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St. Cloud State University
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Satellite presentation takes off
By Geoff Higgins
Published:
Monday, October 14, 2002
Conquering the Fear: A Process for Healing, was a program shown live via satellite in 40 different locations around Minnesota last Thursday.
The Minnesota Cultural Diversity Center (MCDC) has been putting on this annual program for nine years. The MCDC was founded by the company's executive director, Ghafar Lakanwal, who helped his company expand to work with as many clients as 380 organizational, corporate and individual members. The MCDC offers a number of events throughout the year to help people understand cultural diversity.
"Our mission is to promote multi-cultural understanding and inclusiveness in the workplace as well as in the communities," Lakanwal said.
Along with the four workshops and seminars that the MCDC puts on every month, the company also organizes 10 cultural learning events a year.
One of the most important learning events is the conference that the MCDC puts on every year in compliance with Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU). This conference is provided to every campus that is part of MnSCU via satellite.
Conference topics change every year, but the conference is always headed by well-educated speakers and community leaders that welcome students to call in and ask questions.
This year the title of the satellite conference was Conquering the Fear: A Process for Healing. The presentation was moderated by Cathy Wurzer, the host of "Morning Edition" on Minnesota Public Radio (MPR). Wurzer opened the conference by introducing a video prepared by the Pillsbury House Theatre Company.
This is the fifth year in a row that the Pillsbury House Theatre Company has made a video for the annual conference. This year's edition was titled, "Breaking Ice."
The video showed common situations where people come face to face and struggle to communicate because of cultural barriers.
The cultural barriers were not limited to just racial differences. As the video illustrated, communication barriers exist in situations where there were differences in life styles, ages, and gender.
"(The video) Is to inspire people to talk to each other about their differences, and the theatre serves as a great catalyst for this," Hunter Batz said.
After the video, Kathy Wurzer was joined by keynote speaker Joseph L. White. White said according to the census bureau, the majority of the population of the United States is going to be people of color by the middle of this century.
Another topic White covered was the change in public perceptions of blatant racism.
White said America is in the "chillin' out phase" of open racism, although he did acknowledge cultural misunderstanding still exists.
White used the example that different races do go to school together, but they do not hang out with each other.
"We are strangers in a sense that we don't know each other as a people," White said.
To get the nation truly united, White said, what needs to be created is a new racial paradigm that brings Americans from all ethnic groups as one.
White mapped out a four layer program people can use to better understand one another through better communication. This program will help develop this new paradigm, and will eliminate stereotypes people have about other cultures different from their own.
"We have all sorts of stereotypes that fill in the unknown," White said.
The first layer of the program is conceptual. This is where White says that a person needs to reach out intellectually to another culture by reading books or seeing movies about another culture. This step is the self education process.
The second layer is dialogue. The dialogue layer is a chance for people to understand and narrow the perceptual gap. Here a person is challenged to sit face to face with an individual from another culture. This allows both parties to reach out and become educated through the discussion of cultural beliefs and practices.
The dialogue layer also challenges people to use introspection. To look at what they have done to contribute to racial problems and decide what to do to change for the better.
Empathy is the last part of the dialogue layer that people should use to have a better understanding of different cultures. Understanding the fears and experiences of another culture helps everyone understand where these other cultures are coming from.
The last layer that White presented is behavioral interaction. This layer is the final and most challenging step for people to take, because it involves stepping out of one familiar environment and stepping into another. There is a lot of interaction between cultures and a lot of learning.
After White concluded his speech. Wurzer lead a panel discussion made up of experts in communications and cultural understanding.
The panel included Concordia University professor Bruce Corrie, Janice Downing of Fredrickson Human Resources Consulting Group, Phillip Bamberger from Progroup and Val Varga, a Hispanic Chamber of Commerce member.
The panel discussion reviewed the material White shared and was also open to questions called in from viewers.
The panel agreed the best way for people of different cultures to learn about each other is to make efforts to communicate.
Some faculty and staff from SCSU attended the diversity discussion along with students.
Balasubramanian Kasi, a professor of Environmental and Technological Studies said that everyone at SCSU could take an important lesson away from the diversity discussion and agreed with the panel's view that communication is the key to better cultural relations.
"Basically students faculty and staff should not be afraid to take the first step (to better communication between cultures)," said Kasi. "To live is to be vulnerable."
