The uncomfortable role white people play in diversity

Susan Bodnar writes that she wants "live in a society where dignified difference constitutes our common core".

Editor's note: Susan Bodnar is a clinical psychologist who teaches at Columbia University's Teachers College and at the Stephen Mitchell Center for Relational Studies. She lives in Manhattan with her husband, two children and all of their pets.
(CNN) -- In my family, I'm always bringing up stories from the past, our family's story, our diversity.
My daughter often rolls her eyes. "We don't need to keep talking about this stuff. We get it."
My son admonishes. "We know!"
In truth, their schools have done of a good job trying to make their population more closely resemble our country and our world. My kids have friends of all races, cultures and social classes.
However, as a female white mom married to a male white dad with two biologically conceived white children, I'm trying to make a different point.
I want them to understand that light skin color is not the norm from which everyone differs. White is not the signifier of normal.
Many white kids take diversity for granted. They have worked hard to overcome stereotypes and bias and to accept other people as different.
The fact that they may be someone else's diversity rarely occurs to them, let alone most white adults.
Three influences have altered my white-centric perspective: my psychology students, the people with whom I work in my clinical practice and the diversity work of both my kids' New York City private schools.
Some of my psychology students wanted to write a children's book where every character had a different identity. Children's books generally feature characters of one race or ethnicity, not multiple identities in interaction with one another. When we finished our first draft, we realized our characters had become very close friends. They each came from a different place but everyone had came from somewhere.
Skin color doesn't define personhood, but since race is a marker of identity in our society, the experience of personhood includes having to deal with the meanings others attribute to racial identity.
Protected by the privacy of a clinical relationship, beautiful black and brown women have shared how ugly they feel. Gentle dark-skinned men convey the humiliation that overcomes them when white people mistake them for dangerous criminals.
Since whiteness has become synonymous with a better life, it is easy for any lighter-skinned person to use skin color as a shield against hurtful stereotypes about social class, gender, sexuality, family history or even mental illness.
When white people deny their own embarrassing identity markers, we perpetuate the hypocrisy that only people of color have these problems.
As a psychologist -- no, as a person -- recognizing status and identity anxiety as a mutual experience lifts the veil that ordinarily separates us from each other.
This year, the parents association at one of my kids' schools named me co-chair of the diversity committee. I felt so self-conscious.
Group leadership called forth a greater reckoning with my identity than simply participating in a committee. It also provided me the chance to experience being a minority member of a group.
Sometimes I sat as the only white person at the table feeling really insecure, worried that I would be seen as a white stereotype instead of as myself.
How did growing up white with financial struggles intersect with racial diversity?
When white people want to "help" people of color, it always reeks of privilege and entitlement as in, "let me help you with your problems." It's a different sentiment than "let's help each other with our problems."
Did people of color trust me? Did they wonder what I was doing on the diversity committee? Was it my job to speak for the concerns of underrepresented minorities? Or did I contribute more by trying to put forth a more multifaceted approach to the question of identity?
How can we sit with each other's differences without feeling compelled to rank one way of being or looking as being better or worse than the other?
Our diversity committee ultimately worked through these questions in our conversations. Although we did not fully answer them, we found that by talking about them, we discovered the theme of our work and developed a friendship.
I now look at diversity as something that is in my interest: I want to live in a society where dignified difference constitutes our common core.
Nuances in how we think, feel, work and love define what it means to be human. Everyone is unusual and unique.
Racism is just another word for hating our realness.
Our commonality as a country derives from the fact that we all have an identity just beneath the surface of our skins.
The variety of stories that inhabit the people who call this country home -- from the brutality of slavery to the flight from genocides to the call to some better god -- enable democracy's creative synergy.
The hands that have built the instruments of modern America have been every color, every nationality and every religion.
I want to be part of a world that loves and embraces humanity as a diverse and interconnected organism. I want to be part of a world that accepts that every difference has a color, and every color has a unique meaning.
How do I do this?
I realized that it starts at home.
Rather than teaching my kids that they are white, I want to impart to them that they are part of a kaleidoscope -- lots of continually shifting colors and shapes.
They don't always want to hear their parents tell another story about grandpa's poverty or the coal-mining relatives. But this history holds our family's painful and joyous truths.
Every family need only peel back the layers of a few generations to find their own story.
Authentic family history exposes everyone's diversity. A society that embraces uniqueness loves the messiness of the human condition. Being loved despite or because of our messy truths creates empathy rather than sympathy.
When we raise children to accept and acknowledge their own story, they learn to listen to someone else's, with respect.


source: http://edition.cnn.com/2014/05/28/living/white-people-diversity-identity/index.html?iid=article_sidebar

This Valentine's Day, bring human rights into the conversation with Iran

A portrait of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi is held
during a campaign rally in Tehran on June 10, 2013.

