Diversity and ACA - American Camping Association - Miller's Meanderings - Column

"Diversity: the quality, state, fact or instance of being diverse; difference." If you have read my columns over the past several years, you know when I want t define my terms, I start with Noah Webster. So you now have Webster's definitio of this issue. I want to spend the rest of the column trying to apply the definition to ACA and camping.

In the ACA Strategic Plan adopted two years ago, ACA committed itself to six separate initiatives related to diversity issues. These initiatives have the ultimate goal of making ACA more closely match our society and making the camp experience more available to children of all racial, ethnic and socio-economic groups within America.

While it is certainly a credit to ACA to make this issue a central focus for th strategic plan, it is also disturbing that it remains an issue at all for the association. ACA established an interracial-interfaith component to its Statement of Ethical Practices for Camp Owners and Directors more than 20 years ago. The continuing need to make this issue a focus means that our practice has not matched our rhetoric since passage of that statement in 1973.

The United States has always been a country of diversity. That diversity has no always been considered positive, yet we built our society around immigration that has included people of all races and nationalities. Immigration originally may have been exploitative, as it was in with African-Americans, Asians and man Hispanics, but all of the racial and ethnic groups have made huge contributions to what our society is today.

The United States has also always been a country of distinctions. The U.S. as a "melting pot" has always been a myth. Culturally distinct areas such as "Chinatown" remain highly valued cultural centers in many cities. Festivals celebrating heritage are important in many areas of the country. Our country ha achieved its greatness because of its diversity and distinctions.

The ability to create the most powerful country in the world out of this diversity has made the United States unique. There are many examples of societies that have not been able to bring cultures together and forge them int a single, stable country. We only have to look at Rwanda and Bosnia to see what the end result of this failure is.

This distinctive history is not without its dark moments, however. The failure to fully accept people of color as "real" Americans continues to plague our country. The failure of our government to honor its commitments to the Native Americans until very recently is indicative that our majority population has been extremely slow in translating its stated belief into action. By action I mean truly accepting that those who are different than us have much to share that will enrich our lives, our country and our world.

Like our society as a whole, ACA has not successfully encompassed the diversity that is America. We remain primarily a white middle-class institution, serving an industry that primarily serves white middle-class Americans. What a tragedy! We know that the camp experience can do much to break down the barriers that exist between us! We know it. We have many examples of camps that have made thi a central mission of their institutions. Yet, when the outside world looks at ACA it sees mostly white, middle class faces talking to themselves.

This is not being said to condemn ACA, it is being said to challenge us. Just a the strategic plan meant to push our organization to actively pursue a course that would place us at the forefront of organizations working to make our country even stronger through its many distinctions.

A society is like a living organism. It requires that all of its many component work effectively together if it is to thrive. In the New Testament, Paul, writing to the early church at Corinth, described the church in much the same way. In trying to mold unity out of diversity he said, "The body is a unit, though it is made of many parts, and though all of its parts are many, they for one body . . . The eye can not say to the hand, 'I don't need you.' And the hea can not say to the feet, 'I don't need you.' On the contrary, those parts of th body that seem to be weaker are indispensable" (1 Cor. 12: 12, 21-22).

Our society is probably the single most heterogeneous society to ever be molded into a single country in the history of the world. Even the Roman Empire, with all of its vastness, was never truly a single country. We are unique in the history of the world. Just as Rome fell through internal corruption and its failure to truly incorporate all of its citizens into a mutually supportive society, the United States could fail if we do not learn to accept the many distinctive cultures that have come together in this land.

As a microcosm of society in general, ACA must become more effective at including all segments of our society in our membership and become a voice for creating unity within our society.

How to best accomplish that is the key question. Almost all would agree that th best way to influence behavior in others is to model that behavior ourselves. I we want all people in society to be accepting of the many cultures that make up our country, ACA should model that acceptance. If we want society to actively pursue inclusion of the racial, religious and ethnic groups that make up our population, we must actively pursue that inclusion.

But I believe that inclusion should come through self evaluation and growth, no through legislative edict. One reason the Bosnian situation exists is that toleration of the diverse cultures in Yugoslavia was forced through governmenta action. Acceptance of the cultural differences was never achieved.

Camps can do so much better for our society. We can through our programming and work with children, help create within succeeding generations acceptance, respect and true understanding of the differences that make us one!

COPYRIGHT 1994 American Camping Association
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