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

EEOC's Anti-Discrimination Efforts Benefit Many Races of Americans

 

The EEOC typically is thought of as an agency that benefits protected classes such as minorities, women and the disabled.

 This year's report shows the extent to which the work of this office benefits all classes and races of Americans. A record 99,947 charges of employment discrimination were filed  in Fiscal Year 2011, and the EEOC obtained $455.6 million in relief - a new record.

 Once again, charges alleging retaliation under all the statutes the EEOC enforces were the most numerous at 37,334 charges received, or 37.4 percent of all charges, closely followed by charges involving claims of race discrimination at 35,395 charges or 35.4 percent.

 While the numbers of charges with race and sex discrimination allegations declined from the previous year, charges with the two other most frequently-cited allegations increased:

 

•     Disability discrimination--25,742
•     Age discrimination—23,465

 The agency’s enforcement of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) produced the highest increase in monetary relief among all of the statutes: the administrative relief obtained for disability discrimination charges increased by almost 35.9 percent to $103.4 million compared to $76.1 million in the previous fiscal year. Back impairments were the most frequently cited impairment under the ADA, followed by other orthopedic impairments, depression, anxiety disorder and diabetes.

 For the first full fiscal year of enforcement, the EEOC received 245 charges under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of genetic information, including family medical history.  So far, none of these charges has proceeded to litigation.

 “For the second year in a row, the EEOC received a record number of new charges of discrimination,” said EEOC Chair Jacqueline Berrien. “Nevertheless, the hard work of our employees, combined with increased investments in training, technology and staffing in 2009 and 2010, and strategic management of existing resources made 2011 a year of extraordinary achievements for the EEOC.”

 Due to EEOC’s enforcement programs in both the private and federal sectors, 5.4 million individuals benefitted from changes in employment policies or practices in their workplace during the past fiscal year.

 EEOC’s public outreach and education programs reached approximately 540,000 persons.

The EEOC is typically thought of as an agency that benefits protected classes such as minorities, women and the disabled.

This year's report shows the extent to which the work of this office benefits all Americans. A record 99,947 charges of employment discrimination were filed  in Fiscal Year 2011, and the EEOC obtained $455.6 million in relief - a new record.

Once again, charges alleging retaliation under all the statutes the EEOC enforces were the most numerous at 37,334 charges received, or 37.4 percent of all charges, closely followed by charges involving claims of race discrimination at 35,395 charges or 35.4 percent. 

While the numbers of charges with race and sex discrimination allegations declined from the previous year, charges with the two other most frequently-cited allegations increased:

• Disability discrimination--25,742
• Age discrimination—23,465

 

The agency’s enforcement of Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) produced the highest increase in monetary relief among all of the statutes: the administrative relief obtained for disability discrimination charges increased by almost 35.9 percent to $103.4 million compared to $76.1 million in the previous fiscal year. Back impairments were the most frequently cited impairment under the ADA, followed by other orthopedic impairments, depression, anxiety disorder and diabetes.

For the first full fiscal year of enforcement, the EEOC received 245 charges under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of genetic information, including family medical history.  So far, none of these charges has proceeded to litigation.

“For the second year in a row, the EEOC received a record number of new charges of discrimination,” said EEOC Chair Jacqueline Berrien. “Nevertheless, the hard work of our employees, combined with increased investments in training, technology and staffing in 2009 and 2010, and strategic management of existing resources made 2011 a year of extraordinary achievements for the EEOC.”

Due to EEOC’s enforcement programs in both the private and federal sectors, 5.4 million individuals benefitted from changes in employment policies or practices in their workplace during the past fiscal year.

EEOC’s public outreach and education programs reached approximately 540,000 persons.

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.)

When Visiting the Doctor, Should You Mention Racism as a Health Issue?

The next time you visit your doctor, you might not want to hold back on sharing that story about the  black guy who called you a honkie or the white insurance agent that unjustly refused you a policy.

