Diversity: Human Destinies are Intertwined

1
Diversity Human Destinies are Intertwined
john a. powell Williams Chair in Civil Rights
Civil Liberties, Moritz College of Law and
Executive Director, Kirwan Institute
November 3, 2005 Findlay University Diversity Lec
ture Series
2
Overview

• The first step must be to define the problem or
  goals of the university
  
• Next, success must be defined. How do we know
  when were there?
  
• Then, we must look for the tools to achieve that
  goal.
  
• We must have diversity in our structures and
  institutions
  
• However, diversity cannot do all of the work. We
  must go further into the source of the current
  lack of diversity and also pursue a remedy
  there.

3
AGENDA

• Our Structures and Institutions are Racialized
• What is diversity?
• Why is diversity important? Why do we need
  diversity?
  
• Why are some audiences open to diversity, but
  opposed to affirmative action?
  
• What needs to be done in order to promote and
  actualize diversity?

4
I. The Problem Our Structures and Institutions
are Racialized
5
Enrollment at The University of Findlay
Findlay University Enrollment by Race/Ethnicity
2004
Race and Ethnicity in the U.S. 2000
Data Source National Center for Education
Statistics
Data Source US Census Bureau
6
Racial Diversity at the University of Findlay

• In 2004, there were 3,460 undergraduates
  enrolled
  
• Of those 3,460 approximately 100 were Black
  (2.9)
  
• According to the National Center for Education
  Statistics, the graduation rate within six years
  for Black students was 18.2
  
• By these estimates, approximately 18 of the
  current black undergraduate students will
  graduate in 6 years.

Data Provided by the National Center for
Education Statistics. They noted that this perce
ntage should be interpreted with caution.
7
Impediments to Diversity

• Why be concerned with those who didnt make it
  in?
  
• For example, if the admissions/hiring process is
  colorblind, does that means it is fair?
  
• Durable group inequalities are present in our
  institutions, which brings into question the
  fairness of larger structures and arrangements.
  
• What is the source of the inequalities along
  racial lines?

8
Defining Race

• Historically, biological definitions of race
  explained (and produced) the secondary status of
  people of color.
  
• Cultural understandings have more recently been
  used to explain disparities which persist.
  
• In contrast, we suggest that race
• is a social construction
• produced as dialectical and hierarchical
• gives power to white peopleto legitimize the
  dominance of white people over non-white people.
  (Western States Center 2)
  
• and distributes benefits (and disadvantages)
  accordingly.

9
Racial Categories

• We recognize that racial categories are both more
  and less significant than we acknowledge.
  
• Less because they are not inherent, natural or
  essential differences
  
• More because they are socially inscribed. We have
  created it as a difference
  
• How do we resolve this?
• Ignore them?
• Naturalize them?
• Acknowledge the social meaning, and recognize and
  challenge the inscription of race in our
  structures and institutions

10
Structural Racism
How do we understand racial disparities if they
are not explained by personal discrimination or
explicit laws and policies?

• Structures are sets of mutually sustaining
  schemas or relationships and resources that
  empower and constrain social action and that tend
  to be reproduced by that social action. (Sewell)

• Structural racism is both a model for
  understanding the reality of how racism functions
  and a way to refigure necessary intervention.

11
Disparate Outcomes
Historically
Today
Racially Biased Structures
De Jure Racially Neutral Structures
Structural Racism
Disparate Outcomes
Disparate Outcomes
Individuals/ Culture
Structures/ Opportunity
12
Understanding Structural Racism

• In order to understand structural racism, the
  focus must be on
  
• racialized outcomes instead of racist
  individuals
  
• interactivity between institutions (regardless of
  intent)
  
• de facto disadvantage as a result of the
  historical legacy of discrimination

13
Considerations for an SR Response

• In order to respond to the network of power
  shaping SR, the interconnecting relational web
  within which individuals live and act must be
  investigated and articulated.
• Multiple levels of leadership that cut across
  fields and borders must be identified and
  mobilized.
  
• We must consider the larger relationship between
  opportunity structures and institutional
  inequities.

14
SR approachExample of Interconnections
15
SR Frameworks Contributions

• Put in a different manner
• Giving them fish
• Exclusion, but with charity.
• Letting them fish
• De jure inclusion, BUT the magical assumption of
  equal opportunities.
  
• Teaching them to fish
• Amending past exclusion, questioning the magical
  assumption of equal opportunities, BUT still
  assuming that the arrangements are fine and there
  is something wrong/missing with them.

