“It never deterred my father.  His pride in this county remained strong,” my colleague said.  “It showed me that I, too, could work for equality and stand up for change in the world,” he added, referring to his own long and growing history, leadership and world-renown for his ideas and activism.

 I, white and Jewish, am listening, and all I can see is a vision of Horshak from Welcome Back Carter, raising hand and saying “Oh, Oh, Oh, Oh…”  When finally called upon, I say, “Um, when I was 10, I got two pet fish, one gold and one black, and I named them Golda My-Fish and Martin Luther Fish.”

 Depth, substance, power of real life experience that feeds a credibility to teach others and lead major corporations on international inclusion campaigns, versus…what did you say?

 Because of my own work and interest in interculturalism and speaking other languages, people often ask what inspired my interest.  I always feel obligated to provide an epiphany or event that set me on my path.

 For the most part it’s just always been there.  In fact, the only two anti-Semitic things that happened in my life didn’t actually happen to me, but to two non-Jewish family members:  My Brazilian husband was ostracized at a job once after they discovered his wife was Jewish; my Catholic nephew ended a budding relationship after the woman in question said she hated Jews.

 My question is, does there need to be a why/how, a life-changing event for someone to strive to be anti-racist?  Shouldn’t that actually be the norm?

 It’s just that USAmerican culture likes when people overcome adversity to achieve fame and fortune.  It’s the American Dream.  We celebrate actors who are recovering addicts, victims of crimes spurred on to help others; the more profound the original pain or injustice, the better.

 When I start to get anxious about this, I like to think of my hero in this area…Shakespeare.  Not because he is an enduring, insightful, amazing writer, but because from what I understand, he led a pretty boring life, middle class, mostly suffering from a boring marriage.

 In that sense, maybe I’m not overdue a life-changing tragedy.  Maybe it’s innate.  You play the flute.  I have a sixth sense for unconscious bias.

What inspires you to do what you do?  Was it an event…or an essence?

When I first saw the Duncan Hines Hip Hop Cup Cake ad last month, I first wondered why advertisers would make food geared to kids so creepy (a la the Cinnamon Toast Crunch cannibal ads); and that the icing would never work…the microwave would make it too gooey or too hot to be practical.

As Ken Wheaton over at Adage  points out in his great article last month entitled “Duncan Hines ‘Hip-Hop Cupcakes’ Shows Necessity of Diverse Work Force (you can view the ad embedded in the article):

“Some folks will look at that and simply see harmless cupcakes. Others will look at it and wonder, “How is that hip-hop?” And many others, including Source.com and many, many other sites, will look at it and see cupcakes in black face.

It is amazing that with such a strong reaction, no-one, from conception to execution to release, ever stopped and said “do you think anyone might think this is offensive?”  And that’s why it’s critical

1. To have diverse teams and multiple perspectives in the workforce,
2. There’s an environment where people feel comfortable opening conversations involving race (Was there not even a “Do you think they look black?” with the last word whispered and furtive glances all around) and
3. People work on their own comfort level and vocabulary about talking about race.

As I took five weeks from the time of seeing the ad to actually “fess-up” to not seeing the initial racial images (people would think me racist if I admitted that, right?), I’m reminded of a post I ran almost at the outset of Intercultural Talk.

Almost three years later, looks like my love of lifelong learning is rewarded…there’s still lots to learn! (the original post is below)

Family Values:  Identifying Racial Stereotypes in the Media

ScienceDaily.com reported on April 2 that “Fear of Messing Up May Undermine Interracial Contact.” The report was about “a provocative new study from Northwestern University,” which “suggests that whites who are particularly worried about appearing racist seem to suffer from anxiety that instinctively may cause them to avoid interaction with blacks in the first place. Study participants indicated that they worry about inadvertently getting in trouble for somehow seeming biased.”

But I would argue that we all invariably are influenced by biases that are created by images we receive in the media everyday, and that confronting, defining and overcoming those stereotypes is essential in moving toward being more bias-free.

