We have to begin healing our own communities.  That is the message I have been delivering to a neo-diverse set of audiences.  Yes, I speak with student groups, but I also speak to older adults in specialty classes and in churches. 

    I am asked to speak by these varied groups because they too are experiencing the press of neo-diversity.  That neo-diversity press creates anxiety that comes from knowing you have to interact with people from different American-groups everyday of the week.  What are we supposed to do, how are we supposed to interact is always the question.  Sometimes though the question is how can we help “…them”?

    Truth is, though, that before anyone can help another group, you have to heal your own community.  Church groups want to help, to reach out to various groups in need.  Yet many members of those groups have not faced up to the neo-diversity problems in their own community.  How can you reach out to others, when there are members of your community who suffer because of your silence?

   So has your community addressed the use of stereotyped language by your group members?  Has your community set a new standard that forbids tolerance of intolerance in language?  Or are members of your community still getting away with whispering or speaking out loud about “…them” and “…those people.”  Whenever people in a group think “…we can talk this way because it’s just us,” an awful mistake is being made. With neo-diversity, you see, it is not always easy or possible to know who is a member of a “…minority” group within your group.  And so in the presence of a vulnerable person, letting your group members speak in stereotypes or use anti-group slurs lets group animosity live on in your community.

    Last week was a very busy week for me.  In addition to my regular teaching, I was involved in a number of diversity events on campus.  One of those events was called, “These Hands Don’t Hurt.” I was asked to participate as a “…prominent man on campus” who stood against violence against women. You see violence against women is not a woman’s problem.  Violence against women is most often perpetrated by men.  How can men let that go on?   Violence against women is a problem of my male community; we have to begin healing our own community.

    A neo-diverse group of men (students, staff, faculty and administrators) stood out front of the D.H. Hill Library on the brickyard.  We put our gloved hands in colorful mixtures and then made our handprint on a big sheet.   Then we gathered for a group picture.

    We men stood to say that we will speak up against violence against women.  We stood in public to say that we will also support and help anyone we know is being abused. 

    We stood to begin the work of healing our own community.

    “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.  That they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

    These are our words.  These are the first words used to describe what it means to be an American citizen. 

    We hold these truths to be self-evident; so obvious that there is no need of discussion; there is nothing to be explained. Yet, for a long time in America, the whole country said that these words did not apply to someone with my skin color.

    No right to my own life; so I could be sold and used as a slave.

   It took the Civil War to start to have those words apply to someone who looks like me. But even after that, Americans resisted. Racial segregation became the law of the land, so no right to liberty to choose where to live or go to school; no right to vote until 1965.  And no right to choose who to marry, that is no right to the pursuit of happiness until 1967.

    Racial segregation, Jim Crow, which I grew up in… did something very important.  It made it clear who was ‘we’ and who was a ‘they.’

    With those immoral laws gone, we now live in a time when interacting with someone who does not look like us is unavoidable.  Now we struggle with neo-diversity anxiety. That anxiety is causing some of us to want to keep other American citizens in the category of “they” and “them.” 

    But the problem is we have made a diversity promise to all Americans. Diversity, it turns out, is the core value of the American identity.

    “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal.  That they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

    That statement makes diversity the American value.  And so we are all required to accept and work for that American value. 

        About that principle, General Colin Powell said,

    “This beautiful statement was not the reality of 1776, but it set forth the dream that we would strive to make a reality…Governments belong to the people and exist to secure the rights endowed to every citizen.”

     Whenever we have fought diversity in the past, we have held ourselves back. In fact, that seems always to be the point in fighting against diversity.  Those who fight against diversity seem to want America to stay the same; to stagnate.  When we do that we fight against our own best interests.

    But, when we have come to accepting diversity, we have moved forward… we have grown as a nation.  Why?  Because we have begun to use all the talents available to us… and that makes us stronger.

    I served in the U.S. Navy… 1972-1976.    At one point in our American history, that would have been impossible.  Then when it became possible for a black man to serve, at first all that black man could be was a cook. America fought through that discrimination against it citizens.  My older brother was a submariner.  I served in air anti-submarine squadrons as a personnel clerk.  My younger brother graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy and became a Navy pilot.

  I served with men of honor.  Some of those men were gay.  On board ship, aircraft carriers, did we know that… yes, we did.  Yet all that mattered was that everyone did their job.  That’s all…

   About finally removing don’t ask, don’t tell, the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen, said,

     “I still believe that it was first and foremost a matter of integrity, that it was fundamentally against everything we stand for as an institution to force people to lie about who they are just to wear a uniform. We are better than that.”

