MR. KOJO NNAMDIFrom WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington, welcome to "The Kojo Nnamdi Show," connecting your neighborhood with the world. Howard Ross is here. Later in the broadcast, Redskins owner, Daniel Snyder's dropped lawsuit against Washington City paper. But first, 10 years ago, when airplanes flew into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and killed thousands of people, much of the world shared America's horror.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIThe attacks were sudden and unexpected and generated sympathy from people around the globe. But a decade later, as our nation marks the 10th anniversary of those attacks, much of that sympathy has waned, replaced by a sort of international compassion fatigue. While Americans still feel deeply the emotional and military scars of 9/11, as we saw during the weekend's solemn commemorations, even our allies seem to have moved on.

MR. KOJO NNAMDIPolitical commentators offer big picture theories about this change in attitude, but they don't tell the whole story of how our cultural bias shapes our world view and affects our ability to empathize with the plight of others around the world. Joining us now in studio is Howard Ross, diversity consultant and principal in the firm Cook Ross. He is author of the book "Reinventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose and Performance." Howard, good to see you again.

MR. HOWARD ROSSKojo, always great to be here.

NNAMDIWhy do we need to reinvent diversity?

ROSSWell, I think, that, you know, we've been working on this issue forever and, you know, particular -- you know, we talk about the civil rights movement starting in the 1950s with the Montgomery bus boycott, but the reality is, of course, we know that the notion of civil rights and inclusion is at the core of who we are as a society. And at the bottom of that or at the base of the way we've dealt with it have been some fundamental core paradigms of looking at this issue that I'm suggesting need to be changed for a new reality, a new world.

ROSSYou know, first that we tend to look at this only from a social justice standpoint. And I still think that social justice is a critical issue, but as we get into a more global world, there's a broader aspect of culture and how culture plays itself out in many, many ways outside of just social justice.

ROSSAlso, we tend to throw events at these things. And organizations, you know, will do a diversity training, will do black history month and international food day in the cafeteria and then, kind of check diversity off as opposed to really understanding what systems thinking is and what it takes to change a culture. And maybe most importantly, relative to what we're going to be talking about today, is that we live in this sort of good person, bad person paradigm about diversity.

ROSSThe notion that there are good people who are equal and fair and treat people, you know, equitably. And then, there are those bad people who do all these things we hear about. But the current research that we have on the mind and the way it works indicates that bias is something that not only is something that we all have, but it's something that's fundamentally necessary for us to function as human beings.

ROSSAnd so that requires us to take -- I'm suggesting, a new way of looking at this, getting out of this good person, bad person mindset and focusing instead on mutual understanding in a different way.

NNAMDII'm glad you brought that up because I've been thinking a lot over the past few months about what I call the nationalism or the patriotism bias. Americans tend to see 9/11 as a cataclysmic event. Our country was attacked by four dramatic and deadly air strikes that exposed vulnerabilities we had not given much thought to. In the immediate aftermath, a strong sense of patriotism enveloped us. What role does nationalism play in an individual's sense of identity and perception of the world?

ROSSWell, I think it -- first of all, it depends from person to person, of course. And I think that, you know, certain countries are more nationalistic than others. And one of the things that's true for us, you know, here in the United States, is that one of the fundamental sort of aspects of being American is thinking that we're the best. It's something that we're encouraged to believe.

ROSSAnd to the extent where anybody who even questions that maybe we're not doing something as well as somebody else, their patriotism questioned. And so that sense of nationalism, of seeing us in a particular way, is very much a part of how most people see themselves as Americans. Now, another aspect, of course, is so few of us travel. So relatively few Americans, I think, and the last statistic I saw was less than five percent of Americans have gone outside of the United States in the last 10 years.

ROSSSo we don't really have a sense of comparison. Our world is shaped because of the size of our country, because of the location of our country, because of the fact that we don't travel by that. And so that becomes part of the fundamental background through which we see the world.

NNAMDIHaving been born in another country, every time I go there or get e-mails from people who, like me, were born there, they always refer to it as the best country in the world. So I suspect that that is a sentiment that is universal. That people in most countries think that their country is the best country in the world.

ROSSRight. And I think that it's true. Although the level of humility in a lot of countries, I think, is quite different than it is here.

