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Opinion Columns

(If you would like to use these pieces in your work, or see additional columns, please contact me.) All text copyrighted by Dalya F. Massachi.

Americans with Disabilities Act Turns 10 (published in The Oakland Tribune, August 8, 2000)

Why I Went Veggie (published in The Columbus Dispatch, June 8, 1997)

Who's Ethnic? (published in The Columbus Dispatch, October 5, 1997)

Our Intercultural Families (published in The Columbus Dispatch, October 19, 1997)

Being Different: I wouldn't Have It Any Other Way (compilation of columns published in The Columbus Dispatch, 1997)

WTO On My Mind (December 1999)

International Women's Day Hits Home (March 2000)

UN Millenium Summit: Where's the Full Story? (September 2000)

Schools Must Learn to Value Diversity (September 2000)

Eat Your Peas (World Food Day, October 2000)

When I was 13, I was seriously injured in a bicycle accident and was confined to a wheelchair. I eventually learned to walk and run again, kicking big red rubber balls down the hospital hallway.

The accident also affected my speech, but not my status as the giggling patient in the children's ward - my younger brother made sure of that. After weeks of therapy, my slow and slurred words finally caught up with my thoughts and feelings.

I rejoiced whenever I had a weekend away from the hospital. I loved visiting home and enjoying the outside world. But the hassles associated with getting around bothered me. My mother parked in the space marked handicapped when she drove me to the library. I wondered what it must be like to wear that label every day.

Over 54 million people in the U.S. don't have to wonder. Their severely limited employment opportunities lead to annual income much lower than the national average. Their opportunities for leisure activities are also much fewer.

I was one of them before July 26, 1990: the day the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became law. My disability could have barred me from all kinds of activities and services. The ADA now prohibits discrimination in restaurants, schools, theaters, stores and even bowling alleys. Public transportation and phone lines also have to be accessible.

It took a while, but the ADA lit a fire under many public and private agencies. For example, in 1998 Clinton created the Presidential Task Force on Employment of Adults with Disabilities. The Task Force looks at many different aspects of the lives of people with disabilities, and issues recommendations for moving them into the labor force.

To mark the ADA's 10th anniversary, the Department of Education, Department of Health & Human Services, Small Business Administration, Department of Transportation, Census Bureau and many others are to announce how they will meet the special needs of people with disabilities.

The ADA has had reverberations around the world, as well. Activists in many of other countries use it as a model for their nondiscrimination laws. Over 80% of the world's disabled people live in developing countries that provide few, if any, services for their special needs. People in countries such as South Africa, Singapore and Hong Kong are working to improve access to medical care, rehabilitation therapy, disabled-friendly equipment and equal education.

There is no telling my fate if I had been in one of those countries when I was injured.

Fortunately, my rehabilitation took only a matter of months. But that was long enough to feel isolated, angry and impatient. I soon left the hospital and returned to middle school. I was incredibly lucky.

I remember one special day, soon after I had regained enough control over my hands to maneuver a pencil on paper. I had been a poet before my accident and wondered if I could still write, after so much had happened.

I looked out of my hospital window. It was so bright outside, so inviting-so clear that there was so much to experience in the wider world.

That day I wrote a poem, Sunshine. I cried from happiness.

Often, when I meet a new person and we go out for a bite to eat, something I've taken for granted for years suddenly becomes the topic of conversation.

Why am I a vegetarian?

Sometimes I say it's a long story or tell my dining partner that it just makes sense to me. I usually don't go too far into my reasoning, but its roots go back to a small town on West Africa's Ivory Coast:

Neither the heat nor the rain seemed to effect her. She just kept wandering around our courtyard for days, Weeks. But not quite a month. She wasn't exactly our pet, but none of us cultural exchange volunteers from the U.S. really wanted to see her demise.

She was our chicken.

Neighbors had given her to us as a welcoming gesture. We thanked them for their kindness but were all a bit clueless.

Sure, we had ridden public bush taxis (run-down vans) with people carrying large pots of fresh pork. The outdoor market was full of animal carcasses hanging upside down from the stalls' rafters. Some of us had spent time in a nearby village where "bushrat" was a delicacy reserved for visitors.

But that meat was dead, and our chicken was very much alive.

