Hello, and welcome to our new blog about diversity! This blog will be written mainly by my husband Dr. Leo Parvis, and myself, Julie Parvis. Occasionally you may hear from our business partners Bob and Terresa Steinbach. We run a company called diversitypromotions.com, where we promote positive messages about diversity in a number of ways, including the creation of our “Embrace Diversity” logo and products; written materials such as articles, books, and other educational materials; we do presentations, workshops and plan special diversity-related events. We are also responsible for establishing National Diversity Day, the first Friday in October (October 5th this year).
We hope through this blog we will be able to share our thoughts and provide educational material relevant to the subject of diversity and its many related topics. We welcome your input, and hope we will become a resource you can turn to for help and information on diversity-related matters.
Yesterday, my business partners and I received what I would call a “nasty” e-mail concerning a column my husband writes for our local newspaper. I edit and also contribute to his column from time to time, and as a matter of fact, I had contributed to this one quite a bit. The column is called “Eye on Diversity,” and while we cover a variety of diversity topics, we usually try to include a local spin. This one didn’t specifically have a local spin, but definitely hit a nerve with a local person, who then sent us his reaction via e-mail. This particular column was about while great strides have been made in this country to change racist behavior, there are still problems with racist attitudes.
A number of examples were given, including one about two of Leo’s students (he teaches cultural diversity classes at a local college), each of these students come from a different country in Africa. They told him that they had recently decided to stop shopping in local grocery stores on the weekend, because they have noticed that often the people who hand out free samples at the stores on the weekends turn away or look down when they are walking by and don’t offer them samples or engage them in conversations like they do other (white) people. This is what it says in the column:
“I asked them not to do that and told them I think they should specifically continue shopping on weekends so as to make these ignorant individuals aware of their presence in our diverse America. To approach them and make the first step, to go forward with confidence and a friendly attitude to make others feel more comfortable, and help change their attitudes. It is a two-way street.”
The basic message of the column is to try to encourage people to mix with all types of people, to be pro-active in taking the first step–the more we mix with people who are different from us, the more we learn about others and try to look at things from their viewpoints, the more accepting, tolerant, and inclusive we are, the more racist attitudes will cease to exist. Other examples in the column included references to the recent scandals caused by anti-gay slurs among the cast of “Grey’s Anatomy” and the cutting remarks made about people’s physical attributes during auditions for “American Idol” by the judges. A positive example we included was about the two black coaches heading to the Super Bowl, and the diversity to be found amongst the possible presidential candidates. If you want to read the full column as it was printed in our local newspaper, please send me an e-mail with “article” in the subject and I will be happy to e-mail it to you. ( julie.parvis@gmail.com )
The e-mail we received was filled with hateful accusations and racist attitudes, and accused us of being racist and calling elderly people ignorant. Since we didn’t even mention elderly people in the column, we were at first confused as to what this person was ranting about (the e-mail was filled with miss-spelled words, lots of capitalization’s and over-punctuation). We finally decided that maybe he was one of the people who hands out samples at the grocery store, perhaps he is elderly, and he took what we said as a personal affront against elderly people who hand out samples at the grocery store as a way to supplement their income. Which of course, we did not intend to insult him or anyone else. I think he thinks that “ignorant” means “stupid” and not as the dictionary says “unaware or uninformed.” Let’s face it, in a state that was originally settled by primarily white Scandinavians and Germans, there are still today, some people who have not had contact with many diverse peoples, especially in small communities far away from major cities, and so they may experience a level of discomfort when dealing with people different from themselves. And no, I am not trying to insult people from small white communities, I grew up in one in north-central Minnesota and I still remember when Jesse Jackson was campaigning and he came to our town, and they had this huge turn-out–not because people cared about what Jesse had to say, but rather, many of them had never seen a black person up close and in person before! Really, that is what people were talking about, not his views on election issues. Anyway, I digress.
What I really want to say is, that in this wonderful world, people are free and allowed to freely express their opinions in columns in newspapers, in letters to the editor, in e-mails, and yes, even in blogs. So while I was at first upset by the false accusations and hateful attitudes expressed in that nasty e-mail, I do appreciate living in a country where we are free to express ourselves and where people from many different backgrounds can peacefully co-exist, and, hey, he did give me the first topic to write about in our first blog! God bless America and all who live here!
Do you have a story to share about how you handled blatant racism and was able to turn it around to a more positive outcome? Or maybe you deal with racism on a daily basis at work or school and want to share your story? We’d like to hear from you!
