Utahns adjusting to diversity, state aide says

PROVO — Yvette Donosso Diaz grew up in Los Angeles and Miami and felt lost amid the mass of white faces during her a freshman year at Brigham Young University in 1991, one of her former professors said Wednesday.

Ted Lyon shared that observation as he introduced Diaz, the first Latina to serve in a Utah governor's Cabinet, before she spoke at BYU's David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies.

Now at home in Utah, Diaz said she believes Utahns also are growing more comfortable with ethnic minorities.

"I think we're becoming a little bit more used to (diversity) in Utah," she said. "Even though there are anti-immigration groups that will always raise challenges, there's starting to be a media sensitivity and awareness and maybe a cultural change where rather than seeing ethnic diversity as a threat or a challenge, we're starting to see how can we start using it as an asset or how can we start using it as an opportunity."

Last year, Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. appointed Diaz the executive director of the Department of Community and Arts, where she is responsible for the Office of Ethnic Affairs. Diaz earned a bachelor's degree in anthropology at BYU in 1995 and a law degree in 1999.

Diaz said the perception of Utah as homogeneous is giving way to recognition of it as a progressive state where ethnic minorities now comprise an estimated 16 percent of the population, illegal immigrants can obtain driver's licenses, the Office of Ethnic Affairs consolidated leadership of the state's minority councils and 117 undocumented students attend state colleges and universities.

Challenges and controversy persist, however. Children from minority groups still struggle in Utah schools. Some legislators think the state is too progressive, as do anti-immigration groups. And, Diaz said, minority groups have been too fragmented at times to be effective players on the state level.

"Unfortunately, even though ethnic minorities in Utah are 16 percent of the population, we haven't done a good job at developing political power. We have one African-American representative, and he's retiring. We have two Hispanics who are just freshman Democrats. And that's it."

Diaz said minority leaders succeed when they work together instead of in fractured, smaller groups, when they build coalitions and are straightforward with and earn the respect of legislators.