One day, the section of pavement in front of our house got too small for more than one species. We asked a local person to butcher the squawking bird, and it was our meal that evening.

Well, let me correct that. Bread and vegetables sufficed for me and the one vegetarian there. The animal protein seemed like a good idea, but the reality of it hit me.

I was 19 and just starting to think about the ethical, environmental and health implications of what I ate. That summer spent with the African chicken pushed me over the edge.

I had been reading about how raising animals for food wasted natural resources in a hungry world: how it takes 10 or more pounds of nutritious grain to produce a single pound of (fatty) meat; how every year millions of gallons of water and huge amounts of topsoil are wasted or polluted because of animal breeding and processing. And how endless acres of trees are destroyed to make way for grazing pastures, notably in Latin American rainforests.

Although I believe in human rights more than I sympathize with rights for other animals, I can't help thinking about the Hindu idea of Karma: what goes around comes around.

As the African sun set on that evening of the chicken dinner, I realized what it's like to see the origin of a chicken nugget, beef jerky, or some other disguised form of expired creature.

In the U.S. our meat is neatly presented in sanitized, colored, or flavored packages. For many people, it's a daily or weekly ritual to buy a pound or two of hamburger or pork chops or pot roast for supper and be done with it (except for the grease left in the kitchen sink). I can hardly make my way past the blood-red refrigerated section of supermarket anymore. I call it the morgue.

Not to be morbid, mind you, but doctors can't seem to say enough about how meat kills. Studies keep coming out about how clogged arteries, cancer, strokes, diabetes, kidney stones, high blood pressure and even osteoporosis are often linked to eating meat. My stomach churns from the thought of growth hormones and the frequently unsanitary processing conditions of the meat industry.

In many countries, as incomes rise, so does meat consumption: it's a status symbol. Cases of heart disease and high cholesterol increase, too.

Not long after the African chicken incident, everyone in our volunteer group shared in a wonderful meal. It was the best protein-rich sandwich I had ever had. It was made with peanuts, freshly harvested and ground into butter, and was topped with bananas just off the tree.

You gotta try it.

Note: A good place to start is with the Great American Meatout, every March. Check the Web site at www.meatout.org.

I walked into a large drug store the other day - the neighborhood branch of one of the chains. I couldn't help but notice the aisle marked "ethnic products."

Ethnic products?

I had guessed about the meaning, and I was right. Ethnic... you know... African American. The aisle was full of hairstyling products for both men and women - hair relaxer, weave-in braids, and the like.
Apparently, black Americans are supposed to think of their ethnicity as something unusual, out of the ordinary. Something to be noted and dealt with separately. They're the exception to the rule ... the rule of whiteness.

I consider myself an "ethnic" person. Everyone has at least one ethnicity -- usually more. Why are most ethnicities so taken for granted, so "normal", while only those that show up in skin color, or accent, or religion stand out?

People who appreciate their ethnic complexity often must suppress the entirety of who we are in order to succeed in our lives. Often, our true selves would be "offensive" or "threatening" if we expressed them in everyday settings.

A black man jogging at night might "scare" whites into crossing the street when they see him coming. Speaking a non-English language while chatting with friends at work might be perceived as "secretive" to a co-worker who doesn't understand.

In this country, staying within the narrow confines of what is thought to be acceptable is tough.
Euro-Americans, especially men, don't have to see themselves as part of any ethnic or "minority" group because they belong to the dominant culture. Only those of us (the vast majority) who deviate from this supposed norm are considered outsiders. We have to conform, strive to fit within the lines, prove ourselves as worthy human beings with dreams and personalities and dignity. We often have to continue repeating ourselves until our message comes through to the "larger society." We have to "be nice" and overlook the intolerant remarks, jokes, stares, insinuations and actions against us.

Sometimes we even do it to ourselves, it's so ingrained in us. Little black girls often are partial to white Barbie dolls, who they think are much prettier than their black counterparts. Members of non-Christian religions often celebrate traditional holidays as if they were simply versions of "what everyone else is doing," such as casting Hanukkah as the Jewish Christmas. Parents teach their children to do everything they can to be whiter.

