Comments on: Are White Men Racist When They Ignore Ethnicity?

By: Djueno Searles

Djueno Searles — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 09:24:53 +0000

I have always personally defined diversity as a willingness to be open to something besides my own experience, history, values, race, beliefs, etc. Not to judge others for how they look, how they speak, who or what they choose to worship, who they vote for, or who they choose to seek companionship with. I’ve read three “Ask the White Guy” columns now and there is a strong political bias running through all of them. So strong in fact, it makes me feel uncomfortable and unwelcome to the DiversityInc wesite because I don’t share those political opinions. WOW! That sounds a lot like what discrimination victims go through. Is Mr. Visconti in need of some remedial diversity training? Perhaps…

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 11:28:00 +0000

I’d like to offer a different perspective from that put forth in the article, just so that we’ve considered several possibilities. First, I think it is possible that most majority people (male + female) are not seething pustules of rage like Limbaugh or Hannity. Many know diverse people, think they’re pretty fine coworkers and neighbors. The ‘stupid’ questions they ask might be prompted by an attempt to look beyond difference to simple things everyone enjoys, like the ice cream. These folks have surely missed out by not using the opportunity to uncover and explore valuable cultural distinctions and acknowledge them. However, in most cases they just don’t know how to have the tough conversations, are afraid curiosity might be seen as ignorance, or of unintentionally giving offense. While this clearly isn’t a best practice, it doen’t necessarily mean that the ice cream team finds the diverse folks meaningless. As far as oil companies, I do tend to think of them as somewhat of an evil empire. However, it is possible that they have not colluded to avoid your survey. They may know that they cannot be nominated and choose not to invest the staff time in gathering the detailed responses to the survey. My company, for example, had to minimize our supplier diversity program due to economic issues, and so did not respond since we knew the omission would disqualify us from the list. Again, just proposing possible alternatives to malice aforethought. Best to all.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 06:49:00 +0000

Q: “Are white men racists….?”A: No. We weren’t raised that way. Things have changed, however, and with all the anti-white b.s. (from Sonia Sotomayor’s mouth,or from ‘Rev.’ Wright’s mouth, for two examples) out there, we could learn to be, if that’s what you want. It’s up to you.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:24:00 +0000

I don’t understand. With a name like Visconti, you’re not white. In my history class, I’ve been taught that white are those that are of British desent, not Italian. I may be wrong. But if you are white, this makes hispanics white as well.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 06:19:00 +0000

This article was great and Luke your response was on point with my past experiences. I did a “cultural competence” survey of providers in the 90′s for a state mental health agency.The questions were serious and really questioned how much a potential respondent “understood” simple things like the social graces of other cultures and some of the values. I received angry feedback from white employees on the questions with demands to know why that information was relevant to their ability to “treat” minorities. It took me about six months to respond in the various ways available to me that “treating” mental health issues of “minorities” was not possible without an understanding of their cultural norms and values. A lot of the responses asked me why couldn’t “they” just accept that “they” are American. I had to explain that “we” (I was new to the agency so many did not know I was African-American)understood that we were American. We needed the majority culture to understand that we were American. I also had a problem getting the respondents to understand “they” had a culture. In their minds, they were Americans and something was wrong with everyone else because we did not think, speak,and behave as they did. It was a powerful lesson for me but it also saddened me.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 01:05:00 +0000

While I completely agree with the meat of this article with respect to ice cream and its relevance to workplace inclusion, I find it interesting that we cannot seem today to define diversity and tolerance without loving Sotomayor. Why do we need to support Sotomayor in order to be in accord with the rest of this article? Not even during the election of Obama was the support of our now President required in order to avoid the label of useless bigot. I am a huge supporter of diversity and inclusion. I am concerned, however, about a lack of recognition as to “diversity” as it applies to non-Latino, non-African Americans as issued from Judge Sotomayor. Love or hate the Judge, I would think that articles focused on topics other than the Supreme Court should be able to stand on their own merits, not hanging onto the philosophical coat-tails, or robe-tails, as the case may be, of our latest celebrity.