Cultural IQ

Got Racism? Find Likeable People to Lead Workplace Change!

Life doesn't always give us a chance to practice for a role before the curtain opens. We have to say yes first, and learn our lines later.

This is especially true for individuals listening, learning and leading change in their communities. Research indicates that friendliness and democratic values are useful tools for challenging racism but how often do we use them? 

 Brian Lowery, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University Graduate School of Business, goes so far as to suggest that racial stereotypes that are subconscious may be reversible. He suggests that people may change feelings toward another ethnic group following  brief  interactions with likeable role models who promote egalitarian or democratic values.

Subconscious or hidden biases toward other racial groups often surface without our knowledge, Lowery's research suggests. While conducting word-association exercises, he found that research subjects more quickly associated the faces of African-Americans with negative words, and the faces of whites with positive words.

However, if he exposed the participants to appealing African-Americans or white Americans who displayed democratic attitudes, such as an anti-racism T-shirt, these associations or hidden biases began to shift. The groups' associations about blacks were then less negative. In an interesting twist, Lowery tried the experiment again using an unfriendly, though egalitarian, role model. This time the participants did not experience the same shift in attitudes.

What might we conclude from this fascinating research?

Well, it certainly seems to suggest that the messenger matters when it comes to delivering anti-racism messages. I have said often in this column that sarcasm and angry voices seldom persuade others to adopt our views. Instead, we need to wear our best smiles and exhibit compassionate attitudes.

We might also conclude that likable people can be effective communicators when it comes to promoting justice and inclusiveness in the workplace. CEOs contemplating new diversity initiatives should file away this fact. "When we like or identify with people, we're more likely to emulate their attitudes and behaviors," Lowery explains.

Lowery also has found that many research subjects are not aware of their own racial biases. They are often uncomfortable when confronted with results that suggest that code words may prompt them to respond negatively to a racial group. In another study, he examined the subtle effects of racial stereotypes upon the penal system. He asked Los Angeles police and probation officers to make judgments about a hypothetical adolescent of unknown race who had allegedly either shoplifted or assaulted a peer.

Some officers were subliminally exposed to words associated with African-Americans: ghetto, homeboy, dreadlocks. These messages were flashed on a rapidly flashing computer screen so that the officers took in the information subliminally. The remainder of the group did not receive this "priming."

Officers absorbing the subliminal messages attributed more negative traits and greater culpability to the hypothetical offenders, and they endorsed harsher punishments. Lowery theorizes that the racial priming beforehand may have prompted them to begin seeing a neutral situation in racial terms.

So there's a caution here, as well as a lesson.

Be mindful of the movies you watch and the people you choose as friends. Priming  affects us more than we might think. It can lead us down under into the land of bias-based decision-making.

The lesson? It is not often we think of likability as a quality required for diversity training and change leadership.  Perhaps, we should.

If you want to influence your workplace, change starts with you.

 

Photo Credit and Caption: Jellybean people at the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia

Restaurant Tipping: Is There a Reason Many Blacks Tip Less?

Posted by Linda S. Wallace  

Diversity classes haven’t actually prepared us to talk about the really scary stuff: the issues that make us squirm, glance down at the floor and hope for a fire drill.

Let’s consider the racial disparities in tipping at fine restaurants. Pity the fine-dining manager who has to explain to a waiter why he or she must provide quality service to customers who aren’t likely to leave a tip.

Pity the poor CEO who must explain in court why a group of African-American customers had to wait 30 minutes longer to get a table than white diners.

It is easier on us to avoid these dialogs, and settle the racial and gender discrimination lawsuits as they arise (Denny’s Corp., $54.4 million settlement; Cracker Barrel, $2 million consent decree resolving a sexual discrimination lawsuit; and Shoney’s Inc. $132 million).

The facts are indisputable: African Americans, as a group, tend to leave smaller tips at full-service restaurants and that may lead to unenthusiastic service by blacks and whites.  It is indisputable that the restaurant industry’s practices – and the racial biases that shape and influence management’s decisions and customer tipping practices – are costly for heavily minority communities such as Memphis,  investors and ultimately, diners.

