the starting point. I suggest a different approach and orientation to diversity work: Look at disparities and contrasts. Look at the disparities in treatment of different people and the contrasts in people’s experience and perspectives. This will educate groups in a compelling way. After that, they can come to value and respect differences with more sincerity.

The usual subjects of diversity need revision. Some people live in different time frames than others. Some people carry more history, or are carried along by different histories than others. People live in different geographies, actual or virtual, physical or metaphysical.

People relate to different coordinates of time and place and this affects their identity and worldview. For some people, history, even their own history, is long ago and far away, an abstraction or irrelevant. For others, it’s here and now, concrete and the most relevant fact they know. They may seem to be in the same situation but they’re not, they don’t share the same state of mind about themselves or each other. We are just one species, but with so many complications and permutations.

The Americas were connected, then they separated, then they reconnected. The dance of the continents. For 14,700 or 30,000 years, ancestors of indigenous people migrated or drifted from Siberia or Australia or Africa. Now the USA is the address of native people, and 11th generation New Mexicans, and immigrants who became naturalized citizens yesterday, and resident aliens, all in one country at the same time. Human contact speeds up the closer it gets to our own lives. Some places are becoming a society of everyone. Some people don’t approve. Patrick Buchanan is perversely provocative in calling his new book The Death of the West. We personalize history in such different ways.

It is the year 5762 in the Jewish calendar. It’s been 500 years since the mingling of Europeans, Africans, and native people in the Americas. Some people prefer to look only at the last 50 years, since the Second World War, or at the last year, since George W. Bush became President.

If we are post-modern, much of our attention is on places and times closest to ourselves, so that we are the reference point, the center of our consciousness and of the universe we make. But not everyone lives according to the same reference points, and this gives rise to much of what is called diversity--nationality, ethnicity, culture, race, religion, etc.

This is also true about gender, class, sexual orientation, and many other personal and group characteristics. No wonder it seems like we are playing different games with different rules. We try to make social contracts to accommodate our shared space and time but our respective conditions are not stable. Some people live with continuity and others with discontinuity. We live in parallel universes. We need more adaptive and imaginative social contracts.

Too much diversity work ignores this. As a consequence it seems to concern itself with superficial things, it seems to be struggling to fit square pegs into round holes. Don’t blame diversity work for not working; change it.

Q: Does September 11 make this work harder or easier?

A: You have a choice: close up shop or do something meaningful. I suppose another choice is to coast along, but that’s just a form of giving up. Since September 11, we should be sadder but wiser. Several agendas have been set before us. Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel said we must fight against indifference and against fanaticism. Diversity is the condition of the world. In every realm, the world is diverse, from space to the oceans and all in between. When we say there is an absence of diversity, we are saying there is an absence of life, we are negating the world.

The condition of the world is a good subject to tackle. It will be refracted through people’s filters and contexts in so many different ways. It is a living laboratory of our work. Carry on.

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THINKING LIKE A CONSULTANT I try to help people in organizations become self-facilitating. As a consultant, I want them to become their own consultants.

There are probably several times a year (a day?) when you and your group could benefit from a visit by a magician, wizard, shaman, guru, swami, an expert in the art and science of how people can work better together, a fix-it person, a healer, mediator, problem-solver, confidante, wise elder, or guardian angel watching over you. Yes? No? Maybe?

Wouldn’t it be nice to have such a person on call--assuming one exists who is just right for what ails you, and you know how to reach them, and they are available. And to have a budget for it! You might even need more than one. What would it cost to have them come when you need them?

Every group I know of could make good use of advisors, consultants, coaches, counselors, facilitators, and personal trainers. Some groups don’t know they need help, others are acutely aware that they do. Many groups don’t know what they need to learn or do in order to do their best work, to be fully-functioning or high-performing.

A consultant or training intervention should leave you more self-sufficient and self-reliant, more confident in your interdependence with others, than you were. Consultants and trainers should pass on some of their expertise or they’re holding out on you.

People in institutions, departments, divisions, should understand how to create the conditions for the optimal functioning of themselves and the people they work with. This means understanding how to maximize group creativity and capability. It goes beyond organizational stovepipes, partitions, compartments. It recognizes emotional literacy, social conscience, spiritual realms, environmental ethics, mind/body connections. Personal growth is professional growth. Work/family issues are inter-related. People are complex combinations. When you talk about quality or excellence it takes in all those areas.

In recent years there’s been a lot of interest in self-organizing systems, groups that are self-regulating and self-governing. In fact, this is how democracy works, with checks and balances, citizen action, and the idea of people power.

The latest movement may have started more than 40 years ago with the work of Ilya Prigogine on dissipative structures and nonequilibrium, then became more popular with James Gleick’s book Chaos in 1987, Margaret Wheatley’s Leadership and the New Science in 1992, and thousands of other books, articles, and web sites. Yes, thousands.

You can check this for yourself. Put “complexity” or “chaos” into Google or Amazon.com and see how many returns you get. Try this for Quantum, Adaptive, Visionary, Sustainable, Networked, Virtual, and Learning Organizations; Human, Intangible, and Knowledge Assets; Social, Human, and Intellectual Capital; Knowledge Work and Workers...all of which are related cutting edge perspectives on what work is and how it gets done.

We’re applying the insights and models of emotional literacy, multiple intelligence, cultural diversity, co-intelligence, social accountability.

This goes way beyond “personnel” and “industrial psychology.”

As the partner in an architectural firm told me, she’s interested in “having change happen faster, more easily, more often,” and wants to know how to help that take place. So in addition to her particular professional specialty, she realizes she needs to be a social architect as well.

Everyone in an institution needs to take responsibility for the health and wellbeing of its social environment and supporting systems. This is what it means to live in a democracy--”government of the people, by the

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people, for the people.” The overall social system can’t be democratic unless all the parts and components are democratic.

I think it’s odd that we have some specialists who are very good at handling HazMat situations (hazardous materials)--chemicals, poisons, explosives--but we’re not so good at handling what I call HazSits (hazardous social situations).

HazSits are potentially combustible, inflammatory, incendiary, explosive, dangerous, or unstable situations between people. They include cultural, interpersonal, intergroup situations and conditions which emerge from distrust, exclusion, disrespect, ignorance, animosity, antagonism, disputes, tension, anger, fear, prejudice, bigotry, intolerance, discrimination, discomfort, etc. And the question is, are you equipped to handle them?

There are some things you just have to know, like what to do in case of fire. Every group should know how to perform CPR and the Heimlich maneuver on each other. We go through a checklist of disaster preparedness when we’re dealing with natural disasters, acts of nature. And now we have expanded our concerns to include terrorism.

With any risk, hazard, or danger, the challenge is how to avoid, anticipate or prevent it, not just how to recover and clean up after it happens. Some groups have a session on sexual or racial harassment after there’s been an incident or crisis. The alternative to crisis is not getting yourself to that point.

Is everyone in your group equally capable of handling HazSits? Do you have some designated specialists? Are you equipped to be your own consultant?

Some places tell people what the punishment is for various misbehaviors rather than making efforts that such misbehaviors won’t occur. Some places emphasize the negative and the punitive. There are too many hostile, abusive and toxic organizations and work environments. As I write this, a company called Enron is being described as a culture of corruption and deception, and its vision and values statement (respect, integrity, communication, excellence) is still on its website.

To summarize: Look at yourself, listen to yourself. Develop your own expertise. Build in-house capability. Consult yourself. Don’t be caught unprepared. Facilitate your future. Have internal resources. Think ahead. Have contingency plans. Call on yourself. Maximize, optimize, multiply your capabilities. Get help to help yourself.

February 6, 2002

— College Services, April 2002

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APRIL 2002

Q: After September 11, isn’t this a whole new situation?

A: There are groups that have not been willing to address some forms of diversity. People who made such decisions told outside consultants and trainers and their in-house diversity staff that certain subjects were off-limits, and diversity sessions were conducted under such restrictions. This is a recipe for failure.

What are the taboos now? What diversities are we ignoring and neglecting and avoiding? How should we rise to the occasion? These are questions that I hope you’re asking and answering.

Diversity awareness or sensitivity may have seemed abstract and unimportant to some people before, even though it was never unimportant. It is of the utmost importance for many reasons. We can see that now.

All of a sudden, on September 11, the U.S. had to change its worldview. Many people in the U.S. did not have a worldwide worldview before. They have been struggling with this since then. I’ve been wondering how many diversity programs were caught by surprise as well.

Before September 11, how much did you talk about religion, much less Islam? How much did you talk about wealth and poverty, fear and anger? A whole new range of diversities has been added to the agenda--political and religious factions around the world, the history, geography and cultures of other parts of the world, and how much U.S. government and educational curriculum knew and understood about them, not to mention what people in those places know and think about the U.S.

Of course, America’s attention to diversity must reflect and include the rest of the world. The world keeps coming at us. There is no way we could miss American interconnections, interdependencies, with the 95% of the world that don’t live in the U.S. There are new issues, new opportunities, on the diversity radar screen, post-September 11. Have you regrouped and reassessed your diversity program? Is it broad and deep enough? Is it keeping up with the scope of people’s concerns? Is it anticipating new horizons? People are trying to catch up with the reality of the world we live in. This is making demands on everyone.

We know that people cannot work effectively if their thoughts and feelings are blocked, scattered, distracted, interrupted. People need to absorb, process, debrief, express, and reorient their responses to the new state of affairs since September 11. This is important for their ability to function.

You can sponsor an ongoing series of listening exchanges, where people can talk about whatever is on their mind. Such drop-in groups can be facilitated informally, with a rotating moderator. It’s a good time to talk about what makes democracy and pluralism work and how to live up to your ideals.

Still, there are those who reject the idea that anything should be done differently or that they might be able to learn anything new. We tend to call this “resistance to change,” but it’s usually deeper than that. It’s resignation, a denial and rejection of other people’s lives, and it’s a choice to perpetuate violence and pain in human relations. Don’t let it derail you.

If someone in your organization is dealing with ethics or social accountability, group learning, emotional intelligence, or empowerment, now’s the time to put those concepts to a real-life test. This is the chance for diversity work to link up with such efforts, because they supplement each other, they are incomplete without each other. Many diversity issues could use an ombudsman or an office of organizational effectiveness. When diversity is used as a Band-Aid, isolated, temporary, it’s just a cover-up. Instead, diversity should be a springboard for expanding active engagement with our work and our world.

You are using world maps more often, aren’t you? Are you translating your messages into more languages? Do you have a wide range of contacts with your various communities? Are you providing diversity consultation to every aspect of your operation? Do you have an environment where everyone feels respected?

Yes or no? OK, you’ve just done your emergency diversity audit. Now you can move ahead.

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MAY 2002

Q: How can we be more effective?

A: Diversity work in organizations reflects and promotes a model of how people can be or should be organized. It is about the relation between individuals and collectives. It is about the social space that is shared, which includes emotional, cultural, and physical space. It is about various concepts of order and disorder, freedom and constraint. But we usually start discussions about diversity several steps removed from these considerations. We usually don’t identify the basic beliefs and assumptions we hold, we just catapult over them to address diversity.

It comes back to haunt us. The work on diversity within organizations is a combination of efforts--it is political, educational, diplomatic, visionary. I have asked you to think of your role using a variety of models. You may be using some of them, including social change, cultural creatives and co-intelligence.

I don’t know what frame of reference you have for yourself and your work. Do you see yourself as a facilitator, catalyst, revolutionary, translator, convener, moderator, mediator, educator, listener, change agent, interpreter, organizer, advocate, prophet, stage manager, orchestrator, provocateur? What role does your employer expect you to take? How do other people see you?

We probably think that an organization organizes people. We might think that people organize an organization. Perhaps we should examine this more closely. Is an organization a force-field of power and control, and are they in turn culturally determined, and is that biologically determined? Does organization homogenize people? Are social systems always hierarchical? Does work have to be organized in a certain way? There are different schools of thought about this.

If we ask what is conducive to social order and what is disruptive, we have an ideal and a standard of social order in mind, against which we assess degrees of disruption. We are making qualitative distinctions and value judgments before and after we apply quantitative measurements.

We should have more discussion about what we’re doing, what our models and inspirations and dilemmas are, and where we’re trying to go.

Here is a perspective that might be useful to you: Tempered Radicals: How People Use Difference to Inspire Change at Work, by Debra E. Meyerson, Harvard Business School Press, 2001. Q: What’s the next wave going to look like?

A: I was standing with a friend looking at a bulletin board this morning. A note on the board announced an “Ethnic Banquet” coming up. My friend said that soon it will be unusual to have a non-ethnic banquet.

I got a note from a friend in a Midwestern city. He wrote, “the elementary grades of the public school district have minorities over 50%, and many language issues. This is on every political agenda as an opportunity/challenge.”

Another friend wrote, “As I watched ‘Roots’ 25 years later, I was very sad this time around to the point of tears with almost each episode. The reality is that things really have not changed. We have the same level of denial and systemic and institutional oppression and exclusion that has existed throughout history which continues to perpetuate itself generation after generation. We indeed have a long way to go.”

As the dynamics of diversity continue to multiply, we will have new terminology and new configurations of issues. Things will be more complex and interrelated. The stakes will be high, as usual.

I’m trying to decide whether I should keep writing this column, now in its eleventh year. I don’t know who is reading, or what your concerns are. Occasionally, I hear from graduate students who ask about getting into the field of diversity work and I hear from diversity consultants who are getting out.

Where do you think things should go from here? What questions and answers do you have about all this? If you’ve never been in touch, now’s the time.

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MAKING THE WORKPLACE OPEN TO ALL

How do I know if I or my staff needs or could benefit from cultural diversity awareness training?

First, learning more about human diversities is a good thing to do on general principles. It’s part of being a citizen of the world and living in a democratic pluralistic society.

Second, it’s appropriate for people in an educational institution to always be involved in continuing education, professional development, and lifelong learning.

Third, it’s smart to do as a preventive measure rather than wait until there is a crisis.Fourth, it’s necessary to do if there has been any incident or situation which has revealed a lack of

understanding, knowledge, respect, or ability to relate well to other people.Fifth, there are always diversities between people who are working together, or between people

in your group and any other groups they have contact with. They are fundamental to hiring, promotion, training and development, teamwork, community relations, customer service, interpersonal conflict, communication, and productivity or performance.

Sixth, how much do you know about the life experience and background of the people on your staff? Don’t assume people need Diversity 101--most people are way beyond that and it is condescending and counter-productive to give some formula training.

Which pretty much covers it, I think.

Where do I find resources to help me obtain testing or training appropriate to my staff?

Again, this is pretty easy. Resources are widely available. They might be called by different names. Look first at local resources in your community and on campus. As much as possible, partner with another department or group.

Ask faculty to tailor a workshop for your group's needs and interests. Ask student groups to tell your staff about themselves. Use your regional or national professional associations. Bring in resource people from State agencies. Community groups, from the "Y" to the Chamber of Commerce to Sister City, have programs you

could participate in. Identify local individuals and businesses that are working with immigrants and refugees, world trade,

conflict mediation, group facilitation, human rights, domestic violence. When local groups have programs on cultural or religious understanding, piggyback on their efforts.

Ask them to include your group. This includes religious centers, arts and performance events, holiday observances, public school activities, police and fire department training. People on your staff already are members of groups that most likely are addressing some aspect of

cultural diversity, respect, tolerance, prejudice, inclusion, community, etc. Do some joint programs. Keep a directory of such resources. Make sure they know of your interest. Be on each other's mailing and email lists.

How do I manage an employee who resists Cultural Diversity training?

It’s not always what it seems. Someone may “resist” training for a number of reasons. Don’t assume you know why without looking into it. What looks like resistance could be something else.

a. It could be impatience, frustration, discouragement, anger, boredom, etc. b. Some people are uncertain whether training will be a form of political pressure or group therapy or indoctrination. These are valid concerns. c. It could be because the training has touched a nerve for issues that should be dealt with outside a group

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setting.d. People are exposed to diversity in the media, through their children, their religion, their extended familye. People don’t like being told how to act or what to think-behavior modification, or “political correctness”f. They may have had a bad experience in previous trainingg. They may be feel that the proposed training is not going to meet the real needs of the group, that it’s too superficial or window dressing.

Respect the resistance; be curious about it; don’t assume you know what it’s about. A person could be reacting for many reasons. Resistance is often healthy and is often a symptom of another issue in the individual or group that isn’t being addressed.

Are there things I can do on the job (teaching opportunities) short of formal training to increase a feeling of inclusiveness?

Yes, of course. You can arrange ongoing informal discussions with community and campus people, including clergy of different faiths, social agencies, immigrant groups, women’s centers. Encourage people to learn another language or take a course (credit or noncredit). Look at the larger social environment around you. You could help arrange for guest speakers from campus in your staff ’s children’s classes.

The main thing is to recognize the breadth of relevant activities. Don’t limit yourself to some model of training which is not appropriate for this work.

--College Services, June 2002

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JUNE 2002

Q. What’s our goal?

A. I think the goal is to have a process, a set of conditions and resources, which enable people to function with a wide spectrum of characters and personalities. This is going to vary depending on the nature of the people you’re working with and your organizational setting. That’s why I’ve said that diversity is about bandwidth and adaptability. It’s about an individual’s or a group’s comfort zone, which is about their experience and facility in meeting and interacting with others. “Awareness” of diversity doesn’t describe the goal. Awareness should be a serious proposition. Many schools of practice aim to achieve a state of awareness. Usually, it involves discipline, repetition of some kind of exercises or meditation or probing questions. Doing things together, spending time together, usually helps.

How can people be more aware of diversities? They need to have more experiences with each other; richer, fuller experiences. One of the problems with grappling with diversity issues is that many people have such superficial contact that things never get very far. That’s why it’s important to have some kind of interaction, continuing, in-depth, experience, something more intensive, guided, facilitated, than the usual passing impersonal gestures.

Q. Why is this work so difficult to do well?

A. It sometimes seems easier to be separated than united. We practice isolation more than we practice relation. So much humanity in the world is divided. We separate and divide people into others, outsiders, foreigners, strangers, aliens. We label some people as opponents, enemies, adversaries. We cling to our security blankets and rituals. And then we wonder why we might need some help, or push, or stimulus, toward appreciating, valuing and celebrating people who are different?

Q. Is it all right to call some people “minorities?”

A. It’s questionable statistically, linguistically, and politically. The largest school districts have “majority minority” enrollment. That’s double-talk. It’s objectionable as a term that assumes that “white people” or “Euro-Americans” are the norm and all Others are less-important exceptions or deviations from the norm, or substandard, or not central to our lives and discourse. It’s offensive if it implies some people are less than a whole person, or 3/5 of a person, as in the U.S. Constitution. It’s historically and stylistically out of date when the shifts in population categories are turning cultural and ethnic minorities into majorities and vice versa. There are newly identified minority groups. There are thousands of places in the U.S. where white people are the numerical minority. It’s confusing and misleading unless you define your terms, and you sound imperious if you assume everyone knows what you mean.

On the other hand: The term has been useful for talking about protecting the rights of minorities in a pluralistic democracy, although we are inconsistent in honoring this idea. We continue to say “majority rules” when often the majority are ruled by concentrated minority groups. I wish the term were only a vestige of a social order and mentality which are outdated, but it’s not. As long as there are systemic and structural disparities based on social differences, we don’t have a society of equality and fairness. There continue to be inequities and contradictions.

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JULY 2002

Q. As I become more aware of the value of diversity, I become increasingly more frustrated by the continual “sameness” of leadership and their unwillingness to recognize the need for change. Then it hit me, the reality of society is that it conditions people to conform. If you want to be successful, conform (i.e., go to college, start your own business, get married, start a family, etc.). To be accepted and respected, you have to CONFORM!!!

Something is wrong with you if you don’t CONFORM!!! Laws are made to make people CONFORM!!! If they break the law, they aren’t CONFORMING, and are punished! In your May, 2002 article, you wrote: “Does an organization homogenize people?” I say yes. Leaders are saying, “Diversity is strength,” “Diversity is great,” “We want to cultivate differences,” “Differences are welcome,” etc. But do they mean it? Because in order to have your contribution respected, and I mean really and truly respected, it must “conform” to the system that is already in place. I know that this may not always be the case, but all too often it is. To put it simply, my question to you is, “If society dictates (even celebrates) conformity and punishes non-conformity, can we ever really hope to become diverse organizations where differences are really considered an attribute?”

A. You’ve gotten to the heart of the matter. This is the challenge of caring about diversity. Around the world there is enormous pressure to conform, as consumers, as citizens, as one-dimensional patriots. Living with these pressures to conform takes courage. The real task is to be authentic, to live with integrity.

An organization is defined by the questions it doesn’t want you to ask. There are forces that want you to conform to certain ideas of diversity, to simplistic models and approaches of addressing diversity. That seems like a contradiction, doesn’t it? While diversity is a simple fact, it is politically and psychologically complex. So this work is about facing the pressures to conform, in your job, in your organization, and in society at large. Controversy is a test of diverse opinions and experiences. Democracy is a test. We have so much more work to do on this front. Any other effort depends on our ability to do this well. Your question also points to the compromises that accompany much diversity rhetoric. How are differences recognized, utilized, and leveraged? Is there a steering committee or a group that’s been trained to facilitate the multiplier effect of differences? Do you feel you’ve made significant progress? If so, how did that happen? If not, what are you planning to do next?

What kind of orientation, training, and assistance do people in your workplace receive to deal with these matters? What is your organizational culture with regard to conforming? That’s an index of diversity. What are your criteria for diversity? That’s an index of conformity.