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SR Frameworks Contributions

• Proposed Extensions of the latter by an SR
  approach,
  
• Making sure that the teaching to fish is
  working
  
• Monitoring outcomes judging teaching coherence
  AND its capability-enhancing characteristics.
  
• Learning to fish together
• This action of monitoring, while inclusive, must
  also be a TWO-WAY STREET because as Seneca stated
  The process is a mutual one. People learn as
  they teach. Hence, questioning the arrangements
  TOGETHER.

17
SR for Understanding Disparities and Formulating
Interventions

• Structural racism gives us a framework from which
  to understand disparities.
  
• It also provides us with a way to conceptualize
  necessary intervention
  
• It accomplishes this by looking at outcomes as
  opposed to just intentions.
  
• One of these visible outcomes is the lack of
  diversity in our institutions.
  
• While remedying this lack of diversity is
  important, it can not do all of the work alone

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II. What is diversity?
Embracing and celebrating difference (hope)
instead of denouncing it (fear).
19
Defining Diversity What Difference does
Difference Make?

• When we think about diversity, we are not merely
  talking about differences. Our categories are not
  inherent or natural. What counts as a difference
  is a social phenomena.
• We have recognized race as a difference and
  created race as a difference, a social action on
  our part. We have done so in a way that is
  problematic.

20
Defining Diversity

• Diversity is both a strategy to dismantle
  structural racism and a measure of our success.
  
  
• Diversity is not solely a numerical pursuit, it
  is a structural one.
  
• Including people where they have historically
  been excluded is not enough. True diversity
  requires allowing marginalized populations a
  voice to participate in, and help restructure
  society.

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III. Why is diversity important?
As a means toward an end and not an end itself.
22
We are all caught up in an inescapable network
of mutuality, tied in a single garment of desti
ny. Whatever effects one directly effects a
ll indirectly. -The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther Kin
g, Jr.
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Diversity in Higher Education

• Most colleges and universities acknowledge and
  pursue the benefits of diversity.
  
• The University of Findlay has the following
  stated goals
  
• Mission Statement To equip our students for
  meaningful lives and productive careers.
  
• Belief To foster an intercultural and global
  awareness through the presence of a socially and
  geographically diverse student body.
  
• Belief To attract and serve a student body
  diverse in its experience, age, race, gender,
  ethnicity, geography, and academic abilities.

Source The University of Findlay Undergraduate
Catalogue http//www.findlay.edu/academics/infor
mation/catalog/pdf/2003UGcatalog.pdf
24
The Importance of Diversity for Individuals

• Access to work and education is a fundamental
  attribute of modern citizenship.
  
• Voting alone does permit individuals to exercise
  much influence over the conditions of day-to-day
  life.
  
• Education is a gateway to meaningful,
  non-contingent work. Without this, people may
  fail to develop a sense of personal worth and
  individual agency, attributes essential to
  functioning as citizens.
• For most people, medical care, social insurance
  and a sense of self are located in the
  workplace.
  
• Access and opportunity to participate is
  critical to equipping citizens to fulfill their
  responsibilities, to respecting their status and
  autonomy as individuals, and to legitimating
  society's decisions as reflecting in the
  participation of the community.

Susan Sturm and Lani Guinier, The Future of
Affirmative Action. Boston Review Dec. 2000/Jan
2001
25
The Myth of Merit

• Our flawed formulations of merit have failed to
  allocate scarce educational opportunities in a
  manner that is consistent with democratic
  values.
• An overemphasis on test scores and school
  rankings, not affirmative action, excludes poor
  and working class whites, especially from rural
  areas.
• In the employment setting, it restricts access
  based on inadequate predictors of job performance.

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The Myth of Merit

• The basic premise of the merit narrative is that
  selection criteria and processes used to rank
  applicants for jobs and admissions to schools are
  fair and valid tests of merit. This is flawed.
• Differences in environmental backgrounds based on
  socioeconomic status (SES), defined broadly to
  include more than income, provide some students
  with significant advantages not apparent by
  grades and test scores.

27
The Myth of Merit

• The correlation between test scores and SES
  indicators is stronger than the correlation
  between test scores and future academic
  performance.
• A study by the Educational Testing Service found
  that 74 of the students at the most selective
  universities come from the upper 25 of the
  socioeconomic status indicators.

