Opening Remarks from the NMCI Spring 2008 Institute

By: Elizabeth P. Salett, LCSW

May 29, 2008

Good Morning! And welcome, to NMCI’s 25th Anniversary conference,

Envisioning the Future: Cultural Identity in the Global Age.

25 Years! This conference is an important benchmark for NMCI and I’m going to focus my remarks today on three related themes: change, demographics and the need for action.

When NMCI first started in 1983, Ronald Reagan was in his first tem as president, the Soviet Union was our major enemy and our resources and attention were focused on fighting Communism.

Think back to that time, most of us didn’t know about the internet, or e-mail, or cell phones,or blackerberries, or ipods or digital cameras or even web sites and Lean Cuisine.

So many new gadgets have become so indispensable in our daily lives that we can’t even recall what the world was like before we came to expect instant communication with anyone anywhere in the world, 24/7.

25 years ago, most of us were just beginning to understand our international linkages and interdependencies, and to recognize what came to be called the “cross-border effects” of war, poverty, pollution and trade.

We learned to use the word global in its many forms: globalize, globalization, to go global.

But it wasn't until 9/11 that hatred and religious intolerance came to define our global outlook.

Radical Islam has replaced communism as the filter or lens through which our leaders and our major media view world events.

And as in 1983, we tend to have a simplistic and inaccurate view of the world around us.

Our world is changing. 25 years ago and even as recently as 5 – 10 years ago, we could not have imagined that all 3 of the current candidates, Democratic and Republican, would belong to groups that have experienced, and often continue to experience, discrimination, by race, by gender and by age.

The subtle and not so subtle racism that Obama is confronting; the demeaning references to gender that Clinton is facing; and the concerns raised about McCain because of his age, are all indications that we still have a long way to go. While we shouldn’t minimize the significance of the history that is unfolding before us,

Electing an African American as President will not eliminate racism in the United States; electing a woman will not eliminate gender bias, and electing a 72 year old man will not eliminate ageism. But what all this to open up the possibility for these issues to become the center piece of our national political dialogue.

There’s been a lot of talk about change in this Presidential year, but we know that defining change is in the eye of the beholder, and can mean different things to different people.

According to a recent article in the Washington Post, whites are more than twice as likely as blacks to believe that the position of African Americans has improved a great deal.

But Blacks are more than twice as likely as whites to believe that conditions for African Americans are growing worse. One explanation for this disparity is that whites tend to measure progress by comparing the present with the past. On the other hand, nonwhites, tend to evaluate racial equality in comparison with a desired future.

Our perceptions, our yardsticks, and our life experiences are different, and we define change differently.

That is why, today it is essential that in our political dialogue, we must define change more specifically. We must define the parameters, the context, the beginning and the end point of the changes we seek.

Some changes in our future are not debatable. And that is the change in our demographics. To a great extent, demographics now are our destiny.

Especially when you realize that the United States today is both more ethnically diverse

than it has ever been in the past, -- and less ethnically diverse today than it will ever be in the future.

Over the next 20 years in California, the white and the black populations will stay steady. Both the Latino and Asian populations will double. Those numbers are indicative of what is and will be happening around the country. These demographic facts have profound implications for how we define and experience our personal and our group identities, how we exercise power in our relationships, and how groups relate to other groups.

We have choices in our future:

will our society be more unified as we became more diverse, or more divided, fractious, and separatist over time?

In contrast to 1983, as multiculturalists, we can all see some changes. There are notably fewer articles that straight out attack multiculturalism as a “left-wing plot to weaken America by dividing it into hostile tribes,”or as a “mechanism to nurture grievance

and institutionalize victimhood,” or as a “growth industry for trainers and consultants.”

We are no longer the objects of derision, but we must find ways to police ourselves, to create standards and competencies for the field, and to support a professional code of ethics. One of my disappointments in the past 25 years has been that NMCI’s efforts, along with those of many others, to professionalize the field, have been unsuccessful.

But if we as diversity practitioners are going to make a difference through the work we do, we will need to be action oriented, and to see our role as both bridge builders and change agents.

We must find ways to create dialogue, to give people opportunities to talk and meet face to face. At one of our conferences several years ago, when I went from workshop to workshop, sitting in on sessions and getting a sense of what’s going on – I was struck by comments that one participant made to another when she said, “I never knew that a white person would care about what I thought and felt.”

A few minutes later, I went on to the next workshop, and I heard another participant say to her neighbor, “I’ve never spoken to a black person so openly before.” Stunning! There are so few opportunities for frank, safe and open discussions. That is our role, to create opportunities for people to connect and hear one another. But we must do more…

We know that racism and homophobia and gender bias, and the fear of Muslims and immigrants, to name a few, are still front and center in the lives of large numbers of people.

Much of our work is focused on increasing awareness, but also working to make systemic change in our institutions. When inclusion and equity become the norm, when diversity is not just an add-on but part of a mainstream initiative, we know we’re making a difference. But we must do more.

Given the very rapidly changing racial and ethnic makeup of our country, we need to search for and encourage solutions that also take place at the community level.

Counties, smaller cities, and towns around the country that had been relatively unaffected by immigration, are now beginning to learn about diversity and accommodating

new groups and cultures.

For example, NMCI has been involved in a community project in Aberdeen, SD, the State’s 3rd largest city. We’ve been invited to work with the Aberdeen Diversity Committee to help them prepare their community for a 20% increase in population. To revive the flagging economy in their sparsely populated area, they are opening a large beef processing plant.

To find workers for the plant, they will have to recruit immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere. Aware that this new influx of people will change their community, they are taking a pro-active stance and looking for a way to prepare their residents for this influx of new migrants. An exciting model for how to prepare for change.

So let me leave you with a challenge and a call to action, to think ahead and to find solutions for how we bring together our changing society.

For that, we need to pursue and encourage dialogue in our workplaces, in our communities, our religious and spiritual homes, and even among our friends and family;

Secondly, we need to engage in political action, at all levels of government, to ensure that our voices are heard and our concerns are addressed;

And third, we need to make a personal commitment to bring leadership, energy and courage to move us beyond rhetoric to action.

My hope is that 25 years hence, the next generation will be able to look back and say that we understood our destiny and our duty.

Thank you!