But trying to be whiter is pretty tricky. It can mean learning to speak English the "proper" way, coloring or bleaching various body parts, or just trying to get beyond your roots to reach an imagined level of success. But how successful are you if you have to become someone else in the process? Or be whitewashed in the office and be yourself at home?

I guess that's part of survival. Once you've "made it," only then can you express your culture, your uniqueness, your whole self. It's crucial that managers and other professionals become mentors and role models for the next generation of "ethnic" people. I have learned so much from people of color and women who have made it.

But lots of us never "make it." Some of us barely survive or end up behind bars -- or dead.

I remember, as a child, taking family car trips during summer vacations. We lived in the South, and frequently got uncomfortable looks or unwelcome gestures from strangers in unfamiliar towns. One time we were even chased off property with the wave of a firearm.We got off easy.

Several months ago, here in California, my heart raced with fear as my answering machine played a death threat from a stranger. My crime? Being Jewish. I still get a knot in my stomach when I think about it.

Ask any of the organizations in this country that tracks such hate incidents, and you'll see that they are far from rare. And you may have thought that we had progressed beyond that by now.
But race relations in this country has never been our strong suit. Sure -- discrimination is usually not as overt. Racism is now more concealed, hidden below the surface. Some people say that kind of prejudice is even more dangerous than the old-fashioned kind. At least then, you knew where you stood.

Standing tall and proud upon one's heritage and ethnicity is part of being fully alive. It should be celebrated, nurtured and studied. Not downplayed, ridiculed or somehow separate us from one another. We need to grow together, not apart.

I'm a mutt. I come from a long line of people from all over the world: no pure-breeds here. Let me tell you about it.

I have a large family -- I'm one of 30 cousins. We speak and understand a hodgepodge of languages, come from different backgrounds, and all see life very differently. We consist of both Ashkenazi and Mizrachi Jews, and some (like me) who are mixtures. These two geographical strands of the religion have developed very different traditions and rituals, and are separated largely by language and national culture.

In recent decades, people have begun going beyond the traditional idea of "sticking with their own" when it comes to marriage or other forms of partnering. Although this trend is considered somewhat new for American whites, many people of color here and abroad have intermingled for centuries --even millennia.

The reality is that this country was founded by immigrants who, once they landed on our shores, often formed mixed marriages. Think about it: how many people do you know that claim to be one part Italian, British, Irish, Polish, Dutch, Native American and another part something else?

There are no accurate official figures on intercultural/interracial marriages or the children of these couples. Partnerships that are not legally binding -- including unmarried couples and same-sex unions -- also add significant numbers. But, according to Dr. Francis Wardle of the Center for the Study of Biracial Children in Denver, Colorado, those families number in the hundreds of thousands -- and the trend is growing. He adds that there are an estimated 1 to 10 million biracial children in this country.

Look around -- you'll see their faces. Some of our popular heroes -- like golf master Tiger Woods, former U.S. attorney general nominee Lani Guinier, and Olympic gymnast Betty Okino are part of that group. We are living at the crossroads of a new era.

Crossing over boundaries of race and ethnicity is no longer something to be shunned or hidden. Intercultural people know that there is much to be gained from the wealth we contain from the mixture of different cultures. The pride I feel when I share thoughts about my varied heritage is real. So is the sense of wonder I feel when I learn about someone else's ethnicities.

I remember when there was a single crayon color named "flesh." It was peachy-beige and was supposed to be used for all the people in my coloring book. Now, I can find many other colors: like almond, wheat, gingerbread, mahogany, cinnamon. It's crucial that each person's heritage(s) be acknowledged, preserved, nurtured, appreciated. Celebrating new possibilities and ways of living is the key to understanding each other and strengthening our rapidly diversifying society.

My own childhood included celebrations of many kinds. We used to eat traditional foods of Eastern Europe -- such as smoked salmon (lox), cheese blintzes and noodle kugel (a type of casserole). We also feasted on Persian vegetable and meat stews over rice, as well as traditional delights during holiday times.

The wonderful meld of flavors still lingers on my palate: each one distinct yet linked. My kitchen cupboards are now full of foods from both cultures, and others I have found over the years. Many other people with multi-cultural backgrounds tell a similar tale.

