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Bruce’s Diversity Detox: Tips for kicking habits of bias
By Bruce Jacobs
#4) Don't believe what you believe
One afternoon not long ago, 14 of us, a collection of adults who had never met one another, spent an hour together in a room with the door closed.
We were there as part of a Baltimore program called Be More ("B'More" is local slang for "Baltimore"), which brings together scores of kids from different racial and religious and economic backgrounds to have fun for four successive afternoons playing sports and having organized conversations with other children they'd likely never otherwise meet.
At one point, some of we adults were called to sit together and talk in a room. Most were there because they'd brought their children for the afternoon. I was there because I am interested in anything that tries to cross stereotyped barriers.
We sat in a circle and did the kinds of exercises you do in groups like this to get to know one another. I learned that the white guy to my left, Bill, teaches math and science in the city public schools. The black guy to my right, Craig, is a former cop who now does security for one of the local major league sports teams. Our small circle included men and women; Jews, Muslims, and Christians; Asian-Americans, blacks, and whites; a woman from Korea who has a young son; a woman who spoke French as her native language; a man with his eyes obscured behind sunglasses who turned out to be one of the most emotionally honest people in the room. Through simple talk about who we each are as people, I felt my presumptions toppling to the ground like felled trees.
But here is the thing that really got me: I learned, from being paired in conversation with Bill, the white man seated to one side of me, that his paternal grandparents are Cherokee and that he is named for a chief of the Cherokee nation. That's right: this "white guy," who I took to be as Euro-Caucasian as can be, self-identifies both physically and culturally as substantially Cherokee. And get this: so do I. Through my maternal grandfather, I have ancestry that appears to be Cherokee. Family elders have talked for years about this Native American presence in our family history. And I have long found this connection, alongside my African-American heritage, to be a big part of who I am as a human being. So here we were, two men sitting next to each other in a room, suddenly revealed as being neither entirely "black guy" nor "white guy" in the ways we might expect of each other.
This is why there is absolutely no substitute for unfiltered human contact when it comes to learning who people are. The tales told by our mass media are worse than worthless in this regard. So, too, often, are the teachings of our parents or instructors or friends. As long as we remain mired in this matrix of manufactured hearsay, we will never know one another.
What I re-learned that day, as vividly as I ever I have, is that if we want to know anything about who a coworker or a neighbor actually is, we have to ask them. And watch them. And hear them. In person. Day after day, year after year. Nothing else will do. Least of all what we believe.
Bruce A. Jacobs
Bruce A. Jacobs is the author of Race Manners for the 21st Century: Navigating the Minefield Between Black and White Americans in an Age of Fear ( http://www.amazon.com/Race-Manners-21st-Century-Navigating/dp/1559708042/ref=sr_1_1/185-2567916-1991828?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1275753823&sr=1-1 ). His video, Bruce A. Jacobs on Bigotry, can seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3kUqMwPC1Y He can be reached at racemanners@earthlink.net 201q
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