Name: Anthony Maione
Occupation: Executive Director, The National Conference for Community Justice (formerly The National Conference of Christians and Jews) for past six years.
Background: Director, The Samaritans, the suicide hot line, for six years; before that ran an association for retarded citizens in Connecticut for four years.
Education: Bachelor’s degree from Rhode Island College, master’s in business administration from the University of Rhode Island.
Age: 46
Family: Married, two children.
Residence: North Kingstown
ANTHONY MAIONE: ‘We can talk to each other about what the other might be thinking.’
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PBN: In a sentence or two tell me what the mission of NCCJ is?
MAIONE: The mission of NCCJ is to fight racism, bias and prejudice and promote understanding and respect among all races, religions and cultures. That’s the letterhead.
I presume that the business community plays a significant role with NCCJ on a number of levels?
Yes. NCCJ has a long, long history of corporate support and affiliation, which I think puts us in a unique role in a sense that we can be, a lot of the times, a translator. We can move between worlds. Between the corporate world, the community world and sometimes between the interfaith world because of our founding as Christians and Jews, and translate for all. We can talk to each about what the other might be thinking and sometimes, because of the credibility that we have built up over the years, in communities, with the business world, with the religious world, with other folks, we are in a position to bring people around the table to have discussions in a safe environment that they might not otherwise be able to have. That, I think, makes us unique. We don’t lobby for one group of people. Our concern is all people together, creating a common community. That’s what I think makes us stand out.
In trying to achieve that, what do you see as the key issues we face today?
The key issues are all over the front page. We clearly have the issue of racism, which we know from our studies is always with us, whenever we talk to people about race. For example, we did a study, back six years ago — a national study, followed by a local study two years ago in Rhode Island– where we ask questions like, do you think people of color have equal opportunity in America? And 70 percent of the white folks said sure, it’s all been taken care of, it’s a done deal, it’s fine. Eighty percent of African Americans disagree with that. So we have this wide, wide chasm. And by the way, 60 percent of Latinos and almost 60 percent of Asians disagreed with that statement. So we have a wide, wide chasm of perception, if nothing else. How I feel about my chances, versus how others feel about my chances, is very, very broad. So we know that that’s with us. Today what we have is a crisis.
We have the shooting of a black officer, Sgt. Cornell Young, Jr., which brings that right front and center, right out loud. How people see the situation, how folks think the situation ought to be handled is very dramatically different, and NCCJ plays a critical role in that in translating those views back and forth and trying to find some middle ground so that out of a tragedy we make some progress in race relations. That’s a fitting legacy in my mind. The tragedy really only brings out I think only some of the passion and emotion that was there anyway and helps percolate to the top and opens up for discussion.
There are two critical things that I think will come out of this and NCCJ is involved with both of them. I spent probably the first two weeks of the crisis after the shooting, I will bet I took close to 200 phone calls from various folks, trying to explain what’s happening. The first two weeks were about the Cornell Young situation as it led to 150 years of bad police-community relations, where people just really felt very angry and now this lit that powder keg. We saw a lot of righteous anger the first two weeks, and I’d explain to people you shouldn’t look for a lot of rational, logical kinds of things in the first couple of weeks of this, because people are just mad and they have a right to be mad. But now it’s moved and it’s moved along two tracks. One is the public policy issues and NCCJ anticipated being involved with the governor’s office and the attorney general’s office and community groups to create a commission to study the policy issues that flow out of the Cornell Young case. How we relate to ea
ch other across race lines in a community-policing situation. Lots of policy and procedure issues I would imagine in that. The second piece is we discovered there was a wellspring of people in the community, because we were getting these calls and e-mails, of people who wanted to talk now, who wanted to come together and talk. They were disturbed. So we’re organizing and launching a program we didn’t anticipate doing this year, which presents a financial issue. We’re launching a series of dialogue programs that will either take place in homes or in organizations, religious organizations, community settings, where people can come together and talk through some of the issues and learn from each other. We think that’s going to be a very successful program. We’re going to do it through the end of June and then reevaluate. I suspect it may become a continuing program.
Why should the business community have particular interest in these issues being discussed and resolved?
I think these ultimately become business issues. My belief is business flows out of community. If you don’t have a vibrant community, if you don’t have a community where people feel safe and accepted and welcomed and then really you don’t have a business environment that’s conducive to the kinds of things we want to do here in Providence and around the state. We want to have a Providence renaissance. We can’t have a Providence renaissance unless the community feels good, the whole community feels good about what’s going on here. Feel included in that. And that’s both a local and a national issue, because as we’ve seen the data, for example disparity of income, we know there are whole groups of people – and I talk with them on a regular basis – who feel left out. They don’t feel part of this economic renaissance in the city, or the economic renaissance in the country. Critical issue for the country and our state is to find ways to bring folks along with it, so that they can see that this economic renaissance has benefited them as well. That’s a key to a good business climate in the future. Without that you’re back to the ’60s and the kind of situation we had in Detroit and Watts and other places where people are just so angry and have no investment in a system that they resort to violence.
Do you get a number of calls and concerns about opportunities for minorities trying to achieve both professionally and in the business community here?
