I’m sad to report that elements of racial intolerance are still alive in America. As a Black man I’m encouraged that society has embraced the tenets of multiculturalism and diversity as an anthem of the 21st Century. Yet my heart breaks as vestiges of intolerance based on race persist where we live, work, and play. These elements are arbitrary, subtle, and stubbornly exhibited across the enterprise. Consider events that made the news during the summer months:

•Lack of minorities to anchor the local evening television news looks more like the 50s than the new millennium;
•A 2005 study found that Blacks are targeted by police for traffic stops more often than other drivers;
•A star basketball player, and former Trailblazer player, charges racism during a traffic stop;
•Blacks continue to raise suspicions while shopping;
•A local bakery recently settled a sexual and racial harassment lawsuit;
•A star baseball player surging towards breaking the coveted home run record is singled out among others and charged with using illegal performance-enhancing pills.

We will never attain Dr. King’s beloved community while operating from a dated model based on segregation, inferiority/superiority, and beat down/keep down. So, let’s get down and dirty.

Based on what’s transpired just this past summer, the honorable goals of diversity and multiculturalism fall upon hard ground in America because the soil hasn’t been turned.

The better analogy is an emergency room patient being administered a blood transfusion for internal bleeding. You don’t stop internal bleeding by pumping blood into the patient.

And since the first arrival of enslaved Africans, the slaughter of Native Americans, Black Codes, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Act, and now to the philosophy of multiculturalism, we’ve been pumping blood. The United States, even Colonial America, has been in a cataclysmic state of hemorrhaging. In medical parlance the time has come to get a second opinion. Or, turn the soil.

Census data certainly underscores the need for open minds, as waves of newly arrived immigrants from foreign soil call America home. The influx prompted one scholar to call America the “new Africa.”

Sadly, perceptions of the “other” aren’t necessarily congruent, as the American populace strives to embrace a new arrangement. A country saddled with a clear case of schizophrenic notions of race and cultural identity ultimately struggles. Maybe not the best example, but our youth are showing signs of the illness.

For example, we have urban White, Black and Brown youth calling each other “niggahs,” (sic) sanctioned by rap music, video images, and Hollywood movies. Is this the tidy fit the multiculturalism and diversity movement hoped to achieve? (To apologists: Is it okay to use the equivalent disparaging remark about Jewish people, Asian, Native American, or Mexican?)

This also stands in stark contrast of how, or if, the moment of multiculturalism and diversity translates to the rest of society in meaningful ways.

Diagnostically, we need a blue print that considers our unique problem — the kind that comes from scholarship and experience with the American arrangement. A good start is to loose the tyranny of fear.

A fear proposed by decision makers and from those that uphold the current system — unwilling to admit the pillars on which this nation was founded — has failed Black, Brown Red, Yellow, and White people. That Eurocentric thought in all its machinations, working in isolation as savior of America and the world, may not be the answer — not even where diversity and multiculturalism aren’t a factor.

We need a to recreate a framework for a system that the entire diverse populace will benefit from. In addition we must release our captives from the violence of poverty, sickness, unemployment, unaffordable housing and healthcare. If your attitude is at variance to the goals of diversity, peoples’ lives will remain in the dungeons.

In bringing the point back to the concept of multiculturalism and diversity, every race and culture should take claim of the best of cultural mores and values. Then we must be very selective in choosing what works for a diverse population like America.

I know for sure that Black Americans need to shun the failed philosophy of integration in exchange for what Randal Robinson proposes in his book, The Debt:
“I am this new self and an ancient self. I need both to be whole. Yet there is a war within, and I feel a great wanting of the spirit.” (Sutton Press)

If we take the Robinson notion to the edge, every race must accept its past, and build a present informed by what we learn from this acceptance. Now, if you’re the race in power, it’s hard to accept responsibility for being wrong, then to coalesce to create a collaborative, integrated platform of ideas informed by what works for a diverse populace. But this is precisely what a true world leader must do.

A final note is, and I get no pleasure in writing it, but in one of her books’ brilliant moments, Dr. Joy DeGruy-Leary confers the notion:
“People can identify so closely with their tormentors they become like them.”

We’ve seen minorities successfully assimilate the mores of corporate Euro-America. They take on the attitudes, assumptions, and philosophies of the system, and even claim immunity until they get pulled over by while driving their luxury sedan, or get the eyeball while shopping an exclusive department store. Now you know, like your less fortunate minions experience everyday, that no matter how high you ascend — you still a (“N” word).

I boldly propose that since enough Blacks are apathetic about social justice in Oregon, until a solution arises, White people sign up for membership in organizations like the NAACP, Urban League of Portland, the African American Alliance, or Chamber of Commerce. This would do much more for their understanding of the “other” than a week-long workshop on multiculturalism or diversity. At least half the problem would be solved.

Rashad’s writings deal with culture, aesthetics and spirituality. His topics, opinions and insights pay homage to the scholarly search for truth, which leads to personal responsibility and preservation of community life.