But being multi-ethnic is not all glorious. Sometimes we represent an imbalance of power, and it can be frightening or frustrating -- if those differences go unacknowledged. For example, people with one parent from the dominant Euro-American culture and one from elsewhere can be trapped in the middle. Or we may feel forced to downplay the part of ourselves that is "the other". Blending backgrounds is sometimes a very unwelcome process, to communities of any ethnicity. Our society often teaches that that somehow it's unnatural, unhealthy or dangerous to unite different people.

Millions of us would beg to differ. Being able to weave together the assorted strengths of different cultures is a precious skill in today's world.

In my family, we knew that although backgrounds may be different, a common humanity and respect for each other runs throughout our lives. Millions of us across the country continue to discover that treasure.

As one of the protesters in Seattle last year at the WTO meetings, I was deeply impressed.

I was heartened and inspired to see the unity of tens of thousands of people like me on the streets: human rights activists, environmentalists, working people and others fed up with corporate control over our lives.

I could hardly contain my emotions as I watched the enormous creativity of so many people burst forth with larger-than-life puppets, costumes of sea turtles and butterflies (both endangered by WTO policies), spontaneous drumming, singing groups, and other sights and sounds of protest.

The placards in the sea of people left their own mark: "No Globalization Without Representation," "WTO: We're Taking Over." And the sign sported by a woman who called herself "just a citizen": "Barbie Is Made By Girls Who Are Too Poor To Buy One," with Barbie holding her own little sign reading "My Plastic Hooters Are Earth Polluters."

I was lucky not to have been gassed, clubbed, pepper sprayed, shot with rubber bullets, or arrested and detained. But I - like so many other Seattle protesters and witnesses - was outraged, frightened and profoundly saddened by the complete disregard for our civil liberties. Martial law, the National Guard, curfews, riot police on every corner of barricaded streets, security checks everywhere you turned, helicopters circling overhead… Gas masks, protest signs and even protest chants were temporarily outlawed, in flagrant repression of American democracy and freedom of speech.

As a white, middle class person born and raised in the U.S. (like most of the Seattle protesters), I had never experienced such a crackdown. It was hard to believe that in this center of American prosperity the full weight of US force was used against us. People of color and those from other countries were not so shocked - it happens in their lives frequently.

One of the demonstrations I joined was a silent protest for women, democracy and sovereignty on the day after the first night of the unconstitutional crackdown by the police. They only allowed us to march in the "no-protest zone" because we walked in single file and were not "threatening." We met a line of riot police in full gear, as we stood before cameras with bright blue tape covering our mouths to show how we had been silenced.

No one was smiling that day.

And the debates and teach-ins in crowded auditoriums all over downtown Seattle -- in which activists, academics, and other experts delved into the meaty issues of the WTO --weren't in the media spotlight. Police brutality was.

But, in the end, we were successful. The WTO was unable to complete its work in Seattle. The WTO became a household word around the world. The crisis bells rang out.

And what's going to happen now? What will happen to the momentum of the Battle in Seattle? What will come of the issues we raised, of environmental destruction, labor violations, national and cultural sovereignty termination, economic violence?

Perhaps it is not coincidental that International Human Rights Day was December 10, following on the heels of those historic WTO meetings. The Day could only serve to remind us that human rights - for all people, in all circumstances - are essential to moving our species forward. The issues we talked about in Seattle are all connected and all boil down to learning to live with each other and the planet by respecting our dignity and right to a decent life.

The Battle in Seattle shifted the tide. There is change in the air. At the dawn of a new century, people realize that the time has come to address the urgent needs of our planet and its people. We're no longer willing to allow a few hundred billionaires to possess wealth equal to that of entire countries. We're not going to allow our hard-won environmental and labor standards to be eroded by the unelected, closed-door meetings and rulings of the WTO.

Americans are waking up to the fact that in a global economy, no lines exist between what happens abroad and what happens within our borders. We're all in this together.

As we protesters in Seattle chanted, "This is what democracy looks like." The signs read: "This Is Only The Beginning."

My father is from Iran. He likes rice and chunky sauce made from vegetables and meat, and yogurt with cucumber, mint, pomegranates, figs.

He is not a terrorist or a harem master, He collects Persian carpets, and they don't fly. He came to the U.S. as a student in his early 20s.