NNAMDIImmediately after 9/11, our allies and even some of our foes elsewhere in the world were sympathetic. The French newspaper, Le Monde, ran a headline that said, "we are all Americans." How did the attacks of 9/11 prompt people around the globe to so empathize with us?

ROSSWell, I think that there are times in life when we have common experiences that allow us to see the other person -- the humanity in other people and sort of ignore the divide that's there. We see this a lot during tragedies of all kinds. You know, you remember after the earthquake out in California, the stories about -- I forget which road it was where the bridge collapsed, but it was right in between a wealthy white neighborhood and a poor neighborhood of color and how everybody came together to help each other.

ROSSAnd I think the same thing is true and we see national tragedies like the Haitian earthquake or the Tsunami or things like this. There's something about the humanity that we see that reminds us that we're all human beings on the same planet, that we share that common heritage. And then, what happens over time, of course, is we remember that we also have these other sub-identities. And the sub-identities are national or they're racial or they're gender or whatever else.

ROSSAnd depending on which identity we're sitting in at a moment, how close or distant we feel from that person we're talking to, that we're relating to or that we're reading about can be different.

NNAMDIMedia reports, over the past week, have pointed out that a decade after the 9/11 attacks, the world's sympathy has waned. Why has the American view and the world's view of the impact and implications of 9/11 diverged?

ROSSWell, I think there are lots of reasons. I mean, first of all, 9/11 meant something very unique to us that it didn't mean to the rest of the world. In the same sense, as slavery means something very different to African-Americans than it means to other people, in the same sense that the Holocaust means something very different to Jews.

ROSSThat it's -- when something is a personal attack on us, it has a depth of seriousness and uniqueness that allows us to see it in a particular way that's distinct from all others. On a broader sense, we would say that we lost 3,000 people in the attack of 9/11, but in Iraq, they've lost of 100,000 people and Afghanistan, they've lost tens of thousands of people to the war, you know, that wars happen all the time and that people around the world experience wars.

ROSSAnd so for people around the world, this is an experience of war. It's an experience of conflict that cost some people lives. For us, it was a unique experience in the American history, historical narrative. And it fundamentally changed the way we saw ourselves and more importantly, even how secure or insecure we were feeling.

ROSSAnd so that moment in time is marked, as we saw yesterday, is marked, probably forever in all of our mindsets, just like we all -- those of us who are old enough to remember, when we heard that John Kennedy was assassinated or that Dr. King was assassinated. So the -- we have different backgrounds to which we look at this.

ROSSAnd then, I think, secondarily, the way we've behaved in the world after that also is perceived differently. While we know that we have a lot of conflict in the United States, for example, as to whether we should've gone into Iraq or not, just as an example, around the world, there's not that much conflict about that. There's more -- much more universal feeling than our going into Iraq was not the right thing to do.

ROSSSo in other parts of the world, people perceive us as being sort of the big kid on the block or the big dog on the block who, you know, got knocked down and then came up and starting biting everybody and somewhat unilaterally. And so as a result of that, there's not nearly as much sympathy for us because we became, in a lot of ways, more dangerous to the rest of the world rather than less so.

NNAMDI800-433-8850 is our number. How has 9/11 shaped the way you view the world and the way you categorize nations and people as friend or foe? 800-433-8850. How has 9/11 shaped the way you view the world? You can also answer that question at our website, kojoshow.org, send us a tweet @kojoshow or e-mail to kojo@wamu.org. Howard Ross is our guest. He's a diversity consultant, a principal at the firm Cook Ross and author of the book "Reinventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose and Performance."

NNAMDIHoward, I hope -- I guess it's human nature to see your own situation as more urgent than that of others. It's personal, for instance, in Norway. People are still shaken by the July attack in a way that the rest of the world is not. The Japanese are still reeling from their earthquake and tsunami in March. There's a famine in Somalia. People in Haiti are still thinking about the earthquake that happened there.

NNAMDIHow does our national bias, to see ourselves at the center of the universe, contribute both to the way we relate to the other countries in their crisis and the way the rest of the world relates to us?

ROSSWell, I think, as I said, I mean, I think one of the things that's core to understand how both individuals and communities of people -- and I mean by communities of people, the broader sense that is small communities or the broad sense of the American community, if you will, this connection that we have of identity as being Americans, is that we all have distinct backgrounds through which we see the world.

