I realize it has not even been a year since we here in the US elected the first African-American president and that change is slow. But the recent incident at the Hunt Valley Swim Club in suburban Philadelphia  makes me wonder if we are making progress at all. Earlier this year, I questioned the future of diversity training, but now I see that we still have a long way to go in resolving race relations.

This incident at the Hunt Valley Swim Club is the latest to spark a race-related debate. Earlier this month the club rescinded the invitation as well as refunded the money of an inner city summer camp prohibiting them from swimming at the pool for the remainder of the summer. Many of the children from the camp are African American or Latino.

Although the club has denied this was a case of racism, insisting instead, it was a space issue in the pool, the comments made on television by John Duesler the swim club president seem to prove otherwise:

“There is a lot of concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion . . . and the atmosphere of the club.”

Whether you think this was an act of racism, as the camp alleges or not, as the swim club asserts, I hope we can all appreciate the wisdom and insight spoken from one of the kids involved:

“I didn’t understand because we’re all the same. We’re just a different color,” said 9-year-old camper Kevina Day Morris.

A couple of months ago I met a charming woman at an intimate gathering of professionals. When I mentioned I worked in diversity training, she immediately told me about a piece her daughter had written for the NPR show This I Believe. Below is the insightful essay.

Seeing Beyond Our Differences
by Sheri White

My mother is a geneticist, and from her I learned that despite our differences in size, shape and color, we humans are 99.9 percent the same. It is in our nature to see differences: skin, hair and eye color, height, language, gender, sexual orientation, even political leanings. But also in our nature, way down in the DNA that makes us human, we are almost identical.

I believe there is more that unites us than divides us.

My mother came to the United States from India. She is dark enough that she was refused service in a diner in 1960s Dallas. My father is a white boy from Indiana whose ancestors came from Germany in the mid-1800s and England in the mid-1600s. I am a well-tanned mix of the two of them.

(Read the Entire Essay)

One of the Rules of Engagement that we promote during our respectful workplace program is ‘to value the many different sources of knowledge that exist’. While we present this as a guideline to consider during the program, I’ve also found it equally useful in my own life.

Recently I was chatting with a close friend who is African-American. She and I have known each other for years and therefore can be candid with one another, especially when it comes to issues of race. During the conversation she told me a story about discrimination. It wasn’t a story about discrimination that had happened to her but rather told to her by a good friend, who is white. She told my friend that where she grew up in the Upper Midwest her family had been discriminated against in their town, because they were from a different Eastern European ethnic minority than their neighbors. My friend, an intelligent college-educated woman in her mid-30s, couldn’t understand this story.

Why?

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The following article originally appeared in the March 15, 2009 edition of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and shows the depth of experience with diversity and prejudice of Northeast Ohio students.

Stop the Hate
By Sharon Broussard

The high-spirited Shaw High School Band and the Cleveland Heights High School choir dazzled the crowd at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood with their music and poise.

But make no mistake, when the topic of the essay contest is “Stop the Hate: Youth Speak Out,” it’s going to get a little ugly. Yet there are going to be some rays of hope.

I should know. I served as one of the judges.

The brightest light last Sunday afternoon? The radiant but stunned look on the face of winner Matt Soble of Solon High School. He was speechless when Milton Maltz, the museum’s co-founder, gave him the $100,000 college scholarship prize.

Anyone would be.

It’s a lot of money for one student, and it would be better if the sponsors spread the wealth more evenly next year among runners-up.

The darkest passages came from those teenagers’ roughly written but brave essays. They wrote about a homeless guy beaten in an alley, a Jewish kid mocked by her clueless teacher and, to the surprise of several judges, rampant bigotry toward gay students.

Gay students weren’t seen or heard if you went to school back when Afros rose high and boys wore jeans that actually fit, as I did. They flew far under the radar then, and we didn’t have a name for them. Now too many kids do — and it’s not very flattering.

(Read the rest of the article)

As I watched the historic and emotional Inauguration of President Barack Obama, I pondered the future of diversity as we know it. As someone who was born at the cusp of the Generation X and Millennial generations, I tend to identify with both groups’ attributes, especially when it comes to accepting and celebrating diversity.

Obama’s victory, as our nation’s first African-American president, not only reflected this ability of young voters to embrace diversity, but also highlighted the fact that race was not the reason that they cast their ballots for him. Polls of younger voters consistently indicated that they were motivated  primarily by his message of change, not his race. 

It’s not uncommon these days for those of us in Generation X and the Millennial  groups  to attend school, socialize and work with people who are from different backgrounds than our own. As a group, we are more comfortable with diversity, which is why during this election we as younger voters came out to support a candidate that inspired us and who we felt was qualified to move our country forward. Very few of the fellow Generation X or Millennial voters that I talked to even mentioned Obama’s race.

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