Silence lets people go on automatic. Being silent when a person uses group slurs or stereotypes is a bad idea.  That is what I said in my last post (April 19, 2011). Not to put too fine a point on it, but silence lets people go on automatic, never having to consider the ugly, hurtful and divisive impact of their words or the images they send around. 

      In clear evidence of this is the recent episode in which President Obama was depicted as a chimpanzee in an email distributed by an elected representative of the Orange County (California) Republican Central Committee.

 

    In her written apology, Ms. Marilyn Davenport said, “I didn’t stop to think about the historic implications and other examples of how this could be offensive…”

     “I didn’t stop to think…” is the most important part of her statement. No excuse, but that reflects the too often experienced social reality. Some Americans get in their in-groups and talk negatively about other Americans in group terms without ever being challenged about that way of talking. So, when in another social context, having been unchallenged before, those people go on automatic and we get pictures of our President depicted in racially offensive ways. 

     Or as happened in Sanford, NC, we get an email that depicts a lynching.  Why?  To remind the staff of the Department of Social Services to turn off their computers at the end of the day or there would be dire consequences.  For this we get a silhouette of a lynching?  There too someone went on automatic, pulling an image of harsh consequences from our racial history without even considering how that might offend a neo-diversity mix of local citizens.

     We set this up in our everyday interactions when we are silent when someone expresses themselves using racial, gender and other group slurs. We… set this up.

     Being silent when a person uses group slurs or stereotypes is a bad idea. Being silent shows too much tolerance for intolerance. That silence lets people go on automatic, never having to consider how their actions might influence and hurt anyone.

    I started working on diversity issues in the US Navy in 1974 (see my memoir, “Making Gumbo in the University). Back then diversity was all about black-white relations. But diversity in black and white is dead. Neo-diversity is what we live with today; a time and circumstance when for all of us, contact with people who do not look like us happens every day, and is unavoidable.  And people are having trouble adjusting to our neo-diversity America. Not so much because of prejudice and bigotry, but because of uncertainty and anxiety about how to interact.    

    Today my work is about neo-diversity with mixed groups on and off our campus. From college students, middle school students, people over 50, church groups, I have learned that one of the biggest neo-diversity problems in America is that moment when someone in a group utters words of intolerance. In all of the groups I teach and work with, that moment is described along with the reaction: “I am very uncomfortable when people do this, but I don’t know what to do.  So I don’t say or do anything.”  

    Silence it turns out is a bad idea. Silence lets stereotypes live on. Silence gives power to racial and all kinds of group-slurs; to slurs against our gay, lesbian and transgendered brothers and sisters; to slurs against our Muslim brothers and sisters. Silence gives power to divisiveness. When we are silent in those moments, we show too much tolerance for intolerance. That’s why we end up with racial graffiti. 

     Will we ever stop that intolerance completely?  No. Can we, you and I, influence how often it happens? Yes. But the change we want will not come through text messaging, face-book or tweets. The change we want will come from what we do in our face-to-face social interactions and relationships. 

    Each of you has the power to influence your social interactions. When the person you are interacting with uses negative racial, gender, ethnic or religious language, do not tolerate it. But, don’t call that person names; racist, sexist, homophobic. Name-calling is just that; name-calling. Instead of name-calling, speak for yourself.  When a person you are interacting with uses stereotypes, let that person know your standards for continuing to interact with you. 

   Don’t try to tell that person they are wrong.  Don’t try to tell that person it’s just not a good idea to talk that way. No; just quietly, but firmly, express your personal standard for the interaction. It’s time for all of us to wake up and take personal responsibility for what goes on in our interactions with other people. 

   So when a person you are interacting with uses stereotypes or slurs against a group, speak into that moment, and speak for yourself.  Simply say, “Oh I am very uncomfortable with that kind of language. I find it offensive. It hurts me.” If the person persists, walk away from the interaction.

    I tell you this as a social psychologist; a scholar of intergroup relations; a researcher.  And the research shows that kind of statement makes a difference.  It reduces the other person’s tendency to ever talk using stereotypes or to use slurs against groups. It also makes the person feel bad about their intolerant words.  

