In a day or so this place will get busy with my colleagues who are getting together for the inaugural conference of the International Society for Diversity and Inclusion Professionals. And for a few days we will have passionate conversations about very important topics and rush to swimming pools at the end of the day to cool off and enjoy.

Swimming pools.

There is one right next to my building. I went there as soon as I dropped my bags in the room. I asked for a towel and got an uncomfortable explanation from a friendly young man at the counter that towels were only for red-level guests.

Red-level guests? It took a moment to compute.

A few minutes prior when I was checking in at the front desk a clerk put a blue bracelet on my wrist. It looks like something you get at the hospital or at the amusement park. This bracelet means that I am a guest at the resort. It means that I belong. I had no problem being marked as a part of the in group.

Now – here I am ready to jump into this enticingly turquoise water and being told that towels that are rightfully mine are at the main pool and that walking there along the beach will take me no time.

I am not “us” anymore.  I am now “them” or at least not “us enough”.

That does not feel right. I am about to get all righteous about it but my logical brain starts its boring reasoning with me.

It reminds me how flying here I enjoyed the fact that my frequent-flyer status with American Airlines gets me through a much shorter line at security.

But – I argue right back – they now started some new program that allows people to go through security even quicker and I have not had a chance to sign-up. That did not feel fair to stay in a short line and watch people walking through with no line at all. Here I thought I was in and I was not in enough, even there!

I came all the way to this Puerto Rican paradise to engage with my colleagues on issues of diversity and inclusion, power and privilege, differences and ways to bridge them. I came all the way here and brought with me an everyday and every minute reality of our relationship with privilege – now you have it, now you don’t.

I don’t like not having my privileges. At the same time I also have problems having privilege, since the nature of the beast is such that any moment I enjoy some kind of a privilege automatically means somebody else does not.

I need to clear my head around this.

I think I’ll go for a swim.

They kept saying he was a nice man, and he understood the industry, but there was no gushing.  They paid respect to the moment and the man.

Anderson Cooper missed the story behind the story.

What wasn’t said was that American Bandstand was not initially an integrated show.

Come on, we’re talking about the 1950’s.  I want to assume Dick Clark evolved like all the rest of us white folks who remember American Bandstand.

I googled Dick Clark on racism and found a reference to a time when, on the Pyramid game show, he offered a clue for things that are whipped: “Slaves that are disobedient” –then Clark added – “Of course, that was appropriate in a different era”.

It was a classic example of offensive statements that whites, often unthinkingly, make about blacks.

It’s not unlike the first line supervisor I heard of recently who wanted to compliment his line of workers, many of whom were African American, and sent them a “good job” card with a monkey on the front clapping symbols together. Most everybody agreed the first line supervisor was a “naïve offender”.  Maybe that expression fits for Dick Clark as well.

But some African Americans wanted to leverage the naïve offense to talk about racism.  What does that tell us?

Whites often see race as the first thing that blacks reach for to explain unequal treatment– generally characterizing that as “playing the race card”. Yet, the story we hear most often from African Americans is that they go to great lengths to avoid attributing different treatment to race. When blacks do bring up race, they usually have already gone down a checklist of what else it might be, and can’t explain what happened in any other way.

African Americans who wanted to leverage the thank you note to talk about racism, were not trying to “use the race card” for personal gain. The goal was undoubtedly to leverage an opportunity to talk about the elephant in the room.  That elephant is the subtle way that racism creeps into today’s workplace.

American bandstand has evolved along with the rest of the U.S. social landscape, which, as Eric Liu observed. “…. finds itself ever more in flux: between a white self image and a colored face.”

So how can we move forward and acknowledge that we really are a multiracial, multicultural society? And what will it take to effectively manage the mix?

One way is to learn to communicate better with those who are racially and culturally different from ourselves. The place to start there is to see the present dis-connect between how we see others and how others see themselves.

One example that comes to mind is a story my friend Ken tells of a white woman who he had worked with for many years who said to him one day in the office, “Ken, I don’t even notice you’re black any more”.  He responded, “You know Gladys, “I don’t even notice you’re a woman anymore.”

In playing down Ken’s race and seeing him as just “Ken”, Gladys was probably commenting on the comfort level of their working relationship. But in doing so she also misrepresented his reality, which was as he pointed out in his reply, was a both/and, not either/or, racial identity and experience, just as Gladys had with gender.

Flowers for my patio were delivered, and the macho delivery guy said, “I used to garden with my Mom.”

When I stopped at Fannie May, to buy Easter candy, a woman said, “When I was young, my great aunt was becoming senile, and we found out she only ate chocolate.  Now I understand her.”