For example, unrealistic images of women in media have been discussed and challenged so often that intellectually we know all women are not that skinny and blemish-free. Some advertisers, such as Dove, have used that to their advantage by using ‘real’ women to promote their products.

How does this relate to representations in the media of race, ethnicity and culture? Let’s take a look at this monumental event:

One day I got out of my car and walked into a building, passing a man and a woman holding hands with a small child between them on the way.

As my little sister would say “that was a really good story.” But it was.

Because in that flash of a moment, as I defined and categorized what I saw, as we all do to unconsciously absorb and understand our world, my mind said “mom, child…who’s he?” Boyfriend? Uncle? Friend? Not “I see a mom and a dad with their child.” And I knew in that moment that if that couple had been white, I would have assumed that they were the married parents of that child, but because they were black I didn’t.

Am I afraid to tell that story because I might seem prejudiced? Maybe, but more because of the reaction to the story, not because I believe it makes me prejudiced. In fact, in that moment’s epiphany I realized that something that I had unconsciously been taught by the media and perhaps even my own upbringing to be universally true, was indeed stereotype and prejudice. It was only in that realization and the telling of it, that I grow.

Comedian Elon James White’s take on Pool Racism

In intercultural communications, the emphasis is on cultural understanding and appreciating that sometimes people might unintentially offend because of unconscious bias.

Such was not the case with 60 African American children who were kicked out of a pool at a private club in Philadelphia, being told that so many kids might “change the complexion” of the club.  The camp had paid $1,900 in advance to use the camp for the summer, but were asked to leave before even  finishing their first session.

 Luckily, another local, private school has stepped in, so camp will go on, but I imagine for many, and especially the children, the scar will not heal so quickly.

In the meantime, club President John Duesler has apologized, and maybe, indeed, it was an awful mistake.  I’ve always said we learn most from our mistakes, and perhaps this will be an ‘aha!’ moment for him, that will turn into greater good for all.

The call to action has been protest and hate mail to Duesler and the club, but I’m thinking maybe ‘love mail’ to the children and to my own child might be good.

How might your child react in a situation like this?  If he was part of the minority group?  A member of the club?  Will you discuss this with him or her?

I like the clear distinction hip hopper Jay Smooth makes in this video blog “How to Tell People They Sound Racist” between “what you did” and “who you are.” It offers, at least in my mind, a good entre to acknowledge unconscious bias as well.

The hard part about calling one’s own unconscious bias into the open is the fear of feeling/being seen as “a racist” (who you are). Whereas deep analysis through a lens of ‘what you did’ is a great way to explore unconscious bias, to understand where it comes from and be able to learn and grow for the future.

(Thanks to Aliza Hausman at Memoirs of a Jewminicana where I originally found this video blog)

Let us never doubt the critical importance of any and all efforts, big or small, to combat prejudice and racism.  As the shooting today at the Holocaust Museum in DC confirms, both are still rampant.

Sometimes I think the best way to avoid perpetuating racial or cultural stereotypes in advertising is to purposely mix it up, which is why I liked the new “Let a Stranger Take You Home” ad for Heineken by Wieden + Kennedy, Portland.  The spot opens with an Asian looking young man singing along to a hip hop song about friendship on the radio, and closes with a loud chorus led by the middle-aged Caucasian cab driver (not exactly sure of the ethnicity of the curly-haired fellow in the front seat, but not sure that it matters, either).  The overall image conveyed in less than 5 seconds is one of urban camaraderie oblivious to culture and age, all joined together around responsible consumption of Heineken beer.

“Nice juxtaposition of the unexpected,” I thought, and that easily could have been the end of it, save for the fact that as a white woman I had a nagging feeling it was too two-dimensional or possibly racist to say the ad featured an ‘Asian Man listening to Black Music.’    

Was it okay to say “Asian Man?”  Would someone Asian also think he looked Asian, or would it look like I thought “all Asians looked alike” by using the generic term “Asian.”   Thanks to Dyske Suematsu, a self-described “Asian man” and author of the blog alllooksame who said “In the US, publicly admitting that you cannot tell Asians apart, comes across sounding racist or prejudiced,” but this really may vary from person to person regardless of race and have more to do with familiarity than anything else.  

