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Diversity
“No way I am prejudiced!” Or is there…
The film, Crash, just won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Original
Screenplay. The win shocked Hollywood, as Brokeback Mountain was expected to win
hands down. The subject matter of both films, in addition to another Academy Awardnominated film, Transamerica, forces the viewers to examine their own beliefs of others
who are different than themselves in some way. Perhaps once again, Hollywood is
opening up our minds, even just a little bit.
Would I have reacted that way? Would I have felt that but not said it out loud? Actor
Matt Dillon (who won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar) plays a prejudiced cop who
thinks he has seen it all and has it all figured out. His views are solid, and angry. His
disrespect for certain groups of people is reinforced in his experiences on the job dealing
with the worst of society’s ills on a daily basis.
“Diversity – again?”
The term “Diversity” has been used in the workforce for at least 15 years. Many of us
have been required to attend at least one training course per year on the subject. Some of
this training has been solid, while some training courses have done more harm than good
to its participants. One class attended in the early 1990’s required the students to write
their prejudices about each category of participant, for example, “white females,” “black
men,” etc. on a flipchart page posted around the classroom. The class wrote out
stereotypes under each heading that were painful. These were hung all during two days
of training, and never referred to again. The words were so ugly that people didn’t want
to look at them or sit near them. The trainers mistakenly didn’t debrief the exercise,
change the phrases to positive statements, or have the class burn them in effigy. It was a
terrible experience for which management later apologized.
Step 1
The first step in a quality diversity course is to help you come to terms with the patterns
that you have formed in your mind about people of a certain category (race, age,
disability, etc.). To say we don’t hold these “prejudices” is not being honest.
Acknowledging that there is a pattern we form around certain people is not admitting you
are a terrible person.
Step 2
The next step is to help you to prepare to open your mind to new ideas. If you are set in
your ways as the Ryan character in Crash, all the training in the world won’t change your
mind. If you hold every single person in a category against your “pattern” of that
category, you will no doubt be surprised. After teaching one diversity course that we
challenged the class to “stereotype” one volunteer, we were surprised to learn that the
young African-American woman preferred classical music and ballet over hip-hop. One
randomly selected volunteer from the class had already opposed our expectations within
1 hour of class!
Step 3
The third step in a successful diversity course is to dare the participants to leave the
classroom with a commitment to simply keeping an open mind about others. Yes, we
think ___ people might act ___ way frequently, but we KNOW that they ALL do NOT,
and we will not treat each person as if they had.
How ICATT Can Help You
True diversity also investigates fields other than race, religion, gender, color and physical
ability. We vary from others in our life experiences, our fears, our assets, our talents, our
personalities, our backgrounds, our chemistry, and many other variables that you
CANNOT SEE by simply looking at a person.
The 4-hour Diversity Course that ICATT Consulting offers follows these crucial steps.
Instructors are experienced with helping the class fully process sensitive and/or thoughtprovoking situations and case studies.
One of the best compliments, among the many, that we have received regarding this class
was from a former military member, who was forced to attend numerous training sessions
on the subject. He approached the training staff after the class and said, “I was really
dreading coming to this class this morning. I thought I had seen it all in diversity
training. Of all the training I have had, and that has been a lot, your class was the best by
far. It was a real surprise!”
For more details, or to schedule a course for your office, please see our website at
www.icatt.net.