Howard J. Ross - Reinventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose, and Performance

One Song

Jalaluddin Rumi

Every war and every conflict

between human beings has happened

because of some disagreement about names.

It is such an unnecessary foolishness,

because just beyond the arguing

there is a long table of companionship

set and waiting for us to sit down.

What is praised is one, so the praise is one too,

many jugs being poured into a huge basin.

All religions, all this singing, one song.

The differences are just illusion and vanity.

Sunlight looks a little different

on this wall than it does on that wall

and a lot different on this other one,

but it is still one light.

We have borrowed these clothes,

these time-and-space personalities,

from a light, and when we praise,

we are pouring them back in.

Foreword

Howard Ross is a gentle giant of a man with a passion for diversity that is unparalleled. He has written from his soul, and from his very essence. Weaving his twenty-five years of experience as a diversity professional with statistics, anecdotes, and perspective, he has produced a manuscript that challenges the reader to consider the ways we have been programmed to approach issues of diversity and difference. Within the challenge that he poses, he offers each of us the opportunity to explore the basis of our many biases and challenges us to be mindful in the face of the inevitable demographic changes that will shape our society.

This is a careful book. Howard uses conventional wisdom to build toward that which is unconventional, offering organizations a set of metrics through which to assess diversity matters. In some ways this work is disconcerting because it is so comfortably discomfiting. In other words, Howard begins with the familiar, then pushes us toward the challenging and unfamiliar. There is a wry sense of humor working here. Who else would lead a chapter opening (as in chapter 8) with reinforcing quotes from both Malcolm X and Oscar Wilde? In many ways, Howard Ross reminds us that we are more similar than we are dissimilar, connecting the thoughts of two extremely different men to make a point about perceptual reality.

I am honored that Howard asked me to write the foreword to Reinventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose, and Performance. We have a long association and friendship, through Leadership Greater Washington, where he was the lead trainer for my class, and through our mutual work in diversity issues, first working together to construct training for a Fortune 50 company, then through his work as diversity professor in residence at Bennett College for Women. In appointing Howard as diversity professor, it was my goal to make the point that diversity is not simply an issue for people of color and that it is essential that white folks get it and both talk the talk and walk the walk. Howard is one who not only gets it but also lives and breathes it. His openness of spirit, gentility, and humility make him a perfect person to push us past familiar diversity models to truly challenge ourselves and our organizations about ways we can effectively embrace those inevitable changes that will shape our collective futures.

In his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folks (1903), the African American philosopher, activist, and leader Dr. W. E. B. DuBois wrote, The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-linethe relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. In these challenging economic times, with world relationships recalibrating based on economic power, the DuBois assertion is prophetic. Weve taken twentieth-century problems into the twenty-first century, even as the kaleidoscope of our reality continues to shift, challenging interpretations of global dominance, cultural hegemony, and faux postracialism. Thinkers like Howard Ross remind us to resist the status quo, to embrace the creative dissatisfaction that comes when things change.

To be sure, there is much in this book that one might challenge, much that one might take issue with. That is a good thing. I applaud Howard Ross for raising the issues, for bringing his heart, soul, spirit, and passion to an issue he has devoted much of his life to. We have no choice but to embrace diversity, and Howard says we must confront our own biases in that embracing and in our effort to construct a more inclusive society. His words aint nothing but the truth, embracing my Ebonics. This is mind-expanding and important work.

Julianne Malveaux

President, Bennett College for Women

March 2011

Acknowledgments

This book has been cooking for a long time. There have been at least a dozen serious times over the past fifteen years or so when I was going to really get it done, and God only knows how many other moments of inspiration, thought, or fantasy. While books can, and do, serve many purposes, for me, after more than twenty-five years in my profession, this book serves as a milestone of where I have been and what my work has become. And, as are many people, I am nothing if not the product of the relationships I have been blessed to have and the people I have been blessed to learn from. And over a long life, there have been many.

I have had the opportunity to work with and learn from an amazing array of talented, passionate, and committed people over the years. Images of many of them fly through my thoughts as I write this: Sandy Amato, Susan Bender, Lee Butler, Robin Carnes, Barry Certner, Sally Craig, Christine Cranston, Nicole Daley, Brenda Dancil-Jones, Janet Davis, Bob Devlin, Michael Friedman, Chrisanne Garrett, John Honor, Clyde Horton, Emery Jones, Suzanne Lagay, Meredith Levert, Jim MacRae, Janie Marbley, Armers Moncure, Camille Mosley, Tara Nelson, Lizet Porter, Jim Rogers, Bryant Rollins, Caitlin Saunders, Angella Savage, Jerry Schuerholz, Scott Shields, Bobby Joe Smith, Lois Taylor-Holsey, and Bill Woodson. All come to mind with gratitude for each.