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What cultural or racial factors influenced the process?
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Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Along the way, the Italian American group could not come up with
anything meaningful for its portion of the agenda. They wanted sick leave for the work program.
That was their issue, sick leave. That’s all they could think. Their leader said, "We really
don’t have anything here,” and during the course of the mediation, the Italian Americans
acknowledged they weren’t a culture group. They had no issues and they were beginning to
feel awkward. It didn’t really manifest itself until later at the table when they basically said,
"We’re dissolving, because we have no reason to be here.” While listening to others at the
table, they came to understand and appreciate the plight of the racial minority groups, and they
didn’t want to be there.
Question:
Now are you saying you created a black agenda and a white agenda?
Answer:
No, no. I merged all of the agenda items, but the cultural items were often grouped.
Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
Another similar sort of question relates to
the statement that is being made quite a bit in the field now, that white Americans have what’s
being called the dominant North American model of mediation. Many people think it doesn't
work in other cultures and this has been very much said in relation to Africa, Central and South
America. Some people are extending that to minority cultures within the United States. Do you,
or did you see any need to adopt different approaches for different cultural groups?
Answer:
I was never involved in a formal of mediation with the American Indian Community, but I
doubt it would be the same as the traditional mediation model that we know. More consultation
would be needed, more time would be needed. I was told by a Korean-American mediator,
who’s active in the Asian Mediation Center in Los Angeles, that he had a problem when the
parties shared their problem with him and then they expected him to be a party to the conflict too.
They refused to accept his contentions that his involvement ended when the agreement was
signed. They wanted the mediator to immerse himself in the problem and stay involved in the
event the agreement broke down. If you don’t know that culture from the outset, you are going
to have trouble with another model. And if you try to impose another ground rule, you’re going
to get into trouble.
In El Salvador where I’m working now, we’re building a conflict resolution
component, a local Zone of Peace to address violence in 86 low income communities. There are
people who went in, before I had got there, who wanted a big mediation program as part of this.
That won’t work. During our assessment we found out that what will work, is a system already
in place where a directorate decides community conflicts. They come together, so that if the
issue is over the availability of water in the community, it’s the directorate that makes that
decision or resolves it. Does this mean that there’s no mediation? No it doesn’t. It means that
you respect that current process, and maybe you give some mediation type training, teach the
skills of mediators to the members of the directorate and the community so they have options and
alternatives to make them better, more effective in the way they’re doing it. Is there a place for
mediation or mediational behaviors to be used there? I think part of this is how you use the word
"mediation." Formal mediation structured in certain ways, no, it’s not appropriate in certain
places. But the techniques of mediation and being mediational in behaviors are.
Silke Hansen
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
I have a theoretical question for you. At the Conflict Consortium, we have been working on
a theory of intractable conflicts for a long time. We have said that intractable conflicts generally
cannot be mediated (almost by definition) and that identity conflicts, including racial conflicts,
are particularly likely to be intractable. So as I was listening to your discussion about the orange,
I began to wonder, how do you get people to reframe a conflict from being about race to being
about something else?
Answer:
It's what I started talking about early on. You don't talk about race; instead, you ask, "What
are the hiring policies?" or, "What are the discipline issues?" You ask, "What does the
curriculum look like?" or, "Do you have access to the establishment, to the superintendent?"
Because even though the community sees the superintendent as being racist and as being the
reason why they can't get what they want, the real issues and I'm not going to say race hasn't
influenced what has happened there but the next level or the level at which this needs to be
resolved isn't race; it's policies and procedures, and access, and communities, and processes. It's
about interaction and communication, both of which were sorely lacking in this case. The race
factor just made it more difficult because both sides believed, "Those people are difficult to deal
with because of what they have been taught." Race was the orange, but it wasn't the issue.