Lani Guinier, Admissions Rituals as Political
Acts Guardians at the Gates of Our Democratic
Ideals,
Harvard Law Review Nov, 2003
28
Correlates of Success

• Our meritocratic system of college admissions
  assumes those who score higher on standardized
  tests will later be the most successful.
  However,
• SAT scores correlate less with college students'
  first-year grades than with either their parents'
  or their grandparents' socioeconomic status
  
• A study of of Harvard alumni over three decades
  found a high correlation between success (as
  defined by income, community involvement, and
  professional satisfaction) and low SAT scores and
  a blue-collar background.

Guinier, Lani. December 14, 2001.  Colleges
Should Take 'Confirmative Action' in Admissions.
Chronicle of Higher Education. Susan Sturm and L
ani Guinier, Boston Review Dec. 2000/Jan 2001 and
David K. Shipler, My Equal Opportunity, Your Fr
ee Lunch, New York Times, 5 March 1995.  
29
The Myth of Merit

• Most criteria of evaluation in our society,
  including educational credentials and
  standardized testing, have normative and cultural
  content. That does not mean that they are
  inappropriate, but that they are normative and
  cultural rather than neutrally scientific.
• High stakes standardized tests do not fulfill
  their stated function. They do not reliability
  identify those applicants who will succeed in
  college or later in life nor do they consistently
  predict who is most likely to perform well in the
  jobs they occupy.
• They may reward passive learning styles that
  mimic established strategies rather than
  creative, critical or innovative thinking.
  

Iris Marion Young, Justice and the Politics of
Difference
30
Benefits of Diverse Working Groups

• Individuals often perform better in both
  workplace and school when working in diverse
  environments
  
• More creative and high-quality solutions to
  problems are generated when groups are comprised
  of individuals with different vantage points,
  skills, beliefs, or values.
• Heterogeneity promotes more critical strategy
  analysis, creativity, innovation, and high
  quality decisions.
  

31
Example Diversity in the Workplace

• These benefits of diversity are not
  theoretical but real, as major American
  businesses have made clear that the skills needed
  in todays increasingly global marketplace can
  only be developed through exposure to widely
  diverse people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints.
  
• Grutter v Bollinger Et. Al., 2002
• High ranking military leaders wrote to the
  court A highly qualified, racially diverse
  officer corps is essential to the militarys
  ability to fulfill its principle mission to
  provide national security.
• Brief for Julius W. Becton, Jr. et, al. as Amici
  Curiae 27
  

32
Diversity in the Workplace

• The workforce is becoming increasingly diverse
  almost two-thirds of entrants to the civilian
  workforce in the last thirteen years were
  projected to be women and racial minorities.
• However, unless we allow those let in to shape
  and participate in the structures around them,
  numerical diversity will do little to interrupt
  the current arrangements.

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Numerical vs. True Diversity

• Example Women fought to earn a place in the
  workplace
  
• The workplace was arranged with the assumption
  that a parent would stay home with children, and
  thus is not structured optimally to allow for
  both parents working
• Women were granted a place, but not a voice to
  reshape the institutions
  
• Thus the structure and boundaries remain, to the
  detriment of both men and women.

34
Example Diversity in Education

• Student body diversity promotes learning
  outcomes, and 'better prepares students for an
  increasingly diverse workforce and society, and
  better prepares them as professionals.
• Grutter v Bollinger Et. Al., 2002
• Brief for American Educational Research
  Association et al. as Amici Curiae 3

35
The Goals of Education

• Why be concerned with achieving racial and ethnic
  diversity in education?
  
• Goals for public education
• Preparing Students for Citizenship
• Employment
• Building Human Capacity (personal/social)
• U.S. Supreme Court The objective of pubic
  education is the inculcation of fundamental
  values necessary for the maintenance of a
  democratic political system.
• Diversity is a requirement to achieve our
  national goals for public education!

36
Pursuing True Diversity in Education

• What does diversity look like in education?
• Numerical diversity It is important that schools
  be representative of society including class,
  race, gender, ethnicity, etc. Traditional
  approaches to diversity have focused on this.
• True diversity requires moving beyond numbers
• Multicultural curricula Students should be
  taught a diverse curriculum including the
  histories cultures and contributions of all.
  
• Administrative diversity Schools should be
  comprised of culturally competent, and racially
  and linguistically diverse school staff.
  
• Institutional Flexibility Allow students the
  space to be active participants, shaping the
  school and institution in which they are a part.