The tense love-hate relationship developing between African Americans and Hispanics (who also tip less, according to surveys) and the restaurant industry doesn’t bode well for a $604 billion economic sector that employs more than 12.8 million.

Is gender or racial discrimination a sound practice in a nation where whites are projected to be the minority (47 percent) by 2050?

The pipeline of talent that might do the most to connect the industry with fast-growing, culturally diverse cultures are being discouraged from contributing their knowledge, wisdom and culinary tastes.

The Restaurant Opportunities Center, founded in New York to provide support to restaurant workers displaced from the World Trade Center by the events of September 11, has documented the extent to which gender and racial biases factor into decisions made by restaurant managers and executives.

It sent testers, both people of color and whites, to apply for jobs and found, not surprisingly, that whites were more likely to get call back interviews and get hired.

“Employers and several white workers agreed that workers of color lacked the skills, ‘table talk’ (the ability to converse easily and relate to a wealthy white clientele), and/or appearance to succeed as fine-dining waiters and bartenders,” the center said in a release.

“Interviews with workers of color, however, revealed that many were training less-experienced white workers who then immediately surpassed them into wait staff and bartending positions that paid up to five times more than what they were earning as bussers.”

While I was in journalism school, I was hired by the Alumni Office at the University of Missouri to do a surprisingly honest story for the magazine that asked, “Are the Tigers’ stripes white? The story explored the love-hate relationship between the university and the influential black high school coaches in Kansas City and St. Louis.  Mizzou was slow to knock on the door of these inner-city incubators for athletic talent, but  rivals, Nebraska and Oklahoma, were not so shy.

 George Flippin, Nebraska's first black football player joined the team in 1891. In 1892, the University of Missouri refused to play against him, and demanded that Nebraska leave him at home. Nebraska refused, and Missouri forfeited rather than take the field.

By the time Mizzou warmed up to the idea of racial integration, black students in St. Louis and KC - athletes and scholars alike - were warned not to enroll in-state. In the intervening years, Mizzou has struggled to assemble championship teams, while Nebraska and Oklahoma have built competitive sports dynasties.

Restaurant executives, are you listening? Missouri fans - black, white and other - have paid a price for their forefathers' decisions.

“We’re not taught to talk about race and culture,” Gerry Fernandez, head of the Multicultural Foodservice and Hospital Alliance, told a restaurant industry publication.

“We don’t do it well. We don’t like to do it. We’re going to have to get more savvy on cultural communications, cultural competencies, and understanding nuances. If we don’t do that well, we’re going to lose the talent war. They’ll go to other industries who manage the conflict better.”

(Linda S. Wallace, a social entrepreneur and highly experienced organizational trainer, specializes in developing powerful message strategies that resonate with multicultural markets. Contact her at theculturalcoach@aol.com or www.theculturalcoach.com.)

African Americans Leave Smaller Tips: Does It Matter?

By Linda S. Wallace | Published  01/20/2012

For years, waiters and waitresses have taken to the Internet to complain about tips left by African-American customers and their discontent has been widely reported.

Now, after years of independent research, academics have reached the same conclusion: African Americans tend to leave smaller tips at restaurants than whites.

The answer that has eluded them is why? Do blacks tip less because wait staff discriminate against them and provide inferior service? Or do they tip less because they simply are not familiar with the tipping norms in their community?

Dr. Michael Lynn, a professor at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, recently designed a new online survey to put these and other popular theories to the test. The idea is to use research-based tools to determine cause and effect rather than rely on anecdotal personal opinions and experiences.

Finally, African Americans have a chance to weigh in and contribute to the industry understanding of this issue by visiting http://bit.ly/xq1h5b and filling out the survey.

“The purpose is to help me understand why blacks tip less than whites,” Dr. Lynn told The New Tri-State Defender (TSD). “I have tested a bunch of different explanations.”

