This has been taken from our organization’s web page:
The Port Commission established the Charles Blood Champion of Diversity Award in September 2000. Named for a leader who has been devoted to issues of inclusion throughout more than thirty years with the Port, the award is given annually to a current employee who embodies the Port’s diversity commitments and values.
A champion of diversity is someone who:
- Challenges behaviors and practices that do not align with the Port’s commitment to diversity and supports those that do.
- Genuinely demonstrates an appreciation and respect for people of all backgrounds, communication styles and approaches to business.
- Engages in inclusive and open discussions to experiment with new ideas.
- Views issues from multiple perspectives.
- Challenges limiting assumptions and beliefs.
- Communicates with honesty and integrity.
- Confronts and addresses difficult diversity issues.
This year I was the recipient. Usually, the recipient has a few minutes to tell everyone about themselves and their work. Following is the speech I gave on my day. I have deleted the names of people because I’m really not sure how anyone feels about being listed on a blog.
I feel honored and a bit overwhelmed to be here with you today accepting the Charles Blood Champion of Diversity award. I am among good company, not just the previous recipients, and this year’s nominees, but also among you who are here, supporters of diversity.
I appreciate that you are here, and I would like to share with you a little of who I am and how it is I frame my work, which is simply creating places for conversation, and using our act of talking as a tool for social change. I’d like to say a bit about why I think that tactic supports my meaning of the word “Diversity”.
My larger question that I want you to think about today and to talk with me later is: “How can we keep the word ‘Diversity’ from becoming watered-down so that it no longer points to much needed social change surrounding issues of oppression, such as racism, sexism, and class?”
My life has been blessed in many ways.
A long time ago, in a life far, far away, I was raised by alcoholic parents in an environment overshadowed with violence and mental illness in otherwise placid, white, working-class Queen Anne. Between my two parents there wasn’t a group categorized by religion, gender, race, ideology or class that one of them didn’t hate. I wasn’t particularly liked either.
The blessing was that I found that information obtained from my parents was usually wrong at best, and that I was free to reject their values. I also learned that silencing voices by “keeping secrets” is a form of oppression.
I was very fortunate when I was ten. A traveling poet came to our grade school, and I was one of a small group who received lessons in how to write poems. Through the sometimes self-indulgent, sometimes defiant act of writing poetry I was able to see that honest, individual artistic expression can be a form of resistance.
Each of us here has the power to harness creativity to express and move toward a better future. Each of us here has the power to question our own beliefs.
I wanted to grow up to be a hippie, live off the land and practice free love, but instead in my late teens I became a born-again, Charismatic Christian.
For one year I lived in Sunland, California as a member of Youth With A Mission, which operates as a Service-oriented Commune. I traveled to Juarez, Mexico and handed out bibles door to door. I preached in a downtown Los Angeles rescue mission and answered the prayer line on Trinity Broadcasting Network.
I couldn’t help but notice that many of the people I offered this philosophy too more readily needed food, clean water, and housing. I learned that people will tell us –if we listen—what they want or need; it is not our place to decide what others need.
I have since taken a spiritual trajectory that is more in alignment with my values, yet I value having had the opportunity to develop an ethical infrastructure, to practice different change models, and to be part of a community committed to something larger than themselves.
The most important lesson I learned during that phase of my life was that when we listen to others share their life story we are less likely to demonize them; we are more likely to care about what they care about.
Imagine if we had here, at the Port, a process in place for public listening, where we were committed to staying together long enough to discover each other’s ideas and significant issues?
In my twenties and thirties, I alternately studied feminism and psychology. By Forty I started working here and I went to Antioch University to complete an undergraduate in Psychology and a Masters in Systems.
I chose to study Systems because it is a philosophy that examines change in social systems, such as organizations like the Port, and in communities. I wanted to make sure that the work I was attempting to do was founded in both theory and practice.
Systems’ thinking suggests ways for creating sustainable change, such as dialogue and collaboration, which is where I place my focus.
I’ve learned that silence is a system that goes hand in hand, like smoke and fire, with the system of oppression. If there is one, there is most assuredly the other.
Silence and Oppression support each other. Those of us here who believe there is still work to do around civil rights, human rights, and diversity, one way we can approach that work is to engage in frequent, deep, meaningful conversation about issues that matter most to us.
We are very polite here at the Port. Do you find that we are often polite because we are uncomfortable talking about our differences in meaningful ways? Politeness is often a form of silence. Does being polite in the face of injustice perpetuate oppression? I’d say yes, however I really want to hear your views on this, because if we want a world that is inclusive, that benefits us all, we need our combined intelligence and the full expression of our gifts. We need to speak truth to each other; regardless how insurmountable it may feel.
