Our staff is committed to growing as culturally competent leaders which will allow GRIL to grow as an organization. Each month we read and learn together at our staff meeting. Last week, we began discussing the following from a Newsweek article by Ellis Cose in November 24, 1996.
“Americans have little alternative but to accept the possibility that race will continue to divide us. Yet it is clear that society is more hospitable to minorities and more – racially – egalitarian than it was a few generations ago. There is every likelihood that it can become more so. Hence, we have to ask the question – if only as an experiment in thought: Do we have the vaguest idea how to create a society that is truly race neutral? The short answer, I suspect, is no. Otherwise we would be much further along the way than we are. Still, I believe we can go beyond such platitudes as “Let’s just love one another,” which is the verbal equivalent of throwing up our hands in noble resignation. Enumerating steps our society could take toward racial sanity is obviously not the same as putting America’s racial goblins to rest. It is, however, a necessary prelude to moving the dialogue beyond the realm of reassuring yet empty platitudes. So what would some of those steps be?
Step 1 WE MUST STOP EXPECTING TIME TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM FOR US: In “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” there is a scene in which Sidney Poitier (who plays a physician in his thirties in love with a young white woman) turns, in a fit of rage, to the actor playing his father. Only when the older generation is dead, Poitier declares, will prejudice wither away. The sobering realization is that Portier is now older than his “father” was then, and the problems, obviously, remains. Time doesn’t heal all wounds; it certainly doesn’t solve all problems. It is often merely an excuse for allowing them to fester. Our problems, including our racial problems, belong to us – not our descendants.”