Discrimination, it appears, can adversely affect your health. That is the conclusion reached by Rice University sociologists Jenifer Bratter and Bridget Gorman in their study, "Is Discrimination an Equal Opportunity Risk? Racial Experiences, Socio-economic Status and Health Status Among Black and White Adults,"

The authors examined data containing measures of social class, race and perceived discriminatory behavior and found that approximately 18 percent of blacks and 4 percent of whites reported higher levels of emotional upset and/or physical symptoms due to race-based treatment. 

"Discriminatory behavior very well may be a 'missing link' in the analysis of racial and ethnic health disparities," Bratter said. "It's important to acknowledge and study its impact on long-term health. 

Given these findings, here's two questions cultural learners might ask: If communities successfully reduce discrimination, might they also bring down  healthcare costs? If companies eliminate racial, religious and gender biases, might their increase workforce wellness and boost productivity?

Unlike most of the research on this topic, Bratter and Gorman's study examines the health risks of discrimination among both whites and blacks, as opposed to just blacks. Their analysis was based on data from the 2004 wave of the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, an ongoing collaborative project between U.S. states and territories and the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This racially comparative focus is important because we examine whether discrimination is equally harmful to the health status of black and white adults – or whether experiencing discrimination is disproportionately harmful to either black or white adults," Gorman said. "For example, since, on average, black adults typically experience more health risks in their social and personal environment than white adults (including higher poverty and lower-quality medical insurance), they may be especially vulnerable to negative health effects as a result of racial discrimination."

Both Bratter and Gorman hope that their research will raise awareness about the impact racial discrimination has on health and wellness. "Ultimately we hope that practitioners and researchers in the medical field recognize the dual contribution of social class and interpersonal treatment in shaping health outcomes among persons of all racial populations," Bratter said. 

This study appeared in the September 2011 edition of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior and was funded by Rice University.

So here's the question we might ask: If we reduce discrimination, might we also bring down  healthcare costs? Should companies consider making diversity part of their wellness programs?

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

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

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)

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

                                        -Adolf  Hitler      (1889-1945)

 

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Agree to Disagree

"Mother Nature & Father Time decide all arguments."

 

 

                           -- Michael Schefer, Philadelphia Daily News

  

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If African Americans Use the "N" Word, Then Why Can't We All?

Dear Cultural Coach: If African Americans use the word “nigger,” then why can’t white people use it? This situation doesn’t make sense to me.  Is the word offensive or not?

 – Confused 

 Dear Confused:  In a vibrant, healthy garden, caretakers understand what individual plants need to grow. How much sunlight can they tolerate? How often should we water? Cultural groups, like flowers, require compassionate care and knowledgeable custodians. Instead of treating others as we wish to be treated, cultural cultivators and connectors must learn to identify and understand the emotional needs of others.  They, like the gardener, must know which behaviors will make relationships blossom, and which will cause the harvest to wither and die.

This isn't just about connecting with strangers: it is about expanding community capacity.

Words serve as a fertilizer. They make the soil richer, preparing it for new seeds.  Some words – love, compassion, assets, understanding, encouragement, gifts, inclusion, – are powerful. Spread them liberally, and they give communities the necessary nutrients to trust, tell personal stories and create new conversations about the future.  

Other words are toxic, even poisonous, like  insect sprays. They must be used sparingly, if at all.  Where these phrases are in liberal supply (news media websites, for instance), they limit opportunities for connection, collaboration and compromise.  Eventually communities become stuck and unable to hold useful dialogs.

My personal list of toxins includes: whitey, Jap, “the man”, Chinaman, bitch, spic, honkie, Hitler-like, “the white man”, darkie, colored, towelheads, "those people" … the list goes on and on. If you can’t tell fertilizer from insect spray should you be working in the garden?  Really?

Nigger is a word in a category all by itself. It is both a symbol of bondage and an emotional weapon.  For many African Americans, it brings to mind the brutal injustices they or their ancestors survived. Mentioning this word to some African Americans is a bit like saying to a family that lost a loved on 9/11, “Well, didn’t anything good happen to you on that day?”

