Salt Lake event serves up diversity

Being asked to talk about myself for three minutes at a time was a bit intimidating. As a reporter I'm used to a more one-sided Q&A.

For some, like me, the bell indicating it was time to move on to the next person was a welcome reprieve. However, the bell interrupted Kenton S. Mattingly's account of the first time he experienced discrimination because he's not white.

He continued the story when his next three-minute turn came, telling us how, once as a youth, he and his parents waited at a St. George restaurant for more than 45 minutes, watching others get served. First, his Filipino mother went to the counter with no results. Then, after a while, his white father went to the counter and was served immediately.

"Every so often, I get treated differently," he says. "It's always the nonverbal stuff that gets you."

Like Mattingly, each person sitting at the table had unique experiences that served as a learning opportunity for the rest of us. I learned that the Pappas in Dorothy Pappas Owens stems from her Greek heritage and is a family name associated with priests.

Mattingly was surprised to learn from Francine Mahak, who attended graduate school in Iran, that miniskirts and tube tops were once a common sight in the country now under Muslim rule.

After the dinner, some of those who attended said they felt it was a helpful way to break out of their normal social patterns, and they hoped there would be some follow-up.

"In Utah, we don't have many public places where we all congregate," says Mattingly. "This helps break down those barriers."

Organizer Sanchez says the county already plans to make the event annual and is "going to get creative" with ideas for other community events. The office is also compiling an e-mail list of participants so people can keep in touch, and will be sending out results of a survey on how participants viewed diversity before and after the event.

And some of those in attendance are already working on new networks of friends. Char Nelson left with a small stack of business cards and an invite to go salsa dancing.

"I've got so many new friends," she said. "We're so busy in our narrow little space, it takes something like this to bump us out.... I'm amazed at how quickly we shared on a very personal level."

Perhaps that's the sort of "ripple effect" organizers had in mind.

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E-mail: dbulkeley@desnews.com