My mother is as North American as I. She was born in this country, but her mother and father were born abroad. Her father narrowly escaped the brutal persecution of the Pogroms in early 20th-century Ukraine. Her Canadian-born mother was the daughter of Polish immigrants.

Her father was a small-town junkyard dealer in upstate New York. She remembers his frequent homecomings after a long day on the job with precious gifts for his children: tangerines, bananas, grapes.

And my heritage gets even more complex. My parents are each from two geographical strands of Judaism: Ashkenazi and Mizrachi. They each have developed very different traditions and rituals, and are separated largely by language and national culture.

So in both the Iranian and the American cultures I've never been a mainstream insider.

You can learn a lot from being on the outside…

Questions

I grew up in several East Coast cities. The metropolitan life meant noise, pollution and questions. Lots of questions.

"Where are you from?"

"I'm American."

"No, I mean where does your family come from? What [ethnicity] are you?"

More questions:

"What's your first language?"

And, of course, the ever-popular "What kind of name is THAT?"

I have always stumbled a little. There is always another reminder that I am different. Like many children raised in two or more cultures, I didn't always appreciate the value of my own cross-cultural family.

Answers

Unlike my brother and sister who have "easy" names (David and Deborah), I have always had to spell my name and then pronounce it: "Doll-ya." It is Hebrew, although it is also a flower in English (spelled differently). Most people don't get it on the first try.

My last name is the Farsi job title of my Iranian forefathers: maker of matzos (ceremonial unleavened bread for the Jewish holiday of Passover).

I used to think the name was my life's cross to bear. I just want to be accepted. I wanted to fit in with everyone else. Most immigrants' children do.

I tried to ignore my "exotic" olive skin and thick dark hair. My more-than-ample eyebrows embarrassed me. I did anything I could think of to just be "normal."

But alas: it didn't work. My hair never turned blonde. My nose never got smaller and my name never changed to something easily spelled and pronounced. I never made it into that imagined "golden circle" of the mainstream.

Different Languages

The languages spoken in my home were another way I was different.

My mother speaks a little Yiddish, the sound that filled her childhood home. "Brush your tzaynelach" she sometimes would say at bedtime. Or "lay cappie" when we kids sought comfort on her lap. We never learned any more Yiddish than that.

I grew up hearing my father and his relatives speak Farsi, and I even learned to count to ten, say hello, good-bye and a few other everyday phrases. But I couldn't make sense of the curvy squiggles in his poetry books or in the handwritten notes on the backs of black and white photographs he had saved from his younger days in Iran.

I was often embarrassed, even apologetic, when I had to interpret my father's heavily accented English to waitpersons and store clerks. My brother, sister and I didn't like always being the ones to record the greeting on the answering machine.

My Racial Category

And I've always had trouble with racial categories.

I remember one early autumn morning when my seventh-grade homeroom teacher passed out the forms: "Race/ethnicity - check only one."

Maybe the choices were the four that the Census Bureau used until recently: White, Black, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaska Native. Maybe Hispanic was included.

I was confused.

My mother is white (at least by contemporary standards), with hazel eyes and wavy brown hair. My father has rather dark skin and hair. His complexion isn't black, but neither is it white. And Asia included Iran the last time I checked, right?

"Write down white, Dalya," my parents told me that night years ago. Technically, I am Caucasian, according to the strict definition of the term. So, confining myself to that category did a fine job of glossing over the complexity of my heritage. I was much safer and more privileged if I maintained that I was part of the majority in the US. Never mind that I was not Christian or Anglo-Saxon. Even if I felt like an outsider, my skin was light enough to pass.

My parents are supposedly white and it makes no difference that their children have varying shades of olive skin and are often mistaken for Indians, Mexicans, Greeks, etc.

I only started answering the question with the vague "other" a few years ago. But you can never really ignore those omnipresent classifications. And what does it mean to put yourself in the category of "other"?

Maybe it means "none of your business," or "I don't like the options so I opt out."

Or maybe it means "I don't want to be forced to choose between my parents or grandparents." Or, "I don't fit within the lines you have drawn, so I guess I don't belong in your color scheme."

Appreciating My Complexity

It took a while, but I've grown to see that my complex heritage is a vibrant part of who I am. I now value my unique history and delight in my name. I like it when someone new asks me, "What kind of food do you cook?"

