Question:

Why is it whenever white people defend their racism, the first thing they default to is “I’m not a bigot” and the second thing is “I have friends who are black”? I could scream.

Answer:
It’s disorienting for white people who think they really aren’t biased to be confronted with a reality they have not considered. You’ll also hear things such as “Oh, I guess we have to be politically correct” as opposed to something more accurate like “I guess I can’t manhandle your self-esteem anymore.”

Considering most interracial conversations happen at the workplace (Americans are socially very segregated), these common phrases of denial demonstrate how diversity training is crucial to productivity and engagement.

Luke Visconti’s Ask the White Guy column is a top draw on DiversityInc.com. Visconti, the founder and CEO of DiversityInc, is a nationally recognized leader in diversity management. In his popular column, readers who ask Visconti tough questions about race/culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability and age can expect smart, direct and disarmingly frank answers.

The post ‘I Have Black Friends’ Doesn’t Mean You Aren’t Racist appeared first on DiversityInc.

Luke Visconti’s Ask the White Guy column is a top draw on DiversityInc.com. Visconti, the founder and CEO of DiversityInc, is a nationally recognized leader in diversity management. In his popular column, readers who ask Visconti tough questions about race/culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability and age can expect smart, direct and disarmingly frank answers.

Question:
Curious: Had Juan said something to the effect that he’s aware that some people cross the street when they see a group of Black people walking along, I don’t think he would have been fired. In this case, he’s speaking of a stereotype that sadly resonates in 2010.

On the other hand, was Williams simply being honest? Does it make him a bigot instantly for his feelings on being on a plane with Muslims?

Answer:
For those of you who don’t know, Juan Williams was fired from NPR for comments he made on Bill O’Reilly’s show on FOX News. O’Reilly had been under fire for making comments about 9/11 on ABC’s “The View” and Williams tried to help his coworker (Williams is also paid by FOX) by saying, “Look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil-rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

He was subsequently fired from NPR, and NPR CEO Vivian Schiller gave her reason—this quote is from an article on NPR’s website: “As a reporter, as a host, as a news analyst, you do not comment on stories.”

Schiller said such restraint was a vital part of NPR’s code of ethics, which states that news staffers cannot say things in other public forums that they could not say on NPR’s airwaves as well. “Certainly you have opinions—all human beings have their personal opinions,” Schiller said. “But it is the ideal of journalism that we strive for objectivity so we can best present the positions of people around all parts of the debate to our public so the public can make their own decisions about these issues.”

I think Vivian Schiller has a real problem: In the eyes of the public, the press has moved on from this concept of “objectivity” in the mainstream press. No human being can be objective, and in the overwhelming majority of content created, “journalism” has only had the veneer of objectivism, not the substance of it. In addition, the line between “news” and “entertainment” is gone in the minds of almost all consumers. Indeed, the majority of NPR’s content isn’t objective. What’s objective about Michel Martin’s show? Or Diane Rehm? I think both women are very fair, but they’re not objective—and I wouldn’t listen to almost every one of their shows if they were (love those podcasts). Further, what’s completely objective about The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal? Not much, but I read both. I even subscribe to the website of the bloated provocateur-propagandist, Rush Limbaugh.

The process of diversity management is to stop “objectifying” people and start viewing them as individuals. I don’t think Juan Williams should have been fired. Perhaps he is a bigot (don’t know him well enough to decide), but what he said is certainly bigoted and ignorant. I think he certainly needs to get to know some of the world’s 1.57 billion Muslim people.

But here’s the thing: NPR knew Williams was a rising star at FOX News—and you go to FOX for what? Enlightened dialogue? Reasonable discourse? Intelligent conversation? Please. Feeding fearful people more stuff to scare them and whipping up xenophobia is their trade. Williams’ comments about Muslims fit right in.

If NPR’s CEO said “Juan Williams has persistent problems, he’s alienating our core audience, he doesn’t reflect our values and we just don’t have a place for him anymore,” she would have been on more solid ground.

Given her comments, I don’t think he should have been fired. Is he a bigot? Time will tell.

The post ATWG Answers: Is Juan Williams a Bigot? appeared first on DiversityInc.

Question:
Marine Corps Commandant James T. Conway has asked a question the Big Media refuses to ask, namely: Will open homosexuality within the ranks enhance combat readiness? “My personal opinion is that unless we can strip away the emotion, the agendas, and the politics and ask [whether] … we somehow enhance the war fighting capabilities of the United States Marine Corps by allowing homosexuals to openly serve, [then] we haven’t addressed [this issue] from the correct perspective. And, at this point, I think that the current policy works. My best military advice to this committee, to the secretary, and to the president would be to keep the law such as it is.” General Conway’s moderate and commonsense message was echoed, albeit in more muted form, by Army Chief of Staff General George W. Casey Jr. and Air Force Chief of Staff General Norton A. Schwartz. GENERAL CASEY: I do have serious concerns about the impact of repeal of the law on a force that’s fully engaged in two wars and has been at war for eight-and-a-half years. We just don’t know the impacts on readiness and military effectiveness. GENERAL SCHWARTZ: [My] strong conviction [is that] this is not the time to perturb the force, [which] is, at the moment, stretched by demands in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere without careful deliberation.

Answer:
Our country has gone through this before; when President Truman wanted to end military racial segregation in 1948, the same argument about “decreased combat readiness” was used against Black people. President Truman signed Executive Order 9981 and two commissions formed: one by Charles Fahy, which recommended the end of segregation and quotas, and the other, formed by the Army, was headed by Lt. General Chamberlin. The Chamberlin Board recommended retention of segregation and quotas.

