Neo-diversity anxiety makes people act goofy.  You’ve heard this one; I know you have.  You have heard someone proclaim with pride, “…I don’t see color.”  Here is why that is a goofy claim:

      In Greenville, the colorblindness mistake was made. With worldwide reaction, the board of Congregation Bayt Shalom hired Rabbi Alysa Stanton. That decision was significant because that meant that Ms. Alysa Stanton became the world’s first black rabbi.

     Two years down the road, January 2009, that same congregation voted not to renew her contract. Such decisions about a pastor can occur for any number of reasons, whether the congregation is Jewish or Christian. But I was struck by a statement about the relevance of race in hiring Rabbi Stanton. The article in the News & Observer indicated that “Members of Bayt Shalom said race was never discussed when Stanton interviewed for the job.” Apparently, a past president of the synagogue board said that her race “was a non-issue.”

     If that was the case, the synagogue board was working way too hard not to see her skin color.

   Keep in mind that as soon as she was hired to be the congregation’s Rabbi, the world came to attention, because a white, Jewish synagogue had taken a black female as their spiritual leader. Yet the synagogue board says they gave race no thought in making their decision. That took a lot of psychological work to pull off.

     I don’t know, but one of the problems with that racial colorblindness could have been that the board did nothing to prepare the congregation for this dramatic change. In fact, a leading member of the synagogue now says “she wasn’t a good fit for the congregation.” Since there was no discussion of race when she was hired, the synagogue board’s gargantuan effort not to see Ms. Stanton’s dark skin left it to the congregation to adjust. As noble and mature as some think it sounds, we have not come far enough in this nation to say that “I don’t see color” and to assume that means skin color doesn’t matter.

     One semester, for my “Interpersonal Relationships and Race” course, an African-American male wrote about being invited to a N.C. State fraternity party during rush. Knowing that the fraternity was all white, to be clear with the student-friend who invited him, my student asked if members of the fraternity would be alright with a dark-skinned black male coming to their rush party. He wrote that his friend said, “…he had told his fraternity brothers stories about me and they were all interested in meeting me. After hearing all of that I felt reassured and comfortable [and excited] to attend this band party.”

     At the party, my student wrote that he was talking sports with one of the fraternity members who suddenly asked, “Who are you again? And who invited you?” So my student gave his name and the name of the person who had invited him. Then the fraternity brother said, “…oh, so you’re him. [Our fraternity brother] never said you were black.” Naturally, my student was feeling confused. He asked “…is that a problem?” The fraternity brother said “…no offense but I don’t think we’re interested in having you as a part of this fraternity, you don’t embody what we stand for, but we’re glad to have you at the party.”

     Imagine living that moment. Naively, the friend of my student had set this up. It seems that my student’s friend didn’t think he saw my student’s skin color and that his fraternity brothers would also not see my student’s skin color.

     To not see skin color is impossible. Our sensory systems are designed to make sure we see color variations in our environments. So no one should pretend to be colorblind because in America people still give skin-color social meaning. That is why the pretense of colorblindness is not only goofy, that is why that pretense can only lead to interracial trouble in any social circle.

      At North Carolina State University, along with Americans around our nation, on Thursday, November 3^rd, we held an Occupy-Wall-Street Teach-in.

    I was one of the speakers at the Occupy-NCSU Teach-in.  This is what I said:

   Long ago, sociologists made this discovery: when the economy gets bad people have a tendency to scapegoat; to blame other people.  So people begin to say that “…things wouldn’t be like this if we didn’t have those ‘blanks’ around.”

    And recently we have seen that happen.  Hispanics, gays and lesbians, Muslims… they are bringing this country down. That’s the scapegoating tendency.

    But let’s think back to the success of the civil rights movement.  Your generation has been taught and convinced that racism is in people.  But that is not true.

    Racism is not in any person.

    I grew up in the Jim Crow South.  I was not allowed to go to school with white kids… by law.  That is racism; racism resides in the customs and structures of a society.

      Yes, there were men and women who engaged in violent, bigoted behavior; Bull Connor, Governor George Wallace. But the question is, how could that be; how could that happen?

   Well, individuals like Bull Connor were given free rein and power by the racial laws and customs of our society.  For that reason, the civil rights movement targeted institutions not individuals. The success of the civil rights movement was to ignore individual bigots and attack those racial laws and customs through the use of the U.S. Constitution.

    Turns out that now with Occupy-Wall-Street and Occupy-NCSU, Americans are on the right track.  Yes Bernie Madoff was a bad man who cheated people.

    And just this week we appear to have a new individual culprit.  Ex-New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine whose company MF Global filed for bankruptcy on Monday.  Why? 

    Corzine and his company lost 600 million dollars of their investors’ money. Somehow the money has disappeared they say.  They just lost that money, they say.  And now investors have once again been Madoffed.  But let’s not scapegoat individuals.

    Putting Bernie Madoff in jail and putting Jon Corzine in jail will not rid of us the problem that allowed for a Bernie Madoff and a Corzine to do what they did. Still, don’t misunderstand me.  Taking legal action against Bernie Madoff was right; it is right that he is in jail.

   But, I say again, putting Bernie Madoff in jail and putting Jon Corzine in jail will not rid of us the problem that allowed for a Bernie Madoff and a Corzine to do what they did. We have to attack the economic structures, the economic customs that set up Bernie Madoff and Jon Corzine. Those Wall Street customs support an attitude where money matters more than people.

    You need to know, for example, in the midst of the mess he created at MF Global Jon Corzine was trying to sell MF Global.  He knew millions of dollars had gone missing. But he knew too that if he sold the company, he would be given 12 million dollars.

    Turns out, when he was hired to run the company, the contract given to him by the board of directors of MF Global guaranteed him 12 million dollars if the company was sold.  It didn’t matter if that sale came because the company was failing.

    Where is the accountability for poor management of other people’s money?

    That’s just one of the common practices of Wall Street that is bringing our country down.

    And by the way, there is something else that smells funny. For some reason, with the Occupy Wall Street movement across this great nation… the police are sent to watch those gathered. That’s kind of odd in America… where we are guaranteed the right to peaceable assembly.  Now, the police should show up if there is a reported incident, but not just because people have gathered to protest the practices of Wall Street. 

    But that’s part of what’s going on.  Too many of our institutions are being used to uphold the Wall Street way, but not the American Way.

    All that more reason that it’s time for us to push for changes in the economic and political structures, the economic and political customs that set up the Bernie Madoff’s of the world. Those Wall Street customs support an attitude where money matters more than good stewardship; where money matters more than people.

   It is time for us to push back against that.  It’s time for us to force a change in that attitude and in those Wall Street customs.

   And keep in mind that this must be a sustained effort; it will not work if it’s a one-shot effort.  As one writer has put it,

    “…Everything requires energy.  We must put effort and energy into anything we wish to change.”