America… love it or leave it!

How have we come to this level of bigotry and hate for America’s neo-diversity? How have we ended up having this bigotry shouted from the office of the Presidency?

Back in 2013, my students said I “had to” do a TED talk about neo-diversity. Pushed by my pushy students, I did nineteen (19) minute TEDxNCSU talk with the title, “Speaking Up For Neo-diverse America.” I started that talk singing, yes singing “America the beautiful.” That was my way of getting the listeners to begin to really evaluate “….love it or leave it” bigotry.

My TEDxNCSU talk came to mind because of President Trump’s recent immoral and bigoted statements saying to other Americans “… if they don’t like it here, go back where you came from…”

In that TEDx talk I say that too many Americans have bought the sales pitch of “America the beautiful” and so don’t want to hear about the injustices we have done and do. Having let the sales pitch influence them to buy an unrealistic, shiny image of America, when someone points out our real and ongoing dirty American engine problems of injustice, those who have bought the sales pitch say “America… love it or leave it.”

That has never, and will never, work.

If you’re interested in my TEDxNCSU talk, here’s the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y73bRAwJY6I

Lately, and too often, white people have been calling the police on black people who…

…are two men sitting in Starbucks waiting for a friend…

…were children selling bottled water…

…is a graduate student who fell asleep at a table in the graduate residence where she lived…

…is a twelve-year old black boy delivering papers on his new paper route…

If you have been wondering why this has been happening so often, despite the Starbucks approach, the answer is not “unconscious bias.” That overlooks the real problem.

Our history of segregation is haunting us filling people with uncertainty and anxiety about being in proximity to and having to encounter other Americans “not like me.”  The real problem, you see, is that denied, unmanaged and panic-inducing neo-diversity anxiety.

Here’s my full analysis: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/quiet-revolution/201807/calling-the-police-calm-one-s-neo-diversity-anxiety

There is always good being done in the world. Not covered by “Breaking News”, there is always good work being done by day-breakers.

Monday (June 25^th), at UNC-Chapel Hill I spoke to a group of new College E-Advisors. I was with this group for the first day of their training because of my former student Gabrielle Barnes.

College E-Advisers?  Turns out NC State and UNC-Chapel Hill has created and provides finance support (as in salaries, work places and spaces) to a college advising corps. Their job, to help students in high poverty schools learn about how to, and prepare to, get into and go to college. One component of that advising corps is a set of advisers who work with students remotely, through video-chats, email, texting.

I was with this year’s group of new E-Advisors to alert them to the social interaction challenges they must prepare for that comes with electronic communications.  I was there to alert them to the fact that those challenges will happen in a neo-diversity context; that they will be trying to help, mentor young people who are “…not like them,” which might cause the advisors to experience neo-diversity anxieties that might make the social interactions less than productive.

I was there to “…shake them up,” so they would not take too much for granted about how these neo-diverse social interactions might go. They were receptive, after the usual initial shock at my dramatic opening.

I wanted to get their attention because I wanted to help, and I also wanted them to know that I believe their work is important. I wanted them to know I see them as day-breakers, a la the Arna Bontemps poem, “The Day-Breakers.”

“We are not come to wage a strife with swords upon this hill.

It is not wise to waste a life against a stubborn will.

Yet would we die as some have done.

Bearing a way for the rising sun.”

I was honored to be able to work with this group of young day-breakers who want to help other young people get to college and be productive students. We had a good time. In fact, Gabrielle told me that some of the advisers asked about how to invite me to their respective alma maters. See, this is how I “…get in trouble.”

No matter the day, no matter the “Breaking News,” there is always good being done in the world.

Look for your chance to be a part of that good in your social world, in large and small ways. It all matters. Small moves matter.

Dawn is coming.

Prejudice is not bigotry is not racism.

Prejudice is negative feelings toward members of some group.

Bigotry is the (verbal or non-verbal) behavioral expression of prejudice.

Racism is institutional and organizational patterns (policies) that support and authorize bigotry.

Right now, in 2018, I am teaching the only college course that can help individuals have productive social interactions in these difficult days of neo-diverse America

You see, today we are living int the difficult days that MLKJr prophesied in 1968 in his last speech when he said, “I don’t know what’s going to happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead.”

And at NC State, my Interdependence-and-Race course is the only one in the world that shows people how to understand and analyze what is going on in these difficult days of bold prejudice and bigotry in their everyday interpersonal interactions.

My course is the only one in the world that ask and answers “how is an interpersonal interaction influenced when one or both people are aware that the two people are different from each other by some group identity; race yes, but and/also religion, sex-of-person, bodily-condition, gender-identity, ethnicity, mental-health-condition, age, political-affiliation, etc.”