In 2008, the TSD wrote an award-winning series on tipping that explained the connection between minority tipping practices and jobs. If customers tip less at sit-down restaurants, then these chains will likely have higher staff turnover. In May 2008, median hourly wages (including tips) of waiters and waitresses was only $8.01. Many servers rely on good tips to make ends meet.

If wait staff tips are too low, the chain experiences higher operational costs, which may then reduce profits. Thus, some industry insiders have reported that major restaurant chains have been reluctant to locate in African-American communities for fear that the below-normal tipping levels will hurt profits.

This situation closes off a key gateway into the workforce for many unskilled African-American youth – including those trying to get through college. The $604 billion restaurant industry employs more than 12.8 million, and is among the largest private-sector employers in the United States. If chains don’t locate in minority neighborhoods, many youth lose access to job opportunities. According to the National Restaurant Industry, the industry is expected to add jobs at a rate of 2.4 percent, compared with the 1.8 percent expected for the national economy. In the next decade, the industry expects to add 1.3 million positions.

If the underlying cultural differences surrounding tipping could be understood, Lynn said that he, and other industry experts, could develop suitable programs. But first, they have to know which issues to tackle!

In the survey, responders are asked questions about how much they regularly tip as well as those that measure cultural attitudes and beliefs. For instance: If you leave a small tip do you think that is likely to reduce the quality of service during a future dining experience?

It takes only a few minutes to complete the survey. Try to answer the questions honestly. Industry experts such as Lynn say they need an accurate snapshot of the complex issues connected to tipping practices to help restaurants respond in a manner that benefits their customers, their staffs and their investors.

 

 Related Stories:

Tri-State Defender's Award-Winning Tipping Education Campaign

Looks Do Matter in Job Interviews

People with birthmarks, scars and other facial disfigurements are more likely to receive poor ratings in job interviews, according to a new study by researchers at Rice University and the University of Houston.

 "Discrimination Against Facially Stigmatized Applicants in Interviews: An Eye-Tracking and Face-to-Face Investigation" was published online last month in the Journal of Applied Psychology and is one of the first studies to examine how individuals with facial blemishes fare in job interviews. The findings show that interviewers recalled less information about these candidates, which negatively impacted evaluations of the applicants.

 "When evaluating applicants in an interview setting, it's important to remember what they are saying," Rice Professor of Psychology Mikki Hebl said. "Our research shows if you recall less information about competent candidates because you are distracted by characteristics on their face, it decreases your overall evaluations of them."

 Hebl co-authored the research paper with University of Houston professor and Rice alum Juan Madera.

 The research included two studies, the first of which involved 171 undergraduate students watching a computer-mediated interview while their eye activity was tracked. After the interview, they were asked to recall information about the candidate.

 "When looking at another person during a conversation, your attention is naturally directed in a triangular pattern around the eyes and mouth," Madera said. "We tracked the amount of attention outside of this region and found that the more the interviewers attended to stigmatized features on the face, the less they remembered about the candidate's interview content, and the less memory they had about the content led to decreases in ratings of the applicant."

 The second study involved face-to-face interviews between candidates who had a facial birthmark and 38 full-time managers enrolled in a part-time MBA and/or a Master of Science in a hospitality management program, all of whom had experience in interviewing applicants for their current or past staff positions.

Despite the increase in age, experience and education, the interviewers had a tough time managing their reactions to the stigma, Madera said. In fact, the effects of the stigma were actually stronger with this group, which he attributed to the face-to-face interview setting.

 "It just shows that despite maturity and experience levels, it is still a natural human reaction to react negatively to facial stigma," Madera said.

 Both Hebl and Madera hope the research will raise awareness about this form of workplace discrimination.

 "The bottom line is that how your face looks can significantly influence the success of an interview," Hebl said. "There have been many studies showing that specific groups of people are discriminated against in the workplace, but this study takes it a step further, showing why it happens. The allocation of attention away from memory for the interview content explains this.”