     If we really want change, silence is no longer an option. When we are silent we give power to the idea that speaking in stereotypes and slurs is ok. And that is why history repeats itself. But now is our opportunity to begin to change that. You see, it is in the small interaction moments where the next big change will occur. Now is your opportunity to create change in the small moments.

    (There you go. In the post just before this one, “Another Racial Graffiti Storm,” I promised I would post the essay based on the speech I gave at the Wake Up! It’s Serious rally against racism on November 17, 2010; promise kept.  On November 23, 2010, this essay was published in North Carolina State University’s student run newspaper, The Technician. For a pdf version click Essays.)

    November 2007; a paper noose is found hanging in a North Carolina State University (NCSU) campus bathroom. November 2008; racial graffiti threatening our newly elected President, Barack Obama, is found displayed in our (NCSU) Free Expression Tunnel, causing outrage on campus, and an investigation by the U.S. Secret Service.

 Skip a year and then on November 1, 2010 offensive racial and anti-gay graffiti was found in the NCSU Free Expression Tunnel.

     Many students in our neo-diverse student-body were starting to be fed up with this trend of free expression of racial and anti-homosexuality animosity. Now, a storm was brewing. 

    When that November 1, 2010 racial graffiti incident was being reported in local TV (and other) media, I knew nothing about what was going on. In fact it took an email to alert me that something was going on. A recent graduate, a white female, who had taken my “Interpersonal Relationships and Race” course, wrote: “I… wanted to email you to ask if you knew of the “Blackout-Against-Racism” event on Facebook that is exploding with reactions and tensions relating to the Obama Free Expression Tunnel incident?” I had not heard anything. I investigated. What I learned about the lack of information on our campus disturbed me.

    November 4^th, the day after I received that email, in my “Interpersonal Relationships and Race” course, I led an impromptu discussion.  “How many of you have heard about the recent racial graffiti in the Free Expression Tunnel?” Only twenty-eight out of the neo-diverse racial, ethnic, gender and religious mix of 65 students (in attendance that day) had heard anything. What have you heard? One answer was, “there was a picture of Obama doing indecent things and the N-word was written.” “How did you hear?”  Students first heard about this through calls from family whose sources included the Washington Post, States Fan Nation, Facebook Event, News and Observer. Most surprising—one grandmother had seen a report on Good Morning America and called her grandson.

     One student asked, “…why do people outside of the university know more than the people within it?” It was two days after the Chancellor’s statement was released that I was conducting that in-class discussion. Yet nothing had appeared in the campus student newspaper. With disgust, one student said that “…student leaders and student media outlets got an email about this incident; the university was very selective about who they shared this info with.” Even that communication was not informative. One student said, “…there is still a lot of confusion. Nobody wants to say or tell about what was really written in the tunnel.”

    Students around campus were very upset but for different reasons.  African American students had protested by blocking access to the Free Expression Tunnel and that meant that for a time those black students had blocked part of the travel access to different sides of the campus. That got the attention of university administrators and aroused mixed feelings especially among white students around campus.  Friday, November 5^th, a meeting was held with the Chancellor and the leadership of African American groups on campus. Also, through the students’ Union Activities Board a protest rally was being organized to bring together a neo-diverse gender, racial, ethnic, and religious group of students. With the mix of emotions on campus, with this neo-diversity storm, a lot was being blown around our campus. 

    That weekend I received an email asking me to speak at the rally that was being planned.  November 17, 2010 the “Wake Up! It’s Serious” campus walk and rally was held. With the 50 or so participants wearing “I’m Awake” t-shirts, and yelling “we’re awake,” the rally was the culmination of the walk through campus.  When everyone gathered, I was introduced and spoke. 

    My style was motivational, but the content was serious and concrete with the point being that in our everyday interactions we have power to speak against the use of racial, gender, ethnic, religious slurs.  When I was done I was asked if I would turn my comments into an essay for our student run newspaper, The Technician. I did. That essay was published under the title “Wake Up To Your Own Power” (see my next post).

     Here at the end of the busiest semester of my life, something new and important was starting.

