This may look like I accidentally posted a private e-mail to my blog.

I won’t deny it, I really do want to introduce artist Chris Jordan, author of Running the Numbers to Brenda at Kinship Circle  (and to Janet at SHARK).

But it’s really about Intercultural Communications.

Intercultural communications looks at our similarities and differences, evaluating both style and content. 

For Chris, Brenda and Janet, all are powerful activists who have put their passions into action.  Brenda and Janet started with the animals, Chris has touched there through his explorations of what he calls “Intolerable Beauty:  Portraits of American Mass Consumption. 

While Chris was in New Orleans photographing the devastation on a personal scale, Brenda was there making sure the companion animals, left behind, lonely and starving were cared for and reunited with family.

Their  issues are different, but they overlap.  As interculturalists, we bring people and cultures together.

But it’s really about engagement and inclusion. 

Compound that by engagement and inclusion, where a variety of styles are recognized and rewarded, and you have what research shows to be the most powerful teams. 

Chris communicates visually, creating powerful images that encapsulate devastating statistics, like photographing 3200 toy tigers, equal to the estimated number of tigers remaining on Earth, leaving empty space in the middle to hold 40,000 of these tigers, equal to the global tiger population in 1970. (Detail below of border in picture above.)

There’s no one better in the world who’s a better writer or more thorough in creating advocacy and letter writing campaigns on behalf of animals than Brenda, and Janet is equally committed and active in moving forward animal issues.

They use different media to convey their power and story.  As interculturalists we teach organizations to value what all forms of communication can contribute.

But it’s really about improvisation. 

That’s the “yes, and…”  I heard Chris speak at the SIETAR conference (Society for Intercultural Education, Training and Research) last week (you can see a truncated version that he delivered for TED, here).  He takes human consumption starting with one, as in one tin soda can, and explodes it into the massive statistics, and then culls back to a single photographic image that conveys the scale of impact we are having on the earth.  

Intercultural Communications + Inclusion + Improvisaion =Action

Yes, and…here’s what we can do. 

Please watch this 6 minute film by Chris Jordan about the Pacific Garbage Patch, and how it is killing the albatross chicks on Midway Island (warning—it’s hard to watch—even Chris, who filmed it, was crying as we watched it at the conference.)

Chris is hoping to go back to Midway a few times next year to film the full cycle of the birds lives, from birth to mating and everything before the death.

 I thought Chris’ images were a great bridge to communicate the scale of animal suffering to “non-animal people.”

I thought Brenda and/or Janet might have connections or ideas about avenues for funding Chris efforts to document the plight.  Since Chris has documented other animal issues (he’s become vegetarian along his journey) I also thought he might be interested in some of the other statistics you work with.

And, for all…what do you do when you hear a new theory—when your eyes are opened to something for which your hands might be dirty…Do you deny it exists, or do you try to understand it?  What can you do?

US business culture norms today are all about action and the bottom line.  “Show me the money!”

Think about it.   If Socrates were working at a corporation in the US today, with all of his thinking and pontificating, his boss might say “he’s full of baloney…what has he actually DONE?” (or more likely, “Socrates, stop blowing hot air and get back to work!”)

What started me thinking about how time period and culture change our view of things, was the NY Times article on Sunday, “A Charlie Chan Film Stirs an Old Controversy,” about sreenings of a 1968 long lost documentary “The Great Charlie Chan,” in New York in February, and scheduled again for March 16.

My first reaction?  “I loved Charlie Chan detective movies when I was a kid.”

So I was a little uneasy when I read the author’s, Pradnya Joshi, thoughts:

“For many activists, Charlie Chan remains a symbol of Hollywood’s failure to accurately portray Asians and Asian-Americans. The character was usually played by white actors who were made up to seem Asian and who spoke English with an exaggerated accent.”

On the flipside, an earlier article from a 2006 release of a Charlie Chan collection, author Dave Kehr proffers that the films were not racist, “by the standards of their time.” 

That phrase, “standards of their time” rings to me of majority privilege, as in nobody got mad because it was okay in that time.  But okay to whom?  Or, was it actually offensive then too, but there was no power or place to voice that offense?

Beyond Chan’s character (and his son who talks like a typical American teenager of the time, for some fun generational contrast), more uncomfortable to me, from this clip from “Shadows Over Chinatown” (below) is the exaggerated personification of the African American butler, played by Mantan Moreland. (Indeed after years of success as a comedic actor Moreland was ostracized for demeaning representations as the civil rights movement grew in the 1950’s.)

What do Socrates, Charlie Chan and intercultural communications have in common?  

We are who we are, where we are, when we are.  Feeling guilty about how we reacted to things in the past is useless. Knew knowledge and exposure to multiple perspectives allows us to integrate new insights, reconceptualize our ideas, and apply them to future interactions.