The community could get a person of the same race in that position who didn't change the
policies, and that would be more frustrating, because now one can't even blame it on racism
anymore. But if they got somebody else who is white, but who changes the policy and is more
responsive to the community, that will decrease the perception of racism. And that will diminish
the taproot or fuse of inequality and disparity. So even though people see the issue as race, it
really isn't race at all.
Another example of that is the issue of sovereignty, though I haven't yet been able to get the
parties to understand this, and so I haven't been successful in reframing in this area. Sovereignty
is a big issue with Native Americans, particularly when it comes to law enforcement on
reservations. There is less and less willingness by tribal leadership to allow a non-tribal law
enforcement to have any kind of role on the reservation. This also applies in cases of hunting and
fishing rights disputes.
One of the biggest obstacles to developing some effective collaborative approaches to law
enforcement on and near reservations, and to hunting/fishing rights on and near reservations is
that both the American Indians and state officials approach it from a perspective of, "Who has the
sovereignty? Who has the jurisdiction?" What I try to get across is, "Okay, if you have the
jurisdiction, or if you have the sovereignty, what is it you want to do with it? What is it that you
want to accomplish?" If I could get them to talk about what effective law enforcement would
look like, regardless of who has the jurisdiction and the sovereignty, I really think they could
work that out. I totally believe that. But it is such a sensitive issue, it is very difficult to get
beyond that. The focus has been on the sovereignty, because it's a symbolic issue as well as a real
issue. Symbolic issues are very difficult to surmount.
There was one hunting/fishing case that I was called in to, where the state and the tribe had been
in negotiations but reached a deadlock. That's when someone called me. They said, "Well, so-
and-so says Silke Hansen claims she can do this. Let's call her."
"Oh gee, thanks a lot!" I keep telling people, "Why don't you call when you start these
negotiations, not when they fall apart?"
But I went up anyway, and they showed me what they had done, and I said, "I don't even want to
see that." I started putting stuff on the white board. "If you have regulations, what are your
objectives? What is it you are trying to accomplish?" And they were like this [she linked her
fingers together] they absolutely agreed. So once they agreed on that, it was just a matter of
determining what kind of policies each side needed to bring those objectives about. Both sides
gave a little, and at the end of a very long day, the people at the table reached an agreement.
That's the good news. The bad news is that when it went back to the tribe the tribe didn't buy it,
because they said it was encroaching too much on their sovereignty.
Another case in the same state ended the same way. It involved a similar kind of negotiation. The
parties reached an agreement at the end of the day, but in that case it was the state that blocked
the agreement. The negotiators went back to their superiors, who threw out the agreement, again
on issues of sovereignty. So there was no agreement.
But to me, it proves a point. You have to cut through and disregard the identity issues well, you
can't ignore these issues totally because they are there. But the mistake that we usually make in
most discussions is that we make racism or sovereignty the issue, and that is not the issue. The
issue is, "How can we get past that to provide effective law enforcement?" "How can we get past
that to provide good stewardship of our natural resources?" But the history of feeling attacked
and encroached-upon and the perception that "they are just trying to whittle away at what we
have, piece-by-piece," prevents people from focusing on the real issues. On the other hand, there
is the concern that the state "should not give those people special rights and recognition." These
feelings are so strong that it is very difficult to come from a different perspective. But I am
absolutely convinced if they could just throw out that "orange" and deal with the "flavoring" and
the "beverage," there would be much more common ground.
Question:
When you succeed in getting them to do that, what is the long-term result in terms of
identity and symbolic issues and race relations? If they can cut through those things to resolve
this incident, does it have a long-term effect on other incidents?
Answer:
Well, I think it would if it worked at all, but as I said in the two examples that I gave you, it
didn't work. The people at the table were able to reframe the problem, but their superiors were
not willing to do that, and the agreements were thrown out for political reasons. It was seen as
giving too much or losing too much in terms of sovereignty and jurisdiction and control. So
neither agreement held up.