37
Example Benefits of Diversity in Education

• Attending a truly diverse school leads to
• Higher levels of reasoning
• Reduced prejudice
• Increased perspective taking
• A stronger commitment to multiculturalism and
  promotion of racial understanding
  
• Higher college completion rates
• Higher college GPA
• Greater intellectual and social self-confidence
• Mickelson (1997) found that the more students
  (both black and white) that were exposed to
  diverse, desegregated education, the better were
  their achievements (as measured by standardized
  tests), and the higher their secondary track
  placements.

Chang, M. J. (Winter 1996). Who benefits from
racial diversity in higher education? Diversity
Digest. Conrad, B. D. (1988). Cooperative
learning and prejudice reduction. Social
Education, 52, 283-286. Mickelson, R. (2003). The
academic consequences of desegregation and
segregation. North Carolina Law Review, 81,
1513-1562. Astin, A. (March/April 1993).
Diversity and multiculturalism on the campus How
are students affected? Change. Mickelson, Roslyn.
(2003). The Academic Consequences Of
Desegregation And Segregation.
38
Meritocracy and Democracy

• A study of the graduates of the University of
  Michigan Law School found that merit, as
  quantified by college grades and LSAT scores, had
  either no correlation or a negative correlation
  with post-graduation contribution to the
  community.
• Individuals with lower LSAT and college grades
  tended to spend more time in public or
  unremunerative legal service.

Source Lani Guinier, Admissions Rituals as
Political Acts Guardians at the Gates of Our
Democratic Ideals
39
The Importance of Diversity for Our Communities
and Democracy

• In contrast, diversity is linked to social and
  community responsibility
  
• A study of three classes of Harvard alumni over
  three decades found a high correlation between
  success as defined by income, community
  involvement, and professional satisfaction and
  two criteria not ordinarily associated with
  Harvard freshmen low SAT scores and a
  blue-collar background.
• Studies have shown that students of color are
  more likely than white doctors to serve in
  communities where there is a shortage of
  physicians, and to treat minority, sicker and
  poorer patients. These doctors more often serve
  as a community spokespersons, addressing key
  health problems and service needs. 

Source Susan Sturm and Lani Guinier, Boston
Review Dec. 2000/Jan 2001 and David K. Shipler,
My Equal Opportunity, Your Free Lunch, New York
Times, 5 March 1995
40
The Texas Ten Percent Plan

• The TTP was animated by the belief that
  distributed access to educational opportunity
  broadly is consistent with reconnecting the
  university to the K-12 educational system.
• It is incomplete as a remedy however as it does
  little to desegregate schools at the k-12 level.
  
• Both the GI Bill and the TTP programs are
  perceived as either a return to individuals for
  their service to the community or a preparation
  for such service. They also seek to build broad
  cross-racial coalitions.

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The Importance of Diversity

• Define goalswhat does success look like?
• Develop an intervention to achieve these goals,
  such as affirmative action. Measure progress.
  
• Work collaboratively, move beyond numerical
  diversity to true diversity
  
• To paraphrase Baldwin Who wants to be
  integrated into a burning house?
  
• Extend beyond the walls of the university, align
  with high schools to prepare students of color
  for college earlier

42
IV. Why are some audiences open to diversity, but
opposed to affirmative action?
43
Principle-Implementation (P-I) Gap

• Refers to the phenomenon whereby individuals
  agree with certain egalitarian ideals such as
  equal opportunity, fairness, and diversity, and
  yet disagree with many of the specific policies
  designed to deliver such outcomes such as
  affirmative action.

44
Explanations for the P-I Gap

• People are only paying lip service to
  egalitarianism.
  
• Some form of racism (negative affect)
• Social dominance orientation
• Person-based explanations for inequalities
• Color-blind racism

45
Color-Blind Racism

• Color-blindness, as a philosophy, is deeply
  rooted in the liberal tenet of the universal
  subject and is therefore often understood as the
  epitome of just and neutral policy.
• A color-blindness perspective suggests that race
  should not be a consideration in interpersonal,
  representational, economic, and/or legal
  relationships.
• It has taken on a particular resonance in the
  post- Civil Rights Era in which de jure
  discrimination was eliminated to argue against
  programs such as affirmative action.
• Color-blindness fails to account for the ways in
  which racially neutral policies (de jure) are
  mapped onto a historical legacy of racial
  discrimination creating de facto disparity which
  often operates far more covertly.

46
Color-Blind Racism

• A constellation of four frames which lead to
  racist beliefs and attitudes without
  necessitating any underlying negative affect
  towards the group in question.
• (1) Abstract liberalism/Principled conservatism
• (2) Naturalization
• (3) Biologization of culture
• (4) Minimization of racism/inequality

47
Abstract liberalism/Principled conservatism

• Governmental or legal intervention should not be
  used to produce social policy.
  