Our aspirations and ideals often seem to be about living with other people in harmony. What are our operational specifications for harmony? How much do we study the attributes of harmony? Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio has introduced a bill to establish a Department of Peace in the federal government. We need something like that, at least a department of social harmony. Maybe it should be led by a musician, a choral or chamber orchestra conductor, or a musical arranger. We need re-arranging, that’s for sure (as I hear each day’s world news).

So as you explore the path where diversity takes you, say hello to peace-makers, music-makers, and others who don’t fit in to the conventional categories, people who inspire and stimulate you.

Let’s be creative nonconformists.

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WHEN MEETINGS ARE WORK AND VICE VERSA

Work is, mostly, a series of reunions. We keep meeting and re-meeting the same people. The rhythms and patterns of these meetings constitute much of our work. They become routines and rituals. Periodically, there are new people, strangers, outsiders, who enter the scene or intersect our path. We have different relationships with each other, different degrees of closeness. How is it that some people remain strangers and others become partners? How do we maintain or change the social distance between us? This is probably the basic question in any institution, any workplace, and any society. Indeed, any group of people who work together are a society in one form or another. Some of them become communities. Some continue to be a collection of strangers. Every place of employment makes social policy, guiding or governing their relations with themselves and with others. We’re not always conscious of this, we’re not aware of the forces acting upon us, and of the part we play.

But then we go to meetings. There are daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual meetings. A meeting is a concentrated period of heightened interaction among people, whether it is called a committee, briefing, task force, council, retreat, caucus, conference, forum, class, or something else. You might dispute how heightened or focused the interaction usually is in such settings and I agree with you. I think we waste or miss most of our opportunities of togetherness. We don’t take advantage of the possibilities to get the most out of them as much as we could. So a lot of work is one-dimensional. Then, when we’re not at work, we break out of our roles and rules, we break loose, in ways that might surprise the people we work with. We become another person, or another side of ourselves.

Another way of saying it is that we are only part of ourselves at work, we restrict and restrain ourselves in order to fit into the culture of work, to conform to the prevailing social system (without acknowledging how we perpetuate it). So there are dress codes, behavior codes, language codes, thought codes, with different people having different degrees of freedom with them.

A meeting is a group cultural ritual. This is one of those obvious things that we don’t usually notice. A meeting is also a political act, a social event, and a learning experience, and if we said so, we might approach it differently, but we tend to just call it a meeting. One of the clues that it’s a ritual is that we often do it the same way every time, like sleepwalking. We assume we know what a meeting is, we take our places, we act out the unwritten script. And we complain about it, ritualistically.

Meetings have their own structures and procedures. A meeting can reflect and reinforce the culture or be at odds with it. You may have experienced this, when a meeting is much looser, or more regimented, than work styles outside the meeting.

I had a teacher who said the strongest force in the world is the force of habit. We’re locked into our own forcefield much of the time, it seems. What does it take to break out, to have a breakthrough? Sometimes we say it’s leadership, or empowerment, or creativity, or democracy, or passion, or revolution.

Little changes can be revolutionary. When people express themselves, that can be the change that makes a difference. When we find ways to release people’s energies, that changes things in new and unpredictable ways. The question then is our tolerance for the unpredictable.

How many people, before they attend a meeting of any kind, take a crash course in group process? How many people are checked out or get an orientation to group process during a meeting? A meeting is a mini social system, a living laboratory for togetherness. Those who attend a meeting are constantly determining what kind of experience it will be, whether they explicitly decide to do that or not.

Some people spend most of their contact with each other only in meetings. This is where they rendezvous, again and again. They might not see each other except in meetings. With meetings that are ongoing, there are repeated opportunities to go deeper and to experiment with numerous variations of contact. But do they?

It seems odd to me that groups can talk about having a “flat” organization, or wanting people to work at their full potential, and then run an autocratic, closed, system, particularly during meetings. What’s even odder is that such groups think people don’t notice the contradiction and mixed messages of operating this way. Obviously this affects people’s credibility, legitimacy, trust--their spirit.

We often say we are democratic, or this is a democracy. (Demos/people. Cracy/strength or power, form of governance.) But many schools and churches are not democratic, many workplaces are not democratic, much of politics is not democratic, the media are not democratic. Where does that leave us?

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Issues of power and control and pluralism are put to the test in meetings. They are microcosms, in tone and style, of the rest of organizational life. They are where the tone is set, direction is determined, priorities are made, social order is established. Meetings are the gyroscope of work. And vice versa.

If your goal is to just get through the day, to get through the next meeting so you can go on to your real life, that’s one thing. But if you have a desire to connect your life and your work, then you will proceed differently.

--August 2002 College Services

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AUGUST 2002

Q. We’ve pretty much run out of things to do. Is that bad or good?

A. This is a key issue for people with diversity roles and responsibilities. It might be hard to know whether you’ve done all you could or should. You, or your management, probably had a particular idea in mind of what diversity work is. If you feel you’ve done it, I suggest you take another look. This might not be easy. It means changing your model, paradigm, or perspective of diversity and diversity work, but it is absolutely essential.

You might be: --helping to formulate and disseminate statements of policy and values --offering assistance in interpersonal relations --publicizing resources in the community--identifying complaint procedures--training people to do mediation and conflict resolution --instituting a diversity curriculum, a series of training classes.

--sponsoring field trips and exchanges --coaching managers on chairing meetings

Diversity is not something you can check off a “to do” list, to say, OK, we’ve done diversity, let’s move on. Diversity is part of a worldview and code of conduct. It is an ethical system. It should feel more like professional development. It should be a dimension of everyone’s work. It can be seen as continuous improvement.

Why does every diversity office think its company is unique? This is one reason there hasn’t been more progress. Some diversity projects are done as standalone exercises or one-time events which appear to be less important than things that happen regularly. Or they are lost in the noise or discounted as punitive or defensive or insincere.

I’m especially interested in helping people do this reframing. That’s what guides so much of what I discuss in this column. You should take this re-examination seriously. Talk to people from outside your usual circle or field or sector who are doing their own form of diversity work. Do brainstorming with a different assortment of people. How do you help people in your organization relate to the world? The Diversity office doesn’t have to have all the answers. It should be a clearinghouse and referral service. It should invite, convene, coordinate, support, the concerns of anyone you come in contact with. You’re doing well if you have a process and help people in facilitating groups, if you have an environment that can deal with novelty and controversy.

When immigrants become US citizens, they take a citizenship exam. Have you looked at a sample test lately? It would be good to have groups review it.

There are maps in some buildings. In schools, there are pins showing the countries that students are from. But how much do we know about these countries and cultures? Obviously, we need to know more. We expect students to learn about America. Teachers should learn about the countries their students come from.

Diversity programs should use the resources that have been developed outside their borders. International studies programs have curricula that diversity programs could use. Indeed, there is an International Studies Association.

What approaches work well? Conversation, dialogue, discussion groups, study circles, exploration of differences. But only if they occur more often, only if they help open the system to more voices, ideas, and interactions.

Here’s a comment about “The Evolution of Cooperation” by Robert Axelrod from James Gosling’s website: “This is the most hopeful book I have ever read….The key conclusion is that as the frequency of contact increases (whether between countries, people, or bacteria) the optimal strategy shifts from hostility to cooperation.”

The lesson is to do a lot of small things, not a once-a-year extravaganza.

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SEPTEMBER 2002

Q. How can we do more online?

A. Some places conduct surveys online, either through email or other software. You can gather and disseminate information, ideas, suggestions. You can have a chat or discussion, using an internal moderator or an outside guest. You can use your intranet as a forum, bulletin board, and clearinghouse on issues related to diversity, cooperation, inclusion, conflict, complaints, etc. You can run a class. You can distribute readings, links to sites, quotations. (I have helped groups set up their own interactive Diversity Questions & Answers forum and a diversity awareness course.) I believe you should use an online feature before and after any in-person diversity event or activity. Use it to prepare people for the upcoming activity, give them background resources and references, give them some assignments to get them ready. And afterwards, you can give people a way to provide feedback online, to follow up on areas that were raised, and to stay in touch with each other. When people have access to computers, pre-registration is easily done online and distributing contact information is simple. Establishing follow-up discussions and ongoing meetings are no problem logistically. Not enough places use their online capabilities as fully as they could. That includes understanding distance learning methods, seeing the organization as a network, and encouraging hyperlinks.

Q. What’s the alternative to diversity?

A. Extinction. Isolation. Narcissism. Diversity is sustainable, scalable, and sociable. Getting good at diversity is a survival skill. There should be no question of its central and constant importance in any enterprise or endeavor.

Q. After September 11, 2001, do we need any more diversity awareness training sessions?

A. We have all had an intense year-long teach-in on cultural differences and worldviews. It seems like most people have given serious thought to some diversity subjects, expressed in many ways. I don’t think people should be treated as if none of that happened. But people do appreciate an opportunity to process their thoughts and feelings, to hear how other people are navigating their lives. The politics and psychology of American diversity were changed last year. The diversity spectrum is more complex, the layers of questions are unresolved. I think people need ongoing opportunities and assistance/facilitation to explore and clarify their perspectives.

And it’s important to translate global issues into local terms, theories into practice. Each person carries diversity with himself/herself, at home and at work and in between. We live in the macro and micro realms simultaneously—wherever we are, there are dimensions of diversity. Maybe training should build upon that reality. There should be more engagement with meta-awareness topics, beyond facts and figures.

My wife had 3 home addresses in her life before we met; I had 30. Is that a difference that’s interesting or that matters? Some people are orphans, some have been adopted, some know many languages. These things shape people differently. And then when two or more people interact, everything is multiplied. Diversity is a fundamental factor in organizational behavior, effectiveness, performance, intelligence, and capability. So it should be a central, relevant focus of people who work in organizations. This is how awareness training has to change. It should be more aware of itself.

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OCTOBER 2002

Q. Our approach has bogged down. What can give us a new perspective?

A. Think of it this way. There’s quite a gap between what children are learning and living and their parents’ (aunts’ and uncles’, grandparents’) generation. Any workplace diversity initiative is simply about narrowing the gap. If your goal were to catch up with the reality of our children’s generation, you would be 20, 30, 40 years ahead of where you are now. That’s all the measurement and evaluation any diversity office needs.

Some colleges and universities get it. They have changed the name of their Office of Minority Affairs to Office of Multicultural Affairs. They have learned that, for example, the people of India speak one thousand languages and people from India come to the U.S., often beginning with graduate school.

Some public schools recognize that the students each year from now on will be less white and European than the year before. I just led a staff development program for administrators in one school district. The sixty people in the room spoke a total of five languages, all European. The students in the district’s schools speak 27 languages, from various continents.

No wonder more schools see the need to focus on the Global Village, intercultural relations, and geography. These are urgent necessities for the world we all live in, but it seems more obvious when we’re educating children for the world they will be living in when they are our age.

The younger you are in the U.S., the less white. But when you look at the middle and upper tiers in large organizations, they are mostly white, due largely to the magnetic fields of nepotism and affinity groups, and the inbred inheritance of successive generations of narrow-mindedness.

Most traditional diversity goals would be met if we switched 5-10 year olds with 40-50 year olds. Meanwhile, adults go through the tired, empty motions of developing a business case for diversity. The business case for diversity is children. Case closed.

Q. What is the effect of September 11, 2001, on diversity work?

A. September 11, 2001, was a shock to our system, in many ways. It tangibly brought home to many Americans forces from other worlds, worlds they hadn’t thought about or known much about. What world do you live in? Few Americans have a passport, or are good in geography or languages. Many organizations, public and private, are projections, holograms, of the same mindmaps, intellectual and experiential filters, that their founders and leaders have or had. The whole point of diversity efforts is to expand people’s knowledge, empathy, and capability beyond existing habits, limits, and boundaries. That’s what awareness and sensitivity and valuing mean. That’s what training is supposed to do. That’s what all the rhetoric is about. September 11, 2001, colored outside the lines, it was an example of thinking outside the box, in real time in the real world. We weren’t prepared for it. It was all the things we look for in a role play, a case study, or a simulation. It was a powerful diversity awareness exercise. Groups should be processing it but many are still avoiding it, more than a year later, because it’s too visceral, too traumatic and disorienting to their models, theories and belief systems. The events of that day and doing diversity work both provide dramatic evidence of how much many Americans have led a sheltered life, physically, morally, and intellectually. That’s hard to acknowledge, to admit, to confess, to disclose. But that’s where the work of diversity is located. It puts us right in the path of the shockwaves from September 11, 2001.

We need to deal with it, talk about it, work through it, even if it means holding on for dear life.

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NOVEMBER 2002

This is my 133rd column, the first of year 12. That’s a full cycle of the Chinese horoscope, in which I am Year of the Monkey. I would like to hear from you, work with you, in the year ahead. Let’s see what we can accomplish.

I want you to know about a portable exhibit that’s available. It’s called “All of us are related, each of us is unique.” Getting your own set of the 18-panel display costs $700, about the same as some so-called diversity awareness videotapes. You can see it at http://allrelated.syr.edu. If you inquire, tell them I sent you.

The Rig Veda, from several thousand years ago, says, “May we be united, may there be perfect unity amongst us.” This desire obviously comes from observing the fact that we are not united, there is not unity.

Unity comes about through a reconciliation of difference. Efforts at unity depend upon recognition of difference, truly re-cognition, an actual change in cognitive processing. Diversity work should foster this re-cognizing activity and capability. Such comprehension is what “awareness” means. So a proper assessment of any awareness activity is whether new cognition occurs. And if new cognition does occur, how is it manifested? No manifestation, no awareness. (This should help those people who keep trying to measure awareness, when it remains invisible.)

Sometimes someone says that it’s negative to talk about differences, that instead of focusing on differences, we should focus on similarities. But sameness is not unity. If people have similarities, do you think they are automatically in harmony? Harmony is a concert of differences. Have you heard of four-part harmony? It’s the interaction, concurrently and in different patterns, of sounds that contrast with each other, that are by definition not the same, not interchangeable.

This is why, by the way, there are so many metaphors and comparisons with musical groups when we talk about diversity (jazz, orchestras, etc.)--and why musicians and artists of various kinds live with diversity so comfortably and productively. Working on diversity is an example of leadership for change--changing the dynamics, culture, environment, practices, norms, messages and mechanisms of organizational systems, of institutions, groups, societies, associations, professions, networks, and gatherings. Any diversity process needs a leadership component and a change component. And no leadership or change process is adequate without addressing dimensions of diversity. This is how you can evaluate proposals and programs. It’s a simple checklist. The primary issue in diversity work is becoming more aware of what norms you live by and apply to others, how those norms are institutionalized, even ratified into law and language, and what that does to people, how it affects them; how it affects you.

This leads to exploring how norms turn into labels and categories and classifications, and into perceiving some people as deviations from the norm, not normal, deviant, different, Other, pathological, not-as-human-as-my-kind, not-one-of-Us, alien, enemy. You see the continuum, what Zorba called “the full catastrophe.”

Do you think of diversity work as a public health campaign, vaccinating people against the spread of the virus of discrimination, hate, prejudice, and other forms of violence? What are your models, theories, and premises? Changing the norm is the work to be done, whether it goes by the name of inclusion, acceptance, pluralism, human rights, or diversity. Re-cognizing and re-manifesting the norm is the basis of social change, as it is of individual change. That should give us plenty to do.

Have you been with me since I started writing this column, a Monkey’s age ago? If you have, isn’t it time we met? Let’s try this mantra: Each of us is unique, all of us are related.

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LETTER FROM THE USA

I kept rewriting this first letter, but the more I wrote, the less like a letter it got. So I suppose I should just dive right in.

It is a difficult time in the USA; there’s a crisis of confidence in many organizations and institutions. The lines of trust, authority, and communication are ragged. Old models of work don’t work.

The issue, as usual, is democracy. Do people believe in democracy enough to live according to its principles? Maybe we don’t know how. Is it courage we need? Maybe we need some help, some guidance, some facilitation.

The lesson seems to be that democracy is a hologram; you cannot pursue democracy on a large scale unless you can pursue it as well on a small scale. For most people, that means in their family and their work and daily life.

Many of us in the USA have been contemplating, agonizing over, the cultural contradictions of capitalism lately. We are overwrought, dismayed at the broken ethics of economics and the damaged mystique of management.

There has been so much fraud, deceit, abuse, in business, religious, and political organizations. There has been such a breach of any social contract that to many it seems that the breakdown of the system is the system.

We need social inventions and interventions. That’s where Training and Management need to come in. They can be either part of the problem or part of the solution. They are either showing the way or colluding, leading or hiding.

The challenge we keep encountering is how to make the ethos of democracy sustainable. Do people know how to facilitate the necessary procedures and social interactions in organizational and personal life?

This takes various forms. It means promoting integrity from school rooms to board rooms. It means being inclusive and equitable. It is an expression of social responsibility and mutual accountability. It involves adhering to standards of justice.

The more impersonal and transactional your job tasks are, the more they can be done by software. There’s no fun or gratification in that. Our best activities require human heart and imagination, creativity and collaboration. We need to be sure our methodology and technology do not dehumanize people.

In the U.S., things are routinely described as new (“NEW!”) or “all new” or “very unique,” products and processes are continuously improved or re-engineered. Time moves faster than ever. People don’t sleep enough and eat too much.

For most of the workforce, work doesn’t mean making things but buying and selling, or manipulating data and information which are also bought and sold. Less than two percent of the population are farmers. Human resources mutated into human capital and human assets and it sounded like people were monetized and commodified.

So many firms have filed for bankruptcy and are restructuring their finances or disappearing. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs and their pensions. Budgets for training, consulting, and professional development have been cut. These days, there are more questions than answers. It’s not just the traditional questions: --How can Human Resources and Training functions provide expert assistance to people in organizations to be, to use, to give, more of who they are?

--How can people work better together? --How can each person do his or her best work? The biggest issues are things for which there are not traditional programs. What are the limits

and optimal behaviors of consumer society? What are the costs and pressures of a militarized, materialistic society?

There are many efforts to reconceptualize economics, to nourish social conscience, social justice, environmental health. But many people engage in these concerns outside of work, and, in many cases, at odds with their work. We need to train and support people to be monitors, facilitators and stewards of democratic processes wherever, whenever. This means training ourselves to conduct a meeting and an election democratically. It means supporting whistle blowers. It means working synergistically and systemically. It means connecting the big picture and the small action.

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If democracy is just a term in a schoolbook and is not encountered and reinforced everywhere you are, it becomes an abstraction, a fantasy. The dilemma is whether some people have given up on democracy. The status and privileges of hierarchy at the top are not possible without the conditions at the bottom. We love to talk about social change, cultural change. The question is, are we ready to live it?

--Training & Management, New Delhi, India, December 2002

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DECEMBER 2002

Q. Could you tell me again, how did Affirmative Action get started?

A. Here’s a quick review:President John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925 in 1961 used “affirmative action” for the first

time by instructing federal contractors to take “affirmative action to ensure that applicants are treated equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law, prohibiting employment discrimination by employers with over 15 employees, whether or not they have government contracts. Established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. In 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson issued E.O. 11246, requiring all government contractors and subcontractors to take affirmative action to expand job opportunities for minorities. In 1967 President Johnson amended it to include affirmative action for women. Federal contractors now required to make good-faith efforts to expand employment opportunities for women and minorities. In 1970 the Labor Department, under President Richard M. Nixon, issued Order No.4, authorizing flexible goals and timetables to correct “underutilization” of minorities by federal contractors. In 1971 Order No.4 was revised to include women. (--from inmotionmagazine.com/aahist.html)

Q. So it’s been around for some time?

A. Yes indeed. And it’s been more than 30 years since “All in the Family” broke all sorts of rules and taboos by dramatizing bigotry, and what would now be called diversity, on television. It was the most-watched show for a few years. And long before that, the abolition of slavery and emancipation of women were major social, political and religious movements.

Q. What’s taking so long?

A. I wish I could tell you. Obviously legislation, executive orders, and court rulings haven’t settled the matter. At least now that the characteristics, conditions, and costs of Diversity Deficiency Disorder have been established by an interdisciplinary team (which included me), and there is a process for diagnosis and treatment, groups have more resources. It’s up to each group to adopt these principles. This is more strenuous than having States ratify an Amendment to the Constitution. Nobody else can do it for you (in the words of the spiritual). Standards of human conduct, house rules, must still be instituted in every social situation, it seems. Q. What can we do?

A. I’d say, stick up for democracy, whenever, wherever, however. This is not as simple as it sounds. It can even be considered a radical position. A Bishop in the Catholic Church was quoted recently saying, “The Church is not a democracy.” I’ve heard corporate executives say about their company, “This is not a democracy.” Most schools and classrooms are not run democratically; those that are, are called “alternative,” nontraditional, experimental, counter-cultural. (This has always puzzled me. See edrev.org)There’s always something we need to be doing to make democracy work.

2003

“ ”We must not only tolerate differences between individuals and between groups, but we should indeed welcome them and look upon them as an enriching experience. That is the essence of all true tolerance. Without tolerance in this widest sense there can be no question of true morality. It is a task never finished, something always present to guide our judgment and to inspire our conduct.

— Albert Einstein, 1938, Swarthmore College

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JANUARY 2003

I’d like to start the new year talking about death. I have spent the last month helping a woman get medical care, helping with visits from friends and family, listening to what she wanted. She died yesterday.

