by Jeffrey Goldstein

Since last May, Adelphi's employees have been participating in a cultural diversity workplace program consisting of a 2 hour workshop presented by myself, Prof. Jeffrey Goldstein, Ph.D. of the School of Business. The purpose of the program is to re-educate and re-sensitize the members of the community as well as employees of organizations throughout the NYC area regarding issues arising from working in a diverse workplace plus legal work authorization facts.

The program is directed by the Metropolitan Jewish Council, and the Jewish Community Center of Coney Island (JCCCI), in collaboration with Brooklyn's Business Outreach Center Network (BOCNET) for micro-enterprise development, funded by a special "9/11 Disaster Recovery" grant from NYS Bureau of Refugee and Immigration Affairs(BRIA), "World Trade Center Emergency Services Fund Award."

I specifically became involved in this program because of my work since 1989 in the area of diversity in the workplace. Myself and colleagues have visited many different types of work organizations in order to interview all levels of workers as to the kinds of issues they were confronting that had to do with working in an environment of diversity, including different genders, ages, cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and so forth. I have worked with colleagues in developing interventions that would aid employers in dealing with these issues.

The main focus of Adelphi's workshop is on sensitivity to difference. Specifically, the emphasis is on how cultural and other types of differences shape our perceptions, thinking processes, and job-related attitudes. For example, perception is an area where research has shown how cultural differences influence how we see the world around us. Consider the following optical illusions:

Concerning the first illusion, research has demonstrated that people from a European background tend to see the upper horizontal line as longer than the one below it, whereas people from Melanasia, Micronesia, and Polynesia tend to see them as the same length, which is their actual length. In reference to the second illusion, people from a European background in South Africa tend to see the second diagonal line indicated by the arrow as either the same or shorter than the diagonal line on the left, yet people from an African background in South African tend to see the diagonal line on the right as longer than the one of the left, that is, they see it correctly since the one on the right is actually longer than the one on the left.

The program also covers tendencies toward a squelching of diversity, for example, the idea of America as "The Melting Pot" has an implicit ideology that one's diverse background should be curtailed in favor of joining the mainstream. Also, civil rights legislation, although a great protection for all employees, puts the onus on employers treating everyone the same before the law, which is great from a legal protection point of view but at the same time tends towards avoiding the issue of diversity at work altogether. Another example of how diversity is squelched consists of the typical categories by which people are grouped on governmental forms: Caucasian; African-American; Hispanic; Asian; Native American; and so on. Why are so-called "Caucasians" not included under "Asian" since the Caucasus Mountains are actually in the western part of Asia? And, why are people from countries where Spanish is the main tongue linked together as "Hispanic," referring to their language, whereas no other category is based on language? Indeed, why are Brazilians supposed to check "Hispanic" when they don't even speak Spanish, but Portuguese! And, what exactly is common among people from Asia that they are all grouped together? Indeed, the same can be said about the label "African-American" since Africa is a huge continent with a huge amount of diversity.

Another item covered in the program concerns the diverse attitudes of people to work related situations. In this regard, the Dutch researcher Gert Hofstede interviewed and psychologically tested over 117,000 employees in countries all over the world. Hofstede found a great difference among countries concerning such job-related categories as attitudes to authority such as supervisors, openness to new ideas, inclination to be assertive in social relationships, and individualistic or collectivist inclinations.

Then, there are the differences in how we perceive and think about people in regard to whether they are members of our in-groups or not. For example, we perceive much greater detail and differentiation among people in our in-groups than we do about persons who are not. This is the origin of believing that people of some group other than our own "all look alike." Also, people tend to reach different conclusions about the behavior of members of their own cultural in-groups in contrast to members of their cultural out-groups. For example, research has shown that if a member of one's in-group does something wrong, there is a tendency to conclude it was caused by something external such as an accident but if a member of an out-group does something wrong, there is a different tendency of concluding it was caused internally.

Finally, information is shared concerning legal status of immigrants to work in the United States. In general there are a variety of immigration statuses and all an employer needs to know if a prospective employee is allowed to work legally is to see the right stamped documents. This means that, in addition to a green card, there is other documentation given to immigrants allowing them to work before they receive the actual green card.

Participants have found the program informative and it appears to have stimulated awareness of the issues since I have received many emails from attendees alerting me to this or that news items involving diversity. There has also been a call for more of these types of employee workshops. As I said in the workshop, becoming re-sensitized to diversity in the classroom is only one piece of an ongoing conversation on diversity in which we all need to participate.