ROSSWe focus most of our attention on what we're seeing. So we look out there and we see -- you know, in the book, I talk about we look at a roller coaster and one person sees a roller coaster and says roller coasters are fun, another person says roller coasters are scary. The roller coaster isn't either of those things. The roller coaster is just an inanimate object. Fun or scary lives in the background through which we see it, an interpretation that's based on our life experience.

ROSSSo if I've had good experiences with roller coasters or things like roller coasters, I see a roller coaster and I get excited. If I've had experiences with roller coasters where I got frightened or nauseated, I see them and I back off from them.

NNAMDII've had both, but go ahead.

ROSSExactly. And there's the third category, of course, which is those of us who, when we were young, like roller coasters, but now that we're older, don't, right? So this background is very different. So from the United States' standpoint, we look from the standpoint of a country that, not only, is but also prides itself on being the most powerful...

NNAMDIThe big dog.

ROSS...the most success, yes, the big dog, in every way, the most influential and also distinctively that way, the number one. And so when we see the world, we see it from that perspective. And in the same sense, countries that see us seeing ourselves that way or perceive us as bigger than or feeling like we're better than, either one, either our size and, in fact, our power and what we do in the world or what we see or, in fact, see the way we feel about ourselves and hear us trumpeting ourselves as the best, react to that from their background which taps into their own sense of nationalism which is wait a second, you're no better than me.

ROSSAnd you're not all that and that sort of thing. So it creates a national tension which most of us have felt at times. Anytime we've seen somebody who is tremendously successful and not afraid to talk about it a lot.

NNAMDIIn other -- in a lot of ways, you anticipate my next question. The Pew Global Attitudes Project reported this month that many people in predominantly Muslim nations worry that the U.S. military could pose a threat to their country one day. What does it say about the differences in how we see the world? That, while we're worried about Muslim extremists or radicals attacking us, Muslim or predominately Muslim nations are worried that we will attack them.

ROSSWell, I think that that's, you know, that's an interesting dynamic in this whole -- this particular narrative that we're getting -- see played out because from our standpoint, we as a national consciousness have a relatively short memory span. And we tend to think in relatively shorter terms. In the Western world, in general, we do. But particularly, I think, in the United States, that's true.

ROSSAnd so we are in fear of being attacked and we do feel insecure and frightened. And one of the things, of course, that was so seminal about 9/11 from the standpoint of being Americans, is that it shifted us from being a country that felt relatively safe. You know, we had very few examples in our experience of being attacked, even Pearl Harbor was way out there in Hawaii. And all of a sudden, we had that feeling that a lot of us remember, even for weeks and months afterward, of wondering whether something was going to happen almost of any day or an any minute basis.

ROSSWhen we look at the -- particularly in the Arab world, they see a longer train of history. They'll go back to the '50s when we intervened and overthrew Mossadegh in Iran and other kinds of examples of that. They see us as coming into Iraq, they see us as coming into Afghanistan, they see us, from their perspective, as forcing our will on the world, trying to create nations in the way that we want them to be created, overthrow leaders in the way that we want it to happen.

ROSSAnd so it's not a far stretch from that background to think that -- and, of course, the saber-rattling about Syria and what happened now in Libya, et cetera, et cetera. So if we put ourselves in their world, we can see that it's actually pretty reasonable to be concerned that maybe we'll be the next country that the United States tries to change in our own image. I think I heard, who was that, Mike Myers, the comedian, once say that every villain is a hero in their own story. And there are two different stories and two different villains in that story.

NNAMDIWe're going to take a short break. When we come back, we'll explore how it might be possible to bring those diverse stories together. We're talking with Howard Ross. He's a diversity consultant and principal at Cook Ross. Author of "Reinventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose and Performance." And we're taking your calls at 800-433-8850. What shapes the way you think about 9/11 and its aftermath? You can also go to our website, kojoshow.org. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.

NNAMDIWelcome back to our conversation with Howard Ross. He's a principal at the firm Cook Ross, a diversity consultant and author of "Reinventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose and Performance." Even as we live in a more globalized and therefore more diverse environment, the tendency to be suspicious of people who are not like us is something that Harvard Political Scientist Robert Putnam explores in his bestselling book "Bowling Alone."