The Korean War then made integration a necessity—there weren’t enough white soldiers to fill combat slots. As is the case today, when bullets start flying, pragmatism takes over. Integration of some combat units happened and the Chamberlin Board was asked to reconvene a year later. Although it had to concede that integrated units performed just as well as all-white units, it still recommended segregation and quotas. It’s eerily similar to today’s experience; because of  staffing and specialty shortages, since our current two wars started, there has been a dramatic fall in service people separated under DADT (the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy), a fact that bluntly contradicts any prediction of “decreased combat readiness.” The military has already shown us that out and gay can work just fine.

It’s sad to note that the history of oppressing Black service people and LGBT service people has striking parallels—the military in 1951 and 2010  conducted surveys to assess attitudes, hired consulting groups to produce studies (the Research Analysis Corporation in 1951, RAND in 2010—ironically, neither group had discernible excellence in accomplishment in what they were studying). The results of all of these surveys, meetings and reports were remarkably similar. Bigotry was trumped by performance. Familiarity demolished objectification. Integration, handled well, INCREASED combat effectiveness.

Go figure. Treat people like human beings, respect their rights, and they’ll fight better for you. Do you really need RAND to tell you this?

I appreciate the general officer’s opinions that you quoted, and you can counter the opinions you quoted with the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who while testifying to Congress said, “I have served with homosexuals since 1968″ (when he joined the service). He also said, “No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”

We don’t have to line up and contrast senior officers’ opinions, however. It is important to note that we have a very special system in our country: the military is run by the civilian government. The president appoints service secretaries to run the military and the admirals and generals all report to civilians. Our country has a long history of tragedy when we parse rights. The time for action is now—and the president needs to sign another executive order.

In closing, I’ll say that as a fellow naval aviator, I’ve gone from admiring Sen. John McCain to being ashamed of him. He is the Lt. General Chamberlin of our day—a bulwark for bigotry.

The post ATWG: Why I’m Ashamed of Sen. McCain appeared first on DiversityInc.

Question:

I am a white woman asking a question. I am not racist–never have been. A person is a person to me and I have raised my daughter that way. My question is “Why are so many Black Americans racist toward whites?” My daughter goes to school in a mixed community. I could send her to private school, but I feel it is important that she learn to cope with the real world. In the school that she goes to, it seems that the Black students are aggressive toward the white students. Why? I know there is anger because of the past, but why treat whites the way they would not want to be treated and have fought against all these years? We made no decisions in the times when Blacks were mistreated [and] we believe in equality–so why can’t we be given the same respect? This is a question asked by many people I know. I was hoping maybe you could give me an honest answer.

Now don’t get me wrong–not all Black Americans are like this. We have many friends that are not interested in keeping racism alive in either direction–Black and white. So why do some choose to act in such a way? Do they not realize that this attitude is one of the things that keeps racism alive? Thank you.

Answer:

Thank you for your question and the courage it took to put it on the table.

I would expect to find an equal percentage of Black-American bigots as white bigots. (Click here to read “Why the ‘B’ in ‘Black’ Is Capitalized at DiversityInc.”) What Black Americans don’t have, in most cases, is a societal, condoned way of expressing it–because white people are the majority.

This is why it’s more accurate to use the words “bigot” or “bigots” in your question than “racist” or “racists.” Racism is based on an oppressor/oppressed relationship. The majority culture can be racist toward the minority culture, but the opposite cannot be true. Everyone, however, can be a bigot.

Black Americans are more likely to understand that bigotry (and other forms of unjustified hatred based on a person’s identity, such as sexism, homophobia or discrimination against people with disabilities) exacts a reciprocal penalty. There is an economic penalty and there is a psychological penalty.

Frederick Douglass described the psychological penalty eloquently in his concise description of how the corrosive effect of living with slavery destroyed the lives of his white enslavers in Annapolis (in his autobiography, My Bondage and My Freedom). This is an extreme example but it works to illustrate the point.

I believe an intimate (victim’s) awareness of the destructive nature of hate is why the overwhelming majority of Americans who fought for equal rights (for all Americans) were Black. I want everyone to think very carefully about this: Retribution would have been a race war. Dr. King was absolute in his dedication to nonviolent protests!

Most white Americans would say that the civil-rights era mostly benefited Black people. It didn’t. By economic measurement, we can prove that the civil-rights era benefited ALL Americans by freeing the economic engine of formerly oppressed people–the growth in our consumer economy and the reigning economic supremacy of this country over 95 percent of the world’s population that ISN’T American over the past 40 years rests on those shoulders.

I’m sorry for the long preamble, but now I’ll get to your question.

What I think you’re experiencing is a system that has failed to punish bigotry and therefore has promoted it. Please understand that it does not take an active program to promote something in order to be successful in doing just that.

You SHOULD demand equal respect and demand proper management from your school board. I would enlist the help of your Black friends. There should be zero tolerance of race-based bigotry. Human nature is tribal–when a group reaches 20 percent, it begins to act as a (small) majority tribe. The blunt truth of tribal behavior is that our base instinct is to kill the competitive tribe. That’s why EVERYONE needs diversity training–and everyone, especially in a school setting, should be held accountable for biased behavior.

I will note, however, that you need to be very careful. Most diversity training I see is garbage. What is very possible, however, is to enforce behavior codes equally–and, in your case, I would suggest adjudication and/or advice via a very diverse committee.

* Everyone should watch both of the following videos. In the first video, the bigot is taunting a private person with a video camera–he’s really pleased about his little bigoted display of a child’s monkey doll with an Obama bumper sticker for a hat. In the second video, he’s being videoed by a CBS news camera. He takes the sticker off and hands the toy to a child. Think about this–it’s not the (all-white) crowd that’s expressing their disapproval; it’s the man thinking this might not work for his candidate.

Can you imagine the misery of being Black and having this creep as a boss?

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