• e.g., Race should not be used as a factor in
  hiring decisions, and so affirmative action is
  reverse racism.
  
• e.g., We need to live in a color-blind society.

48
Naturalization

• Suggests that certain racial phenomena are
  natural occurrences.
  
• e.g., Because people gravitate towards similar
  others, segregation is a natural state of
  affairs.

49
Biologization of Culture

• Suggests that inequalities stem from cultural
  differences, and that these differences are
  largely immutable.
  
• e.g., Blacks seem to undervalue education.
• e.g., Many young Blacks seem to prefer a ghetto
  culture.

50
Minimization of Racism/Inequality

• Minimizes the extent of inter-group inequalities,
  and the importance and extent of discrimination.
  
• e.g., Things are much better than they were in
  the past.
  
• e.g., Discrimination is a relatively rare
  occurrence these days.
  
• e.g., Inequalities will go away themselves if
  left alone.

51
Developing New Frames to Counter Color-Blind
Racist Ideology

• At the Kirwan Institute, we are working to
  challenge the logic or legitimacy of these
  anti-affirmative action frames with an array of
  persuasive analogies, metaphors, narratives, and
  statistics, and by pointing out inconsistencies
  in values or beliefs.

52
Common Critiques of Affirmative Action and New
Frames for Rebuttal

• Affirmative action isnt needed. Things are
  basically equal now between Blacks and Whites.
  
• While overt racism and discrimination may be less
  frequent than they used to be, race still plays
  an important role in determining an individuals
  life chances. Here are some hard statistics
  concerning African Americans (relative to
  Whites)
• Imprisonment rate almost 10 times higher.
• Family income rate 40 lower.
• Infant (0-1 years) mortality rate 2.5 times
  higher.
  
• Poverty rate twice as high.
• Household wealth about 80 lower.
• Life spans about 5 years shorter.

53
Common Critiques of Affirmative Action and New
Frames for Rebuttal

• Racial inequalities are due to class. Even
  though there may be a higher percentage of poor
  people of color, poor Whites have the same
  problems.
• There are racial inequalities even within the
  various classes.
  
• Poor African Americans and Latinos are almost
  four times as likely to live in areas of
  concentrated poverty as poor Whites.
  
• There have been only 3 Black senators since 1877
  (post-reconstruction). Based on relative
  populations, 125 would have been expected.
  

54
Common Critiques of Affirmative Action and New
Frames for Rebuttal

• Racial inequalities are getting better all the
  time. They will go away on their own if given
  time.
  
• In many cases the gaps are closing at an
  intolerably slow rate, and in some cases they are
  increasing.
  
• Black unemployment is about twice the White rate
  - a wider gap than in 1972.
  
• The Black infant mortality rate is nearly 2.5
  times higher than the White infant mortality rate
  a gap that has expanded since 1970.
  
• The Black-White poverty gap would take about 150
  years to close at the present rate.
  
• Black-White gaps in per capita income would take
  over 500 years to close at present rates

55
Common Critiques of Affirmative Action and New
Frames for Rebuttal

• Affirmative action amounts to an unfair and
  unearned give-away. It is taking from one group
  and giving to another.
  
• Affirmative action encourages and rewards
  diversity, just as alumni credits encourage
  historical lineage (and strong donor bases), and
  just as student-athlete credits encourage school
  spirit.

56
Common Critiques of Affirmative Action and New
Frames for Rebuttal

• The undeserving and non-needy can benefit from
  affirmative action.
  
• Tuna and Dolphin analogy

57
Common Critiques of Affirmative Action and New
Frames for Rebuttal

• Programs like affirmative action that highlight
  race or other factors increase inter-group
  conflict. We need to move towards a color-blind
  society.
• Research has shown that trying to ignore race
  can lead to even more discrimination and racism.
  
• Better is to simultaneously think of others as
  both unique individuals, members of unique
  groups, and also members of our own groups
  (Americans, human beings).
• Affirmative action encourages such categorization.

58
New Paradigm (Connectedness)
We need a New Paradigm that addresses our
isolation materially and ideationally.
59
New Paradigm

• Our society cannot be de-racialized solely by
  material redistribution (e.g., redistribution of
  wealth), nor by only achieving numerical
  diversity in our institutions (affirmative
  action).
• Deliberate collective action to address the
  presence and construction of boundaries of
  exclusion is required.
  
• This approach must promote connectedness, not
  isolation.
  
