Diversity

Diversity Brown Bag Presentation

"How do white men participate in diversity?"

It is often believed that diversity involves only women and people of color. This belief is not only false, but also damaging as it keeps white men, who represent the largest power base in our culture, from participating. There are many ways for us as white men to participate in the process of diversity, but I’ll highlight just a few that can help you get started.

First, we should cultivate our hunger for new learning. By learning about other points of view, other cultures, even differences in gender perspectives, we provide ourselves a basis for being effective at fostering diversity and gaining for ourselves, and others, the benefits diversity provides.

Second, we should learn to speak out about what we’ve learned. We should talk to other white men on diversity issues instead of leaving it to those people most directly impacted by workplace inequities. We need to recognize that speaking out demonstrates publicly our commitment to the value of diversity and helps to diminish the view that diversity is just about women and minorities.

Finally, we should go against our white male culture, which would have us go it alone, like knights in shining armor. Instead we should seek out other white men to learn with and from. We should build and expand a support system that will allow white men to see each other as key to each other’s learning in the same way that we would currently see women and people of color.

Workshop

Prior to writing this presentation, I attended a workshop hosted by White Men as Full Diversity Partners a diversity coaching and enabling group. Much of my presentation is based on my participation in this workshop, and specific, identified elements from materials provided during that workshop were used as part of my presentation.

Survey

Prior to staging the presentation, I created a questionnaire for attendees to complete before they attended the talk. The questionnaire was based on the premise that my being a white male would give the respondents a framework within which to make assumptions about me as a person. This premise is further based on the knowledge that business culture in the U.S. is white male culture, something that is distinct from other cultures but that is hidden from U.S. business workers by being ubiquitous in the workplace. The survey went as follows:

Intro Page - Shows a picture of me looking corporate and normal

Questionnaire - Questions intended to reveal the cultural assumptions of the respondent based on their expectations of me being a white male

Presentation

The presentation itself was in-part based on the results of the survey. It was the intent that the audience discover for themselves that they responded to me as a white male and, in a sense, defined what white male culture is in their responses to the survey. This is an outline of the presentation.