Seems like everybody reminisces at holiday time. For me, Easter has its own vibe of reminiscences that has to do not only with relatives past, but also my family’s religious evolution.

My daughter is celebrating Passover.  My son is celebrating the Rite of Spring.

When I was a young Catholic kid, holy week was solemn.  We went to the Stations of the Cross on Good Friday, and I was so sad about each image of suffering.  I would get a powerful feeling in my soul at 3 in the afternoon – the time we believed Jesus died.

I don’t know what Easter means to me any more.  Growing up Catholic, it seemed Lent was sooooo long compared to the one day of celebrating Jesus’ resurrection. Catholics aren’t so much a salvation people as a people who know how to suffer and offer up the suffering for the poor souls in Purgatory.

Easter Sunday meant I could once again eat candy.  Man, how I gorged with that Easter basket.  Now that I’m grown, it’s hard to celebrate the end of suffering – when you grow up there’s always another suffering around the corner.

Life has such sweetness for me right now, that I can’t help but dwell on the fact that it will end.  I miss the old Easter.

Maybe I’ll become a Buddhist and realize and accept that life is suffering, so you might as well eat the strawberry.

Behind that request, no doubt, was the association of robberies with “people who wear ski masks” and an attempt to forestall the public alarm and fear that a covered face would otherwise create.

We can now add to the ski mask, the “hoodie”, made infamous now by the role it played in the killing of Trayvon Martin.

The issue there –apart from who wears it—is that it denies access to the face, which people often use to determine whether someone is “up to something or not.”

Because of racism, if the person wearing the hoodie is an African American male, what starts out as a general suspicion, ends up in specific certainty.

The public requirement that people present themselves with an “open face”, at times, goes even further.

Mainstream US culture also asks that people “look them in the eye” when addressing them and especially when learning is required, as in US classrooms.

Not doing so means, “you’re not listening”, or “not paying attention”, either of which, adds up to disrespect.

This takes on additional meaning in the context of a subordinate being chastised by a teacher or adult.

In Mainstream US culture, for example, it means accepting the punishment that is being meted out to you, whether you agree with it or not.

Looking away or down is seen as being evasive and cowardly, making whatever you did that got you into trouble, even worse.

In other cultures, by way of contrast, looking an adult or superior directly in the eye when being addressed or criticized is a sign of rebellion or defiance, and taken as gross disrespect of that person’s authority and position — the opposite of what it means in U.S. mainstream culture.

Add to face and eyes the matter of touch.

A recent article by Mark L. Keam highlights the problems that happen cross-culturally when Korean store owners or their staff in black communities interact with their African American customers.

As Keam points out, “In some Asian cultures, it is considered rude to look at a stranger directly in the eye or to physically touch a stranger in an intentional way.  So when a recent immigrant from Asia who is working as a cashier in a small grocery store refuses to look at his African American customer in the eye or to place the change directly in the hands of the customer, it is not because the immigrant wants to be rude. Instead, the Asian immigrant is actually showing respect to the customer. “

From the African American perspective, however, a store owner not looking at them directly, and perhaps especially, avoiding touch, such as not putting money in their hands when returning change, conjures up the experience that Blacks had in the South of being “untouchable” and, therefore, also the image of being less than fully human.

So how can we move forward in getting and setting things right?

From our perspective, it starts with having a conversation. Not just any conversation, mind you, but one that  deals with topics and issues that are difficult, and up to now, mostly impossible to discuss.

Things that make us who we really are.

Especially things that make us different.

The Sacred Heart Catholic School student, 12-year-old Miranda Washinawatok, was not allowed to play in a basketball game as punishment for speaking the Menominee language in class to a classmate.

When the story first broke my first thought was, “Here’s a first year or new teacher who over reacted, did not attempt to ask the student what she was saying, nor asked any questions about the
language that was being spoken, and then moved to punish the child because she spoke differently, with the student doing no more than using a language she learned from her parents and grandmother, who also happens to be one of our original Menominee language instructors.”

I thought, “Would the teacher have done this if the girl was speaking French or Spanish or Hmong –we have families in Shawano who speak these languages– or because it was something she did not
understand and made no attempt to find out”.

Then the school administrator claims in his apology and statements to the press that he suspended the Menominee girl from her basketball game that evening for having an “attitude,…”

Yet, he also did not notify the girl’s mother or family of his action.

He later claims that his action was due to miscommunication and a lack of knowing the facts surrounding the classroom incident and the teacher’s actions.

Richie Plass is working with the family and has offered to assist the school with setting up some cultural programs and sensitivity training for school staff.

I have told him I would be willing to assist in any way that I can.

They were recognized for their efforts to recruit and retain women and girls in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

I am humbled to be selected as one of those twelve individuals and share this honor with numerous mentors and colleagues with whom I have had the tremendous opportunity to collaborate on research.