She was 51. She worked as a secretary for the past 13 years. She was a composer. She got cancer 5 years ago. She spoke and sang in Swedish. Also Portuguese and Russian. She had a Ph.D. in music. She had a cat. She played flute, piano, and viola di gamba. An average American. I think a lot of discussions about diversity would be clarified if we talked about death. In death there is much diversity and much democracy. There is both equality and uniqueness. Dead is dead, ultimately. But living is each person’s difference. This was not my first experience with someone dying. My father died when I was seven. Since then, other people I know have died--a stepfather, grandparents, a wife, my mother, friends. I am always surprised when I meet adults who have never known anyone who died. Indeed, this is one of my measures of diversity. I think people who have never experienced someone’s death are fundamentally different from people who have. Death shapes or reshapes a person’s life. You will notice that I am not talking about diversity in terms of the usual categories. I think when we compare those labels to death, we find a new perspective. There is much pettiness in diversityland. Diversity programs occupy themselves with much that is trivial. Perhaps a new year’s resolution can address that. Many people do not want to think or talk about their illness or death, or the illness and death of other people. As my new year wish, I wish everyone would appoint a health proxy (also called health care proxy or health care agent). This is different from durable power of attorney. It does not require a lawyer. It is easy and simple and helpful. Do it before you get injured or sick. Ask your local medical facility about it.

(In my experience, it would be thoughtful and useful to provide a token payment to such a person, since there are various out-of-pocket expenses which can add up. This is like having them on retainer.) Here’s the thing. At that level of human experience, there is the opportunity for sympathy, care, bonding, identification, that does not depend on any sorting system of similarity or otherness. I think it would be a constructive exercise for people in any diversity setting to offer to be each other’s proxy. Each state has its own laws about health care proxies. I would be glad to be a healthcare advocate for anyone. Do you think you would make any exceptions? Would you exclude anyone? I offered to be a proxy to people in a local organization for homeless people. Death is terribly complicated and awfully simple. I have been astonished at how many television programs are about showing dead bodies. Something is going on in our culture where we look at so many morgues, autopsies, murder scenes in weekly installments and yet are so alienated and displaced from each other.

What would you find out about someone when you are checking them into an Emergency Room? What would you learn by meeting their friends? What do you see in a stranger when they are frail, vulnerable, and depending on you? If you want an assignment for the new year, take this one. Look at the gap between diversity as a topic for workplace programs or popular media or political rhetoric and the reality of people’s lives and deaths. Talk about it, encourage others to talk about it, create situations for people to hear each other and help each other. Let me offer the traditional wish for a happy new year, but this time let’s take it further, let’s be serious about happiness, our own and other people’s.

90

LETTER FROM THE USA

I am constantly reminded about how training and management practices are based on people’s fundamental beliefs about change, human nature, and individual and group capacity. For most of history, in most of the world, slavery has been the source of the workforce. Slavery simplifies human resource management. Freedom makes things more difficult. In the late 1990s, there was a spurt of calling the U.S. “Free Agent Nation,” meaning everyone is an independent contractor. In the existential sense, everyone is self-employed, self-managed. This is true in an ultimate metaphysical way. But human resource management doesn’t pay much attention to metaphysics, so it often tries to manage people, life, chance, and chaos. I’ve even heard human resource managers talk about managing expectations. They get carried away, get caught up in the forcefields of control. There are endless efforts to make both an art and a science of it. Books include management and leadership Lessons, and Secrets, of Jesus, Attila the Hun, a conductorless orchestra, orchestra conductors, military generals, Mahatma Gandhi, simplicity, complexity, the Tao de Ching, Lao Tsu, Winnie the Pooh, coaches of sports teams, and various others you and I have never heard of. Most of these lesson-and-secret sources are male. When you look at books on collaboration, networks, and relationships, most of the sources are female. What is the lesson (or secret) here? Obviously, there is a divide of some sort. The field of management is bi-polar, or bi-gender. There was a book on the Androgynous Manager (I liked it and went to meet the author, but it’s out of print and she died.)

It’s always interesting to realize what people are not trained to do. I was engaged to consult with an architecture firm, the largest and oldest in the city. They asked me to help them develop a more collaborative culture. It turns out that when architecture students study architecture, they never get any training in how to work effectively with colleagues or clients. They learn about drawing (computer-assisted), and building materials. One partner in the firm announced, “Architecture is a social activity. You can’t do it without other people.”

My associate and I helped them listen to each other without interrupting each other, without criticizing each other’s ideas. It was a revelation to them. We met with several project teams, the managing directors and the human resources manager over a year and a half. We offered to teach people how to be facilitators of the firm’s interpersonal and organizational process. Fifteen people volunteered to attend a series of sessions with us. It was a satisfying process for all concerned.

I have met people who are managers and training directors who do not believe that people can change. I mean their ideology and their metaphysical beliefs say that people cannot change, or cannot really change, or cannot change very much. So their approach to management and training is very different from that of someone who has a different model, different standards, a different vision.

Then there are people who do believe in change but they know they are up against a system that will not permit or tolerate change. So they are basically spinning their wheels, running in place, hitting their heads against the wall. Anything and everything they do will be negated, cancelled out, by the conditions under which people are required to work and behave.

And there are many kinds of training that occur in this society which are unknown or invisible to people whose job is to know about training. I am thinking of the widespread training in group facilitation, peaceful or nonviolent social change, healing from trauma, mediation, reconciliation.

You know that we always hear that one of people’s greatest fears is speaking in public. If this is so, why not address this and give everyone some training tips and tricks of the trade for public speaking before they ask for it? We could do this with other things also. In fact, I believe we could identify a dozen things that would benefit and assist people that we could provide right off the bat. My sense is that this would raise levels of confidence, pleasure, capability, and make a lot of other training--training that often is seen as remedial, punitive, or coercive--unnecessary.

What would be some of these anticipatory, preventive, proactive realms of training?

--Training & Management, January 2003, New Delhi, India

91

FEBRUARY 2003

There’s a flavor of diversity for every taste. Here are some bite-size pieces.Instead of a one or two hour presentation, what about a two or three day retreat, repeated three

times during the year? Instead of a small group, what about having 400 people at a session, but not sitting in rows.

We could imagine Beethoven or Picasso saying, “Diversity, c’est moi.” Why not everyone? Usually people use less than 5% of their capability/capacity, and that’s enough to get by, that’s what

is called work. It’s not very vigorous or satisfying. It’s just ordinary productivity.What is diversity like in other countries? Of course most of the planet’s population, more than

95%, is outside the USA. Exporting diversity programs from the USA is seen as a form of American empire--people in Europe do not appreciate being told they have to emulate the USA, especially when US rhetoric often does not match the reality. We have a long way to go to becoming the ideal society.

Look at Mix It Up at Lunch Day at Teachingforchange.org, and What to do after lunch.When are you doing your spiritual practice? When are you undoing your spiritual practice? At

what point do they cancel each other out, so that you have to keep beginning again?It is the season of commemorating Martin Luther King, minister of freedom, swami of nonviolence.

He’d be 74 now, not so old. We know people older.Look at actsofkindness.org, especially the health benefits of being kind.Look at the papers of Dr. Norman L Johnson, Theoretical Division, Los Alamos National

Laboratory--Diversity leads to collective benefits--system-wide robustness. And other researchers’ reports: Collective Problem Solving: Functionality beyond the Individual,

Heterogeneous Agents, Self-Organizing Knowledge Systems: Enabling Diversity.Most people are multicultural, both socially and genetically. This would be a good topic for

discussion.Have you gone to Thataway.org?I was in Russia during New Year, reminded of how diverse presumptions and preconceptions can

be. I used to hear that Einstein used only ten percent of his brain. I wasn’t sure what this meant. I

didn’t know if that was a fact, a metaphor, a formula. I still don’t. (I don’t know whether sailing, playing the violin, or walking used more brain.) I’ve heard that a lot of brain activity is used just to keep us standing. Was Einstein’s brain power/potential more than anyone else’s? The story is told as if he might have used ten times more—and how would it be expressed? More sailing, more walking, more violin, or something quite different?

What if discouragement and hatred decay brain power, so that people who are less positive or loving are less mentally fit, less productive.

We usually settle for less. I suppose one conclusion is that anyone who has not come up with insights that are Nobel Prize-worthy is not using even one-tenth of their brain; or that it only takes one-tenth of brain power to win a Nobel Prize.

Ingenuity must be more challenging than being a couch potato. The kind of training you do might not do much toward expanding this capacity, drawing new neural networks. Maybe we train the wrong things in the wrong way.

Too much diversity work is dry, humorless, literal, narrow minded, defensive, offensive. Can we do better?

How much do you know about me? After 12 years, you know something. An acquaintance died recently. After her death, I learned things about her that I wish I’d known earlier. What are we doing to live before we die? How are we sharing our lives?

92

LETTER FROM USA

Sometimes we use the expression, “practice what you preach.” Or as Gandhi

said, “You must be the change you want to see in the world.” Is our training and management authentic, consistent with our principles and ethics? Are they congruent with each other; do they have the same core values? In many cases they don’t, and workers are caught in the middle of mixed messages.

In the USA over the past thirty or so years there has been a lot of interest in imbuing or investing work with meaning and purpose, even transcendental meaning. In some cases, people talk about organizational transformation, not merely organizational effectiveness or development.

Why? Why would some organization or institution need to be transformed? This is a question that is not often addressed. It would lead to a radical reassessment. Trainers and managers should think of themselves as futurists. They influence the future - or at least they try to. They try to create conditions in which people will work differently in the future (even the next day or the next project) than they do now. It seems to me we should be doing R&D on creating our ideal conditions. I have a standing offer to any group - I can help them double the productivity of people. The only catch is that they would have to do things differently, so not many people are interested. I don’t think this is such a huge gamble, since most people work at no more than 20% of their capability - and most organizations are managed to keep it that way. Statistically, if someone is functioning at 19% and I can double it, that ís still only 38%, but it ís a one hundred percent improvement.

If training makes any difference, then the work performance of a person or group who went to training would be different after training than before training, qualitatively and / or quantitatively. And that would require the person or group to be managed differently after training from how they were managed before, wouldn’t it? Management should take Training into account - and usually doesn’t, which is

counter productive. Training should take Management into account and usually does - only in a counter productive way. Most training functions avoid any systemic issues and are content with marginal changes in an individual’s or a group’s knowledge and skills. Management says it would like to see quantum changes in performance, but they don’t mean it.

Where does that leave us? I’ve been dealing with variations of that question for much of my professional life. Change is the modern mantra. One side of change is, of course - surprise, unpredictability, instability, uncertainty - things which are usually dreaded and avoided. Most organizational systems are designed to be transactional and repetitive. Indeed, there is a lot of attention on redundant systems, or fail-safe, robust, resilient systems - although we don’t want to talk about people being redundant.

What happens to spontaneity? It is seen as ambush, dissidence. Creativity is sometimes treated as dissent, which it is, in a sense. It is a departure from the status quo, from the usual unexamined assumptions.

When we train a group to be self - managing, that changes the role of managers. When we manage a group to be a learning organization that changes the role of training. The rate of learning is the rate of change; the rate of change is the rate of learning. In recent years Americans seem to have rediscovered emotional intelligence. Where will this take us? Too much training and management is coercive and punitive, based on the worst experiences in classrooms. Will we be able to connect the best insights and lessons from different sections of our lives? And will Training and Management sing the same tune?

E.F. Schumacher’s essay Buddhist Economics was published in England in 1973 and it got many people interested in right livelihood. People are still exploring the implications of applying their ethical principles to their work - and we find the cost of not doing that in every area of our lives. So we need support and assistance from Management and Training to live more fully, to find our possibilities.

Otherwise, they are letting us down, sabotaging us.

That’s mismanagement. Worse, it’s malpractice.

–Training & Management, March 2003 (New Delhi, India)

93

MARCH 2003

If you’re in the minority, it doesn’t mean you are a minority. If you are a minority, it doesn’t mean you’re in the minority.

When you go from home to work, maybe you move from being a minority to a non-minority--or when you go from work to home. Or when you walk from one building to another. Some people get away from work to be with a diverse mixture of people; others have to go to work.

Some immigrants were minorities in their home country, but not in the US or Canada, or the UK or France…and others vice versa. Do you follow me so far?

There are many minorities, which sounds funny. You know there is a “minority party” and a “minority party leader.” We are told that in a democracy “majority rules,” even when less than half the voters vote. This can get confusing.

In most of the largest school districts in the US, there is a majority minority enrollment. That is, 85% or 92% of the pupils are minority. The largest cities and several thousand other places in the US have majority minority populations.

We believe in “protecting the rights of minorities.” Maybe these are ethnic minorities, or religious or language minorities, or people with minority opinions. That’s often why people from other countries have come, and continue to come, to the US and to Canada. Because in a pluralistic democracy, we care about the whole jigsaw puzzle, minorities matter.

Sometimes we’re part of the dominant culture, the in-group. Other times, we’re an outsider. Sometimes we know the codewords, we know the rules and how to bend them. Then we’re clueless. Sometimes we can take the lead. Or else we need a guide, an interpreter, an ice-breaker. Our social system keeps changing. Our perceptions, perspectives, and feelings change. Our knowledge and comfort changes.

For some people, this is normal. For others, it is weird, or challenging, or threatening. Some people live in a stable, single world and others live in multiple, alternating, worlds. What happens when these people meet? There could be misunderstanding, conflict, culture clash, disorientation, confusion, stress, surprise, resistance, excitement, curiosity. Pick one. Or more than one.

This can happen as you go through your day. You go from one identity to another. Minority one minute, majority the next. Do you notice? Does it matter?

Do you like moving among different groups, different kinds of people? Do you feel like an intruder, an observer, an impostor? Do you feel like you fit in, like a chameleon, a shape-shifter? Do you feel that you have many facets, many dimensions, and you can call on them as necessary, as appropriate?

Are you equipped for these transitions? Did your upbringing prepare you for the nature of the world you now live in? Do you have resources you can call on for help?

There are times when we don’t think about whether we’re minority or majority. And then we find ourselves in another situation where the social and cultural politics sort people out or call them names.

Those who are part of a numerical majority, like females, can feel like they’re a minority. There are more Chinese people than any other national culture, but they’re not always the most numerous people in a room.

We each have many hidden parts of ourselves that identify with, or feel connected to, people who might not seem anything like us at first glance. Our minority parts might be dominant at any time.

My niece and nephew are children of what used to be called a mixed marriage. So is my wife. Many or most of our friends are in relationships or families with people of a different language, religion, culture, or nationality than theirs. There are all kinds of inter-marriages, or non-marriages, adoptions, stepfamilies, and so on.

For many people, their minority or majority status was (and is) their identity and their destiny. Not for others. Some people “pass.” Others “come out.”

My niece used to tell me about how many different clubs and groups she was part of in college. She liked being able to mix and match. I do, too. I don’t like it when I can’t attend a Women of Color meeting. Who’s a minority? It depends.

94

LETTER FROM USA

My heart is broken. Democracy in my country is broken. International diplomacy is broken. My computer broke. My car broke. I got my bike out and oiled it for spring. Then it snowed again. I haven’t been able to focus on writing. So I’ve been fixing things in the house, painting, patching, cleaning. That has been therapeutic. The question is, what do we train and manage ourselves for? Peace or violence?

Are we building an infrastructure of wholesomeness and health? We have been flirting with the idea of sustainability for many years, and then there is this breakdown, disruption, cataclysm, catastrophe. We have been infatuated with organizational learning, but I wonder how organizations can learn if individuals cannot. We have been saturated with messages about change, but we have regressed, deteriorated into the most primitive state.

What do we do in such times? How can we process and express what we think and feel? When we go to work, how can we work with such storms of concerns on our minds? How can we be managed? How can we be trained? I think we need to acknowledge the anxiety and trauma of our condition. We need support and assistance. Where will this come from? Are there people at work who have special talents for performing this function? We don’t have an Office of Anxiety and Trauma, but maybe we should.

Instead, we have people with job titles like Trainer, Manager, Organisational Development, Employee Relations, Human Resources, Personnel. How well equipped are they to facilitate what we need in this crisis? Maybe their temperament and skills donít fit. When people are distracted and preoccupied, how can they concentrate on something else? How can there be business as usual? Many individuals and social systems can’t handle dissent or controversy very well. I mean they can’t handle them at all. They don’t have the capability of addressing them in useful, constructive ways. Why not? Isn’t this a failure of training and management? Or perhaps I should say this is an opportunity for training and management. In a crisis, some people and systems become inflexible. They lose their creativity. They tend to revert to following the rules But there may not be rules that address the situation we face.

We may need to improvise, invent and create among ourselves. And then the question is, do we know how to do this? Have we been trained, that is, to manage crisis creatively? Do we know enough about ourself and others to meet such a challenge? Have we practiced this scenario? I think the present crisis reveals and redefines many areas for training and management in all settings.

I will think more about it as I bike and clean and paint. Maybe we can learn how to fix our work home as well.

–Training & Management, New Delhi, India, April 2003

95

MINORITY REPORT

If you’re in the minority, it doesn’t mean you are a minority. If you are a minority, it doesn’t mean you’re in the minority.

When you go from home to work, maybe you move from being a minority to a non-minority--or when you go from work to home. Or when you walk across campus, from one building to another. Some people get away from work to be with a diverse mixture of people; others have to go to work. Some immigrants were minorities in their home country, but not in the US or Canada, and others vice versa.

Do you follow me so far? There are many minorities, which sounds funny. You know there is a “minority party” and a “minority

party leader.” You’ve been told that in a democracy “majority rules,” even when less than half the voters vote. This can get confusing. In most of the largest school districts in the US, there is a majority minority enrollment. That is, 85% or 92% of the pupils are minority. The largest cities and several thousand other places in the US have majority minority populations. We believe in “protecting the rights of minorities.” Maybe these are ethnic minorities, or religious or language minorities, or people with minority opinions. That’s often why people from other countries have come, and continue to come, to the US and to Canada. Because in a pluralistic democracy, we care about the whole jigsaw puzzle, minorities matter.

Sometimes we’re part of the dominant culture, the in-group. Other times, we’re an outsider. Sometimes we know the codewords, we know the rules and how to bend them. Then we’re clueless. Sometimes we can take the lead. Or else we need a guide, an interpreter, an ice-breaker.

Our social system keeps changing. We keep changing from one system to another. Our perceptions, perspectives, and feelings change. Our sense of our knowledge and comfort changes. For some people, this is normal. For others, it is weird, or challenging, or threatening. Some people live in a stable, single world and others live in multiple, alternating, worlds. What happens when these people meet?

There could be misunderstanding, conflict, culture clash, disorientation, confusion, stress, surprise, resistance, excitement, curiosity. Pick one. Or more than one. This can happen as you go through your day. You go from one identity to another. Minority one minute, majority the next. Do you notice? Does it matter?

Do you like moving among different groups, different kinds of people?Do you feel like an intruder, an observer, an impostor? Do you feel like you fit in, like a chameleon,

a shape-shifter? Do you feel that you have many facets, many dimensions, and you can call on them as necessary, as appropriate?

Are you equipped for these transitions? Did your upbringing prepare you for the nature of the world you now live in? Do you have resources you can call on for help?

There are times when we don’t think about whether we’re minority or majority. And then we find ourselves in another situation where the social and cultural politics sort people out.

Those who are part of a numerical majority, like females, can feel like they’re a minority. There are more Chinese people than any other national culture, but they’re not always the most numerous people in a room.

We each have many hidden parts of ourselves. And who knows which ones will identify with, or feel connected to, people who might not seem anything like us at first glance? Our minority parts might be dominant at any time.

My niece and nephew are children of what used to be called a mixed marriage. So is my wife. Many or most of our friends are in relationships or families with people of a different language, religion, culture, or nationality than theirs. There are all kinds of inter-marriages, or non-marriages, adoptions, stepfamilies, and so on.

The 2000 Census in the US was the first one in which we were asked to check off more than one ancestry or heritage, recognizing th;at the family tree has numerous roots and branches. Even though not many people did, this mixed-category group of people is the fastest-growing in the population, as more people learn about and acknowledge their background, and I think it will one day be the largest.

For many people, their minority or majority status was (and is) their identity and their destiny. Not for others. Some people “pass.” Others “come out.”

My niece used to tell me about how many different clubs and groups she was part of in college. She liked being able to mix and match. I do, too. I don’t like it when I can’t attend a Women of Color meeting.

What do we call this state of affairs? It’s the evolution of society, it’s our life story. Who’s a minority? It depends.

— College Services, April 2003

96

APRIL 2003

Who would have guessed that the big diversity issue of the month would be backlash against French fries and French toast?

What if I suggest that France has been helping to provide the checks and balances that we say we value in democratic process?

At a critical time, diversity and doing diversity work is more important than ever. Increasing and strengthening.diversity is the key to homeland security. That means diversity efforts are crucial to a peaceable workplace as well as a peaceable world. What is happening to diversity in a time of terrorism and war? We need to show courage and leadership. We need to raise diversity issues even more than before.

A diversity office should offer guidance, support and integrity, even if it is unpopular. People are feeling anxiety, fear, trauma. The diversity program should be more active than it was in easier times.

People cannot focus or concentrate on their work when they are worried or scared, or distracted and preoccupied by threats of killing and dying, or angry and upset. That seems like such an obvious, non-controversial observation.

Now diversity and its advocates are being tested. Diversity is central to our political life, our attitudes and behavior, our mental health. Are we saying so, even when it’s not popular, when the principles of diversity are under attack? Look at your diversity policy statement again. Are you implementing it or ignoring it?

***

“Whites are the most racially isolated group in America’s public schools,” says the new report from the Harvard Civil Rights Study. (The average white student goes to a school where 80% of students are white. Nearly 40% of black students attended schools that were 80-100% black.)

The US is overwhelmingly segregated in school and in much of its housing. What about the workplace? How comfortably do parents of segregated children work together? Is this the subject of diversity programs? I think diversity programs have quite a challenge. As they advocate and try to model diversity, everyone knows that the reality of people’s lives involves a double (or triple) standard: segregation in some sectors, desegregation in others.

