North Carolina State University is a town. With 36,000 residents, its own roads, buildings, transportation system, and plenty of administration, NCSU is a thriving community. Not only that, it is our community, our town. 

I have been on the faculty of the NCSU community since 1988. So this is my professional home, my town. Things happen in our town — some good, some not so good. Some of the recent have been not so good — incidents of ugly, hateful, racial and anti-GLBT graffiti. These incidences are bad for us. But in my case, these incidences also fall within the purview of my scholarship and teaching. That’s why as a citizen of this town, I decided to use my academic work to help other citizens of the NCSU community understand what is going on, how we are hurting ourselves and how we can and should do better. 

In 2006, I created and since have been teaching a course titled “Interpersonal Relationships and Race.” Teaching about our 21st century situation, the course revolves around the concept of neo-diversity. Rightfully, America dismantled the immoral laws of segregation. Today we live with neo-diversity — a time and circumstance when for all of us, contact with people who do not look like us happens every day, and is unavoidable. Even knowing that all students on our campus are part of the Wolfpack, neo-diversity anxiety causes too many students to struggle with the question, “…who are the ‘we’ and who are among the ‘they.’”

In my course, students write papers about their experiences with neo-diversity — being in interaction with a person who is not like them in some way (by race, gender, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation).  I teach my students social psychological theory and concepts that help them understand why they experienced anxiety in those interactions and how that anxiety led to problems in that interaction. I also teach my students why it is that when some people experience this kind of anxiety, some people can just lose it. The person feels so anxious they act out with negative, anti-group behavior — avoidance behavior, in “…private” negative anti-group language, and sometimes public anti-group graffiti. I also teach concepts and strategies that help my students learn how to deal with their own neo-diversity anxieties and how to productively confront other people’s intolerant language.  

Having learned all that, in their papers my students speak with a new understanding and new commitment. My students voice how their new understanding of neo-diversity anxiety has changed them and made them want to work to accept the reality of the neo-diversity of our campus. These students howl that all students at NCSU should learn to positively interact with people who make up the neo-diversity of our great town. 

Using my students’ writings, I wrote my new book: “Howl of the Wolf: NCSU Students Call Out For Social Change.” To try and help our town do better in this age of neo-diversity, I have given out a thousand free copies of the book. Why? It’s time for a real conversation about neo-diversity. It’s time we start to heal our town — to truly nurture our pack.

Get your hand on a copy. Read this book to hear the new howl of the Wolfpack.