DIVERSITY: CLARK DISCUSSES RACE RELATIONS AT UNIVERSITY

People need to come together, not pull apart over the issue of race, Southeast Missouri State University's top black administrator said Wednesday.

Leonard Clark, assistant to the president for equal opportunity and diversity issues, addressed the issue of race at a meeting of the Society of Professional Journalists, held in the offices of The Capaha Arrow, the campus newspaper. About 15 people attended.

Late last month more than 100 black students refused to stand up for the singing of the national anthem before a Southeast basketball game. They then stood up and sang "Lift Every Voice and Sing," sometimes referred to as the black national anthem.

The protest was in response to comments from area residents over the singing of the black anthem during halftime of the university's basketball game as part of the Martin Luther King Day celebration.

Clark said some people wrongly associated the song with the idea of black separatism.

Some people, he said, didn't understand the importance of the song to black Americans. "The song means a great deal to the people of color."

Clark said it's important to emphasize "things we have in common as opposed to our differences.

"We get cut, we all bleed the same way," he said. "We've got a lot more things in common than we have differences."

People tend to view the nation as a "melting pot," said Clark. But he maintained that the nation is more like "a salad," whose diverse people make up the ingredients.

Clark said the university and the community are a microcosm of this nation in its views on racial matters.

Racial problems, he said, are often caused by a lack of communication. "I think it is a lack of communication and a lack of understanding, too."

"We've got room for a lot of improvements," said Clark.

But he said he doesn't believe Southeast's supporters will allow the university "to be diminished" by racial or cultural divisions.

The university, he said, is working to improve the recruitment and retention of minority students, faculty and staff. Diversity is a part of the university's mission and important to its success, Clark said.

Clark said there's no single black viewpoint or white viewpoint. All blacks, for example, are not liberal, he said.

He said many people misunderstand federal affirmative action policies. "Affirmative action is designed to remedy the present effects of past discrimination. It is an aggressive effort."

But he said people wrongly link hiring quotas with affirmative action. "That word should be an affront to every female and every minority," said Clark.

He said businesses don't make a practice of hiring people who are not qualified to do the work. Courts sometimes mandate minority hirings, but he said that's the exception rather than the rule.