This is confusing, frustrating, and crazy-making. It creates cognitive and emotional dissonance. People are expected to switch from one social system to another and back again, several times a day. Surely this affects the ability of people to think and work The diversity program is the only resource around to clarify, mediate, and assist in this process.

Once again, we see that diversity is the bottom line.

***

The Census Bureau has just reported that there were about 32.5 million foreign-born residents of the U.S. in March 2002. That is slightly less than the number of African Americans which is slightly less than the number of Hispanics--though there is some overlap. When we talk about “minority” groups, we should be including foreign-born people.

Have you been doing that all along? Have you been educating people about pluralism, the dynamics of democracy, the multiple nature of minorities? Do you function as a center for peace studies, a forum for coexistence?

I hope this does not set up another competition about who is the most important minority, which is an endless, and pointless, contest. The very concept of “foreign-born” people deserves some attention. At some point, the great majority of people in the U.S. and Canada were “foreign-born,” weren’t we?

So my question to you is, how are you doing in difficult times?

97

MAY 2003

Diversity work is taking many twists and turns these days. Diversity is homeland security. If we want to improve homeland security, we should be sure we are nourishing the health and vitality of diversity in all our operating systems and support systems. This makes diversity a critical priority and an operational necessity. We need to be attending to it, especially in troubled times. We should be looking more closely at what I’ve called deep diversity, the sources and forces that generate diversity symptoms and issues. It seems to me the Diversity Office is an Office of Pain and Anguish, a Department of Grief, Mourning and Trauma, a Program for Difficult Times. I’ve said so before, but it seems more apparent during a period of heightened alert. How are you dealing with diversity in an atmosphere of terrorism, war, and political and social controversy? People are in a state of stress and anxiety. They are working wounded. Of course this affects their work, their ability to work. Your diversity program, as always, is a strategic resource addressing the conditions under which the people in your organization function. Of course, this condition is multifaceted. It includes the personal, private, philosophical, political, psychological, emotional, dimensions of people. The diversity program should not be ignoring these dimensions, and it certainly should not be in denial about them, censoring them or punishing them. This poses a challenge to diversity work. It puts some issues on the agenda, on the table, that you might not have identified as your assignment. Is it safe for people to say what they think, how they feel? When you do your social climate survey/environmental assessment, what do the results tell you about how much of people’s energy, faculties, are being filtered, stifled, constrained? Self-censorship is the hardest to disclose or discuss, by its very nature. How much do people hold back? And when some areas are being held back, what effect does that have on other areas? Can people operate this way, selectively screening and making their ideas, imagination and attention available? Some people compartmentalize better than others. What is the toll this takes on an individual and on a group? How much effort does it take to keep your thoughts and feelings to yourself? Sometimes they leak out in unexpected ways, they implode, or, as Langston Hughes said in his famous poem “A Dream Deferred,” they explode. Organizational development (which is the cousin of diversity management) often colludes in producing diminishing returns on human assets, sometimes deliberately, sometimes without realizing it. Are you developing an infrastructure that takes into account the full range of humanity? Or maybe not the full range, maybe less than one percent. “Awareness” training is trivial. Everyone who is exposed to news reports and popular culture gets some kind of awareness training, with more multi-media than you can muster. Here’s the bottom line. Diversity poses an alternative to killing people. The premise of diversity is co-existence, co-evolution. If killing people is the culture of social interaction, locally and internationally, diversity is a counter-culture. If murder is a common model of social communication, as it seems to be officially and unofficially, then diversity may be an uncommon model. Diversity goes contrary to prevailing habits, inclinations, reflexes, policies and practices. It’s swimming against the current, it seems. Diversity takes a different mind-set and a different set of skills than killing does. Are our diversity programs promoting and providing those skills? Slogans will not do it. Anyone who has been on the diversity path knows that it is a path of mutual reciprocity and reinforcement. It is a discipline, a spiritual practice, an ethos, a political position, a technical pool of knowledge. Feel free to substitute other words for “diversity”—multicultural, equity, pluralism, minority, democracy. Fill in the blanks. Let me know how it’s going.

98

TOO TRUE

The lovers Frankie and Johnny “swore to be true to each other, just as true as the stars above,” but he done her wrong. He wasn’t true blue.

We want a building to be plumb, square, and true. We try to find true north. We want our aim to be straight and true.

We use tools to help us to be true to some external target--a compass, T-square, bubble level, plumb bob, a pitchpipe, a tuning fork.

What tools do we have for ourself, when we talk about staying true to ourself? What keeps us on course? What is our internal gyroscope or external guide?

How do you know what being “true” is? How do you know what “yourself ” is? In some societies or cultures, you are expected to be true to the group values, to the culture itself. That is your moral and spiritual compass.

The idea of being true to yourself is in some ways individualistic and isolationist, selfish or self-centered, even when it is done in the name of integrity and conscience.

Some cultures say a person is answerable to a higher authority, a heritage, a tradition, an extended family. For many people, the question is not, are you being true to yourself. The question is, are you in harmony with the universe? Are you living your purpose? Are you living in congruence/attunement/alignment with something beyond yourself?

If you are accountable to a higher authority/power, do you know what the accounting system is?If you believe you have a self of your own, rather than a prism of shifting selves, you may be suffering

from a delusion. If you believe you have a separate self, rather than being part of a collective, you may be suffering from a delusion.

Maybe what you consider yourself is like the detail of a painting and you are looking at only a fragment of something larger. Or maybe you are constantly changing, shedding selves like you shed skin cells, like dandruff, so y ou are unfolding, recreating, and renewing what you are.

There’s a lot of help to find yourself, or be yourself, or at least make yourself look nice. There’s Self magazine. I like Communities magazine myself.

“We are constantly invited to be who we are,” wrote Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862).I think it’s fair to say that most people don’t explore the full range of themselves. They (we) live within

a narrow world within the wider world. Many organizations say they want people to develop their full potential, but they don’t mean it. “Full potential” is an unknown goal and people stop far short of it. If people released their true power, the result would be more than most circuits could handle.

I wonder about “full potential.” Potential is the power that’s not used, a vague outer limit. How do you find out about yourself without experiencing something different than you’re used to? You don’t know your norm if you’re always normal. We are constantly formulating what’s acceptable, what’s reasonable, what’s within our limits and what’s beyond our limits, without knowing or testing what our limits are.

So we do performance appraisals, we conduct evaluations and measurements. We think everyone can do better, either by their own effort or by some other influence.

This casual question turns out to be quite challenging.There are books such as Who Are You? 101 Ways of Seeing Yourself, or Who Do You Think You Are? 12

Methods for Analyzing the True You, or The 16 Personality Types: Descriptions for Self-Discovery.We say, “oh, you’re too much.” We say, “now you’ve gone too far.” What do we mean? (These are

American expressions and might not translate in other countries.)“I’m always true to you darling in my fashion, I’m always true to you darling in my way,” wrote Cole

Porter, for Kiss Me, Kate, in 1948.What is the social compact where you work or in your household? What is it in the society we share?

When do we tell people they have gone out of bounds? Most social systems are not set up to have people operating at their full power. Most social rules keep

people’s power under wraps. Most systems are organized and managed to keep people from working or living at their fullest. There are many mechanisms to keep people puttering and sputtering and fluttering along.

When thoughts and feelings stimulate people, arouse them, provoke them, they express themselves in different ways. Some people shout, some lash out, some shut down. Is it acceptable to be intense,

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enthusiastic, single-minded, focused? Tell me when I’ve crossed the line. Are strong colors OK? What about strong flavors, strong opinions?

When you feel strongly about something, can you go too far, especially in a college, where there is free speech, freedom of expression, intellectual freedom? What do we do with freedom and liberation on campus and off?

“It’s not the values you hold; it’s how you hold your values,” said a college professor of mine. It’s one of the things I remember and still think about, even now.

— College Services, June 2003

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JUNE 2003

This coming August 28, 2003, is the fortieth anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, conceived by A. Philip Randolph in 1941 and revived to mark the 100th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, coordinated by Bayard Rustin. That’s where Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

I was there, on the Mall in front of the Lincoln Memorial, along with 200,000 or more other people, an estimated 60,000 of whom were white.

How many of us are still alive? Are we now elders of some kind? Survivors? Witnesses? Alumni? Are we still marching?

When I have spoken to groups over the years, I have occasionally met people who were there then, now in the same room. We wave to each other across the years. Sometimes it feels like we are in quarantine, placed on “hold.” As we approach that date, we can contemplate that forty has a special significance. According to Islamic tradition, the soul spends forty days wandering between death and eternity. The desert in which Jesus was with wild animals for forty days was known as Quarantena. Lent lasts for forty days of fasting. Moses spent forty days in the desert before receiving the word of God. Quarantine was the forty days that a widow had a legal right to stay in her husband’s principal house after his death.

The word quarantine comes from the Italian quaranti giorni, meaning 40 days, and Latin quaresma, meaning forty.

When bubonic plague swept through Europe in the 14th century, the government of Venice required ships to sit at anchor away from the city for 40 days before they could unload passengers or cargo. The authorities thought 40 days would be enough time for any disease to be identified and either treated or pass through its normal course. All ships under quarantine had to fly a yellow flag. Even now, ships entering UK ports from outside the EU are required to fly the yellow quarantine flag until they have been cleared by Customs.

The Israelites wandered in the desert for forty years.God caused it to rain upon the face of the earth for forty days and nights.A fortieth wedding anniversary is marked with rubies.The platform/demands of the March in 1963 included a massive federal works program, full and

fair employment, decent housing, the right to vote for Negroes, and adequate racially-integrated education. It focused on passage of meaningful civil rights legislation which would prohibit racial discrimination in hiring, a $2 an hour minimum wage, protection for all civil rights protestors against police brutality, self-government for the District of Columbia.

Another speaker that day was John Lewis, now Congressman from Georgia. Peter, Paul, and Mary sang. So did Mahalia Jackson, who five years later sang at King’s funeral.

After the public program ended, some of the key figures went over to the White House to talk about legislation and leadership that would address the issues. The crowd returned to buses and trains and went home to carry on. (Some of us came back in 1968 for the Poor Peoples Campaign at Resurrection City, just after King’s death. We paused when the motorcade carrying Robert Kennedy’s casket passed by the Lincoln Memorial.)

In some traditions, there are forty days of embalming, forty days of mourning, forty years of each stage of maturity and learning. Here’s what you can do. Find people who were at the 1963 March on Washington, and talk to them. Bring them in to talk to you.

Questions to discuss: 1. Compare and contrast historical time and spiritual time. 2. What is the success of petitioning the government for redress of grievances? 3. How far have we come in the past 40 years? 4. What are we doing now?

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LETTER FROM USA

A friend of mine was just offered a raise and a promotion in her job. She turned them down. Do we reward integrity? How many training programs and performance reviews focus on moral courage? For my friend, the price was too high. She would have had to stop pursuing her employer’s discrimination and harassment. But she wouldn’t be bought off, hidden away. She wouldn’t cover up her effort to make things right. Do we have case studies, scenarios, role-playing, simulations, for such situations? Do we help people communicate with their conscience and then turn it into action? Do we give people training in nonviolent resistance—satyagraha--to assist someone who is being injured by the system? I first encountered satyagraha when I was a teenager. I read about ahinsa and satyagraha in connection with the sit-ins, boycotts, and marches of the civil rights movement and Martin Luther King’s preaching. But I haven’t seen many human relations program devoted to such values and practices. I designed a course offered to Fire & Rescue departments across the USA on “Leading Diverse Communities Beyond Conflict.” We need training sessions for how people can be whistle-blowers, to call attention to wrong-doing in their workplace. I lead training sessions for sexual harassment, telling people what constitutes impermissible and illegal behavior and giving them names, phone numbers, and addresses of offices to contact if such behavior occurs. But we don’t go far enough. Some organizations and government agencies have an official ombudsman, a concept started in Sweden in 1809. The ombudsman is an independent watchdog of organizational behavior. Each person is in a position to assess the conduct of the organization she or he is in. Each individual is a participant-observer of such conduct, unless you refuse to be a participant. Another friend leads trainings in “nonviolent communication” and does conflict mediation interventions for various groups. There are numerous consultants on organizational development and effectiveness. Only a few of them talk explicitly about “nonviolent large systems change.” I have given workshops on “Ethical Work,” but maybe that sounds dull. Social responsibility and accountability don’t seem very entertaining. So I sang songs and showed excerpts from old movies. I’m planning to talk about the 40th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom that took place August 28, 1963. That was where King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. I was there, as a college student. I think we should bring the world into the workplace in a number of ways, to connect the disconnected parts of our thoughts, convictions, and lives. When we do evaluations, assessments, appraisals and audits, are we measuring bravery for social justice? There is so much/too much timidity and fear. The United Nations General Assembly declared that an “International Day of Peace shall be observed on 21 September each year, with this date to be brought to the attention of all people for the celebration and observance of peace; shall henceforth be observed as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, an invitation to all nations and people to honour a cessation of hostilities for the duration of the Day.” What about the hostilities at work?

— Training and Management, New Delhi, India, August 2003

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JULY 2003

Q. I’m a 25 year-old white male that was brought up with a very strong work ethic of “if you work hard, you will reap benefits.” I’m from a middle-class background which has meant getting into college (and paying for it was really a challenge, but I managed). I’ve managed to receive my bachelors and now masters degrees--$68K in debt.

I now work with a Fortune 500 company and must say that at face value I’m doing pretty well (financially), but when I look at how aggressive I am and where I want to go I start to feel like I’m restricted due to the overwhelming “popularity” for this company (probably like a lot of other companies) to have managerial metrics around the number of diverse folks getting career path support and leadership opportunities. For a while, I really just thought I was just being a little sensitive but from speaking with colleagues of the same background I found they share these same views. (Unfortunately. How do you voice this without getting labeled as someone who “doesn’t support a diverse work culture” or is a racist?)

The whole affirmative action and diverse workplace is not doing a good job of killing racism in this country; it’s creating a mechanism for young white males to HAVE reason for separating races. (Does any of this sound familiar--oppression & minority complex for white males? Sometimes I have to laugh and think, is this payback?) It amazes me how much focus/effort is being put on finding talent that are specifically not white male. Managers get measured on it, diversity councils are formed around it and eventually there develops a network (infrastructure if you will) of people consisting of no white males that help to promote and mentor each other. I think to myself, can I start an Italian-American council? How about a Scottish-Slovak council? Something tells me I won’t have many supporters or success. I’m left with an overwhelming feeling of what to do? The sad thing--a few of the “minorities” I work with can see the same thing happening and actually sympathize with me; they see there is no support council or initiatives being put in place for white males, nor would anyone think that would be needed. They are also not naive and exploit the most they can from corporations that need to fill diversity numbers. I look forward to your feedback and wish you all the best in educating people. All races need to realize that checks and balances need to be put in place for people of EVERY background.

A. This is an important issue and it’s hard to find a place where it can be discussed. That is why I lead sessions on white male diversity and the future of white males. (You should bring me in.)

Keep being sympathetic to efforts to take corrective steps in a country that has injustice--people are discriminated against for things that they can’t help or change or choose. Both white people and men have long benefitted from their place in a caste system, their unearned advantages. Segregation was legal when your parents (and I) were young. I suppose that in a political/historical sense it is payback.

This can be hard when it affects you. So you have to realize your employer is not targeting you personally but is targeting your EEO classification, coming out of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It just feels personal and it creates new ripple effects. You can try to change your EEO code, literally or symbolically. When you have to check an ethnic identity, check more than one or check “other.”

There’s not a minority and a majority group. White males are not a monolithic category. Women outnumber men. “European” no longer means “white.” White people (male and female) are about 13% of world population. There’s only one human race.

Think of yourself as one minority in a pluralistic society, world, and workforce. Refer to yourself as a minority whenever possible. Stay good-humored about it. You can help broaden people’s perceptions and perspectives, even your company’s diversity people. Make it clear that you are multicultural and that you “support a diverse work culture.” Show that you understand the issues on a global scale. Do you speak other languages? Your company is international. It needs people who can think and function internationally. Make sure they know you are such a person.

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BACK TO BASICS

There are things that are not usually in a job description that are part of a job. Look at the Hippocratic Oath that medical school students take. In 400 B.C. Hippocrates wrote, “As to diseases, make a habit of two things -- to help, or at least to do no harm.” This places the welfare of the patient above other concerns. It is the basis for ethics in the medical profession.

There’s a Graduation Pledge that has spread to many colleges and universities in recent years: “I pledge to explore and take into account the social and environmental consequences of any

job I consider and will try to improve these aspects of any organizations for which I work.” (It’s based at Manchester College in Indiana.)

Here is the Student Pugwash Pledge: “I promise to work for a better world, where science and technology are used in socially responsible

ways. I will not use my education for any purpose intended to harm human beings or the environment. Throughout my career, I will consider the ethical implications of my work before I take action. While the demands placed upon me may be great, I sign this declaration because I recognize that individual responsibility is the first step on the path to peace.”

(Student Pugwash is the student affiliate of the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, with members in 50 countries, winner of the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize. See spusa.org)

This is where social responsibility comes in. Right at the beginning, as the foundation of a person’s work and job.

There are local, national and international chapters of Educators for Social Responsibility, Architects/Designers/Planners for SR, Computer Professionals for SR, Physicians for SR, Business for SR, Psychologists for SR, Engineers for SR, socially responsible investing, and so on.

People in many occupations have formed professional networks and support groups to look at their work through the lens of their convictions, values, and ethical beliefs.

Students and faculty are very involved in such efforts. Service learning, community service, and servant leadership are hot topics on most campuses. Are you involved in the discussions about them? I think you would have some important contributions to make to the conversation. We talk about customer service and total quality improvement. Even though those terms started in business, education, social service agencies, healthcare and government programs now use them. In an interconnected community, we are each other’s customers. And, you could say, we are serving each other. How does that affect us? We all live in a social environment. (You thought I was going to say “a yellow submarine?”) How do we take care of that environment? Through our interactions, in our jobs. We live in each other’s aura and influence and service.

Does the job description say be nice to other people? Does it say call attention to things that don’t look right? Don’t do things that might be wrong or harmful? There are a number of invisible parts of a job description, things we don’t include because we think they’re so obvious. We assume we believe in “liberty and justice for all,” as we say so often in the U.S.A. So, of course we follow that principle at home and at work, don’t we? We measure ourselves against our commitment to liberty and justice —or do we? Sometimes we let the Latin motto of the university or the sentiment of patriotism do the work we need to do. Diversity is just one example. We need to practice it, operationalize it, hold ourselves to its standards. Do we have to keep repeating that we are committed to fairness and acceptance of all kinds of different people? Should we start our day at work and our meetings with a reminder that in a democracy we believe in the equality (one person/one vote) of every person?

Maybe we should. It can’t hurt. It might help. It might make some of the training we’re doing unnecessary, because these reminders themselves would be all the training we need. What else do we take for granted?

Eventually, we answer to a higher authority: our conscience, our dreams, each other. Yes, let’s soar higher. We do that by taking care of core values, reaffirming what should be basic but is often left undone.

— College Services, August 2003

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AUGUST 2003

Summer is traditionally time to catch up on reading during vacations when nothing else is happening. Ha! It’s already been a busy summer.

The United States Supreme Court issued opinions on two University of Michigan cases on June 23, addressing affirmative action in the context of educational benefits of diversity. I assume you’ve read them by now. If not, put them in your priority pile.

As for Harry Potter…he’s different. He’s not normal. Same with Buffy (the Vampire Slayer). These two very popular characters not only tell us something about literary archetypes and mythopoetic individuation, but also about everyday experience. The extensive commentaries on both are relevant to all kinds of diversity work.

The United Nations General Assembly declared that an “International Day of Peace shall be observed on 21 September each year, with this date to be brought to the attention of all people for the celebration and observance of peace; shall henceforth be observed as a day of global ceasefire and non-violence, an invitation to all nations and people to honour a cessation of hostilities for the duration of the Day.” And what about hostilities at work? Do you have a program for Sept. 21?

I hope anyone dealing with diversity issues is a fan of the radio program “This American Life.” If you don’t know it yet, go to the web site thisamericanlife.org and listen. Go on the “Trail of Tears” with the eloquent and provocative Sarah Vowell or read a version of it in her book, Take the Cannoli.

“Race: the Power of an Illusion” was shown on PBS. It’s well done, useful, powerful. Watch it, discuss it. Get the videos from newsreel.org; you can also print out the transcripts of the three programs.

White people won’t be in the majority in the USA when my son is my age. I’m the first generation of Americans who could say that. Though of course it’s not a white world. Never has been. Nobody has ever lived in a “white world,” since world population overall has never been predominantly white. So, what does it mean if the “world” you live or work in is white? Or if you live in a demographically simple, monochromatic world of any kind? We live in a mosaic world, a jigsaw puzzle world, a hyper-linked world. Even species are hyper-linked--look at the transmission of diseases from animals to humans. There’s a great web of life. Check out biodiversityhotspots.org

“Shifting baselines” refers to the incremental lowering of standards, with respect to nature, in which each new generation: lacks knowledge of how the environment used to be redefines what is ‘natural,’ according to personal experience sets the stage for the next generation’s shifting baseline.” (Randy Olson) Get over to shiftingbaselines.org

Diversity can be your spiritual perspective as well as your political orientation. Do diversity advocates consider themselves political and cultural progressives or conservatives, or something else? What’s the network, support system, for us? I wish we would reach out to each other more. Look at democracycollaborative.org

Fewer than one in 7 people in the world would be considered white-skinned. That makes being white rather unusual. Think of the white rhino, white tiger. We seem to be color-conscious. How does that matter in an evolutionary sense? Is it part of natural selection and eugenics? Is it biological, cultural, political, or aesthetic?

Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his dissenting opinion in Grutter, “the Law School could achieve its vision of the racially aesthetic student body without the use of racial discrimination.” His footnote: “’[D]iversity,’ for all of its devotees, is more a fashionable catchphrase than it is a useful term, especially when something as serious as racial discrimination is at issue. Because the Equal Protection Clause renders the color of one’s skin constitutionally irrelevant to the Law School’s mission, I refer to the Law School’s interest as an ‘aesthetic.’ That is, the Law School wants to have a certain appearance, from the shape of the desks and tables in its classrooms to the color of the students sitting at them.”

“Diversity” is mentioned more than 140 times in the two decisions. This would make a good subject for a task force meeting. You can’t say you don’t have plenty to talk about.

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SEPTEMBER 2003

I’ve been talking to some people about education as an increase in human diversity. It seems to me that diversity is an increase in education/understanding. This is probably what we mean when we talk about “awareness.” But then we undermine our goal by using the most limited forms of “training.” If we would really like to increase awareness/appreciation/understanding of diversity, we need a different method for doing it. We need to use broader, deeper approaches. Diversity was mentioned more than 140 times in the Supreme Court decisions in Grutter and Gratz. Those are the affirmative action cases from the University of Michigan. For years, diversity training has spent a lot of time trying to distinguish between diversity and affirmative action. Some of the Supreme Court Justices say that affirmative action is a means toward achieving the goal of diversity. Here’s another opportunity to re-think the rhetoric, the rationale, and the approach to doing diversity work. And there’s this news bulletin:

“The National Football League has fined Detroit Lions president Matt Millen $200,000 for not interviewing any minority candidates before hiring coach Steve Mariucci. After the team’s previous head coach was fired by the team in January, Mr. Mariucci was the only person interviewed to fill the coaching vacancy. The Lions said five minority candidates had been asked to interview for the job but declined because they knew Mr. Mariucci would be hired. NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said that teams that do not interview minority candidates in the future for head coaching positions will face fines of $500,000 or higher. A letter sent to the Lions from Mr. Tagliabue stated: “As the president of the Lions, you participated in the decision by NFL clubs to commit to interview minority candidates when hiring head coaches and you made that commitment for the Lions on the December 20 league conference call.” Currently there are three black head coaches in the NFL.” (diversityonline.com, July 30, 2003.)

***

Anyone working on diversity should read “The Effects of Diversity on Business Performance: Report of the Diversity Research Network,” by nine academic researchers, November 2002. (See it at shrm.org/foundation/kochan_keyfindings.asp)

They propose this way to state the business case for diversity:“Diversity is a reality in labor markets and customer markets today. To be successful in

working with and gaining value from this diversity requires a sustained, systemic approach and long-term commitment. Success is facilitated by a perspective that considers diversity to be an opportunity for everyone in an organization to learn from each other how better to accomplish their work and an occasion that requires a supportive and cooperative organizational culture as well as group leadership and process skills that can facilitate effective group functioning. Organizations that invest their resources in taking advantage of the opportunities that diversity offers should outperform those that fail to make such investments.“ Then in “Looking beyond the Business Case” they recommend, “Adopt a more analytical approach. Support experimentation and evaluation. Train for group process skills.” And, they suggest, it’s best to “foster a culture that views diversity as a resource for learning, change, and renewal.”

(You might also look at some vinegary articles prompted by this report, “Diversity De-Tox” by Peter Wood, on frontpagemagazine.com)

The message seems to be that you either should do diversity really differently or stop doing it.It sounds like things I’ve been saying here for years. Now there is documentation from professors

at major universities to support it. Is anyone listening? Maybe it’s better to ask if anyone cares what the research says. Most places do not do any research or evaluation, do not implement best practices, and go through diversity motions for misguided public relations reasons, which waste time and money and often backfire. No wonder people wonder what in the world is going on in Diversityland.

Some websites to look at-- diversitycentral.com, coopcomm.org, nvc.org, familydiv.org, eeo1.com, nvc.org, nonviolence.org

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MATRIX

As you know, it is common to contrast academic life with life in “the real world,” when they’re not separated at all. They’re only as far apart as you, and you’re right in the thick of things.

I mean that some aspect of college services is present wherever students, faculty and administrators go about their business. In fact, I think the contacts and connections between what you do and what they do are increasing—if not, they should be.

You provide and are an active part of the climate, stimulus, environment, and conditions in which education takes place. You affect the nature and quality of educational life and experiences by everything you do (or don’t do).

We know that learning does not take place only in class or through homework. I think it would be enlightening to do a more complete assessment of the role college services plays in the educational matrix, which is what I try to do in these commentaries.

Students often don’t know what they’re getting into when they enter “higher education.” Going to college is intended to expand their world. It exposes them to a world within themselves and outside themselves, worlds to discover and explore. What about you? Is working at a college just another job or is it an exposure to new ideas and people?

For example, the things you do are the basis for a case study, practicum, field experience, internship, that academic programs teach and ask students to learn. They don’t have to look very far. It takes a lot of services to maintain an educational institution, so it’s fascinating to me that they are sometimes overlooked.

In the mix of the different college services are commercial endeavors, trades, crafts, where the nonprofit status of the (public or private) educational institution overlaps with its own or some other enterprise’s cost center and budget line.

In any institutional web, there might be employee-owned businesses, independent contractors, self-employed and DBA individuals, people operating on commission, concessions, brokers, cooperatives, franchises, branch offices, vendors, unions, suppliers--among others. Right there in the midst of the curriculum, invisible because they’re so much a part of the landscape.

The range of enterprises is diverse, and within that diversity there are diversities. That means the opportunities for interconnection and synergy are great, if we utilize them.

Business partners need to understand the territory, the culture, in which they operate. You are their point of contact, the intermediary between groups that do business with the institution and individual students or faculty, staff, and administration members.

That makes you the fulcrum and role models for what business can look like, how business can be conducted. You are probably a mediator, translator, and guide. You might conduct orientation and training for business partners to help them get comfortable with your institution—and help people at your institution get comfortable with them. This does not happen automatically.

Some business partners may not be familiar with the special qualities of an educational environment. So you become responsible for the compliance and quality assurance of their environmental impact. They are not just business partners but educational partners and partners in creating and maintaining the conditions you want to live and work with on behalf of your various constituencies, customers, and colleagues.

Many businesses have their own in-house diversity programs. Over the years, businesses have become familiar with “supplier diversity” programs. Do you have such a program? You might find that your business partner has more experience with working on diversity issues than you have—or it might be the other way around.

This is one of the things you need to determine. What are the dimensions of a business partner’s understanding of diversity? Is it adequate for having successful relationships with people in your institution?

There is a great chain of relationships, sometimes called a value chain, a supply chain, a service chain. And every link in the chain, like DNA sequences in chromosomes, is full of opportunities. Because there is also what I would call a diversity chain. The human matrix keeps turning up.

We talk about making business agreements on a handshake and we say that anyone is five or six handshakes away from anyone else. A recent movie, “Pay it Forward,” dramatized the multiplier effect in a

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chain reaction of how we treat other people. That’s also the way compound interest works.Business is about people’s transactions with each other. If I’m linked to you, whether I realize it

or not, I’m also linked to everyone you’re linked to. That’s the basis of the Internet, and of a family tree. It turns out that we’re all related. Now that’s a pretty interesting business model. And it sounds like an educational theory worth working with.

– College Services, October, 2003

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OCTOBER 2003

Happy anniversary to us. This is my 144th column in this newsletter. Twelve dozen, a gross of diversity opinions, ideas, information, and suggestions. This column started in 1991, when I had already been practicing diversity for many years, one way or another, under different names, formally and informally, in sickness and health, for richer for poorer.

We’re still living in a diversity-tormented society, a diversity-rich society. It often seems we don’t know what to do with our riches or our torment. We seem to be in an ongoing diversity immersion experience.

Look at how many people are working at diversity, in one form or another: equity, multicultural, pluralism, inclusion, anti-defamation, prejudice/bias reduction, anti-discrimination, tolerance, conflict resolution, diplomacy, peace, social justice, cultural competence, disarmament, healing, you-name-it.

The very fact that such work exists says we haven’t yet achieved our ideals of harmony within our species. It says we keep working to make human relations better. It says we have a remarkably wide range of social troubles which need attention. It suggests we could all get better at these issues of coexisting, in every situation, at every scale of interaction.

So maybe there should be a column like this in every publication. We obviously could use more help, tools, resources, examples, education, support, diversity treatments.

We could reasonably conclude that we haven’t reached mastery of our pan-humanity. There’s so much evidence that we need to start at a younger age and devote more energy to our shared lives at every stage of life.

How much time do you spend on such things? Some workplaces have a day a year designated as Diversity Day, one day out of 250 days of work. That’s less than one-half of one percent of time on the job. And of course other places try to cover it in a half-day or less. Some people’s religious/spiritual observances last a few hours a week, or an hour a day, or a day a week--it doesn’t seem to be enough. Some people go to health clubs or nightclubs more regularly.

If you believe in genetic or cultural influence--that is, in either nature or nurture--then you can imagine that trying to mold or modify behavior might take a little extra effort. A short column in one newsletter is David up against Goliath, a slingshot in a whirlwind.

Of course, diversity is an idea that appears in many contexts. In botany, there is a concept called “center of diversity.” This refers to a specific locality with high levels of genetic or species variance. So why aren’t botanists leading all the diversity programs?

Why do we keep excluding specialists and fields of knowledge from our workforce/workplace diversity work? Why do we act as if our corner of the universe is so different that we have nothing to learn from others? Why do we contradict all the lessons of diversity in so much of what we do?

We reveal how foolish we are when we focus on skin color or speech accents or our foreign-ness. We could do a study of people’s reactions to other people throughout history. We talk about people from different regions as if there were no geology of continental drift, as if there has never been any migration or travel, as if we were not, in multiple ways, strangers and neighbors. We talk about each other as if we’re all aliens, each on our own meteorite, in our own bubble. We have moments when we see through all this. We sing and dance, moved by a common heartbeat. Sometimes we have thoughts and feelings that we call love which cut through any physical and material differences. Anyone who uses the word soul can’t be distracted by our usual pettiness. Where does this insight lead us?

Even though I envisioned this as a Question and Answer column, I haven’t been getting many questions from you lately. Are you bashful? Or maybe everything is working out so well that you have no questions, in which case, I’d like to know your secret. You don’t have to just send me Questions, you know--you could send in some Answers. We all can use all the help we can get.

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NOVEMBER 2003

Who’s different? We all are. But we cling to similarities. We like to say that people are all basically the same. We’re not. We are.

People are different in so many interesting, curious, and significant ways. Often these differences are far more consequential than what we sometimes call diversity. I was very impressed with a book called Biochemical Individuality by Roger J. Williams (published in 1956; it was reissued in 1998) when I first saw it about forty years ago. I’d say the same about neurological individuality, how we’re wired, which seems to be an interplay of environment/developmental learning and DNA.

As soon as we mention individuality, we’re talking about diversity. Yet, so much diversity-talk is about group classification. Which is it?

Yes, there are patterns and types that let us generalize about people; people have some characteristics and attributes in common, from genotype to phenotype, from behavior to thought process.

Do you discuss this in your diversity program, or do you jump in without acknowledging the tension and complexity between individuality and group?

J.M. Coetzee won this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature. It would be a great idea to read or quote him or any previous winner. That would highlight the range of human languages and voices echoing and circulating around the world. And of course it would illustrate the fact that literature (as well as dance, music, theater) reveals some common chords of sympathy, knowledge, and identification.

Most people are multilingual, I think. Almost everyone is musical. Everyone is a mixture of genders, hormones and sexualities. Everyone is a combination of forces. What statements are true and valid and provocative or informative? How about making a list of generalizations? I’d like to do an exercise in which people discuss different generalizations, clichés, and stereotypes. Maybe you’ve done that already.

If you do diversity work, you should start with a test group, usually called a diversity (or multicultural) team, council, committee, or task force. The best way to work with each other is what is called a Circle, with shared responsibility, facilitation, ground rules for your process. This should be an opportunity to develop your skills in group dynamics, discussion of difficult or controversial subjects, listening without interrupting, talking about your feelings, coming up with an organizational strategy. It’s not easy. It takes practice.

See how far you can go with each other, and what happens when you go farther. Is there an outer limit? Where is it coming from? If you can’t get permission and support within a group in which you’re an ongoing member, how will you ever recommend the best ways to work with others?

Don’t settle for all the off-the-shelf formulations being marketed. What else is there? That’s what you’ve got to work out. Don’t reject lessons from other times and places. You may feel you’re unique, but that’s what you need to explore. There are so many resources, ideas, and experiences to draw from. The point of this column all along has been to urge you to make those connections and discoveries, to test various hypotheses, to do some controlled experiments.

If your diversity efforts are open-ended, you’re likely to learn more than if you have decided ahead of time what the outcome should be, what the right answers are. This may be the most difficult challenge you face. Individuals are more different than groups are. It is ironic that diversity efforts so often merge people statistically and superficially, losing sight of their differences, in the name of appreciating differences, and then come up with the conclusion that people are essentially the same.

Roger Williams wrote, speaking scientifically, “There is no such thing as a truly ‘normal’ individual.”

It looks like everything in our life is a manifestation of human diversities. Which ones are you interested in?

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STUCK/UNSTUCK

Q. What advice would you offer to diversity councils that are stuck, i.e., “been at it for a few years now, constantly looked at the numbers (which have not changed much), done the training thing, now what?” Put another way, if you were to list 4-5 “out of the box” things a council could do, what would that list look like?

A. It’s a tribute to you that you’re asking this question. It’s not easy to change your own inertia. Newton’s Law of Motion requires external force. You can’t make an omelet without breaking an egg. And that’s bound to shake things up.

You’ve got two main areas to address—what you can do internally (for yourselves), and what you can do externally (for others). Unfortunately, many councils do not think of themselves when they make a list of the issues they’re working on, but this is critical, especially if they have “been at it for a few years,” and are “stuck.” They might think they’re stuck in meeting the goal of improving the numbers (parity, equity, representation) in the larger organization, but I think they’re stuck in their own internal dynamics and process. (If they get unstuck qualitatively, things will likely get unstuck quantitatively.) First of all, this is common, it is a normal, predictable predicament to be in. For some groups, or the administrative system for which they work, this is when they run out of steam or give up or someone pulls the plug. That’s a big mistake. People might be discouraged, or panic, or feel they’ve failed, but they’ve got to get beyond that. Being stuck is a creative crisis, a developmental crisis, and it helps if everyone can see it that way. They need to trust the process and know about cycles, rhythms, and patterns of group experience. Many groups are familiar with the “forming, storming, norming, performing” chant, but that’s just about getting started. What comes next is crucial but doesn’t get much attention. It’s how to develop mechanisms and practices that will carry them through the long haul, how to grow and mature, how to get through difficult periods. I think it’s significant that groups don’t usually get help with this aspect of their work. This might be because the organization has no experience with projects that last long enough to encounter these stages, or it sees a council as just a committee which doesn’t need any attention. Most committee work is not respected, unless it’s the Executive Committee of the Board, which gets special consideration and perks.

It might be that when people say diversity is a process not an event, a journey not a destination, a marathon not a sprint, and so on, they don’t believe it, they don’t know what they’re in for, they’re not prepared for it. It might be that a diversity council has been left to “sink or swim” without life preservers, lifeguards to look after them, or other life support systems.

Often, a diversity council is in a Catch-22. The organization, top to bottom, is waiting for the council to give expert advice, recommendations, suggestions, and leadership about how to handle diversity/diversity issues, and the council is waiting for leadership, rules, directions, and authority from the organization. This is one way of being stuck.

It can be even more stark than that. Management delegates a diversity council to deal with a perceived problem, to make it go away, and council members want management to be enlightened or able to deal with or change a wide range of conditions and forces related to whatever is being called a diversity problem in the first place. They’re at cross purposes, camouflaged as having the same purpose. This indicates a deeper way of being stuck. The organization doesn’t know what the work of diversity is and what it’s going to take to do the work. It doesn’t know what’s a cause and what’s an effect, what’s symptomatic and what’s endemic. This leaves a council in a multiply difficult situation. They have to educate or persuade the organization, at several levels, to come up with a new way of operating, and at the same time they’re supposed to provide tweaks to incorporate in its present operating system, some of which the organization knows what to do with and some of which it doesn’t.

Some diversity councils are trying to act as an internal “change agent” or “thought leader.” They don’t know how much play or tolerance there is in the system, no matter how common it is to talk about taking initiative, risk, and thinking outside the box. They don’t know if they are an advocacy, advisory, or adversary group. They often don’t have the tools or resources, time or space, to do their work, which is learning, and learning is a state change; it makes a difference. Sometimes we call it being stuck when our ability to learn is being frustrated.

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Are they an ombudsman function? People might come to them as whistle blowers, thinking they can make the system comply, behave, or live up to its ideals and rhetoric. Are they an adjunct of Personnel or Employee Relations or Management Development? Are they a branch of the Training or the Legal or Public Relations Department? Are they dealing with change management, crisis management, or trauma treatment? This is challenging to everyone concerned.

There are systemic issues as well as individual issues as well as group issues. A well-performing council will be working on all of them. It must learn systems theory and change theory, or feeling stuck will become normal and chronic, and when that happens it’s not good. It must learn about mutual support, group dynamics, and co-intelligence. And individual members must learn the connection between taking care of themselves personally and professionally. These things need to be high on the agenda of both old business and new business.

The council group has to keep up its spirits and energy in the face of ambiguity, mixed messages, and confusing signals. And it has to be shrewd about how it’s being used, or not used.

It may be time for a makeover. You’ve been at this for awhile. You may have become part of the furniture. You may be taken for granted. You don’t have to continue this way.

You don’t have to keep the word Diversity in your name. Perhaps you need to shed a skin and go from being a Diversity Council to becoming something else, perhaps an R&D group, a skunkworks, a think tank, a Directorate, an Office of Sustainability, a Steering Committee, a Wisdom Circle, a laboratory for human systems, a project team on designing transformative processes.

“Diversity Council” may be holding you back. It may have outlived its usefulness. It may be too passive.

There are other things to do besides look at the numbers. Have you put in place a mentoring system, a mediation system, a dialogue system, a system to train facilitators? Without these, the “numbers” are going to be like yo-yo dieting, binge-purge. You need to reset the metabolism of the system. You need to do reverse engineering on your organization, retrofit it and gear it up to meet your revised and updated and projected diversity standards and parameters. This can take years, sometimes generations.

You need to expand your frame of reference for doing your work. You need to make alliances with other parties (1) throughout your organization, (2) in other organizations that are not in your field or sector, (3) in the community and society at large, (4) in disciplines that are not represented within your membership.

You need to be sponsors, convenors, and brokers for collective consciousness and collective action, for social responsibility and accountability. You need to be promoting and institutionalizing new policies and practices, new conceptual models and behaviors. You may be expected to get the system to live up to its stated values and principles and teaching it or showing it how. You are doing Quality Assurance, Continuous Improvement, and Environmental Scanning, though you don’t have such titles.

You need to do analysis and diagnosis of the immune system response of your organization, its tendency to maintain homeostasis or the status quo. Some people call this power dynamics, or politics, or resistance to change, co-dependence or collusion. You need a map and compass and orienteering skills. Keep your intention in mind; revisit your mission and vision.

You need to go farther with each other. I am amazed at diversity councils that have been presumably working together for a long time but don’t know each other very well. This is so fundamental and yet so seldom done.

This is a fulltime job. It’s a job and a half. As you now realize, it’s not some kind of tangential activity. It’s a test of your evolution to see how you can reformulate the scope and leverage of your role, how you empower yourselves and become more articulate about your task. Any combination of these things will get you through the impasse you’re experiencing and will be a gift to your organization and to yourselves. It’s worth it.

— Managing Diversity

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‘TIS THE SEASON

December is upon us. Is everyone feeling the Christmas spirit? Not necessarily. “Season’s Greetings” is an attempt to be inclusive, but it’s a phrase that could be used anytime, any season. Sometimes all it says is, “You’re on my list of people to say hello to.” I’m not sure why we save it up for late December. “Happy Holidays” is no better. Some days are not holidays; they’re anniversaries or commemorations. The mood and tone of such days are not all cheerful (merry, happy, joyous) by any means. It depends what you’re focusing on. December 1 is World AIDS Day. December 10 is Human Rights Day. There will certainly be programs and activities associated with them at your school or in nearby places. Is your department joining in? Do you make it as easy for people to participate in them as in other days you’ll observe in December? Some ceremonies take place on different dates each year because they’re based on the lunar cycle. They don’t worry about our political calendars, three-day weekends, and other earth-bound contortions. The Jewish Festival of Lights, Hanukkah (which means dedication), starts on December 19 at sundown this year and lasts 8 days and nights. It’s not equivalent to Christmas in any respect, though sometimes the two are yoked together, as if to give equal time to Christians and Jews. Christmas Day itself is December 25 for some Christians and January 7, 2004, for others around the world. Is this confusing? As you have contact with students from different cultural traditions, international and exchange students, your calendar will fill up. You might begin to feel there are more holidays than workdays. Scheduling gets complicated. That’s only one of the side effects of our global village. Winter Solstice is a reminder of basic astronomy. This year the solstice is Monday, December 22—the beginning of winter in the Northern Hemisphere and summer in the Southern Hemisphere, where days and nights will be their longest and shortest (at least until the summer solstice comes along). We like to find any opportunity to have a party. Parties are great when everybody is having a good time. But people’s ideas of parties and good times are not all the same. When a party gets stuck in a mold it gets moldy. That is what happened, awhile ago, to “holiday parties” timed to coincide with taking Christmas days off. We started realizing that not everyone had the same bubbly associations with Jolly Old Saint Nick.

