Columns:: Worth repeating

since 12/15/98

Columns::February 10, 2003

Worth repeating

The keynote speaker at the annual Public Service and Outreach Conference on Jan. 29 was marketing consultant Alf Nucifora, who talked about the “New Faces of Georgia.” Some excerpts:
“How can we help? How can we help all these communities--Asian American, African American, Hispanic American, or anybody else from any sector of the globe?
“Imagine if you were leaving everything that was familiar, leaving everyone who had always been a part of your life, coming to a country where you don’t speak the language, and coming to a country where you don’t know the laws, the rules, the customs, the manners, the money or the street signs. . . . Unless you’ve done that, you don’t know what it’s like. . . .
“The advice therefore might be as follows. I would say our responsibility--you, me--is self-education and understanding about the culture and the traditions. And primarily what we have to do is try to see it through their eyes. Every now and then we need to sit back, take our own eyeballs out, screw their eyeballs in, and say ‘Oh! That’s an interesting vista. I never quite understood it that way before.’ . . . It provides us with a different perspective.
“Secondly we should learn the language, and I would say, unquestionably, everybody should be learning Spanish. . . . It’s an imperative. . . .
“We should be hiring ethnic staff and consultants. Who can guide us better than people who’ve been there, done that?
“And I would say we need to engage ethnic consumers on their own ground--get involved in their community groups, get involved in their civic association. That’s where the action is.”

--Beth Roberts

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