I do believe that had it held up, it could have provided a good model, a good precedent for how
we can get cooperative agreements on issues like this. In fact, there are other states where there is
less mistrust between state and tribe, and where in fact we do have better cooperative
relationships. If you could either just not mention "sovereignty" or acknowledge that each of
them has sovereignty, and that the two separate governments of two sovereign states are reaching
an agreement, I think it would be doable. But there is so much tension and mistrust in this
particular setting that it is difficult to make that happen.
Question:
What about other settings though? Such as, for instance, the principal who was accused of
being racist, where you were able to reframe it in terms of discipline policy and hiring and that
type of thing? Would that have affected the long-term relationship on race relations in the
schools?
Answer:
It would, because the potential triggering incidents are less common, so the "bomb" is less
likely to go off. Now there is a precedent of communication. There is a mechanism and an
expectation that people will address and deal with problems before they get to the point of
explosion. So it is the redress side that's handled more effectively. Once there is a precedent for
communication, it makes a big difference.
Probably one of the most positive examples of that is the same tax day facilitation. There were
anywhere from 75 to 100 people in that room and at least as many when I went back for a second
meeting. But out of those meetings came a sort of "community board" which included Hispanic
and Anglo participants, including law enforcement people. They formed this board and I trained
them in three days I gave them three days of basic mediation training. I remember one of the
members of the group said, "Gee, you know, Silke, I think this is the first time somebody has
come and said, 'I'm from the Federal Government and I'm here to help you,' and then actually
done it." I thought that was a huge compliment at the time.
That board still exists today, and is still dealing with problems involving the police and
community relations. But they also began to look at other sources of tension within the
community. This community started out as very mistrustful. There were a lot of accusations
about how Hispanics were being treated by the law enforcement system. But now the leader of
that system is working with that Hispanic community to deal with education issues in the
community purely because people are talking to each other now. And they pay me to do that!
It's great!
| Stephen Thom
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Now, in another case -- I'm just trying to give you
all the dynamics of this -- I had a case where a police department collaborated with the INS to do
a series of sweeps in a community on undocumented immigrants. They had done so many
sweeps that they unknowingly swept in Mexican-American citizens, maybe 35 or 40 of them.
They then faced a $35,000,000 suit. I met with both parties and I could have taken them to the
table, but I told the Latino leadership, "I'm going to remove myself from the mediation because
this type of violation is going to occur again until you get some kind of principle in law that
prevents it. I think you have something to get the attention of the institutions. If you mediate
this situation, there won't be any standard by which to terminate this kind of discrimination and I
think something needs to be put on the books." I left them with that. You know, you mediate an
agreement and that town has the agreement, but they were in the position to really put something
in the legal system, in the courts that could sustain some guidance when dealing with
undocumented immigrants and sweeps that effect U.S. citizens. At 35 million I thought they
would get the attention of a lot of cities and a lot of agencies and I thought it was important to let
the case go forward. Little did I know that they would settle this case for a meager $400,000.
For me I said, "We could have mediated that!" I didn't know where the lawyers were coming
from. Again, it's a judgment call that a mediator makes and I didn't want to get in the way of
something that I thought was very precedent setting for the Nation and for their community.
Those are the kinds of judgments a mediator can get into. A year later, the New Jersey State
Police publicly admitted to profiling against African Americans.
Question:
So in that case you decide to withdraw even though they were ready and willing to go
forward with mediation?
Answer:
Yeah. It wasn't exactly there, but I felt I had a good chance. Who knows?
| Bob Ensley
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
I didn't move so I got hauled over to the courthouse. So the
sheriff had heard about it and said, "We let you come here to see what you could do about those
commune people out there. You don't have anything else in this county to talk about." I didn't
know anything about who they were talking about. I said, "I came here to see about those people
who have been beaten in this jail. These are people who have been beaten and denied bond and
the speedy process." "That isn't any of your business, Boy." I said, "Well, I'm going to make it
some of my business. If I don't, somebody else will be here to see about it." And so here comes
this justice of the peace. He said, "You got some nerve Boy, coming down here talking to us
white
people like that. You don't know where you are and I'll..." I said, "You're going to do what?