We saw that our holiday celebrations were not universal. They were not shared by everyone in our family, our community or our workplace. That’s part of our ongoing education and understanding of the world around us. Even the part that is called “political correctness” is based on having developed a different frame of reference than we used to have.

The social contract keeps evolving. It takes new realities and relationships into account. This is an opportunity to rethink old habits—the ones we inherited from other generations, other societies, or the ones that just seem to be social inertia. You can re-make them in a way that suits your circumstances.

The good news is that there are many options. When I looked for “alternative Christmas” on different search engines, I got 2,300-3,800 sites full of ideas and resources. Let your group choose something they’d like to do. The department head doesn’t have to. And it doesn’t have to be what you did last year.

Any day without work, without a structured schedule, it seems, challenges us. We don’t know whether to relax or go crazy. It’s a combination of revelry and leisure, reflection and over-indulgence. Some people can’t wait for vacation. Others make a priority of service to others.

During the month many groups review the year that’s ending. It would be thoughtful to have a year-end appreciation of the work people have been doing, and of the people themselves. That doesn’t require a national holiday. It doesn’t even have to be a party, in which people are just going through the motions.

December leads up to New Year’s Eve, another good excuse for a party…though it’s not the same for everyone. Chinese New Year is January 22, 2004; it will be Year of the Monkey. The festivities get under way 22 days prior to the New Year date and continue for 15 days after; people are not supposed to light a fire or use knives on the day itself, which is why everyone prepares food the weeks before.

Every month has its special days. We look for them, make plans for them. And we’re really put to the test in December. We should find better ways to acknowledge them in our multicultural workplace.

Well, anyway, maybe we could say something more heartfelt than “Season’s Greetings.”

— College Services, December 2003

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DECEMBER 2003 I was interviewed by a Diversity Task Force to conduct diversity training for 600-plus employees. They met with a number of outside consultants. I suggested a different approach. I was the unanimous choice to work with them. This does not always happen. Often, a selection process is so locked-in to a preconceived idea of diversity training that they can’t hear or consider alternatives.

In this case, they pretty much had in mind that they would select someone who would come in and conduct 25 half-day sessions with 25 people in each one, call it diversity training and then go away.

As you might already know, I think that approach is all wrong. Such “training” would be a hit-and-run accident. It doesn’t provide any compound value or multiplier effect to the people involved. It doesn’t leave behind any resources or knowledge for increasing the diversity capabilities, quotient or index of an organization. I could go on.

Here’s the plan I offered:“The first phase of work would include the following:“1. Leadership development with the Leadership Team, including individual coaching and group

sessions. 2. Ongoing consulting with the Diversity Task Force. 3. Train selected people to be Inclusion Specialists. 4. Design, develop and pilot a new employee orientation segment. 5. Review diversity-related policies and practices (discrimination, equity, harassment, work environment, etc.). 6. Provide content for web/online/intranet resources. 7. Introduce local resource people to create a network of partners and allies. 8. Define departmental and inter-departmental diversity training/professional development needs. “This approach will give you an infrastructure and expertise for increasing the capabilities and meeting the equity and inclusion challenges of your organization.

“In the process we will be addressing team effectiveness, customer service, mission/vision fulfillment, community relations, demographic change, employee relations, civic health and harmony, organizational learning, employee assistance program, management development, cultural sensitivity and competence, strategic planning, risk management, hazard mitigation, community preparedness, continuous quality improvement, crisis management, decision support systems, local resource pool, facilitator training, website resources.

“This phase will go for six months. We will review the work progress and identify next steps with you at the end of this period.”

It was certainly different in form and content from anything they’d seen. This plan proposes a systemic multi-dimensional process that increases the group’s ability to recognize, utilize and benefit from diversity. Instead of starting (and ending) with training everybody, the first phase develops a diagnostic plan, process, and support system for training or coaching people as needed, in ways that are appropriate for their situation, and in which the organization is prepared to actively participate and follow up.

The task force needs a perspective which understands that people have different roles and responsibilities and that everyone’s work takes place within a larger, more complex system with many interactive forces and resources. We want to make sure we put in place the mentality and mechanisms that can be responsive to diversity issues. Otherwise, when a diversity issue emerges, there’s no way of handling it effectively.

The plan offers a way to end their dependence on a cycle of outside consultants/trainers. It gives them the tools for self-sustaining workforce development. Basically, the way most groups approach diversity is upside-down and backwards. It’s rare, in my experience, to find people who will allow themselves to be turned around. As a result of this group’s willingness to engage in a transformative conversation, this is going to be a more satisfying and successful experience for everyone concerned. Or anyway, I hope so.

2004

“ ”

America isn’t easy. America is advanced citizenship. You’ve gotta want it bad, ‘cause it’s gonna put up a fight.

— Aaron Sorkin, “The American President” (1995)

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JANUARY 2004 This is the year the years come together. It is 36 years after Martin Luther King was killed and the median age of the United States is 36. So half the population was alive during King’s lifetime and half was not. We’ve got some memories and experiences and stories to share across our various dividing lines. Commemorations of King could occur on his birthday, January 15, the official holiday, January 19, the anniversary of his death, April 4, and Black History Month in February (which began in 1926 as Negro History Week). 2004 is the 50th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, and the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act that was passed after the March on Washington and after JFK was killed. “As the United States entered World War II in 1941, the South was a fully segregated society. Every school, restaurant, hotel, train car, waiting room, elevator, public bathroom, college, hospital, cemetery, swimming pool, drinking fountain, prison, and church was either for whites or blacks but never for both. In courtrooms blacks swore on one Bible and whites on another.” (--from africana.com) In Brown v. Board, the U.S. Supreme Court said separate public schools for white students and black students aren’t equal, are “inherently” unequal. The Civil Rights Act desegregated public accommodations and public education, made discrimination illegal in voting rights and employment and federally assisted programs, established the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, etc. Segregation means apart from the flock or herd. “Greg” is the root, as in gregarious, congregation, aggregate. How are you planning to utilize these anniversaries to address the stories behind them?

There are plenty of people around who were living in 1954—over 70 million, almost 25% of the US population, are over 50 years old. They might remember when school children were officially, legally segregated. Some 130 million people, about 45% of the US, are over 40. Ask one of them how “public” was subdivided according to something called race, skin color, bloodlines, ancestry, before there were DNA tests.

“Everyone alive today is either an African or a descendant of Africans,” says Steve Olson in Mapping Human History (Houghton Mifflin/Mariner, 2003). Jonathan Marks says, “All people are genetic subsets of Africans,” in What It Means to be 98% Chimpanzee (University of California Press, 2003).

The December 2003 issue of Scientific American cover story says, “Does Race Exist?--If races are defined as genetically discrete groups, no.”

We used to talk about de facto and de jure segregation. Now, it is perhaps accurate to say, we are unofficially segregated. Are we de-segregating the herd or flock, the population at large? Are we de-segregating our institutions, organizations and processes and systems, our pipelines, filters and screening mechanisms? Or is segregation built into them so that we don’t have to consciously do anything to perpetuate it—it just happens. Which means we have to exercise active consciousness to de-segregate.

Dan Kennedy’s new book, Little People, is about his daughter’s dwarfism and also about difference. In an interview he said, “…it’s never been a better time and place to be different, whether you’re talking about being an African-American in a majority- white culture, being gay or lesbian, being a wheelchair user, being blind, or being deaf. It’s never easy to be part of a minority culture, but it’s better today than it’s ever been. Yet, at the same time, we’re living in a moment when it is increasingly easy to eliminate difference….And behind the façade of acceptance and celebration of diversity are some pretty tough attitudes about diversity if it comes to one’s own family.” (Boston Phoenix, November 28, 2003) The customary expression is “happy new year.” It’s another chance to live our lives and work together.

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LIVING OUR HISTORY LESSONS

Homer Adolph Plessy was riding in the wrong railroad car in Louisiana in 1892, on purpose. This was meant to be a test case, so, according to plan, he was arrested for refusing to leave a white railroad car under the Separate Car Act. He was seven-eighths white and one-eighth black; he was supposed to be sitting in a car designated for colored people. He was found guilty in district court, then by the Louisiana Supreme Court, and then again by the U.S. Supreme Court in Plessy v. Ferguson.

That was the prevailing situation which Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas challenged and changed in 1954, when the U.S. Supreme Court held that separate educational facilities are “inherently unequal” and desegregation began.

Segregation means apart from the flock or herd: “greg” is the root, as in gregarious, congregation, aggregate. It was not based on skin color alone, since some people could pass undetected, as Homer Plessy did. There was the “one drop” rule, which said if any of a person’s bloodline derived from an ancestor who was not white, that person was considered to be a colored person. This is not ancient history. States enforced such laws into the 1980s. Some of these laws might still be on the books.

Anyone older than 79 was born before Plessy died. There are plenty of people still around who were living in 1954 when children who were white and those who were not went to different, separate, schools in the United States. More than 70 million people, almost 25% of the present population of the U.S., are over 50 years old. Segregation is part of their life story and experience. One of the elementary school buildings in Topeka is a National Historic Monument symbolizing the landmark Brown decision. In a sense, anyone over 50 is a living historic monument to those times.

Some 130 million people, about 45% of the US, are over 40. Ask one of them about the segregation of water fountains, restaurants, theaters, hotels, beaches. It was the everyday American reality in their lifetime. This year is the 40th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act that made discrimination illegal in public facilities, voting rights and employment and federally assisted programs. As the commemorations of Brown take place, one of the troubling facts is that children who are white and those who are not are having different, separate, school experience in the United States this 50th year later. “Whites are the most racially isolated group in America’s public schools,” says a 2003 report from the Harvard Civil Rights Study. (The average white student goes to a school where 80% of students are white. Nearly 40% of black students attended schools that were 80-100% black.)

We seem to have apartheid in our system. In the 1660s, Maryland and Virginia passed “anti-amalgamation” laws against intermarriage, overturned in 1967. In November 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court said “the right to marry means little if it does not include the right to marry the person of one’s choice,” including someone of the same sex. We keep pulling ourselves apart, pushing each other away, getting close to the point of exhausting our rhetoric about American ideals and values.

There’s a paradox in all this. It turns out we all have mixed blood. We are all part of the flock of humanity down through the generations. Around the world, we see eruptions between every combination and variety of people. Biologically, genetically, we’re interconnected. We are inherently, indivisibly multicultural. So the great human puzzlement, our common catastrophe, is that we find so many ways to clash with ourselves while navigating on a relatively small watery planet. Here’s Steve Olson in Mapping Human History (Houghton Mifflin/Mariner, 2003): “…all people are closely related through innumerable lines of descent that defeat any attempt to divide humans into races.” “People on different continents do not have distinct evolutionary histories.” “…no group of humans has ever become very distinct genetically from any other.” “In terms of our DNA, all humans overlap.” “All people are genetic subsets of Africans,” said Jonathan Marks in What It Means to be 98% Chimpanzee (University of California Press, 2003). We get mixed up in the politics and sociology of rules about relations among people when we could cut to the heart of the matter, the relationships in our cells and bloodstream and family tree. We have workshops and training sessions that beat around the issue when we might benefit from a more direct approach. Maybe we have been too impersonal, fumbling with statistics and classifications when this is really quite personal. So-called diversity, equity, pluralism or inclusion efforts have been trying to desegregate professions, institutions, work environments, and other aspects of our lives. Sometimes, though, despite all that, we still seem to be riding on separate cars, alongside the unsettled ghost of our not-so-distant cousin Homer Plessy.

— College Services, February 2004

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FEBRUARY 2004

Everyone is extraordinary. Being human is extraordinary. Everyone is a hybrid of humanity. We could devote a year of programs to these observations, couldn’t we? The world has diversity we haven’t begun to tap. Our imagination exceeds our experience if we let it loose. Our thoughts cross all borders if we don’t curtail them. Why would we impose artificial and arbitrary limits on ourselves? Too many organizations are set up to let things--people, information, issues, processes--fall between the cracks. That’s where I come in. And it’s where you should be. What’s keeping your group or organization from achieving your ideal state, your optimal condition? What are your measures of progress or success?

How do you move other people, groups of people and social systems, toward their fullest engagement with diversity? Do you bait the hook with food and music? You need to use a variety of tools and tactics, many of them, get them spinning at the same time, one after another. You need to use different analytic methods and strategies. It’s not going to happen if you’re timid or if you hold back or use excuses or keep delaying. Do you have a five-year plan? Make one now and it will take you almost to 2010, to the next census. When will your children be your age? You know that I think diversity activists are futurists. What’s holding you back? There’s so much beyond our boundaries, such urgency in the world, and yet too many groups are doing little, are barely moving. They seem to be working in a vacuum, disconnected from each other and from their deeper selves. Are you helping people recognize that their lives at work are related to their lives outside of work? I don’t see enough systemic thinking or systemic management, not to mention systemic leadership. What are you waiting for? Some groups count all Hispanics as people of color, though the U.S. Census Bureau says Hispanic may be black or white (leaving out shades of brown, red, yellow). Other groups call all people who speak Spanish (including Spaniards from Spain) or those who have Spanish-sounding names (like people from the Philippines), Latinos. Some groups count anyone with dark skin from any of the countries in the Caribbean or Africa as African-American.

Geography is one of the many pathways of diversity. If you talk about diversity you’ve got to get involved in geography, but I’m not sure how many diversity programs use maps and globes as much as they should. Statistics is one of the levers of diversity, but many people aren’t comfortable with statistics. To do diversity work, you need to be something of a historian. There were people against slavery in the English colonies before 1776, but still 4 of the first 5 presidents of the United States were slaveowners. Black people were lynched in the United States in my lifetime. How did you get involved in diversity? People ask me that question, and I’ll ask you. I read the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, I heard religious teachings, I saw injustice. Do you use statistics, geography, history, the future? What else? There’s a song by Charlie King, “our life is more than our work and our work is more than our job.” Do you feel a commitment, a necessity, to do this work, or is it “just a job?” The answer to that question may reveal your sense of priority or determination.

“In a sense, foreignness is a metaphor for the respect every individual owes every other individual. All of us are dual, at the least. We are complex and multi-layered, filled with secret memories; why do we so often ignore or pretend to forget this fact? Even within the same language, communication is a miracle.” --Nancy Huston, “The Mask and the Pen,” one of the pieces in Lives in Translation: Bilingual Writers on Identity and Creativity, edited by Isabelle de Courtivron, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

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MARCH 2004

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, I thought there was an urgent opportunity to connect diversity with Homeland Security and national security. So I thought there would be more activity in diversity education and efforts to increase diversity consciousness. The US Federal Budget for next year includes a 10% increase in funds for the Dept. of Homeland Security. Logically, I would expect that your budget for addressing diversity issues would also go up for 2004-2005 and beyond. Does it? Whether you are in education, business, government, healthcare, or nonprofit organizations, this applies to you. We are all mixed into the same society, we all live in the same world of social forces. The global has become local--psychologically, politically, emotionally, educationally, financially. And diversity is our common denominator.

This is not about the US President’s budget request. This is my professional judgment about diversity programs. I have been asking groups to connect the dots for two and a half years. I am holding a give-away sale on my handbook, How Diversity Works. I am offering to give presentations, workshops, and training sessions. I’m available to be a visiting consultant or teacher. I’m not sure what else I can do. Can you suggest something?

In this year of national elections, voting is our public expression of diversity. We’re going to be told that the country is divided between Red states and Blue states, those states that go Republican or those that go Democrat, a new Civil War with new colors. But states are not single unified votes that go one way or another--they are made up of lots of different people, with more than Blue or Red distinctions and perspectives. One slogan says that the largest party consists of the people who don’t vote.

This year is also the 50th anniversary of the court ruling that segregated schools are not equal, while most students today have a segregated school experience. It is the 40th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, but more than 13% of the country live below the official poverty line, including more than 11 million children.

Diversity is security in a number of ways, if you consider that part of what we mean by diversity is increasing people’s ability to live with differences in a shared universe, which includes increasing their familiarity with those differences and their intelligence about what to do about them.

If one aspect of diversity is our harmony, interaction, or coexistence with others, we improve our security through improving that coexistence. Then it’s a matter of figuring out how to make that improvement. We might think that practice will improve the quality of interaction. Where, when, and how do we get the opportunity to practice? That’s what diversity programs should be offering.

Perhaps conflicts are inevitable. So we should learn ways of dealing with conflict, and of determining it in the first place, since some things that are called conflict actually could be handled very differently.

And so on. Just examining the issues is a worthwhile use of your time and energy, since it will give you a larger repertoire of knowledge, skills, and options. How much attention do you pay to these questions? How high is this in your list of priorities? Are you taking advantage of the homeland security dimensions of these issues? Do your budget and program reflect this?

There are plenty of reasons to renew and expand your work this year. I hope you have the interest, the will, the imagination, to keep at it.

120

TAKING SERVICE TO ANOTHER LEVEL

It’s hard to catch up with the future. Many students are already focusing on what to do after they graduate. The college spin-cycle is so fast that if you’re not careful you’re several generations behind. So those hoping to provide services to students have to be operating on an accelerated schedule. What lens do you look through? Maybe a kaleidoscope would help. There are various theories about how people learn. I don’t know which theories are prevalent in your school, or in your department, but whether it’s obvious or not, there is at least one that you’re following.

Maybe you believe in positive reinforcement. Or you believe people learn from reading a manual, or you believe in learning-by-doing, or you believe that telling people what to do will make them do it. You have a bunch of theories, principles, beliefs, that you follow, even if you don’t have a name for them or you don’t know where they came from. They are your management system, your philosophy of knowledge and performance.

A model of learning is also a statement about change. It’s a value system. It’s a manifesto. And it’s expressed in how you do your job. Whether you call yourself an educator or not, it all comes out in your work.

The phrase “auxiliary services” keeps teasing me; it’s a camouflage for other things. Here’s what I think you’re doing. You are practicing social ecology and applied behavioral science. You’re providing environments, experiences, and opportunities for people to grow. Mostly it is off the books, it’s not for credit, but it’s very real nonetheless.

In discussions of customer service, the focus is usually on customer transactions. But in a college situation your transactions keep recirculating—you’re dealing with the same people over and over. That’s not just a few repeat customers; we’re talking about building and maintaining relationships and sharing community life. We’re in another dimension.

Service in a college is cumulative and cyclical. It compounds and multiplies. What goes around comes around. A student, teacher, college employee, or community resident might cross paths with your work dozens or hundreds of times. Each year.

How do you measure your success on the job? What formula do you use? I suspect that some of it is tangible and some is intangible. It should take into account the special nature of college services. These services not only serve the mission of the college, but also the quality of college life.

The main thing that happens for students who go to college is that they get exposed to people and ideas they didn’t know before, and through those encounters they discover and develop aspects of themselves. I don’t think there’s a particular order to follow but there are studies which describe how important these things are. (You can check with the work of Theodore Newcomb, Alexander Astin, George Vaillant.)

Let’s say your concept of doing your job includes adding to a student’s growth and development. This is a good idea. After all, going to college is about maximizing your potential, expanding your horizons, exposing people to things (and people) that are strange, unfamiliar, different.

There is a formula for calculating connections among people, whether it’s co-workers or people you serve. L=n (n-1)/2. It might surprise you. For example, if 6 people each have an interaction with each other, that’s 15 connections. If 65 people each make contact with each other, that’s 2080 connections. And if you help 500 people all make contact with each other, that will be 124,759 connections!

Multiplying connections leads to social linkages, networks, and relationships. As you increase social interaction, you are increasing the likelihood of all sorts of possibilities. So you are “stirring the pot,” provoking unexpected combinations. This is probably not spelled out in your job description, though I think it should be. There’s a bumper sticker that says, “The most radical thing you can do is to introduce people to one another.” Imagine where that could lead!

If there are barriers or filters that screen people out or get in their way they won’t reach their maximum capability. The challenge is to figure out what filters you might be using, what barriers are built into the work you do. Some of them are accidental or hidden, some are deliberate or left over from earlier times. I’m sure you’re not aware of them all. You should spend some time finding them.

People need assistance to move through social and mental space, to bridge the gaps between them, to improve the quality of their encounters with people who are different from them, to stop feeling like a stranger with other people. Then they’re going beyond their old limits. They’re exploring new worlds. And isn’t that what it’s all about?

— College Services, April 2004

121

APRIL 2004

It’s spring, and diversity is breaking out all over in the USA. We have systematic, institutionalized segregation, discrimination, and antagonism, by skin color, ethnicity, religion, wealth, age, language, gender, sexual orientation, and some other things. Just look at the news of the day. There’s the subject of same-sex marriage. There’s healthcare disparities. There’s immigration and refugees from all parts of the globe. There’s sexual assault in the Air Force academy, University of Colorado football team, and among U.S. troops in Iraq, and according to one report over 10,000 instances of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests since 1950. There’s the passion over the movie “The Passion of the Christ.” There’s dropout and graduation rates and achievement gaps in schools. There’s outsourcing jobs to other countries.

Mad cow disease, chicken flu, and farmed salmon are turning more people into vegans. The baby boomers are reaching retirement age but can’t afford to retire. Most people don’t vote. There’s great cynicism about democracy.

The future of America is minorities and immigrants and women who outlive their husbands, multiracial babies and white senior citizens.

So what is your diversity program dealing with these days?Diversity programs are at the intersection of people’s lives outside of work and at work. Can’t hide

from current events, from the concerns and controversies that people carry around with them. Do you find out what things people care about or worry about and address them, or do you present a list of off-the-shelf issues?

