Trust depends on the authenticity of our lives, our openness, and our willingness to start with change in ourselves.

A few weeks ago I took a part in a panel discussion in Washington at the National MultiCultural Institute’s annual conference. Our topic was “The illusion of inclusion: moving from rhetoric to a sustainable future.” In discussing obstacles to inclusion, I noted that our history of racial and economic separation is a barrier to trust. Terrorism makes us more fearful and less open. A growing tendency to focus on our own wants rather the larger need is another factor. Isolation, fear and self-preoccupation all feed mistrust.

A veteran peacemaker from Northern Ireland who visited Richmond recently told me, “We have institutional silence on the issue of trust. It’s one thing to have a neutral workplace. But how do you build commitment to trust that goes beyond compliance?”

Alfred Stocks, who was the chief executive of Liverpool city government used to say, “With trust you can accomplish anything. Without it you can achieve virtually nothing.”

An African American once challenged those pushing for community change: “You have to build a bridge of trust strong enough to bear the weight of the truth you are trying to communicate. You have to earn the right to be heard.” Building trust is a universal need and a global challenge.

My colleague, David Campt, sent me an email, which I shared with the conference. He points to the need for change within the activist community itself as an important step in building an inclusive society. “The diversity industry has not done a good job at developing messages about unconscious prejudice,” David writes. “Thus many people think that because explicitly bigoted encounters have diminished, the challenges to inclusion have been solved.” He then goes to the heart of the matter. “Part of the problem, is our fault as change agents. We have contributed to the thinking that prejudice and bias are things you ‘get past.’ Doing this work requires more risk taking by us diversity practitioners because we must own up to our own on-going struggle against our lower nature.”

Some years ago, a long-time African American colleague shocked me by saying, “I sometimes think that you withhold your true feelings as a way of maintaining control.” It never occurred to me that what I regarded as normal Scottish reserve might be experienced by someone of another culture as a control mechanism.

David’s email brought to mind the words of Howard Thurman: “The root of what I condemn in others is found at long last in the soil of my own backyard. What I seek to eradicate in society …I must first attack in my own heart and life. There is no substitute for this.”

The belief that we are the solution and others are the problem is a serious obstacle to collaborative efforts for change – and to trust building. Personally I have found that people are much more interested in my failures than my successes.

Those of us who are impatient for change need a consistent set of values which are reflected in our personal lives and public actions. Without this there is loss of coherence and breakdown of trust.

What values will we choose? I am glad that my sons have grown up with a greater commitment to tolerance than I did. But tolerance alone is not a strong enough glue to keep our diverse national community from splintering into competing interests and identities.

Ten years ago we launched A Call to Community at the National Press Club and laid out a framework for honest conversation. It includes:

• Listening carefully and respectfully to each other and to the whole community
• Bringing people together, not in confrontation but in trust, to tackle urgent needs
• Searching for solutions, focusing on what is right rather than who is right
• Building lasting relationships outside our comfort zones
• Honoring each person, appealing to the best qualities in everyone, and refusing to stereotype
• Holding ourselves, communities and institutions accountable where change is needed
• Recognizing that the energy for fundamental change requires a moral and spiritual transformation in the human spirit

Trust is a fragile bridge that must be built each day. Initiatives of Change and Hope in the Cities propose values of honesty, purity, unselfishness and love as building blocks of this bridge of trust. Honesty about our failures, purity in our motives, unselfishness in our support of others, and love in our readiness to forgive and accept forgiveness. Trust depends on the authenticity of our lives, our openness, and our willingness to start with change in ourselves.