Community Choices:
Public Policy Education Program
Exploring the Human Resources/Economic
Development Connection
Module Three:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
8 March 2000
The Southern Rural Development Center
3.0
Objectives

Understand key terms, such as culture,
racial groups, and prejudices.

Recognize how perceptions and
stereotypes influence participation in
public policy activities.

Recognize how values vary across
cultures and how they can influence
views on public policy matters.

Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
Become aware of the cultural
dimensions of public policy issues.
3.1
Background Information

The U.S. is one of the most culturally
diverse nations in the world.

By year 2050, it is estimated the the U.S.
will be made up of 52 percent white, 22
percent Hispanics, 14 percent AfricanAmericans, and 10 percent Asians.

Thus, the future economic productivity
of Americans will depend on the talents
and training of culturally diverse groups.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.2
This curriculum is designed to
help participants . . .

Become more aware of their own
prejudices and stereotypes.

Discuss how cultural differences and
similarities might affect public policy
decisions.

Gain insight into how those who wish to
affect public policy need to be culturally
aware.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.3
Key Terms

Racial group—a social group that people
inside or outside the groups have
decided is more important to single out
on the basis of some real or alleged
physical characteristic.

Ethnic group—a group that is socially
distinguished on the basis of cultural or
national origin characteristics.

Culture—the shared values,
understandings, symbols, and practices
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
of a group of people.
3.4
Key Terms (cont.)



Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
Ethnocentrism—loyalty to the values,
beliefs, and members of one’s own
group and having negative views of
other groups.