By engaging in dialogue, we create a shared language. This is vital if we are going to create sustainable cultural change. I’m confident that we share the same understanding of words like “plum”, and “sofa”. I am not so confident that we share an understanding of other words, such as “diversity”, “social change,” or “human rights”.
My sister, in that sibling rivalry way, shared with me some of the “diversity work” she was doing at her company. Initially, I was excited; because of my siblings she was the one least likely to concern herself with human rights issues.
She relayed to me that she had hired a young lady that her staff considered ignorant because she spoke in the “distinctly nonstandard African American vernacular”, or Ebonics. My sister had taken upon herself the task of teaching this young lady to speak “correct” English.
Now, I am not a linguist, and I am not educated enough on this issue to tease through the controversies surrounding Ebonics, but I am smart enough to recognize the arrogance that comes with being an identified member of the dominant group.
As my sister continued talking, I discovered that the young lady she’d hired was white. So, in my sister’s mind, taking a white girl and making her whiter was diversity work. Assimilation and homogenization is not diversity work. We need a shared language.
In 2002 through 2005 I had the opportunity to serve on the Accounting Diversity team. We spent two hours every other week talking about diversity, how to educate others, how to best make diversity a focus within accounting, and how to model it for the rest of the Port.
It is my opinion that our team’s success or lack of success ran parallel to the times we engaged in conversation and the times some of us were closed to conversation.
I am deeply grateful to the founding APS-Diversity team, not only for the opportunity to practice change, but for relationships, and for the generosity of their spirits. I will appreciate it if you can stand when I call your name:
- x
- x
- x
- x
- x
Please join me in thanking them. Thank you. [Applause]
In his role as a Director, X supported me, provided resources and lived his commitment to diversity.
Positive, sustainable cultural change requires both top-down and bottom-up efforts.
I have found that even lacking positional power, we can partner with others; we can find resources to champion diversity. We can educate ourselves and be our own authority.
We don’t have to wait for the perfect leader. You can make a difference.
There are managers and directors such as x, like x, and x, who support those of us without positional power. What they have shown us is that:
- Leaders, you can examine your commitments and values, you can reconcile those values with the Ports value of diversity and inclusion.
- Leaders, you can learn how to integrate and not assimilate your staff.
- Leaders, you can wisely steward the power and the responsibility that comes with positional power.
- Leaders you can become motivators by focusing on honest conversation, high involvement, and creating strong, high-trust relationships.
And these are things we must all do because there is so much wasted talent held in abeyance in these cubicles, so much untapped creativity and wisdom lost. It makes me very angry.
I attended a woman’s conference last month and the facilitator asked for someone to share a frustration they experienced related to their job. I shared that it was frustrating to me to have such a huge gap between my skills and my responsibilities.
A couple of the women participants gave a shout-out that I should just be thankful I had a job.
Like me, they had, at a very young age learned the behavior and beliefs necessary to perpetuate our oppression as working-class woman.
We must talk about our experiences so we can reveal and change the mind-sets that trap us. If, at that conference, we had been discussing gratitude toward our employers I would have said that yes, I am thankful however, If we cannot talk openly about what is problematic within our organizations and work groups, within our relationships, within our families, our communities, within the Port, if we have to get all obsequious then we are not just accepting, but perpetuating our oppression. We must be each other’s witnesses and speak out truth.
I want to express gratitude to several Port people who, through meaningful conversation, have supported, expanded, influenced, challenged and criticized me as I continue to learn how to “walk this talk”. The Port employees I want to thank include (but are not limited to):
- x
- x
- x
- x
- x
- x
- x
- x
- x
One last note before I sum up:
x and I have been talking. Out of our conversation the Accounting and Financial Reporting Green Team is starting a book-slash-discussion group to explore themes of sustainability and our responsibility to each other.
In my mind, conversations about issues of sustainability lead to discussions about resources; resource discussions lead to issues of access and power; issues of access and power discussions lead to discussion of oppression; and to me, issues of oppression are diversity issues. So, I am there. Please watch the Compass for more details.
Thank you. I appreciate your allowing me to share with you today.
How can we keep the word “Diversity” from becoming watered-down so that it no longer points to much needed social change surrounding issues of oppression, such as racism, sexism, and class? Please tell me!
Let’s work together to make sure that championing diversity stays focused on substantial human rights issues. Let’s make sure diversity doesn’t end up being just a visual effect.
Let’s talk about what is timeless, what is meaningful, let’s explore the characteristics that have led to our successes as well as the behaviors and beliefs we find problematic.
Let’s Talk!
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