For Socrates, I’m sticking to the “great man” theory.  For Charlie Chan, I think I’ll take a deeper look, particularly at how the representations reflect the society at the time, and changes that have evolved since then.

Anything unsettling popping up from your childhood?  How do you reconcile incongruities between your former and current self?

photo credit, Raphael’s Socrates, via University of Florida Philosophy Department .  Thanks to @prpc on Twitter for link to original article.

Have you ever been in a position at work where you are working your tail off and all you hear is criticism from those around you?  As explained by a sympathetic friend to me once, “it’s like the idea of a moving target.  If everyone else is sitting around doing nothing, you running by gives everyone something to talk about.”

 I’m not saying there’s a direct correlation here, but I was surprised by the intensity and vitriol in the conversation surrounding Robin Wiszowaty and her book My Maasai Life in a disucssion on Sociological Images.  Wiszowaty left her US privileged life and was adopted by a village family in Kenya, where she lived for a year or so, wrote a book about the experience and now is on the speaking circuit.

The criticism has to do with a sense that she has romanticized the culture and avoided acknowledging the real hardships of the country (that the privileged framework of her travel allowed) and thereby ultimately did a disservice to the local culture and its people.

For a full disclaimer regarding my willingness to state an opinion about that of which I know not, I never heard of Robin Wiszowaty until my fried updated her Facebook page yesterday with a link to the discussion on Sociological Images (and suggested that it might make good fodder for Intercultural Talk.)

That said, here goes.  The power of being a multiculturalist is the hypersensitivity to multiple perspectives.  You begin to imagine how your words will be received or interpreted by others.

On the good side, it’s accepting that your orientation is not the norm but an option, and using that lens to frame thinking before you speak…thinking through the implications and power of your words.

One the flip side, if there’s a fear of always offending or belying your own privilege with your words and actions you can become paralyzed into inaction.

Immersing yourself in another culture is a fantastic first step of becoming attuned to your own biases, particularly if you are of the majority culture.   It’s the idea of being “the other”…moving yourself into a situation that allows you to see yourself through the eyes of others.  

What’s wrong this time?  Maybe a naivety—it’s true that you probably need a certain degree of privilege to make the choices Robin is talking about.  And, no matter how long you live in another culture (or even your own) I’m always wary of anyone who tries to describe “a people” as being a certain way.

My friend frames it this way:

YES, step out of our individual lives to a greater world community… but how do we white folks do this in a way that results in the greatest good, and acknowledges that access to opportunity is not equal to all peoples. How do we affect the world AT HOME? We don’t have to travel although there is much to LEARN FROM THESE WORLDS AWAY.  How do we explore cultures different from our own without limiting the richness of these cultures by romanticizing? Turn up the sensitivity of your vision to see and share the complexity , not “the simple life” as it fits it into a box of your limited perception.

But I say you have to start by acting.  Robin’s language and depth of understanding hopefully will evolve overtime.  At a bare minimum, her actions have inspired the discussion and that alone brings value.

What do you think?

Thanks to Ingrid of Earthly Sites for the link.

My college roommate used to love to start conversations at parties by asking “Do you think good and evil are objective or subjective? (This was the same roommate whose favorite Charades word was Dostoevsky’s “Gulag Archipelago,” but that’s another story…)

A lively conversation always ensued. Is murder always bad? What if the person is terminally ill? What about cultures that allow children to be forced into marriage. Is that bad?

Well, in short. Yes. Surprising from a multiculturalist? Shouldn’t be, because 1.) all cultural sensitivity aside, there are certain universal human rights that transcend cultural traditions, and 2.) to be a great multiculuralist, it’s important to have a strong core identity. To know who you are is the best platfrom from which to understand and know others.

When I first read about Beyonce’s refusal to alter her costumes to perform in Malaysia, I was curious.   To what extent do you alter your “brand” for access to other cultures? (Gwen Stefani did go forward with a performance there in 2007 by agreeing to cover up).  What is integral to your identity or product?  What values do you convey by your choice of where, when and how to interact with international fans?

But the more recent performance makes me wonder if rather than a core of values, her decisions are based on a lack thereof,  as reported in the Daily Beast

Beyoncé had a busy New Year’s Eve: Not only did the R&B superstar perform at Roman Abramovich’s $5 million party, she also did a five-song set at the Nikki Beach club on St. Barts, in front of a crowd that included Jay-Z, Usher, and Lindsay Lohan. The only problem? The party was thrown by Moammar Qaddafi’s son Hannibal, alleged to be a wife-beater and violent criminal. Beyoncé reportedly was paid more than $1 million for the performance. “Jigga, Beyonce and Usher were @ Nikki Beach performing for Khadafy family, WTF?” tweeted DJ Sam Young

There are two lessons for intercultural communications:

1.  You never know who you will have someting in common with (even DJ Sam Young says “you can’t judge a book by it’s cover,” in reference to Prince William’s cool music selection at Boujis in London)

and 2.  Even in knowing and learning, interacting and accepting cultures from around the world, it’s important to operate from a core of integrity, and from a core identity that guides your actions and decisions.

