Finances key to bridging racial differences
When one thinks of business, or even simply human relations in Phoenix, bilingualism, tolerance and direct and friendly communication are hardly the terms that come to mind. In part, this is due to the very real racism and misconceptions held, by Anglos, Latinos, Asians, and African Americans about each other. It is also due to a very real history of segregation and discrimination that characterized Arizona’s history till very recently-and has far from disappeared. For these reasons, it is more urgent than ever that some solution be found where people of different ethnicities can meet, work, and envision a better future, through finances.
Why finances? Because money is the key factor in determining both insertion into American society, and the desire to build a life in this country-whether one is descended from recent immigrants, Native Americans, or the oldest post-Native wave of immigration in the Southwest: the Hispanic settlers who arrived in the 16th century, three generations before the Mayflower docked in at Plymouth. Not to disparage the Mayflower: there is MORE than enough room in this country for people to coexist, in whatever order the languages spoken by your forbears arrived here. For those interested, the historical language timeline begins with the Native peoples, continues with Spanish and the West African languages, augments with English in the 19th century, and continues on, with all the rest.
A Phoenix-based, steadily growing independent enterprise, CompassCBS, founded by Edgar Olivo as a bilingual and bicultural center for business and language training, is making the point that financial success is not an issue of ethnicity or “old boys’ networks.” This is not, as has sometimes been wrongly assumed, an enterprise for Hispanics alone. Edgar stresses the importance of working and training in Spanish and English, equally. In the outlook of CompassCBS, both languages are keys to economic advancement, and financial training is best when people share their cultural perceptions, as well as their languages.
Economic opportunities, as cross cultural specialists Dean Foster and Sheida Hodgg noted back in the 1990s, increase in proportion to the amount of linguistic ability and multi-cultural savvy that the businessperson possesses. This approach to international understanding and economic prosperity strikes a very different chord with many in the business world, who often feel very uncomfortable with ideological arguments that we should “love our neighbor.” One may not be able to “love one’s neighbor” all the time, but one can definitely work with him/her. Taking this type of business and cultural pragmatism as a guiding light, Edgar Olivo and his team at CompassCBS stress the importance of collaboration and personal responsibility.
This is what makes CompassCBS unique: its ability to think outside the box (in two languages, and more are welcome). The organization, from this writer’s observation, neither shies away from issues of racism, nor gets mired in the ugly perceptions that discrimination creates. Instead, CompassCBS creates a bridge where Anglos and Latinos can meet, share perceptions and strategies on the corporate world and the sphere of small and medium-size businesses, and deal with cultural issues that may be serving as a barrier to advancement. For Mr. Olivo, communication, forthright, bilingual, and authentic, is the key to furthering cooperation and, why not, profits.
Some may shy away from this blend of multi-cultural universalism and money, but those who do, would be those who have never had the need to earn a living. For the rest of us, (that is, for most of us) this synthesis of financial growth and inter-cultural collaboration is far more persuasive than any exhortation to love one’s neighbor. If you are lucky enough to have a loveable neighbor, please disregard this. But if you have one that you can simply live with, it wouldn’t hurt either of you — whatever language you speak — to come together to collaborate and figure out how to bring home a fatter paycheck.
Sharonah Frederick has a Ph.D in Latin American Colonial and Indigenous Literature from SUNY Stony Brook and an MA in Renaissance and Medieval History from Tel Aviv University. Email her at sfredrick@njcu.edu.