NNAMDIHe describes what he calls, and you mentioned this, the turtling effect of diversity. His research found that the more ethnically diverse the people we live around, the less we trust not only those who are different from us, but those who are like us as well. Why is that?

ROSSWell, Putnam's research is fascinating because I think -- and first of all, it's been enormously misunderstood and misused by people out in the public, you know, who've seen sort of the headline snip-its of it. You know, there've been headlines like, you know, quote, "Liberal scholar debunks diversity." And he's not debunking diversity at all.

ROSSWhat he's saying is that we have a natural tendency to feel comfortable with those who are like us and to feel less comfortable with people who are not like us, who are less similar than us, who have different cultures, different styles, who look differently, who dress differently. And when we're confronted with that discomfort, it calls up a lack of security in us as to know how best to deal with the situation.

ROSSAnd often, natural fight or flight, what we'll do that'll show up either as a conflict or for most people, if there's no need for conflict, they'll simply withdraw. And so we...

NNAMDITurtle goes into his shell.

ROSS...the turtle goes into the shell, exactly right. And so if I'm at the PTA meeting and everybody's like me and we're getting along, but if all of a sudden, there are people who very different from me, increasingly different from me, all of a sudden, they feel a little less comfortable, a little less comfortable until at some point, I don't want to go to the PTA meeting anymore. And that's not to suggest that diversity is a bad thing, not that we have choice about diversity anyway, given the way the demographics of our society are going.

ROSSBut the question is, is it sufficient simply to throw people together and expect them to work it out or do we need to consciously look at what is this difference mean and what is it doing to us and what are we reacting to and what I call -- actually the terminology comes from my friend Michael Sesure (sp?) who really created the metaphor, putting a flashlight on ourselves, to learn to look at ourselves and watch what we're reacting to.

ROSSAnd then, we see that often what we're reacting to is really quite insignificant. It just is triggering something in us, triggering an emotional reaction that we're then responding to.

NNAMDII wanted to get to your -- the beginning of your chapter eight and the two quotations you have there because the one that you attribute to Malcolm X is, in a way, explaining what you say right now. People are always speculating why am I as I am? To understand any person, his or her whole life from birth, must be reviewed. All our experiences fuse into our personalities. Everything that ever happened to us is an ingredient.

NNAMDIAnd you following it right after that with a quotation from Oscar Wilde, who said, most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Why did you decide to put those two together?

ROSSWell, first of all, as you know, our mutual friend Julianne Malveaux was -- thought it to be quite funny that I chose Oscar Wilde...

NNAMDIIn the forward to the book, yes.

ROSS...Oscar Wilde and Malcolm X to have quoted together. Well, I mean, Malcolm's quote, I think, tells a story of what we know about modern psychology, that we do have these experiences. I mean, we may have a privilege into a particular personality type when we're born and anybody who's seen two babies born, twin babies born, knows that that's the case, that they're different personalities almost from the instant of birth.

ROSSBut the information that we get and the way we experience the world is informed by all the different experiences that we have. And every experience contributes to that, some more importantly than others, obviously. Some more influential than others. But the -- but I think the importance of the Oscar Wilde quote is that this is not a conscious choice. We don't sit and say, hum, I'm going to process this in this way.

ROSSMom says to us, that thing you're sitting in is called a chair and the thing you're eating at is called a table and the thing above your head is called the ceiling. And by the way, boys are doctors and girls are nurses and that's called a wall. And we just take all that information in and we imitate what we've heard over time. We become groups of social systems and what seems to be proper or normal begins to be shaped by our social systems.

ROSSAnd so one of the things that we see, if you look at the great genocidal tragedies in history, whether it's more recently Rwanda or back to the Nazi's or what we did to the Native-American populations in this country or to slavery, how entire populations of people can begin to accept, as normal, something which, at another time in history, when we get our wits about us, we realize was, you know, pathological behavior, homicidal behavior.

ROSSAnd yet, at the moment that seems normal because it becomes the standard by which we operate. You and I have talked before about the meme's of our culture, you know, the normalcy's of our culture. And so the imitation becomes that which people around me are doing and that's really what Wilde is speaking to.

NNAMDIYou know, in this age of globalization, it seems surprising, getting back to the turtling here, that increased diversity in our communities, neighborhoods, work places, would lead not to greater cooperation, but to greater isolation.

