Adding Differences

Monday, September 22, 2008

It wasn't the white male power brokers that we often see, and lament, at the breakfasts and lunches. But then there was good reason: The topic on Wednesday at the InterContinental Hotel was diversity.

Steve Crosby, a dean of graduate policy studies at UMass Boston, noted that W.E.B. DuBois once referred to Boston as "a mecca for the Negro." But, "We've come on hard times" in terms of how we are perceived to treat minorities, he said.

His Commonwealth Compact project, which has signed up 126 companies to track data in 25 areas that indicate just how diverse they are, is designed to improve that perception -- by improving the reality.

Ronald Crutcher, president of Wheaton College, said there were steps forward when a woman and a minority were the leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, and when a woman is the GOP's nominee for vice president. (Yes, there were a few chuckles or groans at the latter.)

But, considering the attacks on those three, Crutcher said, "I wonder how much true progress there's been."

Larry Fish, chairman of Citizens Financial Group, defined diversity as "race or gender or ethnicity.

The Palin snickers suggest ideological diversity doesn't rate. And Margaret Griffin, civil rights officer for the region for the Federal Transit Administration, wanted to ask whether the disabled need to be better represented in a diverse society.

The panel was moderated by Karen Holmes Ward, public affairs director at WCVB-TV. Fourteen percent of the Massachusetts population has immigrated, and 17 percent of its workforce, Fish said. Immigrants, or "new Americans," the term he preferred, are "indispensible to our workforce," he said.

Boston has the fifth-highest percentage of new Americans among the largest US cities. "This election is shining a light on the fact that we live by double standards," said Beverly Edgehill, president of The Partnership, Inc., a leadership and mentoring organization for professionals of color.

She and her colleagues have been slogging in this area for 30-40 years, she said, and some people are tired of hearing about the issue. "It's time for a new conversation about diversity," she said. "People are fatigued."

But it's long from over. ""Until you change very very complexion of the senior leadership in Boston and the rest of the country," she told the 150 or so who attended, "we will keep having this conversation."

Crosby said 92 percent of the corporate board makeup in Massachusetts is white, and 87 percent are men. Half of black and Latino families encounter discrimination at some point in trying to buy houses, he said.

Employees at Citizens bank, which has 256 branches in Greater Boston, speak 81 different languages, Fish said. For 13 percent of that workforce of 30,000, English is a second language.

If the company didn't serve those non-English-speaking customers and provide many of its immigrant employees with help, such as language instruction and legal services on immigration issues, "we'd just be missing out on the market," he said.

The crumbling of some institutions on Wall Street was on people's minds, and the question was raised about whether those at the bottom, many minorities or women, would be hurt disproportionately.

"Hundreds of thousands of these jobs are going to come out of financial services," Fish said, "which has historically been quite white."

Crosby allowed that white America didn't quite get the thing about Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright, whose theology "is commonplace in the black community" but "utterly unknown to whites."

Edgehill added a P.S. to her comments on the panel: "Rev. Wright doesn't represent how I practice Christianity," she said. "I just want to put that out there."


Above: Chamber diversity panel: Ronald Crutcher, Steve Crosby, Larry Fish, Beverly Edgehill. Not shown: moderator Karen Holmes Ward of WCVB-TV.

CRAB GOING UPSCALE

The owners of The Barking Crab, a favorite place with lots of flavor on the South Boston Waterfront side of the Fort Point Channel, has plans.

In a letter filed with the city, owners Poseidon Enterprises say they want to redevelop the old Neptune seafood company property into a six-story, 75-foot-high building with multiple uses.

The Crab would have 38,000 square feet -- it's currently one floor on a 5,842- square-foot site -- and would include restaurant, possible retail, office and residential space, and public bathrooms for use year-round.

Of course, the north side, enclosed by a building and not just a tent, is currently open all year, and it's a cozy place in January when that wood stove is fired up.

Everybody's going green and the Crab could be LEED-certifiable at a Silver level, the owners say.

Owner Scott Garvey said plans have been in the works for a long time.

It's not clear how the new Crab would fit together with the first Seaport Square building (on the adjacent old Frank McCourt property), plans for which are now wending their way through the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

That building, designed by David Hacin, calls for lots of retail and residential space, located on the parking lot just east of the Crab.


Above: With the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy now the beneficiary of several million dollars a year from the state, here's what we hope the new parks won't look like.

DRINK

There have been a few delays, but Barbara Lynch's bar at Berkeley Investments, Inc.'s FP3 residential complex on Congress Street -- the first of her three establishments in the two renewed Boston Wharf Co. buildings -- was slated to open today.