Two years ago, President Obama’s Educate to Innovate campaign was launched to improve the nation’s participation in STEM, particularly for youth.

Among the three pillars of this campaign is the commitment to “expand STEM education and career opportunities for underrepresented groups, including women and girls.”

My scholarship supports this third pillar by contributing research evidence to the STEM discourse on the impact of cultural factors on academic and career outcomes….

Addressing Career Development.

Many individuals are highly motivated to pursue and intrinsically interested in STEM fields but have limited knowledge about the diverse career pathways and jobs they can pursue with a STEM degree.

In a recent New York Times article on November 4, 2011 titled, “Why Science Majors Change Their Minds”, data from the National Science Board was reported that many STEM students lose sight of why they pursued the field in the first place.

Facilitating career exploration, career planning, and career commitment may help address this erosion of STEM career goals.

What can you do?  Consider these six ideas:

• Increase your understanding of how cultural factors, like race/ethnicity and gender, may influence STEM academic and career development. See my article on ” The vocational significance of Black identity: Cultural formulations approach to career assessment and career counseling with African Americans,” and the special March 2011 issue of Journal of Women and Minorities in Science and Engineering on the status of women in STEM, guest co-edited by Angela Byars-Winston and Silvia Canetto.
• Challenge stereotypes—directly address and discuss potential implicit bias, prejudice against underrepresented minority groups in STEM. See empirically-supported strategies for reducing and resisting bias.
• Enhance individuals’ cultural competence to work in historically culturally-homogenous STEM environments. See jointly authored articles on the Influence of social cognitive and ethnic variables on academic goals of underrepresented students in science and engineering …,”  and, “Integrating Theory and Practice to Increase Scientific Workforce Diversity: A Framework for Career Development in Graduate Research Training.”
• Facilitate career development and career planning in undergraduate and graduate STEM research training programs.
• Broaden individuals’ knowledge of what STEM careers are. See video of panel discussion in May 2010 from the US Dept of Labor on youth entering STEM careers. See website for ideas and resources by Prof. Rich Feller.
• Do something local in your community to advance the next generation in STEM. For ideas, visit the following website. Enter your zip code and be immediately connected with local STEM activities, efforts, and collaborations in which to become involved!

I am doing my part to support President Obama’s challenge to “Out-Build, Out-Educate, and Out-innovate” future competitors.

Please join me and the other 2011 Champions for Women in STEM in doing the same.

Stories of racial profiling of whites by blacks, however, also occur, especially in sports –the truism or stereotype being that black athletes are superior to white athletes.

This was made much of in “White Men Can’t Jump” and was the basis of a “con”, or “hustle”, perpetrated by the characters played by Wesley Snipes and Woody Harrelson in the movie.

Green Bay quarterback, Aaron Rodgers, brought this matter up on his talk show recently as a possible reason why wide receiver Jordy Nelson –who is white—continues to get one-on-one coverage compared to Packer black wide receivers.

As is customary when the topic of “race” is offered as a theory or explanation of why something happens, it immediately and automatically gets downplayed, as either being false –it’s dismissively called “playing the race card” by whites at work when blacks bring it up—or, as shown in subsequent media coverage on Rodger’s comment, too provocative to discuss, reflecting the U.S. mainstream cultural orientation that puts “peace before truth”.

This, in contrast to the more forthright African American cultural orientation that puts “truth before peace”, to which our black colleague often adds, “Without truth there can be no peace.”

One could also add, that without “truth” there can also be no further discussion of the topic –a form of putting one’s head in the sand– a rule of  public social etiquette that disallows, by fiat, any opportunity to explore further  what’s “out there,” and “really going on”.

For example, we might begin to deal with the black view of white and black athletic ability as a source of pride for blacks. I remember, years ago, when a black commentator grudgingly had to admit (for Blacks, culturally, “truth” above all, even if it hurts) that the best guard in the NBA at the time (before Michael, Kobe, et.al.) was Jerry West.

We might also learn that whites who live and work in contexts (athletics, jazz) that are heavily influenced by black cultural norms learn and adopt the  prevailing cultural style that gets you “over” (like African Americans and other ethnics have done in the U.S. mainstream workplace).

Thus, it is not surprising to see Aaron Rodgers  expressing a standard black held view, anymore than it is surprising to learn that Larry Bird was one of the best “trash” talkers on the basketball court.

As blacks often say, “What goes around, comes around.”

The question is, can we deal with it when it does?

In the U.S. we have created a myth of pilgrims and Indians coming together to share a feast.

It’s a myth that allows Americans to feel good about themselves coming to settle indigenous land.