    Fall semester always comes on with hurricane force winds.  But for me Fall-2010 was like no other.  Always one to pay attention to my limitations, half-way through the semester I knew I was on the edge of being knocked to my knees by that big wind and deadly rain. I was wondering if I had taken on too much.

    Except for my undergraduate social psychology course, nothing was usual in this semester.  For the first time I was teaching my “Interpersonal Relationships and Race” course as a “big” section.  Up to now I had taught the course with no more than 35 students.  Demand from students had grown, and I had seen what the course does for students and so wanted to let more students into the course.  So for the first time I was teaching the course with 75 students.  Yes, the course structure and lectures were the same, but now I had to pay very close attention to the classroom dynamic every day. And even more so on group discussion days.

   Also, over the summer I had agreed to teach a short-course for NCSU’s Encore program.  That program offers courses for retirees; really anyone fifty or older.  I had agreed to teach a six-week course; “Living on the New Racial Frontier.”  Again, since I had seen how my undergraduate course had such a powerful and positive influence on undergraduates, I wanted to try it with a different, older, audience.  That meant a couple of things.  One, it meant working to distill the 15 week course material, to fit into a six week course with each session being one-and-one-half hours.  Two, it meant taking technical, research-based material and presenting it in an accessible way to people who had intellectual interests, but who were not in a classroom every day.

    At the end of the semester I would know that I thought it went well, and I would learn that so did the 15 people over 50 who were the students. Their evaluations of the short-course were extremely positive with one saying:

    “Dr. Nacoste…made a comfortable environment for our discussion on neo-diversity. It gave me a whole new understanding of the issues we face making me rethink previous conceptions.”

    But at the middle of the semester I didn’t know this and the wind and rain had reached a gale-force; I was working very hard to keep up with my teaching goals. I had also by then done a special-one-session training for new student government leaders, as well as one for graduate students on “Teaching to the Diverse Classroom.” And that’s when the travel started.

    Fall Break (October 7-10) I was back home in Opelousas to do a book reading and signing.  That was held in the old Holy Ghost School library.  First to twelfth grade I spent in that building using that library.  Now a meeting room, when I walked into what had been our school library it hit me.  Here I was back home to present to the Opelousas community my book, “Making Gumbo in the University.” I think because there was an article in the Opelousas Daily World (see Lagniappe) that Sunday, there was a nice turnout that included four of my former classmates.  I was honored and pleased that they came.

    Skip a week and I was in Houston, Texas at a conference of academic administrators.  I gave a presentation on what university administrations need understand to, and what strategies they should take to communicate effectively with college students in this age of neo-diversity.  It went well.

    I had set up my time there so that I could hang out for a day or so before flying back to Raleigh.  Reading the Houston Chronicle on October 23^rd I came across an article about a book signing.  That afternoon, I took a cab to The Gite Gallery on Alabama street to meet and listen to Mignette Patrick Dorsey talk about her book, “Speak Truth to Power: The Story of Charles Patrick, a Civil Rights Pioneer.” [Note: I just posted my review of that book (click on my Book Reviews category).]

    Right after that period of travel is when I felt like maybe, just maybe, I had taken on too much. Along with continuing all my teaching, two major responsibilities remained.  I was to speak for our library’s Fabulous Faculty Series.

      I was also to speak to our Association of Retired Faculty. Luckily both of these were presentations about my book, “Making Gumbo…”  So preparation was minimal, although I never do the exact same presentation for different audiences and any presentation I give is energetic. 

    After those events, just as I thought the Fall semester hurricane was ending, there was a racial graffiti incident on our campus.  And I got pulled into addressing that by my students. 

    I’ll tell you that story in my next post.  For now, know that I made it through the semester feeling successful if worn out.  I was supposed to travel to Jacksonville, Florida to spend time with Phillip my brother and Elinor my sister for the holiday, but could not muster the energy.  I was too exhausted from standing in the winds that I stayed put in Raleigh to get some rest.

   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.

