During President-elect Obama’s first press conference, a reporter asked about the first family’s choice of a puppy, which he has promised his girls. Obama said that their family needs a hypoallergenic breed since Malia is allergic to dogs, but that the family also wants to adopt a shelter dog, which presents a challenge, he added, because most shelter dogs are “mutts like me.”

I thought that was not only a very funny comment but one that demonstrated how far we have come in this election cycle on matters of race. Obama is usually referred to as our first Black president, but in fact, he is biracial. That he felt comfortable referring to himself as a person of mixed race will only make it easier for all of us to talk about this increasingly significant proportion of the American people.

The nonprofit sector also needs to have an open dialogue about the blurring realities of race and ethnicity. For example, social service providers have had to adapt both their program offerings and their communications as the population they serve becomes more diverse. While the next generation of nonprofit leadership has been widely discussed, one dimension often overlooked is that Generation Y is our country’s most racially diverse generation, which will have many implications for how nonprofits of the future approach diversity.

Tags: nonprofit

This entry was posted on Friday, December 12th, 2008 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Assorted Musings, Leadership, Nonprofit Sector, Trends, Youth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.