Exclusive or Inclusive?
Harassment by workers and supervisors. |
Respect for and among workers. Company and
workers value differences. |
Secrets: Withholding the knowledge needed
to do the job; invisible rules. |
No secrets: Invite to meetings, lunch, informal
gatherings; coaching, mentoring, taking under one's wing,
showing the ropes, training. |
Isolation: Occurs
When a company hires only a token person or a few minority
individuals who are then located in widely separated work
places;
When a member of a minority is always given assignments regarding
other members of the same minority. |
Facilitating networking: Within minority
group and outside minority group. |
Represents minority group: Failure is seen
as group failure. Success is viewed as an exception. Increases
likelihood of burnout, as token person is placed on many committees. |
Represents self only: Enough employees belong
to the minority group so the same person doesn't have to represent
the group on every commitee. |
Limited advancement by not being given challenging
work or training. Person is under-valued and under-utilized.
Not held to standards. |
Given opportunities to grow. Given challenging
tasks, support and training. Held to standards. |
Results in high turnover. |
Results in high productivity. |
Summarized from "Valuing Diversity" Teacher's and Trainer's Guides,
Copeland Griggs Productions, Inc. 1991.
People offend one another without intending to. This may sometimes
be due to:
- having a lack of knowledge and information,
- responding unthinkingly to stereotypes deeply imbedded in
us from childhood,
- not putting ourselves in the other person's place to understand
how he/she feels.
Click on the following links to find out words, actions and assumptions that may offend people who
are different from us.
- Yes, I do blush, bruise, tan and sunburn. Everyone has these
responses.
- I have natural rhythm. Doesn't everyone?
- Don't touch me without my consent. On the other hand, if you
ask, I may feel uncomfortable about saying no, but want to say
no.
(Back to Selections)
- I am not an exception to the group I belong to. Telling me this
is not a compliment, because you are saying you don't like my
inheritance.
- When I share with you my opinion on being oppressed by others,
don't tell me I am mistaken, paranoid or overly sensitive.
(Back to Selections)
- Remember, English is a living language. Much standardized English
today was once slang and improper.
- Don't mimic my language, accent or mannerisms.
- Clothes from other cultures are not costumes. People who wear
clothes from their homeland are not exotic.
- A person's culture has developed out of ancient and meaningful
history. Wearing a piece of that culture, even if it has become
an American fad or fashion, trivializes it. Sports teams should
not be named Indians, Redskins or Braves any more than they should
be named the New Haven Honkies or the Minnesota Ministers. Sacred
elements of the Native American culture should no more be in the
cheers, mascots and symbols of sports than the Lord's Prayer or
crucifixes should be.
(Back to Selections)
- Don't assume I want to live where you live, that I dislike my
neighborhood or that I would consider your neighborhood as a safer
place for me and my family.
- My neighbors may not want your old clothes.
- If you don't want to visit my home, I might not wish to go to
yours. If you would like to visit with me, offer an invitation
to your home. If that doesn't work, try lunch out together first.
(Back to Selections)
-
Don't assume just because I am a member of a minority group
that I am not the person with power and in charge.
- Don't assume if I am walking towards you on the street, I want
to mug, solicit or rape you or if I am running, I just committed
a crime.
- Don't assume that what I have in my possession, I couldn't have
bought.
- Assume I would like to be treated with the same courtesy and
respect that you would demand for yourself.
(Back to Selections)
- People of color and other oppressed people do not want to hear
how in the past you acted in oppressive ways nor how much you
disapprove of the oppressive behavior of people you know. People
have enough oppression in their lives without adding to it.
- Members of my group may use terms about ourselves which we would
find offensive if an outsider used them.
- Minorities and women, in order to be accepted by others, should
not have to endure informal testing by being forced to listen
to or find humorous ethnic, racial or gender jokes.
(Back to Selections)
- Sometimes people of color and women prefer to gather together
with members of their own group. It is a strain to live every
day in an under-supportive environment. People need "time out"
from the majority culture for mutual support and strategizing
and to be in a freer space not limited by outsider definitions,
influences, pressures, values and rules.
(Back to Selections)
Ideas from "Cultural Etiquette" by Amoja Three
Rivers, 1991, Market Wimmin, Box 28, Indian Valley, VA 24105. |
