Miami once provided a model for diversity. Now DeSantis won it big.

But that expectation belies how Miami-Dade has always been a battleground over diversity and inclusion. Even in the case of the “Stop WOKE” Act, the bill provoked strong reactions in both directions. Many scrambled to figure out how to comply with the new law. Others resisted through legal action, from students and professors in the public university system to private companies that wish to continue the workplace trainings they consider crucial to their businesses’ success. Meanwhile, the law’s supporters celebrated a victory for “individual freedom” — freedom from institutional policies designed to build awareness and competency around issues of race and inequality, which they condemn as “woke indoctrination.”

Decades ago, however, Florida produced a nationwide model for such trainings. Many called it the “Miami model” in the 1970s and ’80s: an approach derived from South Florida’s notably diverse population. This included training all kinds of health and human service professionals on how to be sensitive to the racial, ethnic, class and cultural differences among the populations they served. In other words, it encouraged people to become what diversity training critics now demean as being “woke.”

Looking to the history of the “Miami model” — an innovator in what was then called “cross-cultural training” — can help us understand why diversity trainings were created in the first place. It also sheds light on how and why diversity trainings have long since elicited strong opposition — way before “wokeness” became a pejorative term and a favored target for culture warriors.

The 1970s in Miami was a “multicultural moment.” The previous decade had seen a dramatic uptick of Cuban refugees fleeing Fidel Castro’s communist revolution. Although many thought of their exile as temporary, it soon became clear that Cubans were there to stay, enhancing the city’s ethnic diversity. There were, for instance, Black and Afro-Caribbean communities that had a long-established presence in Miami. So too had Puerto Ricans who had arrived in large numbers after World War II, many to work in the garment industry. And by the late 1960s, thousands of Haitian refugees fleeing political turmoil also came to Miami. All the while, the number of “Anglos” was decreasing not just proportionately but in absolute numbers. Miami was and remains, conspicuously, a majority-minority city.

From mainstream media to local politics, Miami was on the leading edge of not just recognizing but officially embracing non-White and immigrant cultures. Take, for instance, the hit television series, “¿Qué Pasa, U. S. A?,” which follows the life of the Peña family in 1970s Miami and the wholesome, humorous collisions of Cuban and American culture as they adapt to life in a new country.

It’s not surprising that the country’s first bilingual sitcom was set in Miami. In 1973, county commissioners had voted on a resolution to make Miami-Dade County “officially bilingual and bicultural.” Leading the effort was a Spanish-speaking task force that included Cuban bankers like Bernardo Benes and Luis Botifoll, who felt the county was finally waking up to a “fact of life”: Miami, home to hundreds of thousands of immigrants and Spanish speakers, was already a bicultural county.

When critics complained of the costs of building a bilingual infrastructure, such as hiring translators and interpreters and printing new signage, Benes insisted that such measures would ultimately serve the city financially — especially appealing to multinational companies moving their headquarters to Miami as well as a Latin American market.

In an age of globalization, Benes and others on the Spanish-speaking task force associated cultural sensitivity with business savvy. Bilingualism and biculturalism went hand in hand with terms like “innovation,” “competition” and an entrepreneurial, “pioneering spirit.” Failing to embrace multiculturalism was bad business.

It was also dangerous to health. In the early 1970s, Jackson Memorial Hospital, the area’s major public hospital, employed a nominal number of bilingual personnel. The emergency room operated with no bilingual staff at all. This led to the neglect of the many Cuban refugees, Puerto Ricans and migrant workers who spoke little to no English. An investigation of the hospital’s bilingual capacity revealed that “From the moment of their arrival at the front desk and the signing of forms to the actual visit to the doctor, the person in need finds no way to express his illness, feelings and concerns. […] many times he leaves Jackson Memorial Hospital with far more despair and anxiety than when he went in.”

Hospital administrators responded by hiring bilingual staff and training employees on how to better accommodate patients’ linguistic and culturally specific needs.

Some drew on the expertise and experience of a small group of social scientists and clinicians based at the University of Miami School of Medicine. They had launched a project to make health care inclusive and accessible to the African Americans, Bahamians, Cubans, Haitians and Puerto Ricans surrounding the academic medical center. The model involved training health providers to understand social barriers and to become “culture brokers” — bridging a medical establishment dominated by White, U.S.-born providers and a multiethnic patient population.

Their success led to the model’s expansion to local institutions beyond the health arena — like schools, churches and the police department — as well as beyond Miami and Florida. This is how it became known as the “Miami model.” Participants underwent an intensive training, which included lectures from social scientists, religious leaders and alternative healers as well as role-playing exercises and immersive experiences in Miami’s ethnic neighborhoods. Activities were designed to encourage participants to develop self-awareness, especially of the unconscious biases they might have. Trainees reported leaving the training with a new perspective as well as practical skills for intervening with clients and achieving better patient outcomes back home.

Despite the many practical benefits of this training, by the early 1980s there was a backlash against official multiculturalism. In local news media, some reacted negatively to what they had read about cross-cultural trainings. One Miami News reader decided to withdraw her alumni donations to the University of Miami for encouraging a stance of tolerance toward certain cultural practices, especially healing rituals involving animal sacrifice.

Such criticisms soon became public policy. A local group called Citizens of Dade United succeeded in passing an anti-bilingual ordinance in 1980, reversing the bilingual-bicultural resolution that had passed nearly a decade prior. It prohibited the county from spending any funds “for the purpose of utilizing any language other than English or promoting any culture other than that of the United States.”

Like critics of contemporary “wokeness,” Citizens of Dade United argued that the bilingual-bicultural resolution had been discriminatory and divisive, even favoring those who spoke a foreign language.

Even when their English-only ordinance passed, members of Citizens of Dade United felt their job wasn’t done. In 1981, they held a march against what they called “language injustice, crime, and illegal invasion of our shores,” blaming the turmoil of the previous year on the city’s newcomers. Large numbers of Haitian migrants were entering the country as the Mariel Boatlift brought a dramatic number of Cubans. In response, Citizens of Dade United then demanded the government take action to restrict immigration. Perceiving a threat to some purer version of American culture, the group passed out fliers asking, “Is Miami in the U.S.A.?” and “Do you feel that your language and culture are being changed?”

The promise of the Miami model faded as the politics of nativism took hold, along with sweeping budget cuts to public services. The city’s decision to slash its publicly funded multicultural policy was propped up by fears conservative activists stirred about the changes that might result from sharing power with non-White Americans.

Today, as we see new attacks on diversity and inclusion, we stand to learn a lot from the political and economic context that once embraced a multicultural vision of American society. When the Miami model reigned, the civil rights struggle of previous decades had expanded the boundaries of American citizenship and showed how being self-aware and sensitive to racial and ethnic diversity might give an individual, a business or an entire city an edge in a globalizing economy.

Then and today, Americans have struggled with the problem of how to achieve social cohesion in a plural society. Diversity trainings have presented one particular solution for institutions and businesses that necessarily interface with diverse patients, clientele, customers or recipients of public goods. The goal of training is to leave the trainee changed — with new perspectives, information and skills — thereby changing the institutions in which the trainee works.

While it may be unclear how effective those trainings are, their very existence is a reminder that the process of integration is incomplete. This process requires more than just opening the door to those formerly excluded. It requires changing structures and cultures. Making “wokeness” the object of debate obscures deeper anxieties about a multiracial and multiethnic democratic project that remains unfinished.