Do you have a clear set of core values that guide you?  How have you responded when they’ve been challenged?

Photo credits:  Beyonce, NYPost ; Qadaffi, BBC ; DJ Sam Young, Daily Mail

I’ve seen “Blood Diamond.”  I’ve seen the “Migrations:  History in Transition” photography exhibit by Brazilian photojournalist Sabastião Salgado.  I’ve walked through the “Doctors without Borders” traveling “model” refugee camp.  

I’ve even cried looking at the static images of suffering of those poor, poor people displaced and ravaged in far away lands by war and famine.

Leila Chirayath Janah must have seen them too, but instead of going back to her daily routine, she founded Samasource, “a non-profit organization (based in San Francisco) reminiscent of a tech startup that outsources web-based jobs to women, youth, and refugees living in poverty in third world countries.”

“Shortly after launching Samasource, she read an Oxfam report that mentioned a Dutch non-profit had set up a computer lab in the Dadaab refugee camps in Kenya. “I thought, how crazy would it be if I can get these refugees to do real work for clients in San Francisco? What if we could prove to the world that these people who have been written off completely as only good for receiving handouts, who are stuck in this camp receiving food rations, can be productive to the global economy?” (Read the full article here by Lisa Katayama on boingboing here)

Indeed, Paul, in the video above is “a former Lost Boy who was seized from his home at age nine and survived by walking through the scorching desert with no food for days before arriving at a refugee camp in Kenya, where he was shot in the leg by a guy from a rival tribe.”

While I’m still struggling to reconcile this program with my (outright-not even unconscious) assumptions about refugees and refugee camps (Aren’t ‘they’ all uneducated? Where do they get electricity?), it does draw a parallel to a concept in sales…time slicing.

American Family Insurance has been running a free Small Business Accelerator program to help small businesses grow.  One of the strategies shared is the idea of time slicing…using the time “between” work to get work done.  It’s making a quick sales call between meetings, or sending quick follow-up emails to set meetings in between writing reports.  It’s about making every minute of the day count.

There’s a parallel here in terms of making every process of the day count.  It can be as simple as funding an after school mural project to beautify construction walls or using an institution like Miseracordia Home to attach candies to logo cards to giveaway on Customer Appreciation day. 

It’s looking at the goals, objectives and products of your business, and seeing how you might enrich the process of achieving them by creating opportunities for others along the way.    

Samasource is just doing it exponentially.  It’s no wonder Leila was awarded the Templeton Freedom Award 2009 for Social Entrepreneurship. 

What can you (er, I mean I) do?

(Thanks, @weirdchina for the source)

Obama’s school visit this week is very reminiscent of a program we have in Chicago, called the Black Star Project–the project is all about black male adults serving as role models for black children.  In fact, that’s Secrectary of Education Arne Duncan in the photo above in 2008 in Chicago, participating in the Million Father March coordinated by the Black Star Project (BSP), to encourage fathers to take their children to school on the first day.

In fact, BSP easily schedules over 200 visits each year to 30+ schools as part of the Student Motivation Program (mostly on the south side of Chicago, and, from experience, with mostly a 100% black student population).  Motivators talk about their own career to expose youth to different career fields and then provide a general stay-in-school or inspirational message.

Anyone can volunteer, from me to President Obama.  I always open by asking if anyone knows what marketing is (only 1 right answer in 3 years) and then proceed by flashing two cereal boxes–one for children, one for adults, and ask the kids to say what they saw.  Who’s the target market?  How did they know?  By the end of the discussion we’ve identified over 100 specific, tangible jobs in marketing, and most, unwittingly, were expert marketers all along! 

My inspirational message?  Don’t let others define who you are, and if you like to do something, there’s probably a job in it (a la the Chocolate Taster Job at Hershey’s that I aspired to after a tour of the factory at age 10…it’s a real job!)  Even a young girl who playfully/sarcastically told me her favorite hobby was staring at the wall learned what an ethnographer (sort of a professional starer of sorts) does.

I’ve also followed a speaker who dropped out of high school over 20 years ago.  His career message?  Don’t be like me.  His inspirational message?  Don’t have babies.  Do they listen to him?  Absolutely.  And for some, that is the obstacle to graduation.