You're used to talking to blacks from this area in the manner that you're trying to talk to me. If
you come out here and attempt to do anything to me, I'm going to defend myself any way I know
how. I can assure you that you will not be victorious. Are you understanding what I'm saying?"
So this big bully says, "I won't let no n****r talk to me like that." I said, "You go to hell." I was
scared to death. I got in my car and I knew it was time to go. I went across the street and got in
my car. When I looked around there were two cars following me on that rural road, so I stepped
on
it and got across the county line from Sumter County. I drove right up past Andersonville
Cemetery and I stopped my car and went to the trunk like I was going to get something out.
They stopped when I opened my trunk. I stood right by my trunk as if I had a shotgun or
something. I didn't have anything in there but maybe a jack or something. They sent
word to me that I better not show my black self in that county again and what they were going to
do to me. I said okay.
Julian Klugman
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
The Koreans had
bought out the black tavern owners. There were very few Jewish owners of buildings anymore,
since the Watts riots. The Jews got burned out in 1965 and they left. The Koreans came in, and
they had bought up over half the taverns, liquor stores, and little grocery stores.
It took me a while to understand Koreans. Koreans do not fit the Asian stereotype. In many
ways they're aggressive. They're the bottom of the social ladder for some Asians. Korea's
become industrialized in the last fifteen years. Before that it was mainly agricultural. So the
Koreans came into L.A. There are three hundred thousand Koreans in L.A. and about thirty
percent of them have a college education. Some Koreans are very blunt; they're like the Israelis.
They are very direct. They became shopkeepers. They didn't hire blacks because they are family
run institutions. They moved in and bought shops in black areas. To run a liquor shop in a poor
area, black or not, you're going to have protection. You're talking about central L.A. where at
that time there were more murders than anywhere else in the world. You're talking about drugs
and gang warfare; it's a dangerous place. Here is where they have their shops. I don't think
some black customers like them very much, and I don't think some Koreans like the black
customers very much.
It took me five years to get into the Korean community, being very patient. Once you're in,
you're in. They trust you, but it takes a long time. They had a dozen robberies of Korean stores
by blacks. There was an incident that was the turning point, though. A fifteen year old black
girl went in with her girlfriend to a store and she got a couple cans of soda. She got into a fight
with the older Korean shopkeeper, and the shopkeeper killed her. The woman claimed she
wasn't paying. Fortunately or unfortunately, there was a TV camera there. What happened was
that the girl came in, she got cans of soda and she had money in her hand. She came up to pay
and there was a misunderstanding. They started shouting at each other and the girl threw the
cans. She did push the woman, but she wasn't trying to steal the soda. She turned her back and
she started walking out, and the woman took a gun and blew her head off. It went to a jury and
the judicial system assigned the case to a new judge, who was a white woman. This was her first
case. Nobody else wanted the case so they gave it to her. They found the woman guilty of
manslaughter and the judge gave her probation. She never spent a day in jail. They left and
went back to Korea.
There had been a black and Korean merchant group using my problem solving approach.
I don't believe in just dialogue, but the human rights commission set
up a dialogue group. I got the leader of CALPAC (California Association of Taverns and
Package Liquor Stores), a black woman who was a real visionary. My idea was to get together
with KAGRO (Korean American Grocers Association). I got the two groups together and I
wanted them to sponsor a program for training. I got them to co-sponsor a project for two
things. First, we were going to set up a complaint system so black customers could register
complaints and there would be a system to deal with the Korean merchants who were really
doing things wrong. The other thing was that we would train. The woman who headed
CALPAC was running two stores. She knew how to do it and she had a lot to teach the Koreans.
And the Koreans had a lot to learn about how you deal with customers.
I spent over two years trying to do a whole series of meetings and we couldn't pull it off. There
was a lot of resistance from the black community, but this woman really was a leader. She was
pulling her group along. But behind the scenes, she was paying the price for it. There was a lot
of anti-Korean sentiment. The other thing was that the Human Rights Commission was
undercutting the project.