How’s it going? I hope it’s going full steam ahead, because, as you can see, the society needs you. You are the educators of last resort, organizational shamans. When everything falls through the cracks and the safety net, it’s up to you. Otherwise, things fester. Work is infected with distraction and corruption.

You are the socialization function of the system, the keepers of the energy for humanistic values. You are the fail-safe mechanism before lawsuits and upheaval. It’s a tricky role. And the world is turning up the volume.

The range of issues that are the agenda for diversity are called the culture wars. So many things in America are called a war. We seem to be quick to turn dialogue or discussion or debate or dispute into war. We call social issues a war--war on poverty, war on cancer, war on illiteracy, war on drugs, war on obesity--because that’s apparently the only way politicians can think about mobilizing resources. We are a country literally at war all the time--“perpetual war” is the new phrase.

War can easily become the metaphor for every area that relates to diversity. That makes us warriors. Yikes. That’s probably not what you expected when you took on the diversity job and job title. But it begins to explain the predicament you find yourself in.

Maybe we should consider alternatives. Some people might want to be conscientious objectors. Some might be un-warriors. Others might try to de-war the culture wars, to redefine them, or even to make peace. Are you keeping track: have we won any of the wars yet? Are you ready to change the terms of engagement?

We’ve certainly got an opportunity to reframe diversity issues. As I say so often, our approach to diversity needs to evolve. Here’s where diversity is going--social and ethical accounting, social enterprise, AA1000, SA8000, Gross National Happiness, Redefining Progress, triple bottom line, sustainability, social justice & responsibility. Welcome to diversity in 3D. Interested? You can’t stand still, you know--the planet’s spinning.

122

MAY 2004

Diversity is the antithesis of uniformity. You can’t be in favor of difference and be opposed to differences. But institutions haven’t thought this through. They settle for simplistic slogans and then get caught by the contradictions. In the context of diversity, are there any taboos? Is there any subject you cannot address? Are there things you’re “not supposed” to talk about? If so, what kind of pressure does that put on you—and what do you do about it? There is a special section of very good articles called “Civil Rights Today” in the May/June issue of AARP The Magazine, also on the website aarpmagazine.org. You should also look at voicesofcivilrights.org--you can “add your voice.”

A consultant wrote to me, “I am interested in working with strong believers in an almightly God.” Is she a religious fanatic, a fundamentalist? Is there another God besides an almighty one? How will she determine who are “strong believers?”

What about people who are not goddists of any kind? Does diversity include them? Is diversity a universal value or perspective or have we Americanized diversity beyond anyone else’s

acceptance? “Crossing the BLVD” is a book (Norton, 2003), a CD, a website (crossingtheblvd.org), a

photography exhibit, a series of radio programs, a live reading performance by the project creators, Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan. It’s better than any instructional video I’ve seen—and far less expensive. It’s more evocative and provocative. (The BLVD is Queens Boulevard, a 12-lane highway in a section of New York City.)

This could be a springboard for other efforts. It’s a model for what you could do in your community, organization, institution. The key to doing your own version is to make it kaleidoscopic, multi-dimensional. Use a combination of media formats.

With continued U.S. military action in Iraq and Afghanistan, there will be continued related diversity issues and associated controversy. Any discussion will include politics, religion, and other serious subjects. Diversity programs will have to increase their emotional intelligence in dealing with these matters.

I’m not talking about just a difference of opinion, which is based on varying degrees of ignorance. There are other differences—experience, knowledge, belief, worldview, temperament. There is a difference between someone speaking “off the top of the head” and someone who has studied and thought about something for many years. But in the name of fake democracy we make the two equivalent.

Diversity is a branch of education. What do we know about how people learn? Even with all the talk about having a learning organization there hasn’t been enough discussion about the conditions for learning and having people around who help make it happen.

There’s a debate currently going on in the academic world about “intellectual diversity.” Any exposure to ideas involves diversity. Thinking is an activity that leads to unknown connections. If we stop thinking, we will stop diversity. I saw a restaurant review in The New York Times that commented on the “post-global” food. Someone wrote that the new international dynamics have created “Eurabia.” We’ve already seen “Amexica” and “Mexamerica.” “AHANA” groups became “ALANA” and are becoming outdated (referring to African-Hispanic/Latino-Asian-Native American). There’s new vocabulary along with new demographics. We have to keep learning how to talk as well as how to listen. It’s just-spring, as ee cummings wrote, and the goat-footed balloonMan whistles far and wee, with or without capital letters and punctuation.

123

MAKING A DIFFERENCE: FIRST, BEGIN

How should you go about responding to and supporting cultural diversity? Such a simple question, but it stops some groups from doing anything. I’ve seen groups go into a two-day retreat just to define the term diversity, and then they didn’t do anything else for several years. Don’t worry about making a strategy or policy. That’s unnecessary. If you are part of a parent company, it has a diversity policy; just piggy-back on it. If you are part of an educational institution, it has at least a dozen diversity initiatives, programs, task forces, and policies. Don’t let that confuse you; just join one of them. By the way, diversity committees might not have the word diversity in their name. They could have words like Campus Climate, Pluralism, Inclusion, Equity, Dialogue. Join anyway. Make a few operational decisions. Don’t make them a big deal. If you’re just beginning to do something with diversity, you’re at least a few decades behind the curve, so there’s no point in calling attention to it. You don’t need elaborate goals. Keep them simple. Everyone on a diversity committee has their own ideas about what to do about diversity. That’s fine, but don’t let it get in the way of doing something. Don’t bicker, quibble, squabble, or babble. It’s not useful. Most universities and many colleges are worldwide societies in which people speak 50-100 languages. Are you serving them all in terms they understand and appreciate? No excuses. You have to address diversity/multicultural issues. Don’t worry about the best way to do it. There is no best way. Diversity is flexible and negotiable. It’s open-ended and endless. Don’t let that frustrate you.

It’s a branch of biology, sociology, political philosophy, psychology, and every other subject. It’s connected to human relations, customer service, and good management. There’s no escaping it. Taking a big step is just as easy as taking a small step, so why not do it? Sure, “cultural diversity” is a kind of shorthand phrase. It refers to the presence and interaction of different people, people from different backgrounds and experiences, different kinds of people, people who look and sound different from what you’re used to, and from each other. There are hundreds of resources, guides, and tools. They’re equally good. If another group is using them, they’ll work for you too. Don’t think you’re unique. (If you’re human, you’ve got a lot in common with others.) Don’t delay any longer. If you don’t feel ready to swim, poke your toe in the water. Get someone to splash you. Take a peek at the demographics. Basically, the average age is getting older, there are more women than men, every other group is growing faster than white people with European ancestors, and the world is gaining on us. The USA is less than 5% of global population. Look at your own prejudices, based on the limitations of your experience and knowledge. That’s important. In your next meeting, have people write down two things that would improve the diversity dimension of the services you offer. Compare them, then choose a total of two and commit to do them. That should take 15-20 minutes. Then you can move on to the next item. To repeat: Doing something is not a big deal. But not doing anything is. You should ask for advice and suggestions from other people, including your children, strangers, vendors, and even the people you’re in business to serve. Meanwhile, you should always be doing at least two more things you haven’t done before. Eventually, it will add up, it will make a difference. And send copies of what you decide to do to people on all the other diversity groups you can find. Maybe they’ll write back. That’s called dialogue. — College Services, June 2004

124

JUNE 2004

Being at war seems like the worst case for diversity, the failure of everything we work on and work for. This must be a terrible time for people devoted to the cause of diversity. War undercuts the principles and ideals of diversity programs. How can we make any progress on a small scale when we are losing ground on such a large scale? It seems so inconsistent, such hypocrisy. It’s raging cognitive dissonance. How can we go to work in the morning, how can we sleep at night, with a mandate to promote diversity and at the same time be part of a society that is physically, literally, overwhelmingly, at war?

The messages of diversity are to prevent and avoid war, though we don’t usually put it that way. We’re typically more modest, or more roundabout. Talk of war seems extreme. And yet we can’t ignore the economic, military, political reality that constitutes our practical situation, our daily life. This would be true for us as citizens of the world in any case. It is compounded for citizens of the United States. And to be Americans whose occupation is diversity must be a nightmare.

How do we function in such conditions? Do we incorporate war into our work, do we address the state of war directly? When something is such a prominent feature of the environment, it’s impossible to sidestep it. We would be tripping over ourselves to try. Your job and job title put you into the midst of wars declared and undeclared, abstract wars and wars that are figures of speech.

To be living in a nation at war raises issues at every turn. The U.S. is at war with people in many cultures and countries around the world. The U.S. is at war—killing and being killed—in many languages, across religions, ethnic groups, nationalities, genders, ideologies, worldviews. This is diversity gone mad.

You might have thought diversity was some specialty within human resources, it was about employee relations or customer relations. Well, welcome to the world. The world has come crashing in on our policies and strategies and plans. The world won’t stay outside of the workplace. And of course we live and work in the world, so we were bound to meet one way or another. Being at war is a hell of a way to meet.

What’s your contingency plan, your war plan? There’s a scheduled national state of war, an election, this year, in which the usual metaphor has disintegrated. Politics has become a war about war and it looks like it’s about war in Vietnam in 1964 as well as Iraq and Afghanistan in 2004. The debate is about war on democracy as well as war on terror. And that puts diversity-mongers right in the middle of things. Just when we thought diversity had become safe, kaboom. We have war without end. War will be a presence in diversity work for the foreseeable, and perhaps the unforeseeable, future. Are you working to create a safe space, a zone without war? Are you helping people with survival and recovery skills? Are you working for mediation between opponents?

Diversity is accused of going too far afield from its intended purpose, the redress of ingrained historical social imbalances, oppressions and exclusions. Well, look at us now. Diversity has taken on yet another dimension. This goes beyond EEO codes. This is not part of the rhetoric of affirmative action. Still, it goes to the core of diversity issues. War makes diversity more relevant than ever, essential, fundamental--as if we needed war to make that plain, as if we weren’t taking it seriously before. So now perhaps sadder but wiser we know how high the stakes are in this work, this quasi-profession, this hybrid activity. This is not abstract sociology and philosophy. Now our organizational and institutional matrix is permeated by a nation at war, and we find ourselves in the midst of it. There’s no use trying to keep war out. It’s indivisible from our work and our lives. And it’s not going to end any time soon, or without our efforts.

125

JULY 2004

Freud is famous for saying, “Biology is destiny.” But there are many routes to follow or find your destiny. We could say geography is destiny. Some people doing diversity work might think that demographics is destiny.

I’ve thought up some new programs along these lines: “Where in the world are we?” “Finding your way in the world.” “Generation gaps and connections.” “The challenge of the century: keep the world in mind.” I have created a few hundred new slides. I’ve got some props. I’m getting my act together and taking it on the road. I’m available to give presentations and workshops, professional development sessions and performances.

I’ve always thought that diversity needs to be a powerful, thought-provoking message. We need to reach our audiences in new ways. I don’t think we can just recycle the same Diversity Day time after time.

My approach is to put it all in a larger context. It’s a big-picture overview. I think we miss the forest for the trees too often. There are large forces acting on us, mega, macro, and meta forces. We live and work under their influence. And sometimes we ignore them and seem to pick on smaller issues. And then we get frustrated when nothing much changes over the years. I’d like to see some major changes and I think that can only occur if we take a larger view. We could call this world-consciousness. It’s a different orientation, relying on new forms of peripheral vision.

I don’t think we’re keeping up with the times, organizationally and institutionally. The world is passing us by. Too many groups are working on issues from the 1950s and 1960s and maybe the 1970s, but the calendar has moved on from then. Have you achieved your goals? Is your organization functioning in a 21st century timeframe? Do you feel you are a world-class operation?

Almost any organization needs to be world-class these days, I’d say. So the parameters, metrics, standards, for your workplace should stand up to world-class criteria. There aren’t many activities or enterprises that function entirely within one time-zone, or within one language or culture. With 24 time-zones, people speaking 6000 languages, six or seven generations living at the same time—you do the math. There are a lot of permutations and possibilities. In other words, you need a worldview that truly covers the world. Yes, the whole wide world. And diversity is a feature of that mentality. That’s where diversity comes from. That’s its derivation. Diversity is a derivative of a worldwide worldview. There’s a problem, though. Many people have a worldview that is either outdated or distorted. Many people don’t know some basic information about the world. For example, many people I speak to remember the last time they heard what the size of the population is was many years ago. Many people guess wildly about how many countries there are in the world. What’s your favorite example of this? Does it matter? We are all, on at least several levels, citizens of the world. I think we need a basic world literacy, a basic world IQ. And, as I said, the organizational systems we work in are world systems—they need us to be functioning in world terms. They expect or require us to be functionally world-literate in order for them to function. That’s one of the mostly-unarticulated purposes of diversity programs. Diversity work is usually described in terms of human relations; that’s why so many diversity offices are located in a human resource department and conducted as interpersonal sensitivity improvement programs. But there’s another frame of reference, and that’s the larger world we live in even when we don’t realize it, the world around us even when we don’t recognize it. I think it’s worth trying to make the case for another way of working on diversity. I’m accepting invitations to work with you along these lines. Anyone interested?

126

HOW IN THE WORLD?

When I give talks, I often talk about “organizational magic.” I try to demystify what seems like magic, to give away the secret. Most magicians get mad if you reveal the secrets to their illusions, even though Ricky Jay writes about magic tricks, and Penn and Teller work without a curtain. Most organizations don’t treat people well, from cradle to grave. The magic I talk about has to do with treating people differently. Somewhere between cradle and grave is where you come in with college services, and so sometimes you talk about customer service. There is a magical secret to this, and it’s probably a good time to give that secret away.

It is consciousness of the world. There it is, out in the open. Oh, I’m sorry, did you miss it, did it go by too fast? Here’s the thing: we know we should get a regular health check-up, but we don’t get a world check-

up, and we’re probably overdue. This is true for students and teachers as well. I think everyone needs an orientation to the world every ten years.

How is your world-consciousness? I think if you take care of that, diversity issues will take care of themselves, but because we’ve neglected our world consciousness, we have settled for doing diversity projects.

I always carry a map of the world with me, and when I can, a globe. That’s a bit of magic by itself.Culturally conscious service is the basic requirement for any service area because cultural

dimensions are part of every area of the customer’s life. In less than 15 years, fewer than half the babies born in the U.S. will have two white parents. It’s

already true in many part of the U.S., but not yet in the country overall. That will be a watershed. We are in a countdown to such demographic change.

It should be increasingly obvious when there is a majority of white people at any level in any institution in the U.S. For a long time, there was a country which was infamous for having “white minority rule,” and that was South Africa. Ten years ago, that changed in South Africa. I’m afraid that from now on the United States is going to be in the situation of deciding to have white minority rule in its operating functions. Isn’t that ironic?

Demographics hits colleges in different ways. Some colleges are changing the names of their “minority” programs and calling them “multicultural” because who a “minority” is has changed—or is about to. And every college and university is at the crossroads of the world; they’re all international. It’s not just U.S or North American demographics that matter.

Celebrations of “difference” are inadequate until everyone is treated fairly and with equal humanity.Students are both older and younger at the same time. They are from both nearer and farther away.

There is a swirl of customer demographics and psychographics to factor in to your business plan. The point and purpose of diversity programming is to get institutional behavior to recognize that it must change or it risks being undemocratic, unjust, and unfair, not to mention ignorant. The best way to accomplish this is to develop world-consciousness. Keep the world in mind.

“Customer” sounds neutral, generic, universal, but it’s not. “Customer” covers a wide, a world-wide, range and variety. I walked by one of my local bookstores and saw its sign: “Books in over 700 languages and dialects.” Well, some people don’t know there are 700 languages and dialects in the whole wide world (there are over 5000). Some people don’t know that school children in the U.S. alone, a country with less than 5% of the world’s population, speak more than 400 languages, according to the latest survey I’ve seen. Some people don’t know how many countries there are in the world, or how many people there are. Without such knowledge, how can we expect to “appreciate” or “celebrate” diversity—or to serve customers? So, for my last trick, I’ll make your customers disappear—if you don’t start to know them better, to know more about them. That’s not magic; it’s just a fact of life. Welcome to the world.

— College Services, August 2004

127

AUGUST 2004

What’s the point of managing diversity, or of paying attention to it at all? It is because we live in a world of human beings and the most basic realities in that world are human similarity and diversity. That is the context for diversity programs, efforts, and concerns. We don’t usually talk about managing similarity, though I think we should. Looking at similarity would give us a baseline for diversity, a means of comparison, a point of departure. (Would you read a publication called “Managing Similarity?”) Too many diversity efforts start in the middle of nowhere. They seem arbitrary to me, or capricious. They should be grounded in a frame of reference that everyone could understand. Instead, the jumping-off point is often some human relations slogans which are culturally coded, politically expedient, in-group clichés. Diversity is universal and it is fractal, which means it shows up everywhere as a local phenomenon. It occurs not only throughout our species but in all life. Does your program make the connections? The current diversity movement emerged from a blending of cultural politics, demographic projections, and social history. Diversity was the term meant to break the pattern of an entrenched establishment of male domination in a workforce that was increasingly, and in some cases overwhelmingly, female, and of white domination in a workforce and outside world that was increasingly, and in some cases overwhelmingly, people of color. And it expanded from there. Diversity meant let the sun shine in, reflect the larger world, make room for people who have been left out and for the next generation. It was an attempt to break the demographic gridlock in organizations, the death-grip of those who were grandfathered and great-grandfathered in to their positions by virtue of their accidental lineage and preferential selection. Diversity was a way to reshuffle the deck. And “managing diversity” would be the art and science of doing that effectively--and, presumably, nonviolently. It relied on faith in education and public relations campaigns to reframe the pecking order, on training that sometimes lasted 3-5 days but eventually settled for 45 minutes.

How is our view of the world formed? Our life experiences and our orientation to the world are the sources of our understanding of diversity. We started by saying we should treat people respectfully under the law, then employers developed their own in-house paraphrases of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

After more than 15 years of diversity training (since 1987’s “Workforce 2000” report), too many people and organizations are unaware of and unprepared for the world we live in now--not to mention how the world is changing. I think a lot of people don’t see the larger picture. This is a failure of management’s nerve and vision, a failure of diversity programs.

Many people haven’t digested the fact that the changes in the world since they formed their world view are huge and are happening much faster than they realize. What does it take to make it real to people? It’s like the Copernican revolution. We need to shift our conceptual model. Shift from thinking of the world as far away to being able to relate to it up close; from thinking of the USA as the center of the world to seeing it as one among many nation-states, with less than 5% of world population; from domination by white people who are less than 15% of world population; from being disconnected from the world to being connected to it; from being a citizen of one subgroup to being a citizen of the whole. The future is coming, the future is coming, as Paul Revere might have said. Diversity programs need to lead, follow, or get out of the way.

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SEPTEMBER 2004

If you have ever done a diversity training session, you need to think about what you should be doing now as a next step or reminder or update or check-in. If you have not yet done one, you should be thinking about how to do one that makes sense. Is your training based on 1964, 2004, or sometime in the future? I think it should be geared to at least 2010 or 2015, depending on your business cycle and people cycles.

Here are some things to consider—1. Let’s start by suggesting that diversity is not trainable. It might be educable, as in the song

“You’ve got to be carefully taught” from “South Pacific.” It’s certainly not like other things that are trained. Training is ongoing for athletes, it’s a way of life, not one session. What results do you want? The fact that “diversity training” is rarely evaluated or followed up tells me that it’s not considered to be training.

2. “The operating system of American society is a racist operating system,” says Kimberle Williams Crenshaw, law professor at Columbia and UCLA. What does it take to change an operating system? See the recent books Silent Covenants by Derrick Bell, Quitting America by Randall Robinson.

3. Are you trying to train people or organizational systems? Most training is focused on people, through exhortation, threats, informing them of policies/laws, or doing operant conditioning, simulation, role plays, etc. But a lot of people can be trained and still nothing changes--because the operating system calls the shots and it hasn’t been changed.

4. Are you looking at training an individual or a group? Most training focuses on one person, not a group for maximizing collective intelligence and multiplier effects. Even teamwork training does not usually make much of a contribution to diversity.

5. Think of training a tree or a puppy. How long does it take? Is this similar to the kind of training you want to do for diversity? The difference with people is that you think people will catch on and self-develop and sustain the training, but they seldom do--and they usually need repetition, reinforcement, support, checks and balances. Even then the system doesn’t necessarily change, so they become misfits in the system (square peg in round hole).

6. Do you distinguish between delivery-based training and change-based training? The first looks at inputs, the second looks at outcomes.

7. Diversity is usually handled as human relations skills, interpersonal qualities like listening/conversation, personal qualities like awareness. It’s treated as so many tweaks, like trying to reconcile Ptolemy’s system of celestial motion, vs. giving another perspective altogether. (It was 1400 years before Copernicus suggested one.)

8. A systems approach would look at what influences/affects things at work, such as the organizational environment, political forces, management, culture—all of which are usually outside the scope of training.

9. Training doesn’t usually address people’s core orientation/worldview/belief systems--and diversity is a worldview orientation. When diversity training has tried to address this, it has been accused of indoctrination, “political correctness,” and of violating people’s rights.

10. In the 1980s, some groups had diversity trainings that lasted 3-5 days. Now, groups want to get it over with in 45 minutes. Basic Training in military services goes on for 6-13 weeks—and it is intensive immersion training, so it’s really twice that many hours. How long will it take you to instill, inculcate or institute a Basic meaningful/sustainable training for diversity?

Now that you’ve considered these elements, you can figure out what to do. Or you can ask for help.