   Yet some of us still want to tell American citizens, some of whom are willing to risk their lives to serve and protect our American freedoms… some of us want to tell gays and lesbians they have no right to marry… That these American citizens, that “they” have the right to life and liberty but not to the pursuit of happiness…

   Some of us want to put that restriction on other American citizens because of anxiety; because we want to hold on to something to point to in order to say who is a ‘we’ and who is a ‘they.’

    “We can do this and they can’t.”

    But by our first citizen principle, diversity is at the heart of the American identity; diversity is the first American value.  It has been so from the beginning, when we declared…

    We hold these truths to be self-evident…

[Above are the remarks I made at a forum on the State of North Carolina’s legislatively proposed amendment to the state’s constitution to ban gay-marriage; October 13, 2011.  I along with Maxine Eichner, a UNC-Chapel Hill law professor, participated in the forum to inform students of what is at stake, and at risk, if this constitutional amendment is passed by vote of the citizens of NC. For a report on the forum, go to:

http://www.technicianonline.com/news/forum-held-to-educate-students-on-glbt-marriage-ban-1.2651605]

    Interpersonal relationships and race; many times I have mentioned that course. 

    You may have wondered why I focus on the interpersonal when it comes to (what seem to be) racial matters.  Anytime I have discussed neo-diversity, the reason has been implied.  But to be direct the reason for the interpersonal focus is that interacting with each other remains our great racial, ethnic, gender, religious, challenge. 

       Fast and dramatic social changes have put us in the same situation as Dr. Seuss’ Sneetches.

 

    We rid ourselves of the immoral racial laws of segregation. With that change and other changes in the social world, we were no longer able to say “…well they can’t come in here”; they can’t come to our frankfurter parties.  With that some yelled out like Dr. Seuss’s Starbelly Sneetches did:

 “Good grief!”groaned the ones who had stars at the first…

“We’re still the best Sneetches and they are the worst.

But, now, how in the world will we know,”they all frowned,

“If which kind is what, or the other way round?”

      Caught off guard by the changes, we began our struggle with neo-diversity.  And we sent our children out into that neo-diversity unprepared and without hope of getting aid. 

      2006 is when I created and first taught the course, Interpersonal Relationships and race.  Why did I create the course?  What was my motivation? In the Spring 2004, in my introduction to social psychology course, I was teaching the section on race as an interpersonal phenomenon. I teach this topic late in the semester because I want students to have gotten to know me. Otherwise having me, a 6’3”, 280 lb., dark-skinned black man as the professor might dampen the discussion of race relations.  To a certain degree that strategy had worked in the past, but this time the class of 200, mostly white, students froze up.  The tension in the room was palpable. Discussion was strained.

    After class, I returned to my office.  I sat and waited for a student from that class to show up for a previously arranged appointment. When this young white female came into my office, after she took her seat, and we exchanged our quick hellos I said,

     “Sorry but before we get to your questions, I have a question.”

     She looked at me as if to say, “I knew he was going to do this.”

     By that point in the semester, my students know me well. That means they know that I notice things and will ask about what I think is going on.

     “Did you feel that in the class today?”

    Still looking at me in that way, she hesitated.

     “Yes…” she finally said.

     “What was that,” I asked.

     She looked into my eyes then dropped her gaze to the floor.  I waited.  Again, she looked up, dropped her gaze briefly then looked back up at me.

    “Everybody says we have to be more accepting,” she said.  “But nobody tells us what that means.”

    Profound… this was a profound statement about the state of race-relations and diversity on our campus and elsewhere.  During orientation, colleges and universities tell students that the campus is one that has and accepts all kinds of people.  Students are told that they too have to accept all kinds of people.  But, as this young woman said, nobody tells students what that means.         

     It turns out that even as America becomes more and more diverse, nobody tells citizens what that means. And so Americans are struggling with how to manage their day to day interpersonal lives because the old racial, gender, ethnic rules do not apply.  Without laws and social understandings prohibiting who can go where, we all find ourselves interacting with people from other American racial, ethnic, gender and religion groups. We struggle then with the question, “who are among the ‘we’ and who among the ‘they’?”

     We are all Sneetches wondering:

 “Whether this one was that one… or that one was this one

Or which one was what one… or what one was who.”

    

    With that anxiety we interact with people who do not look like or sometimes even sound like us.  Our racial struggles are today intergroup struggles of interacting with many different American groups. Those interactions are formal and informal; at work, running errands, going to a sports bar, sitting in a classroom.  And whatever the case, those interaction struggles are all interpersonal.