Now I see how my family experiences helped prepare me for a changing world, a world full of explorations across lines of difference: racial, ethnic, cultural, political, etc.

But being multi-ethnic is not all glorious. Sometimes we represent an imbalance of power, and it can be frightening or frustrating -- if those differences go unacknowledged. For example, people like me, with one parent from the dominant Euro-American culture and one from the Global South, can be trapped in the middle. Or we may feel forced to downplay the part of ourselves that is "the other".

Blending backgrounds is sometimes a very unwelcome process, to communities of any ethnicity. Our society often teaches that somehow it's unnatural, unhealthy or dangerous to unite different people. Millions of us would beg to differ. Being able to weave together the assorted strengths of different cultures is a precious skill in today's world.

In my family, being able to mark special occasions in multiple ways was a sign that although backgrounds may be different, a common humanity and respect for each other ran throughout. I remember childhood celebrations where we feasted on Persian vegetable and meat choresht (stews) over rice, as well as traditional appetizers during holiday times. We also used to eat traditional foods of Eastern Europe -- such as smoked salmon (lox), cheese blintzes and noodle kugel (a type of casserole).

The wonderful combination still lingers on my palate: each one distinct yet linked. My kitchen cupboards are now full of foods from many cultures I have explored over the years.

Understanding that diversity enriches our lives was a key lesson for us kids. Millions of us across the country continue to discover that treasure.

Most of us Americans have our first experience with hunger issues in a statement like that. In their bid to have us eat our vegetables, our concerned parents might replace the African continent with our choice of other places: India, China, Guatemala, Iraq, Kosovo.

This World Food Day, October 16, we are asked to probe a bit deeper.

What is really behind that familiar "starving kids" refrain? Where is it coming from? Why is it so prevalent?

Maybe we are supposed to feel lucky to have peas on our plates to eat - or to waste.

Maybe it's that we are to feel guilty about the gross maldistribution of the world's food supply (in our favor), and we can soothe the anxiety by simply eating or donating our unwanted food to the "starving kids" overseas.

Whatever the statement is supposed to convey, it implies that WE are the privileged few and THEY are the nameless, faceless and powerless masses. That there's no hope for people in the Global South and we just better take care of ourselves.

That they, way over there, are hungry. We should feel guilty about it but not really do anything about it. After all, the implication goes, "That's the way it is -- we don't have any power to change the situation. So just accept it and eat your peas."

The message repeats throughout our lives. We end up saying it to OUR children.

But according to the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations' 1999 public opinion study, a majority of Americans -- 62% -- believe that "combating world hunger" should be a very important U.S. goal.

Hundreds of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) across the U.S. are part of a global movement to do just that. They work every day to leverage our power as citizens of the world's wealthiest country to address the problem.

Some take a direct approach by providing emergency relief. Others take a more long-term view and examine the structural underpinnings of how we allow hunger to exist in a world of plenty.

For example, why must so many cash-starved countries limp along under crushing burdens of debt, while their developing economies crumble?

What do international trade agreements have to do with the sub-poverty wage jobs that American companies are exporting beyond our borders?

Why do so many pounds of cocaine, marijuana, and other drugs pour into American cities when those farmers could be growing food for their people?

Why do so many people every day decide to risk their lives to emigrate to the U.S. rather than stay in their impoverished countries -- and watch their children go hungry?

Why are hundreds of acres of life-sustaining rainforest bulldozed every year to provide pastures for cattle that end up as burgers for U.S. restaurants?

After all, isn't the right to food the right of all people -- the first of the American triumvirate (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness)?

Many people and organizations here in the U.S. are putting their money where their mouth is. They're forming partnerships with groups overseas who are working to improve their own conditions.

No one knows the problems and solutions to hunger better than the people with the "starving kids."

Another extremely effective strategy is to work within our own government to determine our priorities as members of the human race -- and act on them.

I often ponder where the food on my plate comes from. How it got there. How it connects my life with the lives of others around the world.

Maybe that is the message behind our parents' reminders to eat our peas.

For more information, visit www.interaction.org or www.foodfirst.org.

As students go back to school this month, I'm thinking about one of my favorite books as a child. It was simply titled People. The glossy, bright oversized pages invited me into a reality much broader than that of my surroundings. The book's images of people from all walks of life, of all ethnicities, of all ages, fascinated me.