 This study was funded by Rice University. For more information or to schedule and interview with Hebl or Madera, contact Amy Hodges, senior media relations specialist at Rice, at 713-348-6777 or amy.hodges@rice.edu

 

Watch Out for Those Hypothetical Questions

November 2011

STANFORD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF BUSINESS — As Americans tune in to the debate preceding the next election, some will hear hypothetical questions about candidates. You might get a phone call, for example, asking how likely you would be to vote for so-and-so if she'd hired an illegal immigrant, or if such-and-such a candidate opposed gay marriage.

Questions in this form are so common that we rarely give them a second thought. After all, trial lawyers sizing up prospective jurors, or market researchers testing the waters through focus groups, routinely use hypothetical questions in their work.

"But what seems innocuous can have insidious effects on an individual," says Baba Shiv, Sanwa Bank, Limited, Professor of Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He and his colleagues have shown that hypothetical questions don't merely measure our current attitudes: such questions can actually sway opinion and affect behavior. And, in their most recent study in this line of research, they showed how and why this distortion occurs.

Designers of political "push polls" understand the basic effect already: ostensibly asking for your true opinion, the push pollster in reality aims to spread rumors and taint your view. (The most notorious example was a push poll during the 2000 Republican Primaries that asked South Carolina voters whether they'd vote for John McCain if they learned that he had fathered an illegitimate child.) Since hypothetical questions cloak a malicious act under the cover of legitimacy, Shiv calls them wolves in sheep's clothing. "Because they're hypothetical, they're not subject to criticism. If I make an outright accusation, I have to defend it, whereas with a hypothetical, I can say, 'I didn't say that. It's a hypothetical question.'"
   
In an experiment published in 2001, Shiv and his colleague Gavan Fitzsimons, a professor at Duke University, looked at voting behavior, finding that hypothetical questions like those used in push polls decreased the percentage of participants voting for the targeted candidate. In this latest set of experiments, the researchers, who also included scholars from the Alberta School of Business and the University of Southern California, probed deeper to discover what gives hypothetical questions their power. Hypothetical questions, they found, work by heightening what psychologists call "accessibility" — "what information becomes top of mind," Shiv explains.

Under normal circumstances, any stereotypic beliefs you may have about politicians or conservatives or any other group are generally buried in your mind, so they won't have much effect on how you behave. "But if a stereotype becomes top of mind, this top-of-mind knowledge will have an impact on behavior," Shiv says. For example, if one of your stereotypes of politicians is that they're corrupt, then hearing a hypothetical question about a politician who took bribes will remind you of that stereotype, making you even less likely than before to vote for that politician in the near future.

That certainly sounds sneaky, but what makes the process especially insidious is that it happens subconsciously. "Even if you alert people that this situation is hypothetical, they don't latch on to that. They simply focus on the content, and not the context."

For example, in one experiment, the researchers gave a pretrial jury selection questionnaire to a group of actual prospective jurors. They asked some of them, hypothetically, how finding out that the defendant was a gang member would affect their impartiality in the trial. Even though the questionnaire explicitly told participants not to use the questions to draw conclusions about the case, participants who saw this question ended up giving more guilty verdicts and meting out harsher sentences, at least on paper, than did participants who hadn't been exposed to the hypothetical.

Shiv, of course, is reluctant to encourage anyone to exploit the power of hypotheticals, but he suggests they can be a fallback when you don't have all the facts to make your case. The more important takeaway, though, is to notice when others are using hypotheticals — and to raise your guard. "Whether we know it or not, we're being influenced by innocuous-looking tactics."

— Marina Krakovsky

If We Listened to the Homeless, What Might They Say?

Occupy Memphis amplifies a down-but-not out ‘voice’

With a breezy Sunday afternoon as a backdrop, James, a 46-year-old newly homeless African American, finds an audience willing to listen, and eager to learn.

Seated in a circle in Civic Center Plaza, across from Memphis City Hall, is a coalition of folks traveling different walks of life – college students, business owners, activists, workers on their day off, and curious passersby. They are gathered at the Occupy Memphis encampment to engage in three-hours of community building.