    People are trying to understand and manage neo-diversity.  That’s what I have been observing and teaching since 2005.  I grew up in the Jim Crow South; that time of legal racial segregation. But now, we no longer live in a society where our racial contacts are controlled and restricted by law. Nowadays, everyday, each of us has some occasion to interact with a person from another racial, ethnic or gender group. And those persons come from multiple racial, ethnic and gender groups. So, today our interpersonal encounters with race are not black and white, but neo-diverse.  That is why I say today diversity in black and white is dead.  Long live neo-diversity.

     Fast; this has come upon us very fast. That rapid social change has involved race (Jim Crow to President Barack Obama), gender (bra-burning to female CEOs and national politicians), communication-technologies (telephones to Iphones to Ipads) and international-relations (peaceful coexistence to being a post 9/11 America).  Those rapid, and simultaneous, social changes have put each of us in situations where we have to interact with people on an equal footing, but people who do not look like and sometimes do not even sound like us.  That is neo-diversity and that neo-diversity creates social uncertainty about how to interact with people. 

     In my essay “Post-Racial?: Something Even More Bizarre and Inexplicable”(see Essays link), I work out the idea of neo-diversity in more detail.  My point now is that it has become more, and more, clear to me that this is what we are struggling with the most right now.  That is why we are so quick to call people names (Harry Reid is a Racist; see my post on this).  That is why we have people who can be led to believe that our President is a Muslim plant with the goal of turning American into a Muslim country.  The quickness of the social changes in our society means we are not psychologically prepared and so we are filled with anxiety about who is who.

     Racial segregation did many things, but one of its main functions was to make clear who was a “we” and who was a “they.”  All that started to change when we struck down the unjust, immoral laws of racial segregation.  Along with all the other changes that started to happen, the removal of racial segregation meant that more and more each of us had to figure out who was a “we” and who a “they” and we couldn’t reasonably use race as the indicator.  As I remind my college students, everyone on our campus is a citizen of the campus. No matter what your classmate looks or sounds like, I say, when it comes right down to it, that student is your classmate, and is therefore a “we.”

     That is the neo-diversity that people are trying to understand and manage.  Sanford’s One-by-One is an example (see my earlier post, Back to the Future II).

    There is something going on. 

    Before I bring us to Fall 2010, I need to tell you about One-by-One.  In the sleepy Southern town of Sanford, NC a group of mostly white, elderly women had pulled themselves together with a common goal.  Their goal is to improve race-relations in Sanford. 

    A friend, Gary, had invited me to a Mike Wiley’s one-man performance of Tim Tyson’s Blood Done Sign My Name.  I use Tyson’s book in my “Interpersonal Relationships and Race” course to give my students a detailed history of the modern civil rights movement.  Knowing that, and having read Tyson’s book because of me, Gary invited me to this performance.  So, with his wife Nyree, we drove to Sanford and the Temple Theater. 

    Mike Wiley’s performance was amazing. 

    But before he started I came across a very interesting insert in the performance program.  The flyer advertised a group called One-by-One with this statement:

    “To improve race relations, a community forum is being planned to discuss racism, with the hope of sharing, understanding and healing.  The ability to work inside and outside of this community as one people, called to work together for the betterment of all, will result.”

    Also on the flyer were spaces to put your name, telephone number, etc as part of their call that read, “Be One with us! Please complete the sheet and drop it in the box.”

    Very interesting, I thought, and said so to Gary and Nyree.  Having been working on diversity issues for so long, I could see that this group needed some help. After all, you don’t ask people to give you their name so they can contact you about race-relations in the community, without giving a name of a person who is working as part of the group. 

    That Monday, by email, I got in touch with the director of the Temple Theater, who then put me in touch with the two organizers of the One-by-One group.  I gave them a bit of my history and asked if I might be of some help to their race-relation effort.  Both replied with enthusiasm, and asked if I could attend their next meeting.  February 21, 2010 I attended that meeting and have been working with the One-by-One group ever since.

    Something is going on.

    Exemplified by the existence of Sanford’s One-by-One group, what’s going on is that Americans are feeling the press of neo-diversity in their (large and small) communities.  And some are pulling together to try and figure it out, not to stamp it out, but to make it a well functioning part of the mosaic that has always been America.