As the Founder of a For-Profit Organization that provides Family Literacy ESL Services, I would like to say that there are residents within Detroit who enjoy good race relations, though our City is nortoriously segregated.

Because I have had the privilege of being trained in a special ministeriial work, I learned to communicate effectively with strangers at their homes for over 35 years. About 10 years ago, however, I was encouraged to learn a foreign language (Spanish) so as to assist in contacting persons in Southwest Detroit with an interest in our work.

This was an unexpectedly outstanding experience! With few exceptions, I was always warmly and genuinely accepted, though my use of the language left very much to be desired. This also helped me to appreciate how much of a barrier language and culture can be. Focusing on the issues and concerns that we shared as humans, of course, helped me to "bridge the gap".

I continued in this work even though some unforeseen caregiving and economic issues made it difficult to pursue it on a full-time basis. At the same time, in my professional life, I was presented with an opportunity to coach a young Iraqi Muslim wife and mother (Bushra) in English so that she could pass the verbal portion of the US Citizenship Exam. Though I had obtained a tutor (a young bilingual Lebanese woman)for lessons in conversational Arabic for several months, Bushra and I struggled with conversation. Her husband (who was bilingual) would leave the house with her baby daughter and I would have to tutor her without a translator. To this day, this family had always treated me with such kindness. When they invited me for the first time to eat with them in the evening, I sat on the floor with them. "Before you were a teacher, but now you are a friend", her husband told me. Bushra enjoyed her sessions so much that she invited a friend, a young Syrian wife and mother on them. Both women became citizens the next year and Bushra and her husband have since recommended me as a US Citizenship Exam Coach for some of their friends.

I said all of this to say that, if we as individuals (I am an African-American) try to get to know others by learning their languages, doing research on their culture,showing human kindness and ACCEPTING THEM, we will be able to dissolve some of our own reservations - or prejudices - and thus attain, at the very least, a satisfying working relationship.