James is not the only person without a job or without an address in this group, which swelled to 25 people at its peak.  While here, he finds his voice, something that often is lost early when one is down on his or her luck. His words are an orchestra of positivity and they offer those around him – including those holding good jobs – a lifeline of hope.

It is James who reassures those who feel they have not done enough. It is James who tells his fellow occupiers not to be too hard on Memphis Mayor AC Wharton Jr. and City Council members. He is convinced they would help, if not for the lack of resources. He asks the others to send good vibes their way. It is James who sits down with a journalist and shares part of his story – though he didn’t want his last name in the newspaper for fear of embarrassing family members.

James showed up at Occupy Memphis recently, part of his journey from unemployment to self-sufficiency. He lost a job working in at warehouse earlier this year – and ended up on the streets as a result.

“Last hired, first fired,” he says, with a shrug.

He spends part of his day in a career-training program, and then sleeps at night in a tent at the Occupy Memphis encampment. James is a go-to volunteer, who is earning respect at this camp. He is among the growing numbers of African Americans drawn to the movement by its message: More opportunity for the many, less privileges for the few.

“We get along really well, James says of his unlikely group of friends, campers and allies. “It’s been peaceful. We try to keep the place clean.”

The Occupy Memphis movement now has volunteer peacekeepers that serve the same function as police: protect and serve. They may facilitate disputes among members, or help defuse tensions that arise when passing strangers taunt the group.

With such diversity in their ranks – representatives come from all classes, many professions and a variety of neighborhoods – their camp has been turned into a laboratory for learning about diversity. On Sunday (Oct. 30), approximately 30 percent of the people attending the community building exercise were from minority or underrepresented groups. Jean Handley, a Memphian who has over 20 years of experience doing process-based restorative justice and conflict transformation work, led the exercise.

In the last two weeks, James has met people from all over the world. Since his arrival, he says tourists from Germany, New York, Nashville, a journalist for the New York Times and labor leaders have visited the camp, which typically has more than a dozen tents. On weekends, as many as 50 people sleep outside; during the week, the number falls to about 20.

In a community-building session, participants focus – not on learning about other cultures or discussing differences – but rather on listening and hearing the life stories of fellow travelers and “connecting to their humanity.”

In the circle’s closing moments, there is much reflection on lessons learned and sincere talk of personal transformation.

Sara B. Free, a youthful, passionate volunteer who has taken on much responsibility for the Occupy Memphis web operations, is not camping out but rather dropping in – as many of the supporters holding down fulltime jobs do.

This protest is also an outdoor classroom, Free says. As she speaks, there is a nearby table filled with books and reading materials called the “people’s library.” James shares that he is reading the Bible and a book on the Bush presidencies.

“I have a new found respect for people in different situations from different backgrounds,” says Free, who attended the community-building exercises alongside James on Sunday. Several members of the group tear up, and each time they are wrapped in loving arms and comforted, sometimes by stranger.

As he prepares to leave, James offers a final thought:

”Keep your eyes on this movement. We have a common denominator now. We depend on each other.”

With that he walks away, off to his next meeting. The others are waiting to hear what he has to say.

Tools for Bridging the Political Divides

 

 

When political dialogs become emotional and heated, try using a quote from a widely respected person to put the debate "on pause." Quotes - like the ones below - help us to step away from our position and consider the issue through a new lens.

  

Misinformation and disinformation:

 “In God we trust; all others bring data.”

   William Edwards Deming, American statistician and management guru

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“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. "

            Sir Winston Churchill

            (1874-1965)

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Dialogs on capitalism and corporate decision-making:

“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get.”    

 Investor and Philanthropist Warren Buffett

 

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 What and who matters

 "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)  

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Freedom of Speech      

 “People demand freedom of speech to make up for the freedom of thought which they avoid. "

         Soren Aabye Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher, theologian (1813-1865)

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Hard Work

"I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have."