Question:
How so? Were they doing something specific?
Answer:
They had a Korean-black dialogue and the Koreans tend to respond to where they see the
power is, and I couldn't produce the money. If I could have produced the foundation money to
fund this we could have done it, but I could not pull it off; it was too risky. The county, through
the Human Rights Commission had this other thing going, and they saw what I was trying to do.
I could not do it through the county. So I had to set it up as a separate thing and they saw it as
competition.
But anyway, this trial had happened a year before which had a tremendous amount of publicity.
We tried to work on that hostility between blacks and Koreans, but when that trial happened,
that killed it. The feeling of the black community was so strong, because much of the Korean
community would not acknowledge that there was anything wrong. They came to the defense of
the merchant. It's true that it was dangerous to be a Korean merchant in a poor black or
Hispanic community. But the woman had no right to kill this girl. They caught her in the lie
and they had it on tape. The Korean community did not write her off; they tended to defend her.
That just killed my effort. So it was the combination of the LAPD actions and the buildup of
tension in the black community after the Rodney King trial, the fluid situation, the Korean-
black thing. When the riot came every Asian store got targeted. It wasn't just Koreans, they
went after. Unlike the later trials, we only had three hours notice. Later we had more notice.
Nobody could
believe the jury let them go. Maybe we should have known better. Also there was a vacuum of
leadership in the LAPD, which became very obvious.
I was on a plane when it started. As we were coming over LAX at about 6:00 pm, the plane was
diverted. Usually they come over direct, but we diverted; we went further South. The pilot
came on and said there were reports of rifle firing. That was the first day; that was April 29. I
got a rental car and drove downtown and I set up a temporary command post at City Hall. I
knew a woman in City Hall and she let us into her offices. By that time at Parker Police Center,
windows were broken, and there were police cars burning; it was out of control. And of course
the next day it got out to the Valley and it wasn't black anymore, it was Hispanic. First day was
black, and there were some white politicos involved, but the second day became Hispanic.
Unlike the Watts riots, within two days it was over a third of the city; it was even out in
Hollywood. Somebody broke the windows of the sex store on Hollywood Blvd. You have to
remember by this time L.A. had 300,000 El Salvadorans and 100,000 Nicaraguans, most of
whom were there illegally. Crimes of opportunity, poor people who didn't have much, saw on
TV that nobody was stopping the looting. It wasn't until the national guard came in the fourth
day that the situation really came under control.
Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Answer:
These were their interests, and they covered the waterfront. They
were very serious ones, primarily from the racial minorities, related to disciplinary actions.
Question:
That seemed to be racially oriented?
Answer:
Yes. Everyone agreed there was a disproportionately large number of blacks going to
detention, there was no question about it. Guards said it was because of the way people behave,
blacks said it was because of racism. This had to be addressed.
Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
The main issue remaining was the reservation.
The American Indians wanted a reservation within St. Cloud. They knew it would not be
allowed, but in lieu of a reservation, they wanted to be able to provide their own Indian
counselors when an Indian inmate was in trouble. So a guy could be taken from his cell and
counsel his friend or the other inmate. The corrections officers absolutely refused to consider the
matter. They drew their line. "That’s our job, we are correctional counselors.” And the
administration stood with them.
Question:
Stood with who?
Answer:
The guards. Now the Indians, I think, the leadership knew they would not get a break on
their reservation. They knew better. But not because they didn't have an eloquent plea. And the
sad part is that the guards or administrators were unable to come up with a single argument
against the proposal for peer counselors.
Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
There was always racial tension with a
white Regional Director dealing in race relations issues. I had to recognize that. You pay a price
for that, and one of the prices is there is tension that exists between your own staff of civil rights
or race relations workers. Should they have hired a black or Hispanic for my job? Well, they
didn’t. I was available and someone who was black decided I was the best person for that job.