NNAMDIAnd I was going to ask, are we doing something wrong? But I think you have answered that question in that we are doing something wrong because what you seem to be saying is that we have to explore the individual perspective which each of us brings to our understanding of other people and other nations. You think it's important for each of us to delve into our own personal back story and examine how we formed our impressions of the world.

ROSSYeah, absolutely. And if we take this out of these sort of seemingly meta-conscious conversations like diversity and the political aspects and all this stuff and think about it from the standpoint of two people in a relationship. You know, I'm in a relationship with my wife, you with yours, and we react to each other different concepts -- different contexts. So if my wife does something that triggers a memory in me of something that my mother used to do that irritated me, I react to that in a different way.

ROSSMy wife says to me one morning, she says, will you take out the trash? And I immediately kind of notice I get irritated by her asking me and then I realize at the time I'm being seven years old, reacting to my mother making me take out the trash. You know, I'm not even with my wife at that moment. So if I notice that about myself, I kind of chuckle about it and I go grab the trash can and take it out.

ROSSIf I don't notice it, if I'm blind to myself, if you will, then I sit there and get irritated with her for telling me what to do. But the reality is, the irritation has nothing to do with the fact that my wife asked me a very simple and totally appropriate request. It has to do with the fact that I took that request and through my own background, went back to sometime in my life where it triggered an emotional reaction.

NNAMDILet's go to Ryan in Washington, D.C. who seems to have an intriguing question. Ryan, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

RYANHey, Kojo, thanks for taking my call. And I've really enjoyed listening to your guests and I certainly don't want to antagonize you. It's an honest question. From my point of view, if I may share, you're just talking about diversity. I'm just a little bit familiar, not much, with the kind of work that you do. But I'd like to pose, what's the big deal? What is so inherently valuable about diversity and would you acknowledge that certain cultures, the American culture, is inherently superior to others?

NNAMDIAnd by superior, you mean?

RYANI'm sorry, I couldn't hear that.

NNAMDIBy superior, you mean by cultural superiority, what do you mean?

RYANCorrect. That instead of celebrating or cutting concessions or whatever to other cultures or other countries, other groups of people, that we should, in fact, emphasize what's good about ourselves.

NNAMDIWhat...

RYANIt's just kind of vague and I...

NNAMDI...I know, no -- Howard is intimately familiar with this because in other circumstances, it's known as American exceptionalism.

ROSSYes, exactly. No, I think, they're important questions, Ryan. And I think, first of all, in terms of what's the big deal, I mean, I think the reason it's a big deal now and the reason that it's gone from being something that some people who were marginalized by society were attentive to or others who are allies to those people, to being more of a mainstream conversation, is because the very fact of the way the world is shaped right now.

ROSSI mean, we've got a demography in this country that is changing so rapidly, there's almost no historical example of it happening before. And actually, increasingly, Europe is catching up with us in terms of that. And then, of course, we have the global world in which we're interacting with people, the sense of globalism in which we're not only traveling to other countries or working in other countries, but we're being exposed to people from different cultures all the time through the media, through the internet, et cetera, et cetera.

ROSSSo we no longer have the choice whether or not to have diversity, this is something that's here. It's saying that we don't like diversity is like saying we don't like the stars in the sky. It is here with us and so it doesn't do us a lot of good to, you know, to question that. The question is how are we going to deal with it? And we know that there's evidence that suggests, in a number of studies, one that I think is one of the more substantive ones is Scott Page who's a professor at the University of Michigan, who, Kojo, you and I have talked about before who's researched this intensively.

ROSSAnd shows that when you've got diverse people coming together, they make better decisions. They are more productive, they're more creative, more innovative and that diversity comes from lots of different places. Now, getting back to the -- I think, the, you know, maybe, the more controversial part of your question, Ryan, which are some cultures better than others?

ROSSYou know, I think this is at the heart of cross cultural-ism or diversity, which is, you know, do we see ourselves as exceptional, uniquely exceptional or do we recognize that other people also see themselves as uniquely exceptional? And who gets to make the decision as to what culture is better or which culture isn't?

ROSSIf we accept the fact that we get to decide that our culture is better, then by its very nature, we have to accept the fact that other people are also going to see theirs as better and ours as not as good. And that's the challenge that we have in dealing with diversity today. It's one of the reasons why, I think, that we need to reinvent the way we look at this.

