Tag Archives: Diversity

Obama, Clinton Most Admired / Water, From the Makers of Coke / The Muslim World’s Diversity

Posted on by

President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton are the most admired man and woman, a new poll shows. In America, billionaires are giving away the bulk of their fortunes. The world’s largest soda maker is working on water projects in Africa. And an American photographer captures diversity in the Muslim world.

Obama, Clinton Most Admired
(mobile version)
For the third year in a row, a USA Today – Gallup poll has found that Barack Obama is the most admired male public figure. The most admired woman is Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has held the title 15 times since 1992. The survey was conducted between December 10-12, and is based on telephone interviews with a random sample of 1,019 adults. Participants were asked to name the man and woman living anywhere in the world they most admired.

A Billionaires’ Pledge 
(mobile version)
The two richest men in the United States, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, launched The Giving Pledge in June 2010, encouraging other billionaires, in the United States and abroad, to give away the bulk of their fortunes to philanthropic causes. As of December 2010, 57 billionaires have joined their campaign.

Coca-Cola’s Water Projects
(mobile version)
Cola-Cola Company, the world’s largest beverage maker, has formed a partnership with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.N. Development Programme to launch or expand water projects in eight African countries. The World Health Organization estimates that 1.1 billion people—including more than 300 million Africans—do not have access to clean water.

Photo Gallery: The Diversity of the Muslim World
(mobile version)
American photographer Derek Brown, whose work has been featured in The Economist and other major publications, traveled to 28 countries for more than 18 months to photograph the diversity of the Muslim world. An exhibit of his work at the cafe Busboys and Poets in Washington drew raves. Andy Shallal, an Iraqi American and the owner of Busboys and Poets noted, “It makes people realize the Muslim world is beyond the Middle East — it’s far beyond that.”

Photo Friday

Posted on by

35 petitioners for United States citizenship took the oath of citizenship at the National Archives in Washington, DC on December 15. The ceremony was in honor of the 219th anniversary of the adoption of the Bill of Rights.

The new citizens are from 26 nations: El Salvador, Uganda, Ecuador, Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, Kenya, Burma, Iraq, France, Senegal, Colombia, Cameroon, Chile, Venezuela, Peru, Russia, Jamaica, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Austria, Australia, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, Philippines, Liberia, Morocco (State Dept./Jane K. Chun).

How Will the World View the "New Face" of America?

Posted on by

Multi-lingual signs in mainstream national stores around the United States testify to America's increasing diversity.

When I was a child, the “face” of the United States was largely white. Today experts are analyzing the initial returns for the 2010 national U.S. census, and they are finding that the face of the United States is looking very different.

By 2025, the United States will be older, more diverse and more urban, according to Bruce Katz, vice president and director of the Metropolitan Policy Program of the Brookings Institution and Judith Rodin, president of The Rockefeller Foundation.

Racial and ethnic minorities, they say in a recent report, accounted for 83 percent of the U.S. population growth in the last decade, and the United States is well on the way to becoming a majority-minority society.

In the 1990s, I remember arguments about whether people of various cultures could adopt democracy. But it seems not to be a problem for the millions of people from all over the world who seek to make the United States their home.

Diversity and the many fruitful ideas it can bring are what helped make U.S. democracy strong. It’s a good thing, I think, that the democratic values the United States represents are shared by people from all ethnic and racial backgrounds. When people from around the world look at the United States, they will be able to see a face that may look very much like their own.

Do you think a majority-minority American society will change the way the world regards the United States?

Democracy and Diversity

Posted on by

I’m currently in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), where the people of its capital city Sarajevo are proud of the fact that they have a church, synagogue and mosque all on the same block. It is representative of the country’s vast religious and ethnic diversity.

For a country that still feels the impact of a war in the 1990s that killed and displaced hundreds of thousands, its government must always keep this diversity in mind. Its institutions are designed to ensure that each of the three major ethnic groups are represented. In fact, the presidency rotates every eight months among a Bosniak, Serb and Croat who have each been elected to a four-year term.

A few weeks ago, I asked readers to share what a new democracy needs. Reader Jitendra described democracy, as ideally “flowering of a nation’s cultural ethos, which comprises tolerance, open dialogue and rule of reason in preference to dogma and fanaticism.”

While the nation’s institutions are designed to ensure all ethnic groups are involved in governing, its people, as Jitendra suggests, must also be tolerant and willing to engage with one another for these institutions to work.

