Opening Remarks for the NMCI Fall Institute

By: Elizabeth P. Salett, LCSW

November 8, 2007

Good Morning, and welcome to the National MultiCultural Institute’s Fall conference. I’m Liz Salett, president and founder of NMCI. I’m going to say a few words and then Gwen Crider, NMCI’s Executive Director, will also make a few remarks and introduce our speaker for this morning.

When NMCI first started nearly 25 years ago, we set as our mission to increase communication, understanding and respect among people of different backgrounds and experiences. Since then, there’s been a lot of hard work on new initiatives and programs aimed at reducing prejudice and inequity; and many of you have dedicated your lives and careers to these goals.

 And yet in the past few months, it feels as though a racist line has not only been crossed, but jumped, like a fireline in California. Overt racism, bigotry, racial threats and anti-immigrant drives have exploded onto our scene. And while not new, the intensity and number of incidents appear to have grown.

I don’t need to mention the dozens of nooses that have appeared, not only in connection with the Jena 6, but on Long Island, at Indiana State University, at Columbia University, and many other parts of the country and in widely diverse settings.

As I’m sure you were, I was stunned by recent comments by James Watson, a Nobel prize-winning scientist who helped discover the structure of DNA. He made sweeping and vicious statements about the IQ of people on the entire continent of Africa. In the past few weeks, John Tanner, the top ranking voting rights official at the Justice Department, was caught on video, arguing that photo ID requirements that disproportionately disenfranchise elderly minorities, was insignificant. Why? Because they don’t become elderly the way white people do: "they die first".

And did you see that Don Imus will be back on the air December 3rd for a regular morning program, despite his insulting and insensitive remarks last April to the Rutgers women’s basket ball team.

And the intensifying immigration debate has become nasty and demeaning. There have been swastikas and cross burnings in Northern Virginia aimed at scaring and forcing undocumented immigrants to leave.

The question is, what is going on here?

• Does it mean that racism is still so deeply embedded in the culture of our society, that having jumped the imaginary fire line, it’s now again permissible to give voice to the most outrageous statements?
• Or that ignorance about the past is so pervasive that many of the people, who do perform these despicable acts, don’t understand the historical context or meaning of what they do?
• Or that the media is hyping these incidents and that we are just more aware of them than we have been at other times?
• Or that our society has been so traumatized by 9-11 and the War on Terror that anything goes.

I don’t know the answer to these questions. But as I’ve mentioned at past conferences, for many white Americans, the changing status from majority to future minority, from being dominant to one of many, from a sense of entitlement to one of uncertainty, is scary and enraging. We could ask, as U.S. society changes and becomes more ethnically diverse, is one of the outcomes the emergence of an unreconstructed racist white minority?

On a more hopeful note, I was looking at recent polling data on race and ethnicity to see if I could find any that showed changes in attitudes over time. The most recent one I found was a USA Today/Gallup Poll on the question of attitudes toward inter-marriage. While not a perfect gauge, the trend is interesting and clear:

              in 1968, 20% adults approved on it;

              in 1978, 36% approved;

              in 1994, 48% approved and

              in September 2007, 79% approved.

This seems to reflect a striking shift in attitudes towards tolerance and acceptance. It’s not unreasonable to think that our work--- over 40,000 people have participated in our conferences and training over the years--- and your work and that of many others in the field, have helped to bring about changes in biased attitudes, reduced fear and ignorance, and supported new ways for people to work well across our differences.

 We may not have all the answers, but we do know that what we do is not only challenging but of real consequence. Therefore, now more than ever:

              It’s important that we be informed and effective,

              willing to examine our own motives and assumptions, and

              knowledgeable in the way we promote diversity and inclusion.

We have to share our experiences, work in coalitions, seek broad support among all sectors of our communities, and not be deterred by all the negativity around us.

Easier said than done, but that’s our challenge – I hope that your attendance here will help you gain some of the knowledge and skills that you need in your work, and that this process of learning and collaboration will continue well past the next 4 days at NMCI.