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

…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

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 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.

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:

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

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

Not “us versus them” between people who seek a just society for all versus those who are fighting to keep themselves in power. No not that…

“Us versus them” among people who say they want a just society, but just can’t put up with people who don’t think about the issues exactly the way they do.

“Women’s marches without intersectionality is just white supremacy.”

“Marched last year, but not marching today because I realized these people are marching against 45 (Trump), not against systematic racism, etc.”

If we keep objecting to the motives of people of goodwill who are trying to march for, work for Justice in some way, our fight for Justice will always be futile.

If we keep rejecting the idea of working with people who are learning to try to work for Justice, our fight for Justice will flounder.

If we reject the idea of working with people because they are not woke in the way you would like, there is no hope of achieving real social Justice.

If for you to march for Justice, everybody has to see everything from your perspective, you are not woke.

To work for Justice always means working with people you do not always agree with on focus, strategy, priorities or vision. Even Martin Luther King, Jr. had to be brought into a full understanding that the issues of oppression were more than racial. And that happened through his interactions and civil conversations with others who were working on racial/social Justice, but with different strategies and focus.

Even if they are trying, no one can see past their limited perspective without direct contact and (civil) confrontation with a different perspective. When you think someone is making a mistake of vision, talk to the person, not at the person. Educate, don’t berate.

Disagree, use your voice to raise issues, but do not withdraw your participation. In the 1960’s my father, a janitor and a bus driver, was also a grass-roots politician in the Jim-Crow South. He worked with all kinds of people, who had a mix of motivations, some with limited and mostly self-interested vision; but he worked with those people push the Justice agenda.

Yes, he was frustrated by those people sometimes; I heard him tell my mother so. But he went on using the small doorway into their frame of reference to get things done. My father, Mr. O-geese, showed solidarity and shared effort with those folks, using his calm but strong voice, making his case and teaching that sometimes helped people see that their vision was too narrow; sometimes not.

But the point was to keep people moving and working in the direction of true racial/social Justice, even if at the time those people were making mistakes of vision while still agitating for some kind of Justice. That’s what it takes. Yes, it can be irritating, frustrating and slow-going.

But that, of course, is why the late Reverend, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. always reminded us that social Justice work is hard by using this quote from an abolitionist:

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward Justice.”

#WeShallOvercome

#TimesUp

As a professor of social psychology, I do not teach abstract psychological principles. I teach social psychological concepts of social life that anybody can use to improve their social interactions.

One of the major things I teach in my “Interdependence and Race” course is what to do when someone you are interacting with engages in intolerant verbal behavior; bigotry.

All of us can stand up to bigotry in our social interactions by simply saying to the other person, “I am very uncomfortable with that kind of language. I find it offensive. It hurts me.” Speaking in the “I” is critical to avoid shaming the person.  But speaking “…it hurts me” hits the person’s interpersonal identity; suddenly they have to wonder, who was I to think this person would accept that way of talking.

Confronted in this quiet but firm way, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in 2006, research by Czopp, A. M., Monteith, M.J. & Mark, A. Y.shows that the confronted person experiences a hot mix of anger at themselves, annoyance with themselves, regret, disgust with themselves.

With all that heating up in the person, yes that person will also feel anger at being confronted and be annoyed with you. No surprise that that mix of hot emotions motivates the person to lash out at the person who has quietly challenged their bigotry. Of late, and yes, this Fall-2017 semester too, with genuine concern a student will ask, “…but what if the other person ask you why do you even care?”

That question is, of course, the other person lashing out by pointing to your demographic group membership to say, “…look you’re not even one of them… you’re not transgender, you’re not Jewish, you’re not white…” Lashing out, that person is implying that all you can ever care about, all you can ever be is a representative of your own demographic group.

How does one answer that insulting attempt to trap you in a stereotype?  How?  With America’s mission statement, that’s how.