But, you should know that there were four or five people in that office when I was hired who felt
that they should’ve had a crack at that job. One of the prices we pay is having some tension
within their own organization. So you have to earn your stripes, if you will, in many ways.
Some of us did and some of us didn’t. Some of us did with some staff, and some didn’t with
others.
Dick Salem
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
If you were dealing with a black/white situation, did you try to get a
black staff person involved? Did you try to match the race of the mediator to the problem?
Answer:
Yes, depending on the problem and the circumstances. I’ve given you some examples
where that was not the case, but some people came over the years and they’ve been working in
this office for many years and have built constituencies. So there was a black member of my
staff in Chicago who had a lot of rapport. He would go to the NAACP state meetings, which was
appropriate, he was a senior person. He would get calls, sometimes directly from them. They
would call him, not me. That was appropriate too, because they knew him and he had been there
for them.
Nancy Ferrell
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
The Native Americans were the most
resistant in that they don't verbalize their problems much, and you have to really spend time with
them. So they were a player, but they weren't as significantly involved as the black and Hispanic
students were.
| Angel Alderete
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
the police department and the rest of the city, aside from token
employment, had no people of color. So that got bigger than just the cops "beating my kid up."
There was an agreement reached that
number one, the police would have such a simple thing as a minority person on call, both
African American as well as a Spanish speaking Hispanic on Saturdays and Sundays in the event
there was that kind of need. Beforehand, if a man who couldn't speak English was arrested, too
bad. "We haven't got that kind of capability," they'd say. "We'll wait until Monday or get your
attorney."
But this way they could provide that kind of service.
Leo Cardenas
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Clearly, we
had to work the ethnicity out
of it first, then the stature of the organization, how long they'd been in existence, because they
were non-profit and volunteer groups. We were also interested in the type of leadership that they
brought to the table.
Question:
You just said something very interesting, "You had to work the
ethnicity out of it." How do you do that?
Answer:
Very carefully. First of all, by trying to bring equity to the table in
terms of numbers -- numbers of the organizations. And one of the things that happened here and
it happened in other cities, is bringing back to the table individuals who did not currently have a
title with the organization, but had held a title before and were highly respected. We asked them
to
come to the table and be sort of senior, elder spokespeople and bring unity, and that
worked very well.
Question:
Did you try to get equal numbers of each race, or did you try to do something
proportionately?
Answer:
I think proportionate to the organizations who actually signed to be members of the
coalition.
Question:
And this was open to anybody who wanted to be included?
Answer:
Correct.
Leo Cardenas
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
You're neutral for the
process, but you bring certain skills and talents and in certain cases, even your race, and that
cannot be neutral.
Bob Ensley
[Full Interview] [Topic Top]
Question:
When you have issues that are so large like racism or class
economic issues, how do you
incorporate that into the mediation or the resolution of the conflict?
Answer:
Well, the first thing, as you know, is that you've got to get people sitting down and talking.
Getting
them to the table is one of the most difficult things and it requires some skill. You develop skills
by practice, and participation, and involvement in similar situations. You have to get them to
realize it's all for the common good.
You also have to be sure they have time to devote to the problem. This is awfully agonizing
many times and so frustrating. A good deal of inner strength and inner faith is required to
continue to work through the processes when they're telling you it's not going to work, that
they're not going to change their position, that you're just going to muddy the water, and create
some additional problems by getting involved. Don't let them deter you. You've just got to keep
on begging them and insisting they've got to meet and sit down and talk. And it's the only way.
You can't force them to do it, but you've got to have them realize that it's not going to go away.
Question:
"Them" means who?
Answer:
The groups that are involved, particularly the white power structure. I know the black
people that have been coached and instructed to say certain things to me, to make me think
things aren't that bad. But it's far greater and much more serious. They don't know that I've
already done my homework in many areas and know a lot more about them and how they were
elected and how they've been voting on issues and certain things.
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