And what about the music? (It’s “You Say He’s Just a Friend,” by Biz Markie.)  Was it Rap, or Hip Hop?  And. clearly, rap is popular among young people of all backgrounds, was I racist for thinking of it as ‘black music?’ 

Azeem at mcazeem.com has a great post about the difference between Hip Hop and Rap, but he made me laugh when he said “I learned that to Italians, Rap, Reggae, Hip Hop, Jazz, etc was innocently called Black Music,” I thought “Oops, did I think that?”   

From an advertising point of view, the product is clear, the message is clear, the ad is well done, and after all of this obsessive, self-conscious analysis, I could use a Heineken right now.   

But if one can get over the unease of acknowledging unconscious bias, it opens the door to amazing new worlds, simply by being willing to say “I didn’t know that.  That’s a different way of seeing something.  Tell me more.” Or even better, “where did I get that idea,” and “how can I look at things differently now?”

What have you learned by stopping to understand your personal biases.  Did it change your behavior, or offer a chance for a deeper connection?

With ‘intra-cultural’ communication, or what’s thought of as Diversity Training, however, it’s more complex.  It’s less about learning a set of  habits or customs and more about sensitivity and understanding power structures-it’s not just about how to communicate with people who might be of different race, ethnicity, orientation, ability or other ‘line of difference,’ it’s about how to identify unconscious biases and to work toward fair hiring and promotion practices. 

While Diversity Training continues to be a multibillion dollar industry, studies abound on both sides as to its effectiveness, depending on the companies studied and metrics used.   Is it measured by the amount of loss that was avoided by complying with legal requirements?  Is it measured by the total dollars or percentage of total dollars spent on minority suppliers?  Is it measured by statistics on minority advancement?  By only tying diversity outcomes to the bottom line of the company, however, ultimately there’s no change in the paradigm of the power structure.

Which leads to the question, where is the intersection of measuring diversity as relates to the bottom-line, and embracing diversity in the sense of social justice such as anti-prejudice or anti-racism?

The arts have long worked to define business metrics to attract support and funding.  There’s the value of cultural tourism, tangible dollars spent on tickets and admissions, and a newer idea of cultural capital…that it benefits business to establish itself in a city with a thriving cultural community, as a means to attract the best talent.

In the area of diversity, however, it would behoove us to look beyond the bottom line, or to cast a broader net to define the value.  Jon Stewart and Daily Show correspondent Larry Wilmore jested that with the election of Barak Obama to the presidency, racism as we know it is over in the United States.  Yet just 15 minutes later, on the Colbert Report, guest Kevin Johnson, former NBA star and new Mayor Elect of Sacramento, cited high school graduation rates across the US (available also from the Manhattan Institute) at only 70% overall, and the graduation rate for African Americans and Hispanics hovered at only 50%. 

For diversity ultimately to work, there needs to be systemic change, and for dramatic systemic change, it needs to come from the bottom up as well as the top down.  For that to happen, inclusion needs to move beyond isolated management training to include staff at all levels, and institutions need to reach beyond their walls and into community. 

So whether you are employee or executive, offer to set up education and mentoring programs with schools under the program title “Diversifying Our Future Workforce.”  Volunteer at a nearby community organization, or set up on-site job-shadow days, defined in business terms as connecting with your customers.  In the world of fitness, the saying is that it takes about three weeks of action to form a habit.  Why not form a habit of promoting diversity and social justice with your every day habits to promote an inclusive workplace?

Because it’s easier to talk abstractly about racism rather than engage in one on one conversation with real people, I will gladly jump on this analogy to the world economy.  The parallel is clear:  just as the U.S. is unprepared and has a fear of losing its position of leading the world’s economy, a group of people who have a history of privilege in a society also may fear what it means to even acknowledge, let alone concede, that position of superiority. 

But the world is changing no matter what, and judging from the growing ‘anti-U.S. sentiment abroad, the U.S. would benefit from developing a new paradigm of respect as a platform from which to interact with the rest of the world, as a true partner.