Arias, who speaks flawless English, thinks the supervisor heard her speaking Spanish to a colleague and assumed she was an immigrant with sub-standard language skills. In high school in Grand Rapids and Eaton Center, nobody knew she was Hispanic, says Arias, who lives in Holt. But he wasn't really mad. The problem, he acknowledges, is that there's just not a lot of communication across the chasms that divide us. The problem is essentially one of selfishness, he says.
Optimists cite small but encouraging steps.
There is, for example, President Clinton's national dialogue on race, which just wrapped up a hearing on the role of race in sports. But the misunderstandings are much bigger than any one group, argues Ann Arbor social-work student Derrick Anderson, who's black. The healthy thing is to confront biases as they well up inside you, he suggests, before inflicting them on the rest of the world. Anderson knows all about that. He's gay, and has had to wrestle with the discomfort many African Americans feel toward homosexuals, as well as his own highly condemning attitudes that he was raised to believe in.