BRATTLEBORO — Let me start with the obvious: We are in Vermont, home to 626,562 hearty souls spread out over 9,217 square miles (14,747 square kilometers). We are otherwise known as the 0.0019 percent of the general population of these United States of America, the most rural state, and among the states with the most rapidly aging populations in the nation.
Not so evident, however, is the fact that Black people have been living in Vermont since the 1600s.
• Black people helped bring Vermont into statehood as members of the Ethan Allen Boys;
• In 1777, our state constitution was the first to prohibit slavery in the United States;
• In 1823, Alexander Twilight, graduate of Middlebury College, was the first African-American to graduate from a college in the United States and the first African-American to be elected to a state legislature;
• In 1899, Marion Annette Anderson, the first black female valedictorian at Middlebury College, was also the first African-American woman in the nation to be inducted into the national honor society Phi Beta Kappa; and
• Lucy Prince from Guilford was the first published female African-American poet.
Vermont holds a particular and peculiar place in the American psyche. Our lawmakers passed nonbinding resolutions to end the war in Iraq and to impeach former President George W. Bush. And right here in Brattleboro, voters instructed local police to arrest Bush and his vice-president, Dick Cheney, and turn them over for prosecution should they visit.
We are leaders in clothing-optional ordinances, farmers' markets, civil unions, marriage equality, GMO labeling, and we are home to an anti-nuclear power movement second to none.
Our bucolic landscape, enduring values, and quirky progressive politics make us a uniquely branded place. We are known the world over as the uncontested home of the best fall foliage, maple syrup, covered bridges, milk products, microbrews, skiing, and World Learning, home to three Nobel Peace Prize laureates.
But before there was a World Learning and the ever-changing alphabet soup of SIT Graduate Institute programs; before there was a School for International Training and the World Issues Program; before there was a Projects and Grants Department and contracts for training Peace Corps Volunteers and refugee resettlement, there was the Experiment in International Living and its Homestay Programs, the organizational ancestors of what we see before us today.
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Eighty-four years ago, Dr. Donald B. Watt, founder of the Experiment, was a pioneer in the field of international educational exchanges among ordinary citizens around the world.
The Experiment Way, as it is known, taught each of us Experimenters to “expect the unexpected”; that there was no mission beyond “just living” in another home abroad. This was the case when a much, much younger me was an Experimenter to Germany, as it was the case last summer for my own daughter, who was an Experimenter to Italy.
SIT graduates, however, are heading off into the world with missions in mind: disaster relief for refugees and displaced persons; building schools and health facilities; helping to resolve or manage conflict; promoting sustainable agriculture, fair trade, language instruction, cooperative development, democratic governance, etc.
And while the “expect the unexpected” mantra worked for the grandparents and great-grandparents of World Learning programs, I urge graduates to leave with not only the legacy of “expect the unexpected” but to chart new territory by being the unexpected.
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Injustice endures because the collective “we” choose to be predictable in our silent non-response to the micro-aggressions, micro-invalidations, and micro-injustices suffered by those in our immediate presence. Albert Einstein once said, “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything."
And let's be clear: not all evil is as over the top as genocide, political corruption, or mass incarcerations. But it can be as simple or as subtle as marginalizing the contributions of a colleague or denying someone dignity because they are the “other.”
The power of willful ignorance by those who are closest cannot be overestimated as they knowingly and subversively attempt to derail one's work towards strengthening diverse, inclusive, and equitable communities.
I challenge graduates to be that unexpected voice of social justice in all your spheres of influence: professional contacts, one's faith community, casual friendships, intimate relationships, or that all-important sphere of family, both nuclear and extended.
I want graduates to display conspicuously courageous leadership in applied social justice - not social justice in the abstract of academia, but applied social justice in the up-close-and-personal world of your lives.
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I am often asked, “What are you, a Black man, doing in Vermont, the whitest state in the nation?”
For the unconsciously unskillful inquirer, the presence of Vermonters of color or visitors of color creates cognitive dissonance.
In my most therapeutic “be the unexpected” voice, I tell them that I work to make Vermont not a center, but the epicenter of inclusive and equitable thought and practice in the United States.
I tell them that my work strengthens inclusive and equitable business and institutional practices in the public sphere. And I tell them that if you scratch below the surface you will find a wealth of diversity here.
We at Vermont Partnership for Fairness and Diversity just finished our first decade of a four-decade - four decade!- initiative we call Vermont Vision for a Multicultural Future.
In your life's work, resist the powerful temptation of instant gratification. Work with intention: sustainable change happens in increments over an extended period of time.
It also helps to be prepared when unexpected opportunities present themselves. We at Vermont Partnership are the unexpected. I will illustrate this point, but first a few words of caution about two insidious traps.
As a community resource for graduate students at SIT and other area colleges, I have witnessed legions of students suffer from the debilitating disease of analysis paralysis: that desire to know everything, to be all-knowing, before acting.
They retreat into that protective academic cocoon whose core is frozen by either the fear of upsetting the status quo of willful ignorance or the desire for unattainable perfection. Those afflicted with the disease are more apt to study the issue of the day rather than materially engage the issue of the day.
Let me let you in on a little secret. Life is a messy series of random chance encounters. No amount of academic study can prepare anyone for every contingency - so take a deep breath and relax.
As for the second trap, most cultures have some version of the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
The Golden Rule implies the basic assumption that other people would like to be treated the way that you would like to be treated. This “presumption of I,” however, is no panacea. Let me explain.