I prefer to celebrate this holiday in a more basic way. For me, it’s a holiday that celebrates eating. I am thankful for food and the ability to smell and taste and eat it.

I have hanging in my kitchen a framed saying I picked up at an antique fair that says: “Some ha’e meat that canna eat, And some wad eat that want (need)it; But we ha’e meat, an’ we can eat, so let the Lord be thankit.”

I remember a thanksgiving when my Dad found a way to taste food. While battling cancer he had the roof of his mouth, part of his tongue, and a section of his jaw bone removed, along with his epiglottal nerve, which allows you to swallow.

He refused to have a permanent food tube inserted through his nose, which would allow him to pour cans of liquid food into his stomach.

Amazing man, my father, he had been a medic during WWII and wasn’t one to be squeamish.

Instead, he fashioned a contraption out of a douche bag with a thin tube attached. He would blenderize whatever delicious food my Mom or he cooked, and then would run the tube connected to the bag under warm water, and put it through his nose into his throat.

Then he’d pour in the food. He’d pat his stomach and say, “mmmm, that was delicious.”

One thanksgiving day he was determined to taste. He filled a cup with borscht, sour cream, and onions. He poured it back and forth from cup to cup to get any air bubbles out. Then he tipped back his head and poured. Down it went.

With tears streaming down his face, he literally fell to his knees. After that, he would have his daily draught of dark beer after pouring the contents from glass to glass to remove the bubbles.

My Dad, Barney Goldstein, had a tavern. People would come from far and wide to meet him, because he would never let life get him down. He’d point a finger and say, “Life is Good”.

So, this Thanksgiving, instead of imagining the myth of pilgrims and Indians, I suggest we all respectfully deal with the truth – whatever that means for each of us.

Dad always said, “The key to life is acceptance”. It helps to remember that, as life changes, and we sometimes long for an idyllic past.

And if you can, take the time to really taste the food you are enjoying!

They usually start out as friction, like deciding upon what time to leave for the airport.

My German Jewish side can’t stand being five minutes late.

My wife’s position—I’m not sure if this is Irish or just her—can’t stand being five minutes early.

Each of us conjures up different worst case scenarios in support of our position.

My worst case scenario is fraught with anxiety–that something will happen that we didn’t plan for or expect that will cause us to miss our plane.

Her worst case scenario is that we’ll leave too early and get to the airport too soon with nothing worthwhile to do.

At issue, also, is our different comfort level around waiting while doing nothing.

I’m like the camel. I can turn my motor off.

My wife can’t.

At best, her  motor is at “idle”: running but not moving.

For a sand piper (her kind of animal) that is a clear UGH!

Another difference revolves around what in business is called “planning the work and working the plan.”

My cultural side says let’s go with the plan ….

My wife’s position is to see our agreement to do something as something we might maybe do but also maybe not do ….

I took that as a plan, which meant, literally!

My wife did not.

Taking it a step further, my position was, if were not going to at least try—why bother having a plan to start with?

My wife’s position—and this is very much tied to the Irish side of her—is that the agreement was simply something that was said we were going to do, but not at all (and maybe in part because it was something we said we were going to do), binding on us to actually follow through on.

In fact—this is often my take on it (biased, but still true)—is that, characterizing our difference along ethnic cultural lines, I say (facetiously, of course), you need Germans to set the plan (an agreement that is binding) and the Irish to know what the agreement/plan is so as to know what not to do.

This fits our different cultural orientation to be more or less obedient or rebellious and the extent to which we take seriously/literally what we said we were going to do.

This pattern of difference started out for me as friction and has progressively moved to frustration and even fun.

It gets to fun when I can laugh about it.

That usually happen when I just play things as they develop or “go with the flow”.

That requires seeing differences as matters of right and left, not right and wrong.

It also means letting go of expectations.

Not so hard when you put your mind to it!

The tragedy and senseless killings in Norway reminded me of the horrific acts of September 11 and how that point in our history changed our country and our lives.

Extremism and hatred are human sicknesses.  Sometimes people with such sickness put a label of religion, political ideology or the likes to give themselves legitimacy.

However, as other sicknesses, extremism and hatred need to be eradicated, as we have done with polio.

The terrorist in this case, Mr. Anders Behring Breivikhad had hatred towards Muslims, multiculturalists, feminist women and immigrants.

Unfortunately, we also find out that the killer was “inspired” by American bloggers who are anti immigration, anti Muslims, etc.   As an American, I would like to see us instead export the American values of pluralism, equality, and sacredness of lives.

To build a stronger America and world, we need to learn about each other as human beings, to appreciate our differences and build stronger communities utilizing our differences and similarities.

As we work towards educating and building understanding, I am praying for love and peace around the world.