ROSSBecause if we get outside of that and we begin to look at ourselves from the standpoint of understanding that people who grow up in this particular culture believe this and people who grow up in that particular culture believe that and that we are influenced, every belief systems are influenced by the cultures that we've grown up, as the Malcolm and Oscar Wilde quotes talked about, then we begin to see, hum, why did they believe that? What is it that has that be relevant?

NNAMDIAllow me to interrupt so that you can give an example of this that I saw in the book. Tell us the story about the man you encountered at a training session in Louisiana who listened quietly to African-American co-workers talking about their experiences and then he shared a surprising fact about his own upbringing by his father and his grandfather.

ROSSYeah, we were in Monroe, La., which is an area that has a strong history of the Klan. In fact, David Duke -- that was David Duke's headquarters when he ran for governor of Louisiana. And we were in this training and, as you said, you know, after a day of listening, a young white man, you know, fairly prejudice, Billy Bob or something was his name and he, you know, flannel shirt, jeans, the whole bit.

ROSSAnd he said, you know, I got something I want to share. And, of course, as a trainer, you're always excited when somebody who hasn't talked for a whole day wants to say something. And he starts talking and he's looking down and he starts to share about the fact that -- he says, I grew up in such and such an area, which is one of the areas that had a lot of Klan activity. And he says, my father and my grandfather were my heroes growing up...

NNAMDITaught him everything he knew.

ROSS...taught him everything he knew, et cetera, et cetera. And then he looks up with tears in his eyes and says they were in the Klan. And he went on to talk about the fact that it wasn't talked about much, but also wasn't much hidden. And that he knew that -- and when he listened to the African-Americans and the group speak, that they were good people and that the things they talked -- they probably weren't lying.

ROSSBut that for him to believe that would mean that his grandfather and his father, who he knew as the finest men he had ever known, were evil people...

NNAMDIWere bad people.

ROSS...and he knew that they weren't evil people, in his mind, in his world. And those two things were (word?) with each other. And, for me, it was a seminal moment because when I listened to this man speak, and in my previous (unintelligible) civil rights work in all this stuff, and you know it would've been convincing why they were evil, but instead what I really saw was, this was somebody who had grown up in a particular narrative.

ROSSAnd the things that he believed were things that he was taught, that he was imitating. That he had been taught to hate in this particular case. And his willingness to be transparent about it and be authentic about it was actually quite moving. And it really was one of the things that contributed to my looking at, hum, is there another way to approach this issue?

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call...

ROSSThanks, Ryan.

NNAMDI...Ryan. We move onto Susan in Tacoma Park, Md. Susan, you're on the air. Go ahead, please.

SUSANHi, Kojo, thank you for taking my call. I was actually raised -- well, I'm bi-racial myself and I was raised in a bi-racial family. And I've always wondered why it is that I feel -- I don't feel any antipathy towards other races. And it if it was a result of just being bi-racial and being around two different races in my family or if it's because I've been -- I'm -- I -- well, I live in an area that has a high Asian population, African population and Hispanic population. And I was just wondering, which one affected my growth in tolerance?

NNAMDIHoward?

ROSSWell, there are a number of things, Susan. I have a particular interest in this. Four of my five grandchildren are of mixed race so I have a particular interest in what you're talking about. There is a phenomena that people often call -- children who are often called, TCKs, third culture kids. And it really refers to children who grew up in different cultures. You know, the president, for example, is a good example of that, grew up partially in the United States, partially in Indonesia.

ROSSAnd -- or in your case, growing up in -- you know, with experience in two different cultural groups, even in the same country. It does shift the world view. It appears that TCKs have a different world view in the way they see the world, that they tend to believe more in cultural relativism than cultural absolutism, that they tend to see that there are different ways that are there. Now, as to which one influenced you the most, that's really something that's relative -- maybe relative situationally.

ROSSYou know, I can give you an example. I had lunch or dinner one night, this is many years ago, with I. King Jordan when he was the president of Gallaudet University.

NNAMDISure.

ROSSAnd we were talking -- he was talking about the fact that young black women who were students on campus, when they were off campus, mostly related to the world as deaf. When they were on campus, mostly related to the world as being black. But when they were in the black community, on campus, hanging out with other African-American folks, they related themselves mostly as being women.

