Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Building diversity

[Verhd (Verhd]

I am an African American who has been lurking on this list for the past few
months.  The suggestions I have read regarding  ways to ensure diversity seem
to be very artificial to me.  I think each co-housing group has to think
about why they want African Americans, or any other specific group, as part
of their community.   Is it because you want to enrich the lives of your own
children, for example, by making sure they are exposed to the larger
community they will come in contact with in their adult lives?  I always have
a problem with this kind of reasoning.  I would like to be included because
I'm valued as an individual and human being, not because exposure to me makes
someone else's life richer.

I also take issue with the statement that " African Americans...have a few
barriers of distrust which are immediately raised when appproached by
Anglos."  To the contrary, African Americans are raised in a white dominant
society and  have ongoing exposure to  whites on the jobs, in school, from
the media, from service providers etc.  There may be whites who have been
able to live their lives without exposure to African Americans, but that's
rarely the case the other way around.  Remember too that your target
population, someone who can afford, in most cases  a $100,000 + home and is
socialized to the concepts that co-housing espouses is probably someone who
is worldly and college educated and has therefore interfaced more with the
white community than others.

I hope that whatever group I choose to align up with is not one where the
members had to attend diversity workshops to get them to the point where they
could accept me.  "Friendships, partners and neighbors" should form naturally
because you like and respect one another and recognize we are all simply
people.

My family, along with two other families, have bought a large vacation home
together as sort of a pre-co-housing experiment to see how we work together.
 Our bond was formed from many years spent at school together and supporting
each others professional development.  We share a vision of how we want our
lives to be which matches co-housing philosophies.  That these two other
families are white was never an issue for me.  Although I, naturally have an
extensive African-American network the goals and values of these other
families are more in line with mine.  If you can draw on the relationships
you do have with people of diverse ethnic groups (and I hope you do have
those relationships in place) that would be the best way to naturally address
this issue.

By the way, African American or any -------- American  is written in caps for
both African and American.  It is only hyphendated when it is used as an
adjective.  (Sorry that's the English teacher in me but people tend to be
sensitive about this kind of thing.)

I realize this e-mail is a bit longer than the other postings I've read but
felt it was important to share this perspective with you.

Verna H. Denny