A year of unrest and turmoil has yielded the beginnings of change in St. Louis – along with a whole lot of questions.
How do we untangle the deep, gnarly roots of racism? What is this thing called privilege? How do people of different races talk to each other about this stuff?
Local organizations that help people think through these issues report a significant increase in requests for diversity training since the August 9 shooting death of Michael Brown Jr. by a Ferguson police officer.
Diversity Awareness Partnership (DAP) expects to double the number of people it has reached by the end of this year, according to executive director Reena Hajat Carroll.
“I can’t tell you how busy we have been,” Carroll said.
Numbers tell the story. In 2013, the partnership trained 1,862 people. In 2014, the number rose to 2,472. In only the first six months of 2015, the figure climbed to 2,352. By the end of 2015, the partnership expects it to near 5,000.
Disparities revealed by Brown’s death, and the subsequent activism and self-examination, are at the heart of the increase, Carroll said.
“These are organizations and schools saying, ‘What do we do, how do we deal with these issues?’” Carroll said.
The local Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has also seen heightened interest in diversity awareness. In addition to community, school and organizational events, ADL has been providing diversity training to regional police departments for 10 years. The Holocaust serves as a springboard for exploring stereotypes, discrimination and persecution.
A recent police cadet training at the Holocaust Museum provided a study in contrasts.
One of the 19 participants was Justin Nichols, a 36-year-old African American with military and firefighting experience. He talked about the pushback he got from family, friends and community when he told them of his decision to become an officer.
“It was looked at as being a profession that was not for black men, in particular,” Nichols said – “a lot of hurt that, I guess, came from police officers from the community.”
But another ADL training attendee, 26-year-old former U.S. Marine Peter Welegala, who is white, encountered no resistance.
“I don’t have any friends who had any negative outlooks on the police,” Welegala said, “or have said anything negative to me as far as my career path.”
The ADL is scheduling diversity events into 2016. “We are limited only by our staff capacity,” said Karen Aroesty, regional director of the ADL. “I think ‘Ferguson’ has allowed people to be more vulnerable and look at these issues.”
She added, “If we started this conversation in early childhood and infused it all through our schools, we wouldn’t be in reactive post-traumatic clean-up mode.”
Since last August, Focus St. Louis has seen an uptick in calls for its Bridges program, in which small groups of people get together to talk about race.
St. Louisans are having more candid conversations about race now, going far beyond whether something is racist or not racist. People are starting to understand that racism is a societal foundation that can’t be addressed just by being nicer and using different language.
“This is not your mother’s or your grandmother’s diversity training any longer,” said Focus St. Louis’ executive director Yemi Akande-Bartsch.
Focus’ developmental director Felicia Pulliam serves on the Ferguson Commission, formed after Brown’s death to explore potential changes in the area’s law enforcement, educational structure and municipal makeup.
Pulliam says the unrest has uncovered some basic, important truths.
“We just don’t know each other very well,” Pulliam said. “In our hyper-segregated community, we just don’t understand what’s going on in each other’s world.”
Follow Nancy Fowler on Twitter: @NancyFowlerSTL.
Reprinted with permission from news.stlpublicradio.org.
