Dr. Samuel Betances This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. thedailytimes.com - Betances talks `cultural competencies' with police - Workshop draws court officials and law enforcement agents

   www.thedailytimes.com/sited/st - [Cached]

   Published on: 9/29/2005   Last Visited: 9/30/2005

   To describe the quick decision-making police face every day, Dr. Samuel Betances started with another field to make his point -- the medical field.
   
   The examination rooms and surgery rooms with all the equipment sanitized and monitored, and the doctors with years of training and residences.
   
   "Life and death in a controlled environment," he said.
   
   Every day police walk into situations that involve life and death issues, and they have a split second to make their decisions, he pointed out. Add to this the chance that they, too, could be killed in the line of duty.
   
   Betances' goal Wednesday at a diversity workshop at McGhee Tyson Air National Guard Base was to give police and court officials another tool they could use to stay safe, and serve and protect a community that is becoming more diverse every day.
   
   He pointed to the tensions resulting from racial differences and those that come from gender and generational differences. To handle these tensions, people need "cultural competencies."
   
   "We need cultural competencies to work effectively across cultural and generational lines," he said.
   
   Forty-one people attended the workshop, including officers from Maryville Police Department, the Blount County Sheriff's Office, and Blount County General Sessions, Circuit and Juvenile courts. Alcoa Police Department officers were working toward re-accreditation this week and were unable to attend.
   
   To reach the crowd, Betances left the lectern and walked to the tables where they sat.
   
   Betances is a speaker and consultant who has shared the stage with Oprah and worked with three U.S. presidents, but he knew there might be a certain amount of skepticism, and that he might be viewed as an "outsider" by police officers.
   ...
   A cop's cop, said Betances. Tall, broad-shouldered, intimidating. He could intimidate with his voice, so he didn't need to use his gun. He was killed in the line of duty when Betances' own father was only 10. He was black, orphaned, and he would eventually meet the rural girl that would become Samuel Betances' mother.
   
   What followed was a description of a life of poverty, an abusive childhood, one that he and his brothers struggled to overcome. His brothers, he said, had a lot of problems with the police, but Samuel Betances managed to go to college instead of prison. Part of that was luck, he explained. Betances said he was "short, knock-kneed," and not the sort of kid gangs recruited, unlike his brothers.
   
   Betances, the child of interracial marriage, grew up learning how differences in culture impact a person's life and why kids get into trouble. Sometimes they get in trouble because they can't keep up at school.
   
   "If you can't be good at being good, then you will be good at being bad," he said.

2. 2. thedailytimes.com - Diversity speaker urges change

   www.thedailytimes.com/sited/st - [Cached]

   Published on: 9/28/2005   Last Visited: 9/29/2005

   If any of the 210 attendees were asleep, Dr. Samuel Betances awakened them with the fire of a tent revival preacher.
   
   "You can't continue to resist change because change is going to come," Betances said, noting that the vast majority of our ancestors were at one time strangers in a strange land.
   
   "Go back into your family to see how many generations it took for you to make a professional contribution today," he challenged.
   
   He prowled the stage and engaged the crowd with humor, hand gestures and animations that were certain to make the point -- but just in case someone missed it, Betances would lead what seemed to be a willing congregation in repeating his words.
   
   There's good reason for his presentation style: Betances said his grandfather was a "full-gospel, born-gain Pentecostal." The Puerto Rican native said that in later years he learned how to speak "middle-class English" by memorizing the sermons of great preachers, such as Bishop E.E. Cleveland, one of the founders of the Church of God in Christ; former Senate Chaplain Peter Marshall, the Presbyterian Scottish minister; and Dr. Billy Graham, particularly his "Hour of Decision" sermons.
   
   Betances also said he consumed memoirs and biographies to improve his vocabulary.
   
   The Tuesday morning workshop for community leaders, titled "Leveraging Diversity: Building a Sacred Trust," was the first of three events for Betances that day, the second being an event for about 50 faith leaders who gathered at Maryville College's Fine Arts Center Music Hall. They, too, heard the challenge:
   
   "Who knows that you have come to a position of leadership for such a time as this," Betances suggested. "One of our great challenges is to make sense of our differences to make a difference for the kingdom of God."
   
   Later, Betances talked with about 40 youth leaders from community high schools at Maryville College's McArthur Pavilion.
   
   Those were the first of six workshops across two days that Betances would conduct as a result of a partnership between Strength in Diversity, the Air National Guard and the Center for Strong Communities at Maryville College. The workshops, which are free to the public, are intended to serve as a communitywide introduction to Strength in Diversity, a group of citizens from all walks of life in Blount County whose aim is to improve relationships among all members of the community.
   
   Betances, considered by many to be a great motivator, holds a doctorate from Harvard, is now a professor emeritus, and has been a consultant to U.S. presidents, as well as CEOs, managers, community groups and others. Growing up in poverty and a dropout at the age of 16, Betances advocates making diversity work for the individual as well as organizations.
   
   `A welcoming spirit'
   
   In the morning workshop with community leaders, Betances pointed out, "America is a nation founded by outsiders, who are now insiders, who are afraid of today's outsiders.
   
   "We've got to have a welcoming spirit," he said. "You can't continue to resist change."
   
   He spoke at length about tensions that might hinder understanding, tolerance and good relationships between diverse members of the community.
   
   "Shifts in the population create tensions in the organizations," he said.
   ...
   "The reason we need diversity training is not because we're evil, but because we're normal," Betances said.