(CNN) -- For much of the world, February 14 is known as a day to celebrate love.

But in Iran, Valentine's Day has come to mark another occasion as well—the anniversary of the house arrest of Iran's leading opposition figures Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi and Zahra Rahnavard. On February 14, 2011, Iranian authorities placed Mousavi, Karroubi and Rahnavard under house arrest for calling on Iranians to demonstrate in support of the popular Arab uprisings across the region.

According to Reuters, earlier this month Karroubi was moved from a Ministry of Intelligence-controlled safe house to his own home.

The transfer shined new light on the plight of Iran's "prisoners of rights"— those imprisoned for seeking to exercise commonly recognized political, social, religious, economic, and cultural rights, denied to them by the Iranian government.

In addition to opposition politicians like Mousavi, Karroubi and Rahnavard, Iran's prisoners of rights include lawyers, journalists, professors, students, labor union workers, poets, musicians, artists, dissident clerics, bloggers, ethnic and religious minorities, LGBT persons and even humanitarian aid workers.

Civil rights and human rights activists are also a primary target. Some prisoners of rights, like women's rights and student activist Bahareh Hedayat, have been arrested for holding gatherings to protest laws that discriminate against women.

Others, like the "Yaran"—the seven leaders of the Bahá'í religious minority in Iran—are imprisoned for teaching a faith the Iranian government does not recognize.

Still others, like lawyer Abdolfattah Soltani, are imprisoned for their efforts to assist or seek justice for prisoners of rights. Ironically, before his arrest, Soltani had been preparing a case in defense of the seven Bahá'í leaders.

The easing of restrictions on Karroubi's house arrest will be of key interest to observers tracking President Hassan Rouhani's delivery on promises he made on the campaign trail in last June's presidential election. While Rouhani made no express promise to free Iran's prisoners of rights, his references to the jailed opposition leaders and pledge to increase civil and cultural freedoms resonated strongly with voters.

The release of renowned human rights lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and other high profile activists last September in advance of President Rouhani's first-ever address to the UN General Assembly buoyed hopes of more releases. And a subsequent announcement by the Iranian judiciary that 80 more political prisoners had been pardoned further stoked expectations.

Unfortunately, these hopes have gone largely unrealized.

According to human rights groups, only half of the 80 promised pardons can be confirmed. Many of those released had already served their terms. Since the announcement, arrests have continued—including the arrest of a popular rapper and more than a dozen "cyberactivists."

There is some indication that Iran's Judiciary may be driving human rights abuses during President Rouhani's first six months in office—perhaps in an effort to undermine reforms.

Indeed, while significant gains have been made through international diplomacy on the nuclear issue during President Rouhani's tenure, advancement on human rights has come to a standstill. This despite a recent poll that shows democracy, civil rights and women's rights top the list of priorities for the Iranian people.

Regardless of whom in Iran's complicated governance structure is at fault, one thing is clear: the international community's engagement on human rights, alongside resolution of the nuclear issue and the easing of sanctions, remains a necessary factor for progress.

Each visit to Tehran, each promise of renewed investment, each round of nuclear negotiations brings a fresh opportunity for global decision makers and influencers to press human rights concerns. These openings should not be squandered.

Another opportunity will present itself when the P5+1 powers reconvene in New York City this month. Although by definition the focus of the talks will remain on the nuclear issue, geo-strategic concerns will likely be raised. Alongside those concerns, every effort should be made to incorporate discussion of Iran's human rights situation into the conversation.

Finally, all of these governments will convene again in March for the UN Human Rights Council's 25th session in Geneva. They should take the opportunity to recommit themselves to the human rights cause by adopting a resolution renewing the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran and allowing him to visit the country. The resolution should also set specific benchmarks for the Iranian government including the release of all prisoners of conscience, a moratorium on executions, and an end to restrictions on assembly, association, and expression. Recently developed bilateral and multilateral channels between Iran and global powers, including the European Union, its member states, and United States, should be used to advance these human rights goals.

A few days ago another anniversary passed -- the 35th anniversary of Iran's 1979 revolution. Back then the international community's support of the Shah was also premised on long term diplomatic security and stability while paying short shrift to the leadership's human rights abuses. The Iranian people did not forget this. Making the same mistake again is not only wrong, it is surely unwise.


source; http://edition.cnn.com/2014/02/14/opinion/iran-valentines-human-rights/index.html?iid=article_sidebar