ROSSSo which part of our identity gets triggered is often situational depending upon what we're exposed to. So my guess is that there are probably sometimes when you're in certain environments, when one part of your background is particularly visible or you're particularly conscious about it. And in other times, when others are there -- and sometimes we can see why that is. And often it's just valuable to notice it. Hum, I notice I'm feeling particularly such and such at this time.

ROSSI know when I'm often in situations where I'm the only white man and I feel particularly white at those times. You know, now, it's kind of amusing.

NNAMDIHow do you resist the instinct to turtle on those occasions?

ROSSWell, you know, I -- I mean, it's interesting because most people -- you know, often we don't find ourselves in those circumstances, those of us who are in the dominating group. Not nearly as much as those of you who are, of course, people of color do. But it does take sometimes conscious effort on people's part, especially at the beginning, to recognize that the fact that I feel that way doesn't mean that people out there are hostile to me.

NNAMDIThank you very much for your call...

ROSSThanks, Susan.

NNAMDI...Susan. Running out of time. But here's this e-mail we got from Heidi in Alexandria, bringing you into politics, Howard Ross. "Almost all these discussions about cultural superiority and distrust can be applied to today's political parties. In addition to viewing themselves as superior and being unable to think about the other parties point of view, both groups seem to be cocooning themselves with partisan news sources and therefore partisan facts. Is there anything diversity research can contribute to bridging the growing gap? Howard Ross for President."

ROSSI don't know about that. That's a job I'm not interested in. But the -- what you're talking about is absolutely true, Heidi. I mean, we're living in this state of perpetual or what I call a conversational network of contention where politics is concerned. There's the Thems, verses the Us. And we define ourselves by being Thems versus Us. I mean, it's not that long ago that being a democrat or republican did not necessarily dictate how you felt on issues.

ROSSYou know, we had the, you know, sort of conservative wing of the Democratic Party, which back in the, you know, '40s, '50s, '60s, et cetera...

NNAMDIThe dixiecrat's.

ROSS...was -- the dixiecrat's, were strongly against civil rights, for example. And then you had the Northeastern branch of the Republican Party which was very pro civil rights, the Rockefeller republicans, et cetera. You had people who were anti-war democrats during Vietnam and anti-war republicans during Vietnam. So there were predominant themes, but not necessarily singular themes. And now -- and a lot of it, I think, getting back to Heidi's question, has to do with the fact that we're getting segmented medias.

ROSSSo as opposed to watching the same news and interpreting it differently, we're now getting different news. So if you want Fox news, you see one news. If you watch MSNBC, you see something completely different. And that continues to inform. And we've begun to identify, not with issues now, but with our party affiliation or with seeing ourselves as liberals or conservatives or whatever. And so as soon as we find out that there's a particular point of view which is the republican or the democrat point of view, we buy into that.

ROSSIn fact, interesting studies about that. There's some folks, I believe it was Yale, but don't hold me to that, but I forget exactly which University it was from, but they took two versions of the health care legislation, synopsis of the health care legislation, one democrat, one republican and they switched the names on them. They gave them to people and something like 75 to 80 percent of people chose the exact opposite of what they believed in because now it was affiliated with their party.

ROSSSo it's very -- it's a great metaphor for what we're talking about because -- and by the way, I want to be really clear. I slip into this myself. So we're not -- none of us are immune to this. That what it requires for us to do is to really ask ourselves why is it that I believe in this? Is it simply because somebody who I'm supposed to agree with tells me that it's true or is it because I've really thought about it and looked up the information and got -- and done my own research and developed a point of view of my own? And most of the time, we'll find it's because there's an imitative quality to it.

NNAMDIA lot of that research you will find in "Reinventing Diversity: Transforming Organizational Community to Strengthen People, Purpose and Performance." That is Howard Ross's book. Howard Ross is a diversity consultant, principal of Cook Ross and Howard, thank you very much for joining us. Congratulations on the book.

ROSSThank you, Kojo. Thanks very much.

NNAMDIAnd good luck. We're going to take a short break. The Washington Redskins won yesterday and Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder dropped his lawsuit against Washington City paper. Do you see a relationship? We'll be right back. I'm Kojo Nnamdi.