Any psychologist will tell you that one of the worse things that can happen to a person is anxiety.  It’s bad because anxiety makes the person feel creepy and haunted.  So everything in the situation feels like a threat.

    Diversity issues have always pushed on the American psyche.  What’s different now is that it’s not diversity issues, but neo-diversity issues.  To repeat myself (see my earlier post; Back to the… A Neo-Diversity Interlude, Thursday, 10 March 2011), neo-diversity is the situation we live in today where contact with people who do not look like or sound like us, is unavoidable.  One cultural observer (Arjun Appadurai) has said that because of this we struggle with the question, “…who are the ‘we’ and who among the ‘they?’” That is the question that is causing so much anxiety in America.

    President Barack Hussein Obama is the personification of that neo-diversity anxiety. Is he one of us, or isn’t he?  Well, he’s African-American… ok, he looks black but he was raised by his white mother and grandparents.  He’s a Christian… yeah, maybe, but his middle name is “Hussein.” He’s a black man… yeah right, Harvard graduate… come on.  He’s American… maybe, if you think Hawaii is really part of America… let’s be sure; let’s see that birth certificate.

    Oh look… here’s the birth certificate! 

     I don’t know… it could be a fake; I mean after all why did he take so long to decide to show it? What was he trying to hide?

    President Obama is correct; focusing on this silliness is getting in the way of our nation addressing the serious issues before us. 

    “We’re not going to be able to (meet those challenges) if we spend time vilifying each other,” President Obama stressed. “We’re not going to be able to do it if we just make stuff up and pretend that facts are not facts. We’re not going to be able to solve our problems if we get distracted by sideshows and carnival barkers.”

    But that’s the other thing anxiety does to a person; it makes the person lose perspective. The creepy-haunted feelings grow more and more intense turning into paranoia. That’s why uncontrolled anxiety is so bad; that’s why anxiety is the one of the worse things that can happen to you.

    All of America is struggling with the neo-diversity question; “…who are the ‘we’ and who among the ‘they?’” That is just natural given the speed of the social changes that have come to us. Yet worse than that anxiety-of-the-day are those like Donald Trump who are feeding that neo-diversity anxiety to suit their own purpose; to keep their name in the public eye, or to sell a book that’s just ready to come off the presses.

  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.

    In any downtown, sometimes getting a parking space is a hassle. So having someone cut into the space you have been waiting for can become a big deal.  But in Birmingham, Alabama in 1954, that small event became so big a deal that it set off a struggle for civil rights and racial change.

    Charles Patrick, a black man, a resident of Birmingham was downtown to buy his adopted son a Boy Scout uniform.  He had been searching for a parking space for a while and just as he went past one he saw a man about to pull out. Mr. Patrick stopped and waited for the man to pull out so that he could back into that space.  The man pulled out and immediately a white woman pulled into that very space.  Mr. Patrick got out of his car walked over to the woman’s car and the two had this interaction.

    “’Ma’am, I was waiting.  The man was pulling out and I was backing in.’ [Mr. Patrick] said the woman yelled back, ‘I’m getting this spot.  My husband is a police officer.’’…He doesn’t own the streets of Birmingham,’ [Mr. Patrick] recalled telling her.”

    Mr. Patrick returned to his car, drove off, found a parking space, conducted his business downtown and then went home.  That evening two policemen came to his house and arrested him. That evening, while in jail, two other policemen, both white, one of whom was the husband of the white woman in the car, came in and beat Mr. Patrick with their fists and when he fell to the floor kicked him over and over again.

    From there the story takes unexpected turns.  Birmingham, Alabama in the 1950s, a black man was beaten by the police.  No surprise.  But that black man goes to court to press charges and to tell of being beaten… huh?  There was court hearing and lots of news coverage because what was happening was unusual.

    At the hearing, the judge ruled to suspend the two police officers. Days later, city commissioners met to render judgment about what to do about all this and ruled to reinstate the two police officers.  That decision brought outraged response from the white community in the form of letters to the editor of the “white” newspapers. 

    What year you ask?  1954.  Where again?  Birmingham, Alabama.  Really, you wonder.

     That is what makes this story important.  The writer is the journalist daughter of Charles Patrick. Ms. Dorsey has tracked down every news article, editorial and letter to the editor written about this event in her father’s life and in the history of the civil rights movement. Yes, she is telling this story because it happened to her father, but also because what she found surprised her:

    “The editorials and letters I read in support of my father changed my views about Birmingham.  Growing up in Los Angeles… I had… adopted beliefs that white Americans in the South would forever harbor animus toward African Americans, that white citizens applauded and embraced violence against blacks, and that white citizens in the South would never change.  But after reading the letters written in response to my father’s case, I realized that Birmingham was a mixture of nobility and treachery like any other city.”

    Yeah… but it was still Birmingham, Alabama wasn’t it.  How could it be that whites would come to support a black man in Bull Connor’s city?  Well, it turns out it wasn’t the Bull’s city at that time because Mr. Connor had not run for reelection because of an embarrassing controversy involving his infidelity.  Later he would return to power, but Ms. Dorsey writes:

    “With former Police Commissioner Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor out, it was…a four-year period when moderate, racially progressive powers spoke, however cautiously.”

    With that window of opportunity, through many steps and the help of black and white hands, her father won his court case, with the two officers being fired. Told with clear, sturdy, sometimes affecting prose, this compelling story and warm family history makes for a captivating read. Working from many sources, but especially her own interviews and conversations with her father, Ms. Dorsey tells this story with humor, anger, puzzlement, affection and new insights into the context of the event and the complexity of the civil rights struggle. Her new insights include:

    “Charles Patrick’s story is part of the civil rights story. His courageous actions laid a foundation for the movement, and dramatized for the oppressed African-Americans of Birmingham in 1954 that fortitude and truth in the face of power can prevail…Yet before any movement where people march en masse for basic civil rights denied, there are fuzzy accounts of individual courage, the details of which are often buried safely within the memories of the participants themselves.”

    That is why this is an important book.  It brings to life an important yet mostly unknown, seemingly small story from the civil rights struggle.  We have heard the big stories.  Now is the time for the small stories to be told.