My work with Sanford’s One-by-One (race-relations improvement) group took me to an unexpected place.  One of the newer members of the group is Matt Martin, a teacher at East Lee County Middle School.  He asked if I would be interested in coming and talking to his Language Arts classes; eight graders. 

    Now, I have been a college professor for over twenty years.  I have no experience dealing with non-college students, let alone eight graders.  But because Matt told me he had them reading Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” and Tim Tyson’s “Blood Done Sign My Name,” I was intrigued.  I also thought this would be a good way for me to learn more about the social contexts and dynamics of Sanford, NC.  So I said yes.

    March 19^th, 2010, during our Spring Break, I drove to Lee County and found my way to East Lee County Middle School.  After finding the school sitting in a prairie all by itself, I drove into the parking lot.  Looking for visitors’ parking spaces I steered through that lot until I stopped my car to look at this greeting.

    I was blown away.  Understand, I have been the keynote speaker in some auspicious places that include the U.S. Pentagon, but this was the best, warmest greeting of my career.  So now it was on.

   College students tell me that I am intimidating.  Well I am who I am as a professor and lecturer.  Although I changed the language of my presentation to suit eight graders, there is no way for me to change my style of presentation.  So although they were somewhat intimidated, they did not back down from me.

    No doubt those eight graders were able to deal with me because of the kind of teacher Matt Martin is to them.  As I looked around his classroom at the books and posters, and as I watched him interact with his students, to myself I said “…Matt is a real teacher.” And I told that to the students. I said you guys are having a singular experience because of this teacher; appreciate him now, because you will surely appreciate him later.

   So it was a good time.  Not just fun; those very young people opened up to me.  They told me of their own anxieties about interacting with people who do not look like them.  When I mentioned that at NCSU we have Muslim female students who wear the Hajib, an African American female student blurted out, “…oh they scare me.”  So we had a real conversation about their experiences with the neo-diversity of our time. 

    I saw real evidence of that while we talked, and in the written comments those eight-graders wrote about our time together and that Matt sent to me in a letter. One student wrote:

    “I loved the way you introduced the concept of confusion in the world, as far as racism goes.”

    Another wrote:

    “It helps to know that to not show prejudice to people we meet that we should…relax and not assume and set the conversation ‘on fire.’”

  Yes, neo-diversity is happening even in what appears to be a sleepy county middle school.  I learned that even in middle school, some of the young people are encountering and struggling to manage intolerance.  One of the eight-graders wrote:

    “Thank you for your powerful lecture. I liked the way you talked about the way people judge one another without knowing them.”

    So, not intolerance aimed at themselves, but intolerance from within their own group that is aimed outward at other groups. I had confirmed what I have been teaching my college students; that in the age of neo-diversity, there are no innocent.

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