"If you will, please travel with me ... to the Delta ... the Arkansas region of the Delta, to a rural community in Phillips County, Ark., the city of Helena. Please see a young African-American male, about the age of 11, riding his bicycle down the main street, Cherry Street. He goes to the local pharmacy, where he parks his bike outside the door and enters the store. Keeping with our old Southern manners, the young man said 'Ma'am, may I please use your telephone?'"

Naomi Cottoms, co-director of the newspaper column CommonStride, paused for effect before continuing an anecdote at the second Women of Color Roundtable, May 6, at the Statler Hotel.

That young man, she went on to say, then placed a call to a Mrs. Shields, saying he is looking for work mowing lawns. Mrs. Shields replies that she already has a young man who does a very good job mowing her lawn. When the boy hangs up the phone, the druggist says that she would like to hire him to mow her lawn, and the boy admits that he is already employed by Mrs. Shields. "'I was just checking up on myself,'" he explained.

And that, said Cottoms, is what Cornell is doing through the Women of Color and Men of Color roundtables: "Checking up on itself -- and for that it is to be commended."

Keynote speakers Cottoms and Mary Olson, co-director of the weekly CommonStride column, used the theme "Building Bridges Across Difference" to illustrate lessons they have learned about black/white relations during many years of working with marginalized citizens in poverty.

Building bridges across differences in an organization involves five processes, Cottoms said: valuing diversity because of the creative results it will reap, even though differences mean that people will communicate differently and have differing values and behaviors; doing a cultural self-assessment of the organization; managing the dynamics of diversity across all areas of the organization -- in education and training, customer service and communications; institutionalizing the value of difference by weaving the commitment to diversity into the organization's mission statement, priorities, policies and procedures; and investing resources in one office or person with the title, power and budget to get things done.

Approximately 60 women from Cornell and the Ithaca community attended the keynote address and breakout sessions on establishing personal writing goals and networks, managing intellectual property, the importance of being a mentor and being mentored, and working in teams.

Cornell presenters were Mary Still, ILR School; Peter Hirtle and Ira Revels, Cornell Library; Patricia McClary, University Counsel; Renee Alexander, Alumni Affairs and Development; and Melissa Thomas-Hunt, Johnson School. Rena Seltzer of LeaderAcademic.com also spoke. DiOnetta Jones, director of diversity programs in engineering at Cornell, and Vivian Relta of the Cornell Interactive Theatre Ensemble gave closing remarks.

Approximately 40 participants attended the first Men of Color Roundtable at the ILR Conference Center on the same day. The event's theme was "Include and Connect."

Keynote speaker Professor Ronald Walters of the University of Maryland, an expert on African-American leadership and politics, spoke about ways that connections have become strained within the black community. These include the growing separation of black leaders from their original communities; the cultural divisions between inner-city black communities and middle-class communities; and how young people look at ethnicity differently than their older counterparts and function in multiple cultural frameworks with greater ease.

"How much of your basic identity do you give up to be accepted?" Walters asked. He urged participants to think about how much their identity is maintained by peer group influence and how much of their identity they gave up to become integrated into a larger, dominant group. "What do you value that can be described as being in the legacy of black people?" he asked.

Walker ended his remarks by reflecting on how the political and social climate of the past decade has focused on individual responsibility, and he looked at such situations as that brought about by Hurricane Katrina to ask, "What about collective responsibility?"

A panel discussion on people of color in leadership was led by LeNorman Strong, assistant vice president of student and academic services; Joe Nathan Rowe, director of administration in civil and environmental engineering; and Leonardo Vargas-Mendez, executive director of the Public Service Center.

Men of Color breakout sessions covered establishing networks, building inclusive communities for people of color, exploring racial/ethnic identities, developing curricular and professional skills for excellence and mentoring and being a mentor.

Presenters included Nathan Shinagawa '05, Tompkins County legislator, and Tim Pettaway of TP Work Pro. Cornell presenters were Eric Rosario, Alumni Affairs and Development; Cal Walker, Learning Strategies Center; Ray Dalton, College of Architecture, Art and Planning; Edmund Wilson, Purchasing Services; Victor Younger, Dining Administration; Tim Marchell, Gannett Health Services.

Participants in both roundtables attended a lunch at which Provost Biddy Martin reflected on Cornell's work to promote diversity and inclusiveness, especially through its Open Doors, Open Hearts, Open Minds statement. She thanked associate provost for diversity and faculty development Bob Harris, who will return to the faculty of the Africana studies program in July, for his leadership.

"Despite remaining true in our hearts and minds to the values of diversity and inclusiveness, we still have a long ways to go," Martin said. "Anything we can do, such as roundtables like these ... helps bring us together and find more effective ways to make sure that everyone flourishes."

The roundtables were sponsored by the National Science Foundation CU-ADVANCE Center, the Office of the Vice Provost for Diversity and Faculty Development, the Statler Hotel and the Office of Workforce Diversity, Equity and Life Quality, Division of Human Resources.