Global Diversity Awareness Month

Global Diversity Awareness Month is celebrated in October. It‘s a time to celebrate the richness of differences and the world’s many cultures, and to recognize different perspectives and appreciate the value of diversity in our lives.

So, what does all this mean?

There is so much rhetoric these days around DEI – Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion – but I often wonder whether people really know what that means, especially when it comes to diversity, and especially when they jump on the bandwagon either in favor of or against DEI.

I find it fascinating that when discussing diversity, culture rarely or minimally gets mentioned. When I led diversity training sessions, culture was always a topic I incorporated.

In his book, How to Know a Person, David Brooks, the New York Times op-ed columnist, poses this question as the title to Chapter 16: “How Do Your Ancestors Show Up in Your Life?” In other words, do you understand that the culture(s) of your ancestors are an integral part of who you are?

So, what’s culture? Brooks described it as a shared symbolic landscape that we use to construct our reality. Culture is the acquired knowledge people use to interpret experiences and generate behavior. Culture is something:

•       shared by almost all members of some social group

•       older members of a group try to pass on to younger members

•       that shapes behavior or structures one’s perception of the world

Read the words carefully. While culture is shared by a group, it influences and shapes the individual members’ behaviors and perceptions. It does not, however, define each individual member. 

The challenge, as Brooks so eloquently states is how do you see a person as part of their group – their social group or culture – while at the same time avoiding placing them in a category and failing to see them as a never-to-be repeated unique individual, bringing their own unique mind and viewpoint?

While it’s a very fine line, Brooks’ explanation illustrates how culture influences and shapes rather than defines. Each of us receives certain somethings from our culture, but we are not passive about what we do with those cultural gifts. We all embrace some bits of our culture while rejecting others—for example taking stories from the past and transforming them with our own lives and experiences. We have to see each other as cultural inheritors as well as cultural creators.

What I loved about working with diversity was the opportunity to better understand myself and to encourage others to do the same—dig into the deep sources of yourself. As Brooks encourages asking yourself:

  • Where’s home?

  • How do I embrace or reject my cultures?

  • How do I create or contribute to it?

  • How do I rebel against it?

  • How do I transmit it? 

As far as getting to know another person, we’ll offer some suggestions from The Conflict Resolution Phrase Book.

  • A big strength comes from learning from people who are different than we are. Let’s learn more about each other.

  • I realize our different backgrounds cause us to see things differently. Let’s talk about our different approaches.

  • Our strength is the varied ideas we bring from our different backgrounds. Let’s explore those ideas.

  • Our differences make us interesting to each other. I’d like to learn more about your background and experiences.

While our differences—which we are celebrating this month—are fascinating, the more we learn, the more we are likely to realize that we have much more in common than we thought.

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