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.