As an adolescent, I'd peer into the shadows of other women and men I couldn't find in my schoolbooks: Phyllis Wheatley, Benjamin Banniker, Sojourner Truth, Black Elk, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and on and on.

These shadows fell differently on my classmates. African Americans among them knew some of their cultural history. So did the Native Americans, the Latinos, the Asian Americans, the children of immigrants. But we rarely knew each other's histories or ways of looking at life. And girls -- regardless of their race -- knew precious little about women's contributions to society.

The white boys were totally in the dark.

I don't wonder why I had to dig up those lessons in my childhood and shine a light on them. This country's history of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, xenophobia and other discrimination is answer enough.

Of course, books are not the only ways of learning about other people. Listening to each other's stories and sharing experiences can do the trick. But that's quite a trick.

Official school segregation, although outlawed in 1954, is alive and well under a more covert guise. Economic class and race still divide students and determine who gets education resources and who gets left out in the cold.

Like who gets new computers and modern facilities. And who spends their early years in dark libraries with outdated textbooks and dilapidated classrooms. These kids are highly likely to be termed "slow," turn to early pregnancy, drop out, or get locked up. They often become part of the estimated 21-23 % of American adults (or 50-60% of those in prison) who can't fill out a job application or read a newspaper. Not to mention navigate the Internet.

Clearly, the U.S. education system has its shortcomings. But it's what we have to work with - and it's slowly changing.

My Jewish mother remembers the days in the 1940's and 50's when the school chorus sang only Christmas songs in December. Or when she had to answer questions when she avoided the weekly "religious" lessons at her public school. Now there's mention or celebration of other holidays and faiths.

Thanks to the contemporary women's movement, girls and boys no longer must take courses "appropriate to their gender" -- shop, math and science for boys; typing, childcare and cooking for girls. The tendency remains, though, to separate along traditional gender lines if we don't encourage kids to see beyond the status quo.

Since the 1970's courses focusing on ethnicity and gender have proliferated in colleges and universities. Elementary and secondary schools are transforming their curricula as well. Women's Studies and Ethnic Studies classes are becoming more common.

Many nonprofit organizations, such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the National Women's History Project, offer a wealth of excellent materials to millions of schools every year.

Community groups of students and parents are organizing to reclaim control of their schools. They're demanding both high-quality, culturally appropriate education and protection of affirmative action programs.

My childhood picture book reflected a growing movement toward appreciation of diversity - in our schools and communities. If only we can harness that potential.

This International Women's Day, I am proud to say that I believe in "the radical notion that women are people." That, according to an oft-quoted but anonymous speaker, makes me a feminist. Many women reject this so-called f-word, but I use it because it identifies me as my own person, while it acknowledges that women have struggled though the ages to reclaim themselves.

That is fine as long as we're talking about middle-class, white, American women. But as soon as we change the subject to women who fall into any other category, the conversation changes. The words uncivilized, ignorant and backward are often used to describe the lives of many of these women. But are their circumstances really so foreign?

Some African women go under the knife in ritual female genital mutilation. And the memory of back-alley abortion butchers still haunts us in the U.S. Every day, breast enlargement, nose jobs and liposuction are performed in American operating rooms.

Female infants in China perish in the quest for male heirs, while the Western news media's portrayal of women and girls is, as lecturer Jean Kilbourne notes, "killing us softly" with dehumanizing images of distorted female figures.

The husbands or in-laws of Indian brides burn them for garnering insufficient dowries, while economic well-being goes up in flames for welfare mothers and divorced or widowed women in the U.S.

Latin American women deal with machismo, while mothers in the U.S. often find themselves and their children abandoned by irresponsible men.

The right of women to control the size of their families is denied via forced sterilization or inaccessible birth control in many developing countries, while abortion clinic terrorists and anti-choice legislators try to strip away that same right here at home.

Southeast Asian women are forced into prostitution where soldiers, tourists or businessmen congregate. Women from all over the world are flown to the U.S. to fuel the bustling sex traffic industry.

Is the control of women so different from one country to the next?