    By invitation, I give talks to student groups around the campus of North Carolina State University.  A couple of weeks ago, I gave a presentation to students in our university-honors village. 

    It was one of those laid-back, get to know the professor kind of gatherings.  My job was to let the students in on my history as a research-scientist.  To do that I had to walk them through my life from my Navy experience on because it was in the Navy that my personal and scholarly interest in race-relations and diversity really came to life.

    I brought the gathered students up to date including my creation and teaching of my “Interpersonal Relationships and Race” course. Letting them in on my why I created the course, I said something along the lines that

     “…we have eliminated the immoral laws of racial segregation. What’s left now, our greatest challenge, is learning to interact with each other as equals. You see, we live in a time when contact with people who do not look like or even sound like us is unavoidable.  So we struggle with the neo-diversity question, who are the ‘we’ and who are among the ‘they’.  But as I tell my students, everybody on our campus is a ‘we;’ everyone in your classes is Wolfpack. Our challenge today is to accept and live in that reality.”

    After interacting with the students for about an hour and a half, I headed home.  That evening I got this email from one of the students who attended.  A freshman, she wrote:

     “I just wanted to thank you for sharing your experience and perspective on diversity with us at the Honors Colloquium. I attended a large public high school, where the bottom line was “diversity is good”. However, I’ve often asked myself what exactly is diversity? and why is it such a big issue? Your perspective and the whole idea of a “we” has given me a much deeper understanding of diversity and why it’s so difficult (especially for Americans) to find peace with it. It’s not necessarily about putting Chinese people, African Americans, Whites, etc. into a room together, it’s about developing understanding and acceptance. As you said, I think this interpersonal connection is a societal necessity that a lot of people do not understand and therefore do not strive for.”

    Turns out, we continue to do a lousy job of teaching young people about diversity and why it is important in America. We continue to offer only sound-bites, “…diversity is good.”  Having been given no substance, our most academically capable young people leave high school confused about diversity.  And too often those young people end up at colleges and universities where that confusion continues because there too they get nothing but “…diversity is good” sound-bites. 

     But what the email from that young woman tells me is that young people want substance; college students, at least, are looking for a real understanding.  That email and what I see happen to students in my class tells me that once students come to understand that the real challenge today is interpersonal, they feel better, calmer, and more prepared to live, go to class, and eventually work within a diverse community.

    At the time, I was North Carolina State University’s Vice Provost for Diversity and African American Affairs.  I was living through the kind of hell that comes when doing diversity work and finding resistance to change from all sides. Foggy, eerie… that was my experience.  In my memoir (Making Gumbo, p. 153) I wrote about that day. I wrote:

   September 11… 9/11… morning drive… radio news… what did they say?… some fool has hit the World Trade Center… small plane I guess… how funny… bagel and coffee filling… tasted good… office… did you hear… what… airline jet… World Trade Center on fire… TV in basement… oh no another jet hit… oh no… buildings burning… collapsing…  have to teach today… walk from administrative office to teaching office … preparing to teach but… won’t be a normal class… I begin class… “No man is an Island” I recite… “a day that shall live in infamy” I say… 200 students… anyone have anything they want to say I ask… student dismay- who did this… why… student fear- what will happen next… fear and sadness- I can’t get a hold of my father in NY… student anger- let’s nuke them… student balance- nuke who… shocked… dismayed… weakened… students’ sense of a new existence- I don’t feel like the world is safe anymore… that night… me… I called Mom…  I watched the images… over and over… too much… couldn’t stop… had to stop…

    9/12… morning… slow, sluggish, heavy… coffee and muffin… office… Provost needs you Rupert… wants help with speech… in three hours… all campus community event… talked with Provost… got idea… theme family… writing… conferring… editing… writing… done… walking to event… Chancellor speaks… Provost speaks… my words… spontaneous applause when the Provost said… we had argued about that line… unnecessary, he said… I said most necessary… reluctant he kept it in… loud applause when he said… we will not tolerate any person or group directing anger at anyone in our, in the Wolfpack family…We are a family… we are still the Wolfpack…

    Today, September 11, 2011, ten years past, we remember.

    I remember the hell of it all and the moments of grace.

    Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

     Free-expression and freedom-of-speech are not the same thing.  In America, no one has a right to total free-expression.  What the constitution says is that,

     Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech…

     No accident that this is in the Bill of Rights; the 1^st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  In America, freedom of speech is a right, privilege and a responsibility.

