I had an interesting weekend this month. I went to the Martin Luther King Leadership Summit. It is really a little hard to describe. I left campus on Friday the eleventh, thinking that this would be a leadership development program, which it was. However, it was a leadership development program revolving around the concept of diversity. This is generally not a simple thing to talk about for an hour let alone an entire weekend. As a bi-racial male, I tend to dance around the concept of my diversity.

It was comforting that I was not the only person going through this conflict. There where a lot of people who I already knew at the summit, and a few new people I met. Every one of us found ourselves faced with the uncomfortable reality of things. This is the world, it is discriminatory. How do you feel about the world as it is? How do think the world should be? How can you face your own discriminatory basis? It stinks having to confront that type of stuff, yet, it is liberating to be able to discus it openly.

I would say one of the most memorable moments of the summit, for me, was when they split us up based on race. "Will all the white people please go up-stairs." That was an interesting request. It made some of white people there angry, some of the minority people angry, and pretty much all of the bi-racial people wondering "am I white or black, or Hispanic or Asian, etc," I certainly did not hesitate, I identified myself as black at the time, but, I feel now I might take more time to consider that from now on.

It was an interesting weekend, I will remember it for a long time to come.