Arlington Puts Diversity Among Its Top Priorities

Arlington County is a diverse, inclusive community. It says so right atop its Web site: "A diverse, inclusive, world-class urban community."

As part of an effort to ensure that Arlington diversifies and includes even more in the future, the county hosted three Diversity Dialogues in the fall. A total of nearly 500 attended, in an effort to build connections and generate discussion among groups in the county.

A report on the dialogues, issued last month, discussed concerns, findings and suggestions relating to diversity in Arlington. The report offers an executive summary in Spanish, then English.

The dialogues, held in September and October at a cost of $4,200, were part of an agenda announced by Arlington County Board Chairman J. Walter Tejada (D) in January of last year. He said he had heard that community members wanted a way to discuss potentially sensitive subjects. Talking about topics such as race relations and immigration issues can be divisive, but they "can and should be discussed in a constructive way," he said.

The dialogue initiative came under the purview of the county's Parks, Recreation and Cultural Resources Department, which worked with other agencies and services. Susan Kalish, director of marketing and communication for the department, said describing diversity is more complex than it appears.

"It's easy to say it's ethnicity," she said. "It's also age, it's also gender, it's also income. It's actually fascinating how people can define themselves and be different but be so similar, too."

Tejada said he wanted to avoid having a few people speaking for the bulk of the time at the dialogues, leaving a brief window at the end for questions and discussion. He said it was important to use the World Cafe conversational model, a process designed to encourage the exchange of ideas and to lead to action.

"The funny thing is, at first, people were saying to me, 'Why do you want to stir the pot here? We're okay in Arlington,' " Tejada said. "My response was, if you want to be an inclusive, caring community like we want to be, it's not going to happen by wishing. You have to work on it. If we are doing good things, we have to find out what those things are and why, and how to sustain that."

Kalish said she would have been happy with 60 to 70 people at the first two events, which were on weeknights. More than double that number attended each night.

The dialogues ran smoothly, although complications occurred, Kalish said. Some people didn't speak English, so volunteers offered to translate. Different task force members hosted each dialogue, which led to a different feeling at each event, Kalish said.

Mara Schoeny, an assistant professor of conflict analysis and resolution at George Mason University, said of the Arlington events, "Having done dialogues before and in a lot of different settings, it was nice to see that this actually works." She said that from what she heard at the tables, "People were really glad, not only to come and say their piece, but to hear what other people were thinking about."

Schoeny directs the graduate certificate program at GMU's Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at the university's Arlington campus. She offered to help and attended meetings along with students from the institute. At the dialogues, the students -- some of whom study and live in Arlington -- served as table hosts.

Schoeny said the dialogues could make a difference as part of a long-term, cumulative effort. She advocated having smaller events to keep the conversation going and reaching out to people who weren't involved initially.

The report says that "a few concerns were voiced consistently." The five issues deemed "most pressing" were keeping housing and retail affordable in the face of economic development; enabling communication by supporting people in learning other languages; establishing public spaces, accessible by public transportation, for people to gather; showing commitment to diversity through actions by reaching out to others; and sustaining a commitment to diversity from leaders and residents.

"Diverse societies that achieve a high level of social cohesion are well positioned to realize their full social and economic potential," the report concludes. With that in mind, the county is moving to "build diversity bridges as a sound investment for the future of our community."