Cultural Diversity and You

Reflect on an instancewhen you or someone else were unfairly excluded, discriminated against, orotherwise neglected or treated inappropriately due to race, ethnicity,age, gender, social class, sexuality, disability, or other categoryrelated to diversity. Depending on the setting in which the incidentoccurred, consider whether any laws or policies were violated, eitherthose established by an organization, such as a business or school, orstate or federal antidiscrimination policies.Part 1 – Describe your experience:
Describe the event and the underlyingdiversity issues at play.Describe your opinions, feelings, actions,and what you learned from the event.
Part 2 – Examine your experience:
Discuss experiences from your personalbackground that might account for your feelings or reactions. Considerareas such as your ethnicity, history, upbringing, local mores, recentevents, et cetera.Connect your experience to at least threesociological concepts and/or issues. For example, if you are writingabout what if feels like to be an outsider, you could connect yourdiscussion to the concept of power or social structure, or the broaderissue of relationships between dominant and minority groups.
Examples of other concepts you could includeare prejudice, discrimination, stereotypes, cultural pluralism,assimilation, structural mobility, social distance, and modern racism.Examples of theories include functional orconflict theory, Marx’s and Weber’s theories of inequality, Park’s racerelations cycle, Gordon’s theory of assimilation, human capital theory,scapegoat hypothesis, and the theory of authoritarian personality.
Incorporate research on the broader issuethat your experience illustrates. For example, if the incident youdescribe involves discrimination in the workplace, research workplacediscrimination and find data on the prevalence or nature of this problem.If the incident involves bullying at school, locate data on how extensivethis issue is. Questions to consider include:
Is the type of incident you describecommonplace?Where might this be most prevalent?Among what groups is it most likely tooccur?What trends did you notice in your research?For example, does the kind of incident you experienced or observed seemto be an increasing problem, or is it declining over time?
Analyze how relevant laws or policies mightbe applied to this situation. These may be civil or criminal laws or,perhaps, policies established in the workplace or schools.
Consider whether any laws or policies wereviolated and how those laws or policies might be changed or betterenforced to address the situation you describe.
Part 3 – Reflect on your experience:
Based on your reflections of the event andthe research you have now done, share personal strategies that are usefulfor informing the interactions or relationships between the involvedparties, as well as your own understanding or perspectives.