                        

Thomas Jefferson      (1743-1826)

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Problem-Solving
  

"Each problem that I solved became a rule which served afterwards to solve other problems. "

                                             Rene Descartes       (1596-1650)

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Speaking Up

 

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. "

     Martin Luther King Jr.  (1929-1968)

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Truth

All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident."

   Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

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"History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon."

            Napoleon Bonaparte

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Critical Thinking

 Minds are like parachutes. They only function when they are open."

  

        Sir  James Dewar, Scientist (1877-1925)

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    " Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

              George Santayana, Spanish American essayist & novelist (1863-1952)

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    " I can’t understand why people are frightened by new ideas. I’m frightened of old ones."

 

              John Cage, American composer & philosopher (1912-1992)

                  ******************************************************************

 

             "What luck for rulers that men do not think."

                                        -Adolf  Hitler      (1889-1945)

 

                  *******************************************************************
 

Agree to Disagree

"Mother Nature & Father Time decide all arguments."

 

 

                           -- Michael Schefer, Philadelphia Daily News

  

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A Not So Colorblind Society

As we survey America's diverse political landscape, it is easy to conclude that we live in a colorblind society. Empirical research, however, continually challenges that notion and asks us to consider whether we have done enough to close the opportunity gap.

The latest study from academia looks at the effect of race on the sales of goods on the Internet.  In Race Effects on Ebay, Ian Ayres (Yale), Mahzarin Banaji (Harvard--Psych), and Christine Jolls (Yale)  assess effects of race on price offered and paid for baseball cards.

"We investigate the impact of seller race in a field experiment involving baseball card auctions on eBay. Photographs showed the cards held by either a dark-skinned/African-American hand or a light-skinned/Caucasian hand. Cards held by African-American sellers sold for approximately 20% ($0.90) less than cards held by Caucasian sellers, and the race effect was more pronounced in sales of minority player cards. Our evidence of race differentials is important because the on-line environment is well controlled (with the absence of confounding tester effects) and because the results show that race effects can persist in a thick real-world market such as eBay."

So the question before us as nation: How do we level the playing field? Should we try?

 

 

Leading Conversations That Lift Us All

 Everybody's talking but is it taking the country or the global village anyplace new or different?

How many everyday dialogs identify pathways for new collaborations or new ways to view old challenges? Whether you are talking to others at an occupation or at a tea or coffee party, check out these guide posts and keep moving forward.

Additional tips and materials are available at  www.libertylights.info  The Liberty Lights are ordinary people who made a commitment to leading community conversations online with grace, diplomacy and skill. They seek to engage neighbors and each other in efforts to increase community capacity, learn through mutual support and care, and create a tone and culture for holding meaningful dialogs.

1.  Ask powerful questions that seek to stimulate curiosity, unlock creativity and encourage others to examine their hidden assumptions, beliefs and biases. Transform dialogs into experiential learning opportunities. The questions below are designed to help you facilitate a thought-provoking conversation: Tell me your life story so I might better understand your beliefs. Who are you? (Explores partisan differences) Imagine we got it right. What steps did we take as a nation to reach consensus? (Helps stimulate creativity and curiosity) Could we take inventory of all the assets in our community and then decide how to bring the talents of those on the margins into the mainstream?  Where did you get your information from? Who is your source? (Demands accountability) As William Edwards Deming, the American statistician and management guru said, "In God we trust; all others bring data."

2.  Reflect on the following: What we know. What we don't know. What we don't know we don't know.

3.  Use universal sources that are likely to be accepted by broad audiences. Try to gather facts and statistics from a wide variety of news sources, books and experts. Sources must have credibility with the audience you seek to persuade. 

4.  Use words that inspire trust and develop avenues for collaboration and compromise. 

5.   Treat relationships as a form of currency: Maintain a diversified portfolio.

6.   Learn one surprising fact every day. Generously give away these gems to strangers. The more you share, the greater your return.

7.   Audit  your cultural assumptions and beliefs regularly to ensure they aren't limiting your ability to see truth or reality clearly.  