Turns out, you see, not knowing how to have productive social interactions with a person “not like me” is what is tearing at the soul of America.

#Starbucks #MeToo #Syracuse #Blacklivesmatter

Created by me in 2006, in my unique course I take research and translate it into strategies for productive neo-diverse social interactions that anyone can learn. And I send that knowledge out to the public through my essays and books to reach as many Americans as possible.

From Yavapai College in Arizona came this comment about the impact of my book: -White male, early 20s: “This book has changed the way in which I view people.  I used to make side remarks about people. But I have learned ways to communicate to others as anyone else, to not act differently if there is a person of a different race, and how I can control my social anxiety to allow myself to communicate with all people.”

I was able to create my unique course by combining my scholarship with my past real-world experience of intense intergroup experiences in the U.S. Navy.  During my time, with racial tensions swirling throughout, I was trained as a facilitator of racial dialogues to help the Navy deal with racial problems that sometimes reached the level of riots aboard ships.

I did the work to create the course because I knew that what I would teach would help my students come out of avoidance to engage in authentic social interactions.  I knew that I could create a course that would help young people lift their heads into changed lives by showing how they have made mistakes and how to do better. At the end of the course this Spring-2018 a student wrote:

“I have now been given the tools to analyze and think more deeply about the dynamics of interpersonal-intergroup interactions and not rush to dismiss people. I am an American, and I am so thankful that this course has opened my eyes to the inclusive breadth of what that truly means.”

Not just in my classroom; I see positive effects of teaching young people about neo-diversity even when I just give a guest lecture. After my Ramsey Lecture at the U. of Georgia a student wrote:

“One thing I appreciated about Dr. Nacoste’s lecture was that he took the time to define a few terms that are thrown around so often in our society today, I think we have lost sight of what they mean. He talked about racism in the terms of structure, which is often overlooked in pop culture and media, who would rather blame individual entities for inequity because it is more sensational and easier to comprehend. He also defined “bigoted” as having a negative view of an entire group of people. This was definitely a good reminder for me to watch how I think about and generalize about other people.”

Hear me then; We can save the soul of America. I write books and teach a course that prepares people to interact in our neo-diverse America not with anxiety but with respect. Here are my most recent students at NC State:

#Starbucks

How many times have I sat in a Starbucks waiting for a friend before I ordered anything. I guess I was lucky no one called the police since I am a big, giant, dark-skinned, black man.

Most Americans have now seen the outrage inducing video of the police taking away two black men who had been sitting quietly in a Philadelphia Starbucks waiting for a friend. The why is that a Starbucks employee called the police because those two black men were sitting in the store and had not ordered anything.

Kevin Johnson, the CEO of Starbucks published a letter of apology. In it he says a number of things, but this line of thinking stuck out to me:

“We have immediately begun a thorough investigation of our practices…  Regretfully, our practices and training led to a bad outcome—the basis for the call to the Philadelphia police department was wrong.  Our store manager never intended for these men to be arrested and this should never have escalated as it did… We also will further train our partners to better know when police assistance is warranted.”

Mr. Johnson, the CEO, has also now said that employees will be put through unconscious bias training.

That whole line of thinking misses the problem.

The problem today is not unconscious bias. The manager who called the police was very aware of what they were doing and why; they felt anxious and uncertain with the presence of two big, black men.

If Starbucks is going to put people through training, it should be training people to acknowledge and manage their neo-diversity anxiety. That is an anxiety about who belongs in what spaces; that is the anxiety of “who are among the ‘we’ and who are among the ‘they.’

To be effective, the training must start at the top of the organization.

For any organization to work through today’s neo-diversity issues, the organizational leadership must have a deep understanding of the root of that neo-diversity anxiety.  And the most important step in that direction is not training workers but training the top-level executives.

First line of change is getting the Executive board to understand that neo-diversity anxiety is rampant in their ranks and in our country. That is the only way the Executives and the organization will learn to operate in our multicultural 21st century with respect.

I coined the concept of neo-diversity. Like I do at colleges and universities, I can do the kind of neo-diversity training the Starbucks executive board needs.

Tell somebody: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22822943-taking-on-diversity

America has a long history of teaching people to try to use skin color to “put people in their place.” That, of course, has never been a foolproof approach, but it is definitely not working today with the increase in interracial (and other intergroup) dating, marriage and childbearing.

So now when people can’t rely on “…the look of a person” too many people experience an intense psychological discomfort. Then to settle themselves in the social interaction, without thinking, people rudely blurt out the question, “…what are you?” Over the years, a number of my mixed-race college students have written about having this experience.

Here is my essay about the “what are you” neo-diversity anxiety moment which includes one of my @NCState student’s stories about having that experience: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/quiet-revolution/201802/what-are-you-legacy-laws-segregation