Today's Hidden Racism: A Polite Apartheid by Dave Lefkowith (2001-11-01) - Hardcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dave Lefkowith has enjoyed a varied career as an executive, a consultant, a "change agent," an entrepreneur and a speaker/trainer.

Dave - or "Lefty" as he's known to his friends - earned his BA from Yale University (summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa) and his MBA from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business (as an Arjay Miller Scholar). Dave has worked for the past 20 years as a corporate consultant and change agent, specializing in organizational transformation, new product development and leadership development.

Dave lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

Nino Amato is a successful business executive and respected social justice activist. He has served as a senior executive in both the health care and energy industries. Nino is a strategic marketing consultant, specializing in business development, governmental affairs, media relations and brand management.

As a community leader, Nino chaired the City of Madison's Task Force on Race Relations and is a member of the NAACP, LUChA and the Madison Urban League. Nino is on the Board of Directors of Common Cause of Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Technical College System.

Nino has been honored with the Rev. James C. Wright Humanitarian Award - City of Madison's Equal Opportunities Commission in July 2000 and the YWCA Racial Justice Award in April 2000.

Nino earned his BS from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and his MA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Robert M. LaFollette Institute of Public Affairs.

Nino lives in Madison with his two daughters.

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Why Did Two Middle-Aged White Guys Write this Book?

Inevitably we realize that people who read this book - probably even those who only hear about it - may well ask:

"Who are these guys? How do two middle-aged white guys have the credentials - where do they get the right - to write this book?"

Fair enough.

We recognize that no white person in the United States can ever fully experience the reality of being a person of color for even one day.

But no matter what our color may be, we're not blind to the disturbing forms of racism that are still prevalent in our country, yet seldom discussed by people like us.

In part, our backgrounds as ethnic minorities led us to write this book. We're Jewish and Italian - not racially oppressed in the United States today, but certainly from ethnic backgrounds that kept us separate and apart from the mainstreams where we grew up.

Dave grew up in a segregated community - in New Jersey, in the 1960s and 70s! Dave was a sports nut who never played golf, because the local golf club didn't allow Jews (or blacks or Asians or pretty much anyone who wasn't white and a Republican) to play on the course. Part of growing up Jewish, Italian or Armenian in that community was the realization that you were one of "the dark ones," the people farthest from the mainstream.

Now Dave has a biracial child who has just started to endure the slights that will inevitably increase in frequency and intensity as she grows up - she is unfailingly courageous in her own youthful disdain for racial prejudice, and it's hard not to feel inspired to act by her example.

Nino has a long track record on social justice issues and is a respected business and community leader. Nino grew up in a truly diverse neighborhood in Madison, Wisconsin - where he and his neighborhood friends were brutally taunted by rival high schoolers for their ethnicity. This upbringing - and Nino's loss of a mayoral election as a very young man due to poisonous rumors that his family was part of organized crime - hardened his resolve to seek social justice.

Nino's efforts haven't been unrecognized - he's been honored with both the YWCA Racial Justice Award and the Madison Equal Opportunity Commission's James. C. Wright Humanitarian Award. He is also an active member of the Madison chapters of the NAACP and the Urban League.

So our credentials, such as they are, seem in order. But while we may have good hearts, why is it that we think we can write knowledgeably about racism?

The answer is simple: because people just like us are the ones who must take up the struggle now. A hidden racism - our polite Apartheid - is particularly difficult to combat. People of color are often excluded from the chambers of influence where initiatives that might address this issue are conceived and deliberated.

But we have access to these corridors of power, political and commercial. For over 20 years Dave has consulted extensively with corporations, interacting directly with top management figures. Nino has been a top-level executive within both public and private organizations. We speak their language and we're a comfortable presence.

We have an entrée to advocate for change without being threatening, without being ignored.

Perhaps most importantly - whether we like it or not - we're part of the privileged elite. The phenomenon of "white privilege" is totally real, in fact pervasive within large corporations. We can say things and "be heard," while a person of color might be accused of "grinding an ax" or "being defensive."

We feel strongly that we have the affirmative moral obligation to speak up. If people like us don't speak up, then there is no way we can get corporate decision-makers to recognize the nearly invisible barriers that keep us apart as a country and threaten our common future.

Our specific purpose in writing this book is to serve as a catalyst, to help awaken and equip a new generation of activists dedicated to positive social change. We're targeting real change now, so we intend to be tactical - we intend to advocate for changes that are realistic, that are apolitical, outlining steps that individuals and institutions can take now for positive impact now.

This is not about good intentions - this about confronting injustice in increments small enough so that local solutions can deliver immediate, local improvements.

We realize that racism won't disappear based on what we write, or on the basis of what anyone writes or does.

But we do have an important mission: our vision is to get complacent people with good hearts to see the hidden barriers that create a polite Apartheid, and inspire them to action.

With the help of every good person our message touches, we hope to overcome these barriers and address our country's silent racism one individual, one company and one community at a time.

We dedicate this effort to our parents, who raised us with the clear notion that the true value of a person lies within.

We dedicate this effort to our children, to whom we want to leave a better world.

Dave Lefkowith A.J. Nino Amato November, 2001 November, 2001