Such culturally insensitive remarks are likely to prompt others to strike back, cry out, or wish that the space debris spiraling toward earth will land on you. It focuses their attention on a wound that has yet to heal. That doesn't help us or them.  

You mentioned, rightfully so, that some African Americans use that word often. This is true. Keep in mind that when they do, it is not used as a symbol or a weapon.  That is the distinction made by some African Americans.  Personally, I favor putting this – and all those words that deflate the human spirit -into early retirement.

My advice to the relationship builders toiling in the community gardens:

• Use fertilizer liberally. Try to use nutrient-rich words that are warm and invite discovery.  Be honest but respectful.  Authenticity is a rich soil that allows new conversations, new ideas and discovery.
• Focus on strengths more than weaknesses. If you spend all your time chasing the worms and birds, your garden might wither and die. Build capacity so your garden is equipped to survive the droughts and storms.
• Avoid toxins and poisons that harm and pollute the environment. I pick up my dog’s poop when we walk for a reason. I don't want to find dog poop in my front yard. Effective relationship-builders don’t  spread manure in public places because, ultimately, we reap what we sow.

 

Everyone Is A Bit Racist; It May Not Be Your Fault

 

Are you racist or are you just an American? Take time to read the next few graphs before you answer.

 Research shows that even people who have egalitarian beliefs can conjure up stereotypes or act upon hidden biases.  Stephanie Pappas, a senior writer for Livescience, recently sorted through this tangled  web of race in a new article. 

She says no matter how hard we try, each  of us  are influenced by culture: the words spoken on tv and  read in the newspapers and the opinions of family, friends, bosses and religious leaders. In other words, culture in a trump card in the deck we are asked to play.

She writes: "The new study finds that while people are quick to associate word pairs that bring to mind stereotypes (think "black - poor" versus "black - goofy"), this tendency is rooted not in the social meaning of the words, but in the likelihood of the words appearing together in literature and media. In other words, this implicit prejudice is driven more by culture than by any innate horribleness in the person, said study researcher Paul Verhaeghen, a Georgia Tech psychologist."

"There’s one idea that people tend to associate black people with violence, women with weakness, or older people with forgetfulness because they are prejudiced. But there’s another possibility that what’s in your head is not you, it’s the culture around you," Verhaeghen said in a statement. "And so what you have is stuff you picked up from reading, television, radio and the Internet. And that’s the question we wanted to answer: are you indeed a racist, or are you just an American?"

Can anyone really be colorblind?

Check out the entire article 

What If

What if, instead of bickering with each other, we could work alongside one another to learn what it takes to make a community great?

Imagine that you and I could sit together to have a conversation that emphasizes listening and learning rather than proving that our particular view of the world is smarter, wiser and more correct.

Imagine that communities had the capacity to grow simply by changing the words they use, the stories they share, the manner in which they ask questions and frame seemingly insurmountable challenges.

What might happen if diverse citizens, of all classes, learned to appreciate and invest in the extensive portfolio of talent in underutilized neighborhoods – capacity cities need to power local economies forward?

Liberty Lights is a new initiative designed to get the current political conversations unstuck by developing a culture and tone that supports new conversations, close connections and successful collaborations between groups and parties.  It shifts political discussion away from the “preach and teach arenas” and moves it toward open spaces where the culture and tone promotes honest exploration and discovery.

It seeks to increase community capacity to resolve human conflicts, consider opposing views, think creatively, listen, solve problems and promote the belief that diverse thinkers are compatible and interdependent, linked together by a shared future and common fate.

In lean economic times, the greatest challenge is not learning how to do more with less but rather how to appreciate and develop a wider range of community assets and increase the depth of our talent pools.

Liberty Lights seeks to:

1. Respond swiftly, with a sense of urgency, to the destructive floods of bigoted, inflammatory and false online posts on news media websites. 

• Establish and skillfully guide diverse online learning communities where individuals speak freely and respectfully, offer bold solutions and probe more deeply the textures of diversity, which are at the root of so many disagreements. 

• Demand shared responsibility and mutual accountability from elected officials, media, and corporate America.  

Learn more at www.libertylights.info