• Such connectedness should be explicit and
  constitutive of this new paradigm.

60
New Paradigm

• This is NOT SOLELY a remedy to lift up the poor
  and people of color but a recognition and
  embracing of our differences within our greatest
  commonality Humanity.
• Without re-conceptualizing structures
  relationships everyone will come up short.
  
• Hence, deconstructing exclusionary boundaries
  benefits everyone it lifts us all, spiritually
  and pragmatically.
  
• Although boundaries have been redrawn countless
  times, they always deprive people of color of
  full membership to the detriment of ALL members
  of society.

61
New Paradigm

• The issue would be a de-racializing liberation.
• A liberation from isolation and its
  racialization structures.
  
• This de-racialization process entails
• A necessary de-racialization of our societal
  outcomes.
  
• A recognition of the community autonomy and
  self-determination of those previously
  racialized.
  
• A respect of the autonomy of non-white racialized
  communities as represented by the identity and
  mode of community by which they survived
  racialization and colonization in the first place.

62
Multi- instead of mono-selves

• Individuals are not one-dimensional, we are
  constructed of multiple selves.
  
• Each individual self is not exclusive, but made
  up of the multiple identities at which point they
  intersect.
  
• We must consider how categories intersect and how
  they are created and maintained.
  
• We also need to broaden our understanding of
  self-interest (i.e., more than economics).

63
Transformative Thinking

• We need transformative thinking to actualize a
  new paradigm.
  
• Materially and Culturally dialectic, discursive,
  relational.
  
• Our efforts in the past have been transactional
  (we are making small incremental changes with the
  result of small gains within existing
  arrangements).
• Hence, we need to re-think those existing
  arrangements, which calls for transformative
  thinking.

64
Response Options

• Bring opportunities to depressed communities
  (e.g., investment incentives)
  
• Take depressed communities to the opportunities
  (e.g., bussing to work)
  
• Redefine opportunity structures (e.g., Utah,
  Oregon, Washington, Maryland, Michigan,
  Wisconsin, and the EUs equality impact
  assessments)
• Develop multiple institutional capacities and
  coherencies, including transparency

65
Response Options

• We propose investing time, energy, and resources
  on redefining opportunity structures and
  developing multiple institutional capacities,
  without disregarding opportunities in relation to
  depressed communities.
• The reason is that they address the real issue of
  creating opportunities within depressed
  communities without becoming patching remedies
  .
• We also need multiple levels of leadership that
  cut across fields and borders, which are
  strategic and interconnects available resources.

66
Response Options

• Deliberative Democracy
• where our material resources are distributed
  through democratic deliberation.
  
• in addition, through democratic deliberation (and
  empowerment) we address our cultural conceptions
  of self, identity in an ongoing and iterative
  manner (i.e., cultural resources).
• Hence, diversity would become less costly and
  less frightening once we have been able to
  normalize it within our understanding of
  reality in addition, its meaning would
  necessarily change and it would be renegotiated
  iteratively through democratic deliberation.

67
Concluding Comments

• Our work must be outcome-oriented (i.e., equal
  humanity), not just simple process or input
  focused (i.e., we need to be and think
  iteratively).
• First identify goals (i.e., equal humanity), then
  work to produce those desired outcomes.
  
• Measure progress or retrenchment in multiple
  areas, as structures and institutions are complex
  and intersecting.
  
• We can make progress toward realizing a new
  paradigm but we need to work together and
  question what we have/are today in order to be
  able to achieve that craved EQUAL HUMANITY in a
  Socratic sense.
• And for this we argue that isolation needs to
  debunked and deconstructed through active
  democratic deliberation in order to achieve a
  DE-RACIALIZED LIBERATION.

68
Concluding Comments

• I dont want nobody to give me nothing. Open up
  the door. Ill get it myself.
  
• Dont give me integration, give me true
  communication.
  
• Dont give me sorrow, I want equal opportunity to
  live tomorrow.
  
• Give me schools and give me better books,
• So I can read about myself and gain my truer
  looks.
  
• I dont want nobody to give me nothing. Open up
  the door. Ill get it myself.
  
• We got talents we can use on our side of town.
  Lets get our heads together
  
• And build it up from the ground.
• James Brown, The Godfather of Soul

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• As Nobel Laureate Nelson Mandela states
• I am not truly free if I am taking someone
  elses freedom, just as surely as I am not free
  when my freedom is taken from me. The oppressed
  and the oppressor alike are robbed of their
  humanity.

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