     Freedom-of-Speech protects citizens from government trying to silence a citizen’s expression of ideas and claims.  Freedom of speech, however, protects no citizen from rebuttal from other citizens.  So Freedom-of-Speech does not protect “free-expression” because free-expression does not require you to identify yourself.  Free-expression does not even require that you stand by and represent your ideas.  That’s why free-expression is almost always done unseen, in the shadows.  

     The KKK wore hoods to hide their faces, and they only rode out at night. That shows you that free-expression is immature, and is the dark tunnel that immature citizens live in and prefer.

     Free-expression, you see, allows people to hide and not have their claims challenged.  Freedom-of-Speech is a right guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.  As with all other constitutional rights, then, Freedom-of-Speech is an American privilege and responsibility.  So citizen, identify yourself and then speak so that other citizens may hear your claims, make judgments about your reasoning and the validity of what you say.  In doing so, your fellow citizens may choose to use their Freedom-of-Speech to challenge your ideas.

     The mistake that Americans have been making lately is this one. For some reason we have been saying that since Americans have freedom of expression, there is nothing to be done.  That is what some have said.  So that’s why we sometimes end up with the odd situation that when someone makes ugly racial, anti-gay and lesbian, anti-some-group statements,  people act as if there is nothing to be done. 

    Not so because, we Americans have the right to Freedom-of-Speech.  Lately, we have been acting as if we think that that freedom means that we have to shut up in the face of someone else’s ugly use of Freedom-of-Speech.  No we don’t…

     No we don’t because no one has a right to free expression, we all have a right to freedom-of-speech.  

   Starting at 8pm, Tuesday, August 16, 2011, on the campus of NCSU we had an event called “Respect the Pack.”

 

     That event was put on to protest and challenge all the offensive, negative group-hate graffiti that shows up in the Free-Expression Tunnel. Our protest that night was significant.

     We were expressing our Freedom of Speech to say that we value each and every student on our campus.

      We were expressing our Freedom of Speech to say that when someone writes racial graffiti, that does not reflect the opinion of the whole campus. 

     We recognize, you see, that the hate of a group expressed in graffiti is really an attack on students of all racial and religious stripes because it shows that there is intolerance and hate on our campus.  Who wants to live in a place like that?  How can a person go home and proclaim their pride in being a student at a place that is so hateful?

     When we recognize and understand that one person’s freedom-of-speech does not negate other Americans’ freedom-of-speech that means there is something to be done.  That means we can raise our voices in opposition to group-hate.

    Wait… wait… but white students at North Carolina State University were upset too!

    Yes indeed they were.

    You have to understand, we no longer live in a society of racial hierarchy.  Even people who wrongly believe in the superiority of one race over another… even those people have to interact with people of other groups who have equal-status with them, or authority over them.

    As importantly, white students at NCSU are not all of one mind about race.  So yeah, some simpleton writes racial graffiti, but that does not reflect the opinion of the whole campus.  Among all of the students there are different racial, moral codes, and interpersonal relationships.   No surprise then that racial graffiti is taken as an attack on students of all racial and religious stripes because it shows that there is intolerance and hate on the campus.  Who wants to live in a place like that?  How can a person go home and proclaim their pride in being a student at a place that is so hateful? It was all that that in this case of racial graffiti, had awakened a sleeping giant.

    These are college students with classes to go too, reading and projects to do, papers to write, exams to take. In the midst of that life, these young people wanted to speak out against intolerance. Yet, they refused to use their busy lives as an excuse for not working for change on their campus.  And as students from a number of racial and ethnic backgrounds developing a coalition, Wake Up! is part of a great American tradition of protest to improve the nation.

    Intergroup coalitions have always been part of the social change movements that mattered.  One example from the civil rights movement SCOPE (Summer Community Organizing and Political Education) a project sponsored by the SCLC (Southern Christian Leadership Conference) in the summer of 1964.  More recently is the example in NYC when people from many different groups showed up with colorful umbrellas so that gay and lesbian couples would not have to face anti-gay and lesbian protests.

    At the end of last semester (Spring 2011), I won a faculty award for my work on diversity on our campus.  Nothing pleased me more than to be in the company of a racial, ethnic and gender mix of people who also won awards for their diversity work on our campus.

    So yes, when offensive racial and anti-gay graffiti was found in our “Free-Expression” tunnel, white students were upset too.  Not only that, but with black, Arab, Hindu and Puerto Rican students as equal partners, white students started organizing themselves to stop the foolishness. That is how the interracial, interethnic student advocacy group “Wake Up! It’s Serious: A Campaign for Change” was born.