Making a Difference:

• Introduction: The Aim of This Session
• Session Four Discussion-Starters
  1. Working on the Issues that Face Us
  2. What kinds of public concerns involve diversity issues?
  3. Creating a new social contract
  4. Moving to Next Steps
     1. What can I do as an individual?
     2. What can we do in our homes and neighborhoods?
     3. What can we do in our community to create a common life?
• Links to Other Sessions and Other AMPU Resources

I have a feeling that we're all waiting for something to happen, for some divine intervention that will sit us all down at one table -- each race, each class, each faction -- and somehow we'll legislate, negotiate, mediate, and make everything all right.

There's this assumption that we're missing some essential ingredient, but in fact all the ingredients are here. It's as if we are in a kitchen and have all the components to make the bread laid out, and we're looking from bowl to bowl unable to make that leap of imagination to mix this with that and put it in the oven and eat it.

We're waiting for other people to do it, and that's totally antithetical to our can-do, will-do, know-how, make-shift, made-up country.

-- Allan Gurganus

We have talked and thought about how we describe ourselves, about how we come together or stand apart, and what it means to be an American. What can we do with the information and insight we've gained over the course of these conversations? How will we make that leap of imagination that Allan Gurganus talks about and work together to forge a common life that sustains all of us?

There are more questions here than you will have time to address. Choose a few that you think will be most interesting to your group.

1. What have you heard and learned during these discussions that has surprised you? What will have the largest impact on your attitudes? your actions in the community?

2. What events in our local history have had an impact on how people work together, or avoid working together?

3. If there are tensions in our community that relate to difference, what efforts are currently underway to address these tensions? How can we build on those efforts? How can we expand them?

1. Spend some time as a group looking at the issues on the AMPU Guide Web page entitled What kinds of public concerns involve group identity issues?.
   • Are any issues missing from the list? Add your own.
   • Rank the top five for your community.

2. Take one of these issues, and describe the typical public debate about it.
   • What voices aren't heard in the debate?
   • In what ways does our diversity have an impact on that issue?
   • Have inequalities, or the tensions and mistrust among us, hindered us in moving ahead on this issue?
   • What have we learned in our conversations so far that would help our community talk about the issue in more constructive ways and begin to deal with it differently?

1. Have we had a "social contract" in this community? That is, has there been an unwritten code about what our rights and responsibilities as members of this place? If we were to create our own "social contract" right now, what would we include?

2. One proposed set of principles has been posted in this Web site, excerpted from a speech by Henry Cisneros, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Are these principles proposed by Secretary Cisneros a good place to start? Why or why not? Are there others principles that would you propose?

What next steps can we take to make a difference? Of the various ideas listed in this session, which seem the most promising? What groups and individuals in this community or outside might support us as we act on these ideas?

1. What can I do as an individual?

   • Take leadership. You don't have to be an elected official, or a well-known civic leader, to be effective. Approach top community leaders and encourage them to foster public dialogue. At the same time, begin dialogues in your own neighborhood as a way to reach out beyond the groups you belong to. Your initial work to bring people together will give you the experience and credentials for a larger role in the community.

   • Talk about community issues whenever you can. Speak up when people take positions that work against inter-cultural understanding and communication.

   • Support local businesses that are run by people of diverse backgrounds.

   • Read about different cultures and traditions. Start with your own and branch out from there.

   • Learn about your local history, and use what you have learned to inform your conversations. Public libraries, historical sites and societies, and history museums are all good resources. Chapters from books, articles, oral histories, and visits to museum exhibits can be used to jump-start conversations. See the resource section of this Web site for places to turn for help.

   • Ask yourself what you can do to help bring your skills to the people in your community. Can you help more people to recognize and take advantage of opportunities?

   • Volunteer to help teach new immigrants how to speak or read English.

   • Tutor students who want to learn a language you know.

   • Be an informed voter.

   • Find out about your representatives in government. Are the people in your community well represented?

   • As elections near, volunteer to help register people to vote, or work to get out the vote

   • Greet people who are different from you in a friendly way.

   • Ask yourself some basic questions. Do you know and associate with people from different backgrounds? Why or why not?

2. What can we do in our homes and neighborhoods?

   Our community's children likely will grow up in a diverse world. How can you prepare them to get along with people of different backgrounds? Here are some ideas:

   • Encourage local merchants to carry toys and books for children that reflect and respect differences among people.

   • Avoid stereotyping, and teach your children to be concerned with the content of a person's character.

   • When groups mark special occasions or celebrate holidays, find out what the celebration is about. What do Yom Kippur, Kwanzaa, Easter, and Ramadan mean to the people who observe them? Talk with your children about the meaning of the holidays.

   • Welcome new neighbors, and seek out opportunities to meet newcomers in the community. Reach out especially if they are people from a different background than yours.

   • Before you barbecue, ask yourself what national American holidays mean -- July 4th, Washington's Birthday, Lincoln's Birthday, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and more. What are these holidays commemorating? In an age as diverse as ours, are these days important for something besides leisure time? Ask others what they think.

   • Have an open block party in your neighborhood. Ask guests to bring a favorite traditional ethnic dish from their family's heritages.

   • Start a neighborhood "community service project" that includes young people from all backgrounds.

3. What can we do in our community to create a common life?

   • Make study circles an ongoing part of the community, on all sorts of issues. Include community groups of all kinds as study circle sponsors, so that all community members will know that they are welcome to take part. Media participation can also promote widespread involvement: in some places, radio and TV stations run public service announcements to encourage participation in the study circles, and newspapers print supportive editorials.

   • Convene community-wide cultural development planning. This could be an effective way to channel the energy generated by a successful round of comunity conversations about cultural identity and diversity. This process could draw out a range of community members' ideas about how they'd like to see cultural life change.

   • Encourage the newspaper to write a series of stories that document the history of the community. Who has settled in the community, and why? How have groups related to each other? Some newspapers have done extensive series on current-day relations between races and ethnic groups.

   • Start a community arts project. That is, use the arts and media as ways for people to express themsleves and their own cultural identities. Community arts projects can take many forms: photo-text exhibits, video and audio "speak outs," murals and other pieces of public art. In some communities, short plays have been "discussion starters" for community conversations.

   • If there are ongoing tensions between groups in the community, leaders from these groups can form an alliance to discuss ways of working together. One example of this is in New York, where African-American and Korean-American leaders formed the Black/Korean Mediation Project.

   • Teach young people about diversity by helping them learn about the art that comes out of different traditions. For example, the Baltimore Learning Network, run by community volunteers, coordinates projects that link the schools to the city's cultural institutions.

   • Sponsor cultural outings for multicultural groups of students, where the groups can visit sites that help them learn about each other's backgrounds.

   • Sponsor projects where community members from all backgrounds will have opportunities to work together and break down patterns of segregation. For example, organize park clean-ups in areas that are usually segregated.

   • Hold a film festival that highlights diversity issues. One example of this took place in Glen Ridge, NJ, as a result of a study circle program on race relations.

   • Encourage and support civic leaders who are out front on the issues of diversity, who understand the importance of addressing them honestly and with everyone's involvement.

   • Create a community leadership program that includes people from all groups in the community, and that contains skills training in cross-cultural dialogue, mediation, and cross-cultural problem solving.

   • Congregations from different faiths and backgrounds can hold joint services, or work together on community problems.