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BETTER SOONER THAN LATER

Many times, people tend to be vague and indirect about cultural diversity or multicultural questions. Or they think it’s an old issue. Haven’t we done that? Didn’t we get a memo on diversity or civility or respect last year? Or you’ve got other fish to fry, too much on your plate, business goals to reach, and you can’t be bothered with diversity chatter. Diversity chatter can turn into a crisis. It can become a monster pretty quickly.

The word “diversity” might not get your attention. It gets lost in the background noise. It doesn’t sound urgent. Would it be clearer if I said you might be offending or insulting or ignoring certain people without meaning to? Would I get your attention if I talk about hate speech, bigotry, discrimination, class action lawsuits, prejudice, hostile environment, formal grievance and complaints? These are words that you could hear when “diversity” doesn’t do the trick. By then, it’s usually after the fact, it’s too late.

One way to look at diversity is how to protect yourself from liability. Another way is how to increase the richness of life experiences. You can start from either place. One approach looks at diversity as a threat, emphasizing the risks. The other approach looks at diversity as an opportunity, emphasizing the benefits.

You’re giving signals about how important diversity is in everything you do and say—or don’t do and say. So the place to start is with yourself. Are there people who will give you some honest confidential feedback?

With your staff, it’s better to devote a half-hour a month to addressing different diversity issues and concerns than to have a half-day session once a year. It’s good to put it on the agenda of your meetings routinely, even if it’s just for an announcement or update or comment. In two minutes, you could mention something that’s happening in another department or in the community and encourage people to take part. Or someone might have some suggestions or ideas from something they read or heard about. Something is better than nothing. (You might even pass around one of my columns!)

The social psychologist Elliot Aronson wrote Nobody Left to Hate: Teaching Compassion After Columbine, after two students killed their classmates and teacher at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado in 1999. He wrote, “The good news is that we don’t need to wait for the research. The relevant research has already been done.” Maybe you need to be told more about such lessons because they’re not being circulated widely enough. There may come a point when you could use some expert assistance and advice. Maybe that’s now, maybe later. Don’t hesitate to tap the many resources around campus, or through NACAS, or from some other connection you have. You might have some inside information right under your nose already. Campus climate surveys usually include staff employees. (They should also include contractors, concessions, franchises, and vendors and suppliers.) They provide critical perspectives about the social atmosphere, the cultural environment, that affects you. They should be used as a needs assessment and diversity audit for your area of activity. Talk to your business partners. Don’t wait. You should focus on being prepared for new and unfamiliar situations. This is part of the basic requirement for 21st century operations. Groups that are not working on the multicultural dimensions of their business are out of step, behind the times.

You want to have a welcoming environment for anyone who might become an employee, co-worker, or customer, people with disabilities, people who know other languages better than English, vegans, people of different religions or no religion, people who have a circle of friends that you don’t know. Think about how your services can be equally available to people who are not your typical, average customer.

Put up some signs or posters that reflect your commitment to being multicultural. Play some new kinds of music. Help get the message out. Talk to your counterparts in other institutions. You should make it clear that you’re interested in these things. You see, once you start asking such questions they lead to all sorts of interesting places. And in the process you become more interesting as well.

— College Services, October 2004

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OCTOBER 2004

This is now the start of the 14th year of this column. I’ve written a fresh new column in every issue every month since 1991. It’s kept me thinking and trying to write clearly. I am disappointed that I hear from so few readers. A few times someone has asked permission to reprint a column in an in-house publication. Someone once took issue with something I wrote (!) And once or twice I’ve met someone who said he reads the newsletter regularly but couldn’t recall seeing me in it. What I thought would be a dialogue or exchange has become more of a soliloquy. I pose questions to myself and then I ruminate, mull them over, and share what I think. A reader might figure out that I’m available to come speak to a group, consult with a diversity team, conduct a training workshop. Or a reader might get the idea that they could have me come for a question-and-answer session in person, or give a briefing to their leadership group, or take people on a retreat. And these things have happened. I have taken managers to a Habitat for Humanity building site in New Jersey for the day. I have been speaker for Martin Luther King Day in Vermont, Diversity Day in Ohio, Multicultural Day in Alaska, a Diversity Task Force in Georgia, an ASTD chapter in Maine, a SHRM chapter in Pennsylvania, and other groups in Texas, California, Arizona, Florida, Wisconsin, and regional, national, international conferences. Sometimes I don’t know if the column was the source of an invitation, but it has been marking my way all along, like breadcrumbs in the forest. Our society seems to be doing an approach/avoidance dance with diversity. It’s stylized, like a bullfight tango. It lurches back and forth. It doesn’t see things through. It gets distracted easily. There doesn’t feel like there’s been much continuity over the years. We don’t build on previous work. It seems we keep picking up at some interrupted point in the middle and don’t get very far and then try to find our way back to someplace not quite where we left off. That may be why there hasn’t been a clear, logical progression in my comments. I’ve tried to carry a thought over from one month to the next, but that didn’t last very long. So I start again, like a musician practicing scales, 156 times and counting. Where will this thought take me this time? I’ll never run out of things to say, because diversity is inexhaustible. And that might be the problem for some people.

Maybe they get diversity fatigue. Maybe they weren’t expecting an endurance race. There’s not much organizational or institutional stamina for something with no end in sight. It’s like Wendell Berry’s comments about people who plant certain trees--they’ve got to be in it for the long haul. It’s what happens when you undertake any project which won’t be completed in your lifetime. There’s no conclusion, no finishing line. It doesn’t give an immediate reward, a conventional return on the investment. For many people this means they’ve got to reorient their perspective to a different worldview and belief system. The cognitive dissonance is deafening. No wonder people get tired.

That doesn’t mean there’s less commitment and intensity. It means you have to keep on keeping on. It means the issues are bigger than both of us. We’d better pool our efforts because it’s going to take as much energy, passion, and creative intelligence as we can muster. All together. Time after time. With people, any people, any two or six-and-a-half-billion people, the variations seem to be endless. The combinations and complications are endless. The possibilities are endless.

So what you get from me is something to reflect on, to discuss with others, some suggestions that might interest you. And then you get it again, but different. And so on. I hope you didn’t come here looking for a simple answer to a simple question…. Well, by now you know me better than that.

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NOVEMBER 2004

I just got back to Boston from Alaska. My first visit--from one corner of the continent to another, sea to shining sea. I was keynote speaker for the Multicultural Reception sponsored by two universities in Anchorage, which coincided with the first Mayor’s Diversity Week. Alaska used to have three time zones; now there’s just one for the whole state. I learned a word each in Yup’ik and Tlingit and Athabascan--which I’ve forgotten.

Before I went, several people in Anchorage told me that the students in their schools speak 93 languages, and they paused to let me be impressed. But of course, that’s not the whole story. Besides the public school students, there are university students, tourists, retired people and working people. I figure there are tens of thousands of people in Anchorage who speak probably 110 or more languages on any given day. That’s what I told them. They were impressed to hear me say I saw them as a crossroads of the world. My picture was in the paper. I was interviewed on television.

The point is that you might hear the statement about students speaking 93 languages and leave it at that. You might think that number is accurate, when it’s really not; it’s fluid, it’s an approximation, it’s an understatement, it’s out of date as soon as it’s circulated.

Or you might get the impression that there are 93 students who speak other languages, unless you look at the 5700 students in bilingual education and start adding up the people those students must be speaking to at home and in their neighborhoods.

Or you might think, Alaska, isn’t that the frozen north, isn’t that the back of beyond--what are people doing speaking so many languages there, in the Arctic?

You recall that I’m the one who keeps talking about diversities. Plural. I keep talking about multiplier effects and multicultural lives. Alaska is a great place to test those ideas.

People were open and friendly. I didn’t have a chance to be a tourist. I got a glimpse of musk-ox culture and a taste of tofu culture, and a peek at moose culture, and I got invited to go fishing for silver salmon.

I read that there are 246 federally recognized tribal governments in Alaska, but I heard other numbers from various people. Any such number is not absolute, especially for a visitor like me. It’s an order of magnitude, it’s an indication of multitude. It means there are a lot of differences, distinctions, differentiations, that we make that you probably don’t know much about. It’s a way to measure the ignorance of outsiders. Mucho ignorance.

What’s significant is that they have a culture of many cultures, which is different from a culture of not-many cultures (although I believe everyone is more multicultural than they realize). It’s different in many ways--food, clothing, music, lifestyles, crafts, worldviews, ways of communicating, ways of thinking. The number of languages is really a magic number that opens a lot of hidden doors.

This is the challenge for everyone everywhere. How do you go beyond the numbers you use about yourselves and experience your social ecosystem? What are the linkages, the connections and interconnections?

Of course I said that it was great that Mayor Mark Begich was sponsoring Mayor’s Diversity Week. There were more than 50 related activities going on, with various co-sponsors and tie-ins. But, I said, who’s going to pick up the slack the other 51 weeks of the year? How are you going to build on those activities, and all the interest and energy they release? It’s important to set things in motion, and then it’s important to keep them moving.

Nobody disagreed. I was even invited back.

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STARTING BACKWARDS

Sometimes when I give a talk, I say, “You might not know, like, believe, or agree with what I say.” I have learned over the years that all those possibilities were true at one time or another.

I could say something I thought was basically uncontroversial and people would disagree with me or they’d get upset! I had to bridge the gap somehow. What were the choices? That I was wrong, I was lying, I was trying to antagonize them. I have found that sometimes people will feel antagonistic toward a fact and toward the person who presents it. This has been called “killing the messenger.”

Some information is distressing or threatening to some people. Sometimes they get defensive. When I give facts and figures, as well as observations and opinions, I can say, “don’t take this personally,” but many people take it personally anyway. I guess any comments are personal when you can see how they affect you. That’s why we sometimes say there’s no such thing as objectivity. It’s all subjective.

In a way this is good. It means people are engaged. It also changes the rhythm. I have to deal with people’s reactions as they are dealing with what I say, so things become more interactive.

When I write, I can usually finish my sentence without being interrupted. Or at least, I can pretend I can, since I don’t know how someone will react to what they are reading. Maybe they stop, turn the page, or tear the page out.

I think there’s a common agreement among many people at work: I won’t say anything real to you and you don’t say anything real to me, and we’ll get through the day just fine. But then something happens, or someone does say something, and the agreement is broken. People become real, the world enters the workplace, and all bets are off.

That must be why people talk about the weather so much. It seems neutral and safe. There might be taboos about talking about politics, religion, sex, or money. They don’t seem neutral or safe.

What is the safety zone where you work? Is it safe for people to say what’s on their minds, or how they feel? Is it safe for people to say something about who they are or what they believe?

There’s a saying that people can agree to disagree. That usually means they just won’t bring up certain subjects. There’s another saying that people should become comfortable with being uncomfortable, but that sounds a bit tricky. It requires some explanation and practice.

So how do people around you navigate the hazards of social interaction? The odd thing is, there’s a risk in whatever they do or don’t do. That’s what makes social situations such an adventure.

Some colleges have explicit Safe Zones around issues of sexual identity. Some talk about civility in speech and behavior. Or they talk about campus climate. The rules of conduct should be honest and democratic. But most of us--not just people from other countries and cultures--need some orientation and a bunch of trial-and-error to master the rules, to internalize them, to make them ours. We’re not used to being honest and democratic. (Isn’t that interesting?)

I’d say this applies to every area of the institution. You can take this personally and professionally. This means in your department, in your office and area, you are making and enforcing social policy. Is it consistent with the social policy of the school, of the community, and of the society?

Do you give yourself and others the time to understand, translate, and learn the rules? You probably have to do this repeatedly. It’s not something that can be just stated once, or posted on a bulletin board. It has to be reinforced. Here’s how it works: in order to appreciate or value differences, people have to be able to experience differences. To do that, they have to reveal their differences. And they have to feel safe enough to do that.

We usually get it backwards—many places think they can just start with declaring that they celebrate diversity. (But I understand that you might not agree with, or like, or believe what I’m saying….)

— College Services, December 2004

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DECEMBER 2004

The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development starts in January 2005. Many places around the world have already launched programs that will tie into it. I don’t want you to be the last to know about or participate in this.

I got 26,000 website addresses when I put “Education for Sustainable Development” in a search engine in late October. I expect that to increase every month for the next ten years. Cultural diversity is a critical dimension of sustainable development. Diversity is a key element of education.

So I’d like to bring ESD to your attention. I think this is where diversity programs need to go now. This is a framework and a context that makes sense. It has support and interest throughout the world. There will be so many best practices to look at, you can take your pick.

Diversity work needs such a perspective and vision. The diversity work that is discussed in this newsletter is closely connected to social change, education, and ethics. ESD is where it all comes together. Our work should be conducted in these terms. Now we have the opportunity to latch onto and benefit from a large-scale effort by kindred spirits doing a wide range of things in the name of diversity. Who could ask for anything more?

I recommend that all diversity programs, offices, advocates, initiatives, leaders, champions, task forces, councils, teams, look at ESD. I will be devoting much of my work to helping them make the connection, helping them adapt the concept to their particular situation. I’ll start with conducting trainings and workshops and briefings, with handouts of fact sheets and resources. This is the bottom line of diversity work; it is the double and triple bottom line.

***“Our students are 33% ethnic,” someone said to me. She meant that 67% of the students are (non-

Hispanic) white, and one-third are non-white “minorities,” but she didn’t know quite how to say it. It has become common to talk this way, to speak about “the diversity employee.” It is a twisted use of English; it’s more than just plain clumsy. It is a form of ethnic slur. It is colonialist slang. It is what oppressors do to their victims. It is meant to distinguish between “us” and “others,” those in control and the marginalized. This is the way much diversity discourse is conducted. It is an example of how diversity is divisive. I think this way of talking about people alienates everyone. It certainly alienates me.

This is the language of apartheid. Using words this way refers to individual people as belonging to a different realm than the people who are talking. It refers to people as abstractions. It depersonalizes. It aggregates people who are differentiated. It makes groups of people deviations from the norm, deviants—even when they outnumber the labelers. It is worse than awkward and ungrammatical. It’s offensive. I don’t want to be called “the diversity eater” if I order a different meal from other diners. It doesn’t even make sense. But it’s done all the time. It is a kind of shorthand, in-group talk. But it has gotten out into public and it sounds terrible. “We hired a diversity candidate,” in this peculiar slang, often means we hired a person who was not white or male, or it might mean we hired a person whose sexual orientation was LGBT rather than straight. Or, we hired a person who was not Christian--or, someone who was not a U.S. citizen. Or it could mean all of those things. It could also mean we hired someone who wasn’t like anyone we already have, so the diversity candidate might possibly be a straight white Christian male in a wheelchair. “I just met a diverse person” sounds ridiculous. When you stop to think about it.

2005 – PRESENT

“ ”I am a citizen of the world.

— Diogenes Laertius. (When asked which country he came from)

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FEBRUARY 2005

Hello again. I didn’t write a column for January and in retrospect that seems appropriate. I always write an original column on time; in order to meet the deadline I have to write a month ahead of the issue date. That means I would have written my traditional New Year column in early December so I would have missed discussing the tsunami in the Indian Ocean that occurred on December 26. Maybe the absence of my January column was a way of having a moment of silence. The tsunami was and is an awful opportunity to consider diversities. The ocean claimed over 160,000 people’s lives in twenty minutes, in eleven countries, of forty nationalities in Thailand alone, of many religions, made five million people homeless and without livelihood, has spurred at least four billion dollars in aid pledges so far. The catastrophes stunned the world. Rich people on vacation, poor fishermen at work. Countries with civil wars. Communities that disappeared. Families devastated. I keep pausing for breath. These were places we didn’t think about very much. The Maldives. Banda Aceh. Now we think about them. And we see the international linkages. The greatest natural disaster in Sweden’s history. How many people were on Thai beaches for Boxing Day and Christmas. A thousand Buddhist monks praying. Once again, the world has provided our diversity lesson, enough for a year’s worth of reflection, study, and action. And once again it is transcultural, pan-cultural. Our perception of diversity has been redrawn by the earth itself, by tectonic plates, by great eruptions. It puts things in perspective. The tsunami is not a metaphor. It is a real event. It has changed the landscape of coastlines across much of the world. And it is only one example of how we live among the forces of nature. The scale of the tsunami’s human, social toll is hard to understand. Maybe impossible. Yes, probably impossible. Now it is February and the shock waves continue. There is still much to ponder and contemplate about that tsunami. There will be ripple effects of many kinds—refugees, adoption, reconstruction, tourism, trauma. Some people might be moved to learn more about hitherto unknown people and places. Once again, people who have job descriptions or titles that include concepts like diversity need to be educators, counselors, guides, referral agents. The tsunami is making demands on all of us, personally and professionally, officially and unofficially. You could and should spend more time looking at the many stories of the December 26 tsunami. Of course, something else might happen that gets our attention even before this issue is published. Something as epic as the tsunami could fade away with the next news. Diversity is a custodian of history and memory, from slavery to tsunami. It takes many forms, has many roles. You need to respond to what’s on people’s minds, and sometimes you need to help put things on people’s minds. I don’t see how anyone can do diversity-related work without taking the tsunami into account. Along with so many other things. It’s a big job, dealing with big issues. So you need to keep your strength up. You need resources and assistance. I hope you seek them out, find them, use them. We all need to gasp and grieve and recover, whether or not we were on the beaches of the Indian Ocean. And when we don’t know what to say, there is silence.

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THE WORLD IN YOUR BACKYARD

Diversity is relative. Some people think there’s too little around them, but for others, it seems like a lot. This means that people experience the same situation differently. You can’t assume that everyone is on the same page. They’re often not. This can lead to some misunderstandings unless you realize what’s going on.

The thing about diversity is that there’s always more, so you can always increase the amount of contact people have with differences, and you can help people learn and understand more about differences. You should do this regularly. It should be part of your job description—if it isn’t already there, write it in. That’s how important it is. It doesn’t matter what you call your perspective on diversity. You can call it multicultural, intercultural, and/or cross-cultural—or something else. The point is that diversity is far more widespread than most people realize. Everyone is multicultural if you look closely enough. Some people have simplified their names and their histories and call themselves members of one culture, one heritage, but that’s not really accurate. That leaves out a lot of the story. Put up a map of the world. This is the strongest signal you can give to your co-workers, visitors, and customers that you’re interested in the big picture, that you’re interested in them.

Make this statement to your staff, and to other departments in the college:“We want to be inclusive and welcoming in everything we do. Sometimes, despite our good

intentions and efforts, we fall short. We rely on you to let us know and help us improve.”This makes you accountable, and gives other people permission to hold you to it.People who have been excluded aren’t used to being included. It may take some special effort on

everyone’s part. This means that training, orientation, and communications need to be more extensive.There is always an opportunity of helping young people grow up, helping people of any age find

their way. There is always an aspect of giving people a home, or a home-base if they’re not actually in their hometown. There is always an aspect of providing the background for them to learn effectively and successfully.

One course at Miami University (Oxford, Ohio) is called “Strength Through Cultural Diversity,” which is geared to help people “function effectively in an increasingly diverse global society.” That’s the right idea, but this shouldn’t be just a course for students. It should also be part of any college services unit.

Since diversity is relative, you have to look at how it works in your environment. You can’t just import an off-the-shelf model. Diversity varies considerably from one place to another. It’s local and global at the same time. Let me give you an example.

I was invited to speak at a Midwestern suburban college in January. One of the goals in the college’s strategic plan is “Develop programs and services that demonstrate attention to and reflection of the diverse community the college serves.” That’s a very reasonable and responsible goal. As preparation for visiting, I looked at the demographics of the college’s employees—the chart said, full-time employees, 90% white; part-time employees, 94% white. So you might say there’s not much diversity in that community.

Then I contacted the local public schools to ask what languages are spoken by their students—just to check what kind of community diversity we’re talking about. Are you ready to see the list I was sent? Can you guess what it said?

Afrikaans, Albanian, Amharic, Arabic, Bengali, Bosnian, Cantonese, Cebuano, Chaocho/Teochiu, Chippewa/Ojibawa/Ottawa, Croatian, Czech, Farsi, French, Fukien/Hokkien, Gaelic, German, Greek, Gujarati, Haitian-Creole, Hindi,

Hmong, Ibo/Igbo, Ilonggo, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Konkani, Korean, Kpelle, Lao, Latvian, Lingala, Luyia, Mandarin, Norwegian, Pampangan, Pilipino, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish,

Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, Yoruba

Just your typical suburban Midwestern community at the beginning of 2005…. What do you know about the kinds of diversities in your school and community? You need to look beyond the official print-outs. You, and everyone you have contact with, live in a larger world, right in your own backyard.

— College Services, February 2005

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“My religion is simple. My religion is kindness.”

— His Holiness the Dalai Lama

“My country is the world; my countrymen are mankind.”

— William Lloyd Garrison(This famous motto of Garrison’s appears in several different forms. On the first number of the Liberator in 1831, the my was changed to our. In the Prospectus of December 15, 1837, it read: Our country is the world; our countrymen are all mankind.)

“Socrates said he was not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world.”— Plutarch: On Banishment

“My country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”—Thomas Paine: Rights of Man, Chapter V

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“Diversity Questions & Answers” columns were published in Managing Diversity, Jamestown Area Labor Management Committee, Inc., Jamestown, New York — Leo Patterson, Editor, and Ralph Letersky, Editor

“Letter from USA” columns were published in Training & Management, New Delhi, India — Jaipal Anand, Editor

College Services is the journal of the National Association of College Auxiliary Services, Charlottesville, Virginia —David Rood, Editor

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Dr. Harris Sussman is an educator, speaker, and consultant. He teaches, designs and conducts workshops, retreats, training, professional development, leadership and other programs and presentations. He has given programs throughout the USA and in Canada, Europe, Russia, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Samoa.

For more information visit http://www.sussman.orgTelephone — 1-800-827-1783