We get calls on both sides of that. I sometimes get calls from people who want me to have their resumes. And I am always glad to get those, because on the flip side I have the other call from executives around the state, “We’d like to hire and will you help us look.” We don’t have a formal program around that, but there are obviously headhunters that do. I say to businesses, the key to getting good talent, especially if you want diverse talent, is not that different than getting good white folks to come in and apply. It’s networking. So you have to expand your network. You have to go outside your usual zones, whether it be to hire a different headhunter, or actually show up at some different things to find folks. One of the things that I do – because my staff must be diverse – and the very first time I ran an ad in the paper to hire people at NCCJ I didn’t get any diversity, just like regular business folks who are not dedicated to diversity get. So what I’ve done since then I have expanded and increased my network, so now I am routinely in conversation with five or six people who I don’t have a job for, and they are not necessarily looking, and they and I both know that they’re in my network for a position at NCCJ. That ought to be the way it is at all the businesses around the state. They ought to be talking to people before they have a critical need, so that they can actually recruit – and we both know that people get recruited when sometimes there is no job. They’re just recruited because they’re the best available talent, and the job sort of forms around them.
It appears to me that in Rhode Island recruitment is mostly a passive thing. Businesses wait for people to come into the door or put an ad in the paper and don’t pro-actively go out to find candidates.
It is absolutely a commitment. When we work, we have a corporate diversity consultant practice out of NCCJ, which begins at the top. It’s not about training, it’s about strategy. One of the things we talk about first and foremost, is where is the leadership’s commitment to this effort. How will it be resourced? How will leadership people hold themselves accountable for its success? So, one of those accountabilities is am I willing to wear the shoe leather off a little bit on the bottom of my shoes, being in places where I can meet people to help my business grow to the next level. Why is that important? If we take a look at the shifts in demographics that are coming to us in the next 20 – 30 years, if you’re a forward-looking CEO, you see huge shifts in the workforce. You see a shrinking world environment in which you have to do business and so you’re going to have to understand diversity and be able to move across all sorts of boundaries to be successful in the next millenium.
We don’t have a lot of diversity in our professional community. Presumably that presents certain problems when it comes to role models in the community.
One of the things we hear all the time is, we need to have professional role models, let’s say in schools, for the minority children to see role models. That’s very important. But the flip is also very important. It’s important for the white children to see people of color in leadership positions, people of color who care about them, because we have cultural stereotypes that are built in and if people, white children, never see a person of color in a leadership role then that feeds the stereotypical kinds of things, the baggage that we all carry with us that continues the cycle of not having people of color in leadership roles, because they never see that, it’s never been part of our culture. I think we’re making strides, but we’re a long, long way from being done, and it’s a very, very important thing. Sometimes we come back to that leadership commitment. I have to dig into the pocketbook a little more, because folks who have those types of qualities and capabilities can command some salaries and can move around the country, if not around the world, so we have to say well we’re committed, we have to bring them here.
You often hear the argument from some professional organizations that it is difficult for Rhode Island to compete for the best minority talent, because of salary and the lack of a professional minority community. It is quite a commitment for somebody to make to come to this community.
It is, and I think we need to explore – and when I counsel companies I tell them they need to explore the alternative, which is we can grow some people. We have some people here, and we can put together some innovative programs to grow people, find them in college, find them in high school and develop that talent so there is some loyalty. We know that people from Rhode Island don’t like to leave Rhode Island. That’s true across, I would bet you, across race and color lines. We could, I think, grow a cadre of future leaders here if we paid attention to that. NCCJ is doing that with some of its youth programs, teaching kids to work together. But we could also nurture kids into professions and then as we nurture them as businesses offer them those professional spots as they come out of school.
After your six years here, do you believe we’re better off today than we were when you took the position?
I think we’re making some progress from the standpoint of energy being focused on issues of diversity. It’s very hard today to turn your back and say ‘you know that’s really not an issue.’ It could be anything from central orientation, which is very much front and center in our news a lot to race and gender. Almost every day I pick up the newspaper I see something for a group like NCCJ to relate to. Current events brings us there. I think that’s a real plus. People calling me and asking me to talk, where can I go to talk was something six years ago I was really beating their door down, to try to find some people who wanted to do it. There’s a lot of events at the moment that are motivating us toward action. The critical success factor in my mind is while we need to talk, the talk needs to lead to change, and if the talk can lead to change – which we’ll know in the next two to three years– are there some policy changes, are there some legal changes to address some of these things that will determine whether or not we’ll be successful in the next 15 to 20 years. But we have had legislative successes as well. We have a hate crime law in the state of Rhode Island now. I suspect that by the end of this legislative session we’ll have a racial profiling law that requires police to keep statistics on whom they stop. Those are small but important pieces of progress.
How does this relate to the neighborhoods? While we see the renaissance, and we see the legislative gains, we still hear of housing and other problems in the neighborhoods.
That’s what I was referencing earlier. I think we have to pay some very close attention, if we want our economic renaissance to continue that we have to focus in the South End, West End, and we have to say to people who live there – who by the way come in a lot of different varieties of colors – that this is for them too. The way you do that is by making sure that there is redevelopment going on, there’s some good housing going in, there are job opportunities. Joe Rizzo is doing a fabulous job in his organization (South Providence Neighborhood Development Corp.) to train people to get them ready to go to work. He needs opportunities for them to go to work. I think those kind of programs need our investment, need our attention, in just the same manner that we thought through how we would build the mall or the Convention Center. If we put that kind of energy into those communities we will have the total package here.
Are you comfortable with the administration of the state’s minority contractor regulations that require 10 percent of contracts to go to minority owned firms?
It’s been progressing. I think Governor Almond talks about 4 percent now, 4 or 5 percent. But it’s been years and years since that law was on the book, and again I think if it’s a priority for us then we need to have a group of people from the public and private sector take a look at why it’s not being filled. We hear that there are not enough minority contractors around to fill that out, to make it work. We hear from minority contractors that there are plenty of them to work, that a lot of them are not busy and would like to help fill that work. We heard that in reference to the mall. I think we need to come around the table and see what is possible, and we have to do. My bias would have a strategic plan that would say if we can’t meet it this year, we can meet it in three years and let’s talk about what we need to do for two years.
