Editor:

A short while ago I lent my public support for a proposal before Statesboro City Council to start a “Diversity and Inclusion Commission.” While I very much support the proposal, I quite frankly think it was rolled out in a way that failed to model inclusion. This is not to condemn the proposal or those who made it. My goal is to simply encourage us all to do better next time.  

Days after the city council meeting I talked to people of influence I know. I also talked to very low income people I know who happened to live on Gordon Street to get a sense of when people heard about the proposals. Generally speaking, neither group knew anything about a proposal for a diversity commission until after it was presented to City Council for a vote.  

As best as I can tell, besides the mayor, city council members and the rather homogenous group of people asked to come express support for the measure, no one knew anything about it. When I say homogenous, I don’t mean racially so or in terms of gender and sexual orientation. In some ways the group was very diverse. But in other very important ways the group was positively monolithic. Most everybody who knew about this ahead of time and came prepared to voice an opinion were well educated, politically progressive people who have lived outside the area and have tangible connections to Georgia Southern University.  

The following kinds of people were left out of this conversation:  Low income poorly educated African Americans, low income poorly educated white people, the affluent business community and conservatives of all stripes. The invitation to this conversation was hand-picked and not inclusive at all, and the diversity that was represented was one dimensional, in my opinion.  

It is much harder than most people think to bring real diversity to the table when it comes to making public policy. I know first-hand because this has been a major focus of mine on the Blue Mile Committee for the past three years. It took us on the Blue Mile Committee hundreds of man hours to figure out how to get real input from low income people living near the Blue Mile and to implement the effort to obtain that input.  

With the help of a couple of African American churches and volunteers from the Blue Mile neighborhood itself we conducted two surveys by canvasing neighborhoods. We followed up the survey with two community meetings, one at the library and one at a local church in the neighborhood. Blue Mile Housing Subcommittee volunteers and members of a local African American church canvassed the neighborhoods to get people to turn out to both of these community meetings. In addition flyers about the meetings were distributed along with the food bank distribution. At the meetings we brought leaders of the Blue Mile Committee and officials representing the city for face to face conversations with the neighborhood about the results of the surveys and to hear the desires of the community first hand.  

We know that our efforts to reach beyond the business community bubble to include low income people in this process has fallen short, and that we must do more. The problem is that people on the Blue Mile Committee have day jobs, and reaching out to people they don’t normally interact with in their daily lives is time consuming and hard. I think all of us would welcome the help of an inclusion and diversity commission if individuals in that group show that they are more skilled at this and have more time for it than we do.  

Personally I wish the effort to present a diversity commission to City Council was preceded by a process that modelled bringing real social and ideological diversity to the policy conversation. I wish the idea was presented to the community first in a variety of venues and through a variety of media outlets and with neighborhood canvasing to show that people who want to be part of this commission are up for the task.     

Marcus Toole

Statesboro

(Marcus Toole has nearly 20 years-experience doing social development in ethnic minority communities in the USA and Canada.  He currently serves as Community Outreach Coordinator for Habitat for Humanity of Bulloch County.)