When, this past Fall 2017 semester, I was asked about people trying to use that strategy to push one of my students to be quiet, to push my student to tolerate intolerance, I said this: Tell that person, “I care because I am a true American who believes in America’s mission statement that ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal…’”

My full essay about this is: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/quiet-revolution/201712/america-s-mission-statement-is-our-light-against-bigotry

People keep saying the Democrats no longer have a clear, concrete, coherent message for the American people. Well, if I were a political consultant, I would push candidates to use adapting to social change as their campaign platforms. I would write speeches with handling neo-diversity anxiety as the theme.

A speech that goes like this:

“We’ve got some difficult days ahead, my fellow Americans,

America is in the midst of a struggle with a force we cannot stop.  Social change.

Yes we have always been a country that is evolving and changing. But today’s social change has come to us with a new speed. Today’s social change is also not about one thing.

Today’s social change is not just about race-relations. It is not just about women’s rights. It is not just about immigration. It is not just about oil and gas. It’s not just about diversity. It is not just about the technology that is in and around all of our lives.

Today’s unstoppable social change is about the fact that because of all those changes happening at the same time, every day we all have to interact with, go to school with, work with, people not like us. Today, we Americans are struggling with anxiety about what that neo-diversity situation means about our future.

But we should not panic. We cannot afford to panic. We must be, and we are, stronger than that as Americans.

Lord knows, the question is not how do we go backwards to when everybody in the room looked the same?  Today’s question should not be and is not, how do we go back to when only people who had money, or who were Christian, or who were white or who were male, or who were heterosexual, were in the room and automatically in charge?

That can’t be the question because that social reality is gone. The social change of neo-diversity has already happened.  And, that neo-diversity social change is continuing to happen and is unstoppable.

To move forward together, to move forward with a new national strength, the real question is, how will we use that social change to improve the life situation for all Americans to keep America strong?

Fighting against the force of the neo-diversity social change will only disrupt our lives; will only push our lives into anger against other Americans.  Fighting the social change of diversity has already damaged the first goal of our American dream to create “…a more perfect union.”

How, instead, can and will we use the social change of neo-diversity to move America forward with new sources of strength?  How can and will we harness and focus the energy of the neo-diversity social change to make the lives of all Americans better?

For us to harness and focus the energy of the neo-diversity social change, there are some things we all have to learn to accept and embrace as part of our already changed America.

First, we must accept, embrace the fact that we live in a new America, where at our work sites we are no longer segregated from each other by race, sex-of-person, religion, sexual-orientation, and the like. We are all in the same room. We must accept and embrace the social fact that we are no longer separated from each other in this new, truer, version of the American dream.

Second, we must accept and embrace that technology is one of the unstoppable forces pushing us into close interaction with each other in our neighborhoods, at work, in school, in the mall, on Facebook, on Twitter.

Third, we must accept and embrace the social fact that people who do not look like, sound like, love like, worship like us, are Americans.

Fourth, we must accept and embrace the social fact that how you look, love or worship does not make anyone automatically the most qualified for a job or for admission to a training program, or a college or university.

Fifth, we must accept and embrace the truth that our neo-diversity means that our social lives, our work lives, our school lives, have and will continue to change in the mix of people involved, and we must respect those Americans.

Sixth, we must accept and embrace the truth of neo-diversity that says that each of us must work to adjust, adapt to respect this new America not just for ourselves today but for the sake of the future of America.”

As a political consultant that is the kind of message I would put together for a Democratic candidate. But I am not a political consultant. Even so, I hope somebody is listening.

Final note:

For a deep dive into the dynamics of neo-diversity social change, see my well reviewed book, Taking on Diversity: How we can move from anxiety to respect” (2015; Prometheus Books) (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22822943-taking-on-diversity). For multiple examples of how I use neo-diversity analyze contemporary events, go to my Psychology-Today Blog, “A Quiet Revolution”: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/quiet-revolution