"Diversity Questions & Answers" is a column that I wrote for
Managing Diversity, from 1991 through 2004.
The first four years of the column are reprinted in my handbook,
How Diversity Works.
Read 8 years of columns by choosing a year and month and
then click GO
My 2005 book, More Diversity, Many Diversities, is available by request as an electronic book. |
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2004
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In the aftermath of September 11, 2001, I thought there was an urgent opportunity to connect diversity with Homeland Security and national security. So I thought there would be more activity in diversity education and efforts to increase diversity consciousness.
The US Federal Budget for next year includes a 10% increase in funds for the Dept. of Homeland Security. Logically, I would expect that your budget for addressing diversity issues would also go up for 2004-2005 and beyond. Does it?
Whether you are in education, business, government, healthcare, or nonprofit organizations, this applies to you. We are all mixed into the same society, we all live in the same world of social forces. The global has become local--psychologically, politically, emotionally, educationally, financially. And diversity is our common denominator.
This is not about the US President’s budget request. This is my professional judgment about diversity programs. I have been asking groups to connect the dots for two and a half years. I am holding a give-away sale on my handbook, How Diversity Works. I am offering to give presentations, workshops, and training sessions. I’m available to be a visiting consultant or teacher. I’m not sure what else I can do. Can you suggest something?
In this year of national elections, voting is our public expression of diversity. We’re going to be told that the country is divided between Red states and Blue states, those states that go Republican or those that go Democrat, a new Civil War with new colors. But states are not single unified votes that go one way or another--they are made up of lots of different people, with more than Blue or Red distinctions and perspectives. One slogan says that the largest party consists of the people who don’t vote.
This year is also the 50th anniversary of the court ruling that segregated schools are not equal, while most students today have a segregated school experience. It is the 40th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty, but more than 13% of the country live below the official poverty line, including more than 11 million children.
Diversity is security in a number of ways, if you consider that part of what we mean by diversity is increasing people’s ability to live with differences in a shared universe, which includes increasing their familiarity with those differences and their intelligence about what to do about them.
If one aspect of diversity is our harmony, interaction, or coexistence with others, we improve our security through improving that coexistence. Then it’s a matter of figuring out how to make that improvement. We might think that practice will improve the quality of interaction. Where, when, and how do we get the opportunity to practice? That’s what diversity programs should be offering.
Perhaps conflicts are inevitable. So we should learn ways of dealing with conflict, and of determining it in the first place, since some things that are called conflict actually could be handled very differently.
And so on. Just examining the issues is a worthwhile use of your time and energy, since it will give you a larger repertoire of knowledge, skills, and options. How much attention do you pay to these questions? How high is this in your list of priorities? Are you taking advantage of the homeland security dimensions of these issues? Do your budget and program reflect this?
There are plenty of reasons to renew and expand your work this year. I hope you have the interest, the will, the imagination, to keep at it.
--Here’s a book I’d like to recommend: King Arthur’s Round Table: How Collaborative Conversations Create Smart Organizations, by David Perkins (John Wiley & Sons, 2003). Despite some silliness in the writing, there are a lot of good ideas here.
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