That’s no easy task after years of conflict, but I’m eager to see how BiH is progressing. How do you teach and encourage tolerance?

More on Diversity, Life Experience and Judicial Temperament

Posted on by

A few add-on thoughts to a post I did a few weeks ago. In my previous life as an attorney, in New Jersey (insert joke here), I heard stories—possibly apocryphal but I think not—about a certain state supreme court justice who had been raised, shall we say, in privilege. One day, while still a mere trial court judge, said legal genius presided over a tort action, a typical ‘slip-and-fall’ case of the type much beloved by the plaintiff’s bar. In ruling against the defendant supermarket, His Honor suggested the store had been negligent because it had not carpeted its floors. Surely, he reasoned, the plaintiff would not have been injured were the floor covered with a cut pile, possibly a plush.

The supermarket’s attorney objected, rather plausibly in my view, that customers couldn’t push their shopping carts down carpeted aisles. Silence from the bench. Gradually, it dawns on all present that the judge didn’t know what a shopping cart was! After all, as those who knew him better later admitted, “the help” always did the shopping for Judge’s family.

This is why diversity of life experience is so important. A supreme court justice who knows what it’s like to pay rent in a tenement house, or pick cotton, or for that matter meet a payroll, can better understand real-life nuances and, in my view, better dispense justice. And this diversity is especially useful on a court with only nine members.

But is being a Latina relevant? I think Judge Sotomayor means to equate her racial/ethnic heritage with a form of experience. But once we admit ethnicity and race, or as previous generations might more starkly have put it—blood—to the discussion, great mischief can follow. How to answer the bigot who suggests the Judge might be too “hot-blooded” for the high court? There are plenty of Catholics and Jews on the Supreme Court. Care to ponder the implications of that? I don’t. And I don’t think the discussion is good for American democracy.
Confusing experience with racial, ethnic, or other characteristics of birth raises all kinds of complications. Here’s one from the recent presidential campaign: should “affirmative action” apply to President Obama’s daughters when they apply to college? They add racial diversity, but is their life experience (except for Dad being President!) all that unique among students at elite institutions? I bet the first lady makes sure Malia and Sasha know what a shopping cart is, but the case for the uniqueness of their life experience is weaker than that for, well, Sonya Sotomayor.

Judge Sotomayor certainly is a Latina. She may prove a wise jurist, and this would be a blessing for our nation. But let’s keep the two separate.

Oh Say Can Yu Vote?

Posted on by

As Michelle and Michael have written, sometimes Americans wonder whether or not to vote. But for some Americans, the issue is being able to vote in the first place.

In a video of an April 7 state legislative hearing, Texas lawmaker Betty Brown and Organization of Chinese Americans representative Ramey Ko discuss proposed voter identification requirements in Texas. Ko notes that some people of Asian descent have had trouble voting in a number of states because some of their identification papers use legal names transliterated from Asian languages while others include nicknames adopted for everyday use. Others have had problems because of variations in how their names are spelled on documents. Both Brown and Ko agree voters should present proof of identity to participate in elections.

A voter hands over his identification as he registers to vote.During the discussion, Brown asks Ko if “it would behoove you and your citizens to adopt a name that we could deal with more readily here.” She immediately adds that she is “not talking about changing your name,” but then later asks “if there were some means by which you could adopt a name just for identification purposes that was easier for Americans to deal with?”

Brown’s comments have generated a lot of attention in the Asian-American community, including the blog Asian-Nation, the Asian American Action Fund, the Asian American Journalists Association and the Organization of Chinese Americans. I personally find Brown’s comments troubling. The United States is a land of immigrants, and the diversity of our names is a part of our cultural heritage. People of any background – Asian, Middle Eastern, African, Latin American or European – should not be asked to adopt different names for identification purposes because others find their true names hard to spell or pronounce.

At the same time, we must acknowledge that many immigrants and naturalized citizens do adopt nicknames for daily use that often are included on common forms of identification such as student IDs, work IDs and driver’s licenses. Should people be allowed to use these documents to register to vote and, when necessary, prove their identity at the polls? Or should they be required to show additional documents that list their legal names, such as naturalization certificates or passports? When there are variations in spelling, how much discretion should voter registration and poll workers have in verifying identification? How can these workers certify people as eligible to vote without unduly burdening anyone?