8.    When examining opponent’s arguments ask yourself: What is it they know that I don't know? 

9.    Embrace civility as a community and global investment strategy. As Mary Wortley Montagu says, "Civility costs nothing, and buys everything." We don't to agree but we ought to try to leave open the door to change.

 10.   Challenge a colleague's facts or conclusion, but never his or her character or grammar. 

11.  Refrain from using derogatory and offensive words that keep others from seeing how wise you are. 

12.   Model Cultural Competencies. Cultural competencies include: active listening, empathy, cultural awareness and knowledge, tolerance of ambiguity and more.

13.   Carry your culture into dialogs with you but don't let it hold you back. Keep in mind your beliefs, values and customs are but one book in the global library. Each volume offers fascinating life lessons. Individualists, who believe decisions should be based upon what's best for the individual, and collectivists, who believe decisions should be based upon what's best for the community, will often disagree. Combine both lenses, and a community gains a deeper understanding of the challenges.  

 Credits.: Making a Difference in Memphis Workshop 

Appreciative Inquiry: Asking Powerful Questions : Kansas Coalition Against Sexual And Domestic Violence 

Life is Messy; So is Democracy

 

A few nights ago, I drove over to Overton Park in Memphis to cover a planning meeting of the Occupy Memphis General Assembly. This colorful scene - complete with vegan cake and at least one alarming Halloween costume - is one that will not soon fade away.

Young adults, college students and several chronologically gifted folks like me gathered in circles to talk face-to-face. A young child - wise beyond his years - welcomed newcomers to the pavilion by offering his hand in friendship.  Participants seemed approachable, respectful and highly skilled at making caring connections.  (The business owner across the table from me approached a stranger with crutches to make certain she had a ride home. As it turns out, she wasn't sure she did.)

After darkness set in, blanketing the area in a cover of blackness, Occupy Memphis members used cell phones and flash lights for light so they could keep on working. Watching them filled me with hope and pride.

Journalists tend to describe the Occupy America movement as a group of unemployed, angry people or as anti-capitalists. That, however, was far from my experience. Perhaps citizen frustration runs deeper and wider here in Memphis. I met business owners, entrepreneurs, stay-at-home moms, peace activists, nurses, lawyers and a police officer in uniform who volunteered to pass out papers to the Assembly.

The Memphis General Assembly established a remarkably complex democratic process that borrows heavily from Occupy Wall Street. There are no designated leaders so leadership rotates and ordinary members are asked to step up. After a local TV newscast submitted a request to interview members at the studio, names were put into nomination and then the nine nominees decided which of them would go.

Any member of the Assembly is able to bring a proposal to the group. These proposals then are voted on by the Assembly, which asked members to use hand signals to show approval, disapproval and to block. Any member has the power to block a proposal, which simply means it is sent back for finetuning and further debate.

Messy, huh? But, oh so beautiful, to witness.  The messaging committee recommended that the group release a public statement that, among other things, supported health care as a basic right. That proposal was blocked, then sent back to the messaging committee. A lone blocker felt this issue was too divisive and might keep the movement from finding more diverse audiences. Impressive that he thought to speak for people who were not yet there.

 Occupy Wall Street  is interesting because it is being built upon a foundation of inclusion - a point being missed for some reason by many national and local media. That is one reason why it is unclear what the group wants or seeks. True inclusion often creates confusion, ambiguity and uncertainty.  This group is struggling to learn how to manage inclusion and diversity of thought. Right now, it is what sets them apart from Congress and other highly partisan groups.

The Occupy Memphis Group has developed a set of non-violent principles I would like to share. They are carefully thought out principles we might all use at work or at home.

• Our attitude will be one of openness and respect toward all whom we encounter, regardless of their attitudes and actions.
• We will use no violence, physical or verbal, toward any living thing. By violence we include comments or behavior that are racist, sexist, ageist, homophobic or otherwise oppressive.
• We will carry no weapons.
• We will not bring or use any alcohol or illegal drugs.
• We will not destroy property.
• We will respect each other’s voices and tactics and work to insure that all of our issues are heard.