Focus is on racial justice, inclusion in a time of crisis
The turmoil of recent weeks and months has exposed inequalities in health care and the need for racial justice at a time when the population is growing more diverse, said Manuel Pastor in keynote comments during the annual Diversify Summit hosted Friday by the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce.
“There are decades in which nothing happens, and there are weeks in which decades happen,” said Pastor, who is professor of sociology and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. “It’s impossible to go back from what we’ve seen.”
The coronavirus pandemic and the killing of George Floyd brought to the forefront problems that younger, more diverse generations are pushing to solve, Pastor said during the summit.
“Young people, they’re not putting up with it anymore, and those are young people of every racial group,” Pastor said.
This is the seventh year the Chamber has hosted the Diversify summit. Though the event has always been in person in the past, organizers moved the summit online in response to the pandemic.
Darian Scott, the Chamber’s senior director of talent and economic inclusion, said the summit that brings together local diversity and inclusion experts with national voices has never had a more urgent mission.
“Silence is betrayal and it’s time to speak out,” he said. “Diversify is all about inclusion and economic access in our community.”
With two pandemics to discuss, the event had a particularly sharp focus this year, said Dionne Jenkins, who
moderated a panel on diversity and inclusion in a time of crisis.
The first pandemic is COVID-19, which recently claimed the life of a member of her family, Jenkins said. The second pandemic is racism, and there is a powerful need to talk directly about race and racism — not only the more general ideas of diversity and inclusion, said Jenkins, who is vice president of diversity and inclusion for the Tennessee Valley Federal Credit Union.
“That word, ‘race,’ is like a curse word when you talk about this work,” she said.
Pastor pointed to growing diversity as a driver of change, pointing to data that shows the majority of people in the U.S. will be people of color by 2045. Younger people are more likely to have diverse groups of friends and colleagues, and they see the inequities that are “baked into” systems from education and health care to law enforcement, Pastor said.
More than 400 people attended the online event, scheduled for Juneteenth to honor the day word of the emancipation of slaves reached Galveston, Texas, on June 19, 1865, more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation.
There is still a long way to go, said Linda Wiley, an event speaker from Turning Point Leadership Group.
“I’ve been operating professionally in the [diversity and inclusion] space for over 20 years and I still don’t see sustainability,” she said. “The civil rights act was passed in 1964 and we are literally still protesting on the streets today.”
As the leader of an organization that serves minority communities, the best thing she can do to move this work forward is listen, said Shannon Stephenson, the CEO of Cempa Community Care. Stephenson turned a recent staff meeting over to employees to share their own stories of discrimination and struggle, and it was a powerful experience, Stephenson said.
“It made me realize how much people need a voice,” she said. “They need to know someone is going to listen to them.”