Join the dialogue on race and diversity

Posted by Matt Zencey, editorial page editor

Posted: April 30, 2008 - 4:44 pm

(If you’ve seen our print edition editorial on this topic, you can skip to the next post and start answering the discussion questions.)

Radio jocks Woody and Wilcox’s insulting and demeaning “joke” about Native women has had one healthy side effect. It has prompted our increasingly diverse community to confront the prejudice and discrimination that still fester here. The infamous insult has opened the door for what could be a healthy community dialogue.

Anchorage got a chance to start that dialogue Monday, thanks to the Begich administration, UAA and the YMCA. More than 100 folks convened at St. Anthony’s Church to discuss race and diversity. Guided by a trained facilitator, a panel and the audience considered questions like, As a community, where are we? Where are we going? What can you, the citizen, do to improve understanding and acceptance? What must society do to counter prejudice and discrimination?

Facilitating that kind of discussion in a large meeting, or across a community, is difficult. The subject can get quite sensitive and emotional, so it’s best done face to face in small groups. Bridge Builders is a great example of how people of good will can come together to learn about other cultures and other people. Healing Racism is another helpful local effort on this front. But these kinds of efforts involve only a relative handful of already open-minded individuals.

The questions considered at Monday’s forum deserve a lot wider discussion. Promoting that widespread discussion is hard for a business that puts ink on paper and moves electrons in computers, but we’re going to try. We’d like to encourage readers to share their thoughts in the paper and on our web site (adn.com).

We ask readers to start with these questions:

* When it comes to prejudice and discrimination, how are we doing here in Anchorage and Alaska? What have you experienced or witnessed? What did you do about it? (Mary Marks, a Tlingit woman who has served on the Anchorage School Board, told Monday’s gathering that four decades ago, she attended a preschool that segregated the Native and non-Native kids.)

* Is prejudice and discrimination in our city and state getting better or worse?

* What is one thing you personally could do to promote better understanding and acceptance among ethnic groups?

* What changes in society are needed to reduce prejudice and discrimination?

Check out the post for each question on our blog and post your comment there, or send comments to letters@adn.com.

In responding, we ask you to follow a very simple rule: Keep it civil.

We realize we’re treading on sensitive ground here. Trying to promote this dialogue is definitely an experiment. The subject of race and prejudice and discrimination often touches raw nerves. We realize that on the web, insults fly as freely as mosquitoes in Alaska’s summer

If the rhetoric gets out of hand, we’ll have to abandon course. But we hope it doesn’t come to that. We hope readers will help their fellow citizens understand where we are as a community and how we can get to a better place.

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