As a college student, I was addicted to ham-and-cheese sandwiches.
For several weeks, I noticed a very attractive female student who ate lunch around the same time as I did. I wanted to meet her, so I devised this surefire introduction: since I loved ham sandwiches and because I believed that everyone must also love them, I would offer her one of mine.
After a week or so, ham sandwiches in hand, I walked over. “Hello, my name is Curtiss,” I said. “Would you like a ham sandwich?”
She looked up with this mild look of disgust on her face and said, “I don't eat pork.”
I did my best to backpedal from her table with my tail tucked between my legs. I was dumbstruck. I learned a valuable lesson on the importance of intel(ligence).
I would have been better served had I followed the Platinum Rule developed by Dr. Tony Alessandra. Simply stated, it is “Treat others the way they want to be treated.”
The Platinum Rule accommodates the feelings of others. The focus of relationships shifts from “this is what I want, so I'll give everyone the same thing” to “let me first understand what they want, and then I'll give it to them.” Seek to understand first before being understood.
But how do we do that when we have been taught from birth not to engage the “other”?
I believe the authentic self is by nature inquisitive and open, but society has herded us into silos of taboos. We have all witnessed a child's excitement: “Mommy, Mommy, look at that man in a chair with wheels!” (The mother's response is to shush the child.) Or, “Daddy, Daddy, look at that lady walks with a stick!” (The father's response is to shush the child.)
And my favorite from a personal experience in a laundromat: “Mommy, mommy, look at that chocolate man!”
But before the mother could shush the child, I told her to stop - and the child and I had a marvelous discussion about the varieties of chocolate, from vanilla white to deep-dark chocolate. And, by the way, she learned that I was not edible.
The Platinum Rule is not concessionary to self and does not require you change your personality or belief system. Applying the rule allows you to understand what drives people, thereby expanding your options for dealing with them. But to do so means you need to authentically engage the other.
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The Platinum Rule works equally well with institutional relationships.
We began our work 20 years ago with the belief that Vermont institutions, government agencies, and businesses were or could be motivated solely by the social and moral arguments to reduce, if not eliminate, prejudice, implicit bias, and/or discriminatory practices.
But just because our work was grounded in the social and moral arguments for social justice, our then-adversaries were not feeling the love. Remember my ham sandwich debacle?
When we stopped trying to make ourselves understood and began to really listen to those with the power to change policies and practices, we could hear a faint voice getting louder and louder.
James Carville, Bill Clinton's political strategist for the successful 1992 presidential campaign, was telling us, “It's the economy, stupid!”
So we broadened our paradigm from the social and moral arguments to include expanding Vermont's economic pie as the means to advance inclusive and equitable policies and practices.
For Republican Governor Jim Douglas, we framed education as a workforce development issue in 2006: that Vermont needed a workforce prepared to attract, to service beyond expectations, and retain a share of the multicultural marketplace given that in 2043 these United States become a “minority-majority” nation.
Those conversations led to mandatory standards for teacher training programs in the subject areas of cultural diversity and equity adopted in 2008.
By 2012, all the programs had been re-certified under the new standards and this year, 10 years after that first conversation, all teacher graduates will have had coursework to hone cultural competency skills critical to Vermont's future workforce - gratification deferred for a decade but not denied.
We brought the idea of the Vermont African American Heritage Trail to Democratic Governor Peter Shumlin to create a new narrative for Vermont as the most welcoming state, in a nation rapidly becoming more black and brown.
Since 2013, the Vermont Department of Tourism and Marketing has been promoting the Heritage Trail and all things Vermont to media markets in communities of color across the United States. State publications are now much more reflective of our rich and varied cultural landscape.
This initiative might not have happened if the Republican candidate in the 2010 gubernatorial election had had a campaign slogan other than “Pure Vermont.” The slogan and its allusions of white race purity and genocide provided an opportunity for Shumlin, the Democratic candidate and eventual winner, to discuss making the Vermont brand attractive to everyone.
The Vermont African American Heritage Trail has also inspired an initiative to attract tourists with disabilities to enjoy our recreational offerings. We work to reposition the Burlington brand as the most international and culturally diverse destination in northern New England.
Our decade of working with the Vermont State Police on fair and impartial policing, implicit bias, and community engagement reduces, but does not entirely eliminate, the chances of profiling or disproportionate contact with current residents or the influx of new tourists, convention-goers, and recreational tourists of color.
Critical incidents like those in Ferguson or Baltimore are highly unlikely here because over the last decade, our law enforcement, led by the state police, has been quietly and intentionally building mutual trust with the diverse communities they serve.
We also find it encouraging that Vermonters of color and other group social identities are participating in the democratic process - at and beyond the ballot box - in growing numbers.
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Much work remains in the 30 years on the clock for the Vermont Vision for a Multicultural Future. Over time, these and other initiatives will transform Vermont into the epicenter of inclusive and equitable thought and practice in the United States.
Imagine - the Vermont brand being synonymous with anti-racism in both appearance and fact.
Imagine - the boon to our local economies as word spreads throughout the multicultural marketplace that in addition to our rolling landscape, clean air, and abundant recreational and educational opportunities, anti-racism makes Vermont the most welcoming place for tourists, convention-goers, entrepreneurs, and venture capitalists of all stripes and colors.
We work so that Vermont can be the unexpected. And I challenge SIT graduates to be the unexpected as well - wherever life's journey takes them.