The point is, EVERY ADULT can and should make time to talk to school children about their career and staying in school.  The children in our inner-city public schools are not “they” as in “they” are flunking out because “they” just don’t want to learn.  No, they are John and Chantalle, Antoine, Carolyn and Maria…young people trying to stay focused and learn and get ahead in a challenging world.  You give them the perspective of your life’s learning, and a chance to think about different paths.

The Black Star Project founder Philip Jackson is very clear about its mission (which is another thing I love about it) to “improve the quality of life in Black and Latino communities of Chicago and nationwide by eliminating the racial academic acheievement gap,” and emphasizes the critical need for support from parents and communities.  But he also is unapologetic in his plea to black fathers and black male role models to step forward. 

Sometimes as a white woman, I feel like I have to say “I’m not really a black man, I just play one on TV.”   But I continue to volunteer.  Why?  They asked me to.   They make it easy (honestly, I try to visit a school once a month, probably succeed every other month, but they’ll keep you marked “active” if you do it at least once a year.)  

And, from a completely selfish point of view, I like being ‘the other.’ I like being the only white person at the school because of how it helps me understand and develop language around institutional racism.   

So, my question to everyone who complained that Obama was going out to talk to students about staying in school, is what did you do? 

When is your school visit planned? 

photo credit Black Star Project.

In the post “Beyond White Guilt: The Role of Allies in the Struggle for Racial Equality,” at This Week in Race blog, the authors point out sources of “latent racism, not of any conscious bigotry,” using the lesson of Rosa Parks. 

“As another example, school children who were educated in the second half of the 20th century, unless they were part of an Afrocentric curriculum, likely learned that Rosa Parks was an elderly woman who was too tired from a hard day of work as a seamstress to get out of her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955.” (Uh huh, I got that one right on the test…)

“Though Rosa Parks did work the day she was arrested, she was not old (42), and while she was, indeed, tired, her real fatigue was from injustice and frustration that her work with the NAACP was not yielding enough publicity for the cause. Rosa Parks was an advocate for racial justice and was participating in an act of civil disobedience when she refused to give up her seat.” (Ohhh….)

While I find the language of the article to be a little alienating “why white liberals are unable to grasp and take action to expose, challenge and provide alternatives to the racism spouted from the right” (it assigns a group responsibility and doesn’t acknowledge individual action, kind of like when people ask why moderate Muslims don’t stand up against extremists), and the concept of “white ally” to be a little counterproductive (a vision for a better world and the commitment and heart to work on it doesn’t need “permission,” as ally suggests, to proceed)  the example is right-on in terms of how we (white?) learn and understand the dynamics and history of race relations in the US.

I’m moved by this post from to ask my 8 year old son who studied this in school last year, “why” he thinks Rosa Parks gave up her seat, in an act that led to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.   As I consciously work to raise an anti-racist child, am I (or his school, society, etc.) teaching him the same unconscious bias with which I was raised?

Photo Credit:  AP on bbc.co.uk

Identifying problems or making a commentary on societal ills is great, but I want the three step approach to solving them.

So what do I do with my answer to yesterdays question, which dawned on me late last night, in pondering the census demographics for Chicago’s Hyde Park neighborhood-(I’m currently working with the Hyde Park Jazz Festival to coordinate volunteers for this amazing 15 hour event of live music, that will bring 15,000 jazz lovers to Hyde Park on September 26)

Hyde Park’s reputation is for being diverse, integrated.  So I suppose I expected to see 50% or thereabouts white, 50% people of color.  But the 2000 census identified 82+% Black/African American.   Hmm, I thought, well that’s a BLACK neighborhood.  But if it was 82%  white, 18% people of color, well, that would clearly be a neighborhood with diversity.

I know there’s something significant in my perception of neighborhoods.  I’m a diversity advocate and professional in intercultural communications, yet my unconscious bias/perception still favors being in the majority-Diversity is okay, as long as there’s not a fundamental shift in the power balance.  Ouch.

Peggy McIntosh laid a foundation of White Privilege with her work White privilege:  Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack.  But as a woman, albeit White, I didn’t always identify the power of the privileged people she described.

Tim Wise also identified institutional/societal inequities in “This is Your Nation on White Privilege.”  Again, fantastic points, but I think Sara Palin did get called out on a lot of the things he awarded her, or that many defended or applauded Obama for his positions, and the alignments were not always race based.

So what’s the action?  Diversity Training focuses on changing actions but doesn’t address thoughts/feelings at all (think Solzhenitsyn-One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich-you can control my body but not my mind).  But, unconscious bias/life experience informs actions. 

I like to think a keen sensitivity to recognizing one’s own bias coupled with empathy for diversity of ideas and perspective, translated into a plan of action, can ultimately lead to a fundamental, positive  transformation in how we operate in a multiracial, multiethnic society.

What do you think?