A recent report by health researchers at Johns Hopkins University found that one out of three women worldwide suffers from a serious long-term health problem caused by violence. Researcher Lori Heise said that "In every country surveyed, the victim is still being blamed."

One American woman, upon marrying an Arab man, dealt with the question "Does your husband beat you?" Her surprised response: "No, and if I were looking for that quality in a husband I could have just as well married an American."

In national surveys, almost one-third of American women (nearly 4 million) report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend at some point in their lives. 18% have experienced an actual or attempted rape. In 1996, of the 1800 murders attributed to intimates, nearly three quarters of the victims were women.

This hardly sounds civilized, modern or advanced.

Advances on an international scale came at the 1995 World Conference on Women in Beijing, China. The meeting produced a Platform for Action on which 189 countries' governments agreed. They all committed to improving the status of women in 12 critical areas of concern, like violence, health, and poverty.

The follow-up conference, dubbed "Beijing +5", will take place next June in New York City. We'll soon find out how much - or how little - progress governments have made in fulfilling their promises.

But this change is not only sought on a global level. Women in cities and towns all over the world come together in their local communities to support each other, from Pakistan to Croatia to Australia to Guatemala to Kenya. And everywhere in between.

Finding new ways of living is difficult for everyone, everywhere. It requires the realization that all people - women, men, and children - deserve respect for their dignity and right to self-determination. A peaceful and productive future requires no less, whether we call ourselves "feminists" or not.

If you're like most people - including me - you were unable to attend the UN Millennium Summit or related activities in New York earlier this month. For us interested folks, it's been no easy task to get a handle on what went on at that monumental world meeting. Reading the few articles that appeared in mainstream newspapers was not much help.

Most of the (rather brief) articles summarized the Summit and the eight-page Millennium Declaration. Of course, the goals of halving the proportion of the world's people in poverty, addressing the pandemic of AIDS, and strengthening the UN's peace-keeping ability are commendable and should be strongly supported.

But what about the broader issue mentioned, largely in passing, as a key theme: globalization. So many international conferences these days are buzzing with that word.

The latest UN controversy on the topic, embodied in the "Global Compact," was the most hotly debated issue at the People's Summit. Delegates to that Summit, largely held on the streets of New York, had been shut out of the closed-door UN meetings.

In a nutshell, the Compact is a non-binding agreement between the UN and a slew of multinational corporations known for their blemished records (e.g., Nike, Shell, Chevron, McDonald's, Disney, Novartis). They agree to clean up their act by following nine UN principles on human and labor rights and the environment. Corporations' compliance with the agreement is completely voluntary and only they will be monitoring their behavior - in an annual posting to a UN-maintained website.

I was shocked and disturbed to learn about the UN's part in this agreement. Corporations entering into this "partnership" with the UN get to use the UN logo in their marketing campaigns.

Why would a mega-corporation get cozy with the UN if not to bolster its image as a good corporate citizen? Wouldn't it be very easy to continue to, say, operate sweatshops around the globe, destroy the environment with fossil fuels, push questionable genetically modified foods on unsuspecting consumers, and just ignore those abuses when they have to report to the UN?

And what kind of marketing free-for-all will result from the use of the UN logo by these corporations? I don't want to imagine it.

These same corporations are prime beneficiaries of the World Trade Organization's rules, which have been shown to trump UN decisions anyway.

And why would the UN stray from its history of being free of corporate influence? Could it be that with financial contributions dwindling (including the more than $1 billion owed by the U.S.), the UN is scrambling to find ways to finance its operations?

In an attempt to prevent being deemed irrelevant in a world of increasing corporate "bottom line" globalization, the UN seems to have figured out a handy solution. The Global Compact neatly sidesteps the real responsibility to address the lopsided trade rules that lead to corporations' abuses in the first place.

Instead, the UN could re-open its Center on Transnational Corporations, a department that used to monitor multinationals and try to keep them accountable for their actions. The Center disappeared in the early 1990s, shortly before the creation of the World Trade Organization.

The Global Compact threatens to pave the way for corporations to infect the last bastion of hope for independent human rights-centered global development.

I had to go to websites such as www.corpwatch.org and www.indymedia.org to get the full story. I encourage others to do likewise, since mainstream newspapers appear unwilling or unable to provide fair and accurate coverage on such an important world event.