San Jose Branch Proud of its Racial Diversity

Crisis, The, May/Jun 2004 by Harris, Hamil

Rick Callender is making waves. In the last four years, Callender, president of the NAACP's San Jose Silicon Valley Branch, has built one of the largest and most diverse NAACP chapters in the country, with nearly 900 members.

The executive board of the branch is composed of people whose families come from China, the Philippines, Mexico and several other countries. According to the latest Census data, the Silicon Valley area is approximately 2.8 percent African American, 24 percent Hispanic and 25.6 percent Asian. As a result, instead of exclusively embracing Black issues, the San Jose branch deals with matters of discrimination from a wide variety of individuals.

"We are really working hard toward having real diversity," says Jennifer Low, a 22-year-old Chinese American who is deputy executive director of the San Jose branch. Though the branch is made up of mostly African American members (82 percent), Callender, a 35year-old water company lobbyist, says people from different races, as well as sexual orientation, should be welcomed.

"It says something about the NAACP for one of our branches to be casting this wide net for non-Black members," says NAACP chairman Julian Bond. Callender's "efforts only make us stronger and more vibrant."

Alice Huffman, president of the California State Conference of the NAACP, agrees. "He has done an outstanding job of reaching out to various populations," she says. "Some people think that the NAACP is Black only, but it is for [all] people of color."

The branch's treasurer, Gail Bautista, whose parents are from the Philippines, says that people from her country have faced discrimination in the United States similar to that of Blacks.

"In the 1890s people treated Philippines the same way they treated Blacks in the 1960s," says Bautista, 32. "In Berkeley there were signs that read 'No Philippinos allowed.'"

During his four-year tenure as president of the San Jose Branch, Callender has created a number of community programs, including the Youth Leadership Academy for students in grades 7 to 12 and a program to teach minorities how to obtain affordable housing.

But some of Callender's actions have caused controversy in the Black community. For example, in October 2003, when Blacks in Silicon Valley wanted to rename a street for Martin Luther King Jr. in the heart of a Hispanic community, Callender was against the effort.

"I said no because this was not our community," says Callender. "We need to be sensitive to other communities and not flex our political muscles just because we can. We have had so much taken from our community, why do it to another community of color?"

In another incident that year, Callender drew fire when he refused to support a request by a group of Black leaders in San Jose to get the county's Human Relations Commission to condemn the use of the word nigger. "All racial epithets are evil so why should we deal with just one," he says.

"The NAACP can't just be an 'us' thing or it will be a failed thing," says Callender. "The times dictate that we represent all people of color."

- Hamil Harris