Description

One of CIC's primary activities was to hold biweekly meetings called "community dialogues" to discuss broad issues such as racism, police sensitivity, education, and employment discrimination within the city of San Diego. The meetings were moderated by CIC Executive Director Carroll Waymon, and his voice is often the first one heard in the audio recordings of the meetings. The meeting convened with introductions, including the newly-elected mayor, Frank Curran, who delivered a brief opening remark. City council members were not represented, but were expected to be in attendance at subsequent meetings. The topic for discussion was identified by Waymon as the employment practices of the San Diego Transit Company (newly purchased in 1967 by the City of San Diego and established as a non-profit corporation of the City). One member of the Committee suggested that the group avoid discussing criticisms of specific entities and attacks on local officials, and focus instead on identifying and understanding the differing, underlying perceptions and emotional responses of the majority versus the minority to encourage a more open dialogue and thereby facilitate coming up with solutions. Accordingly, a number of perceptions were identified; one member gave as an example, "I have never seen a Negro bus driver, and so I am wondering whether minority people can actually drive a vehicle?" The majority perceived this as a matter of qualifications (African Americans were assumed not to be qualified to drive buses), while the minority clearly saw this as discrimination. Another majority perception was that one did not notice the race of the bus driver at all, while a minority member countered that he would notice if the driver were African American. A representative of San Diego Transit presented a breakdown of employees by race, with African Americans representing only 4% of the Transit Company workforce. However, it was acknowledged that prior to the City taking over, there were no African American employees. Minority members held that "the system is still the system" and one or two African American employees are merely "token" employees. Another member opined that only militancy and a crisis would create real change in the system. Minority consensus was that change within "the system" was inadequate, and no progress had been made in the visibility of minority employees in the San Diego Transit Company. It was agreed that public agencies should take the lead role in preventing employment patterns that were not representative of citizens of San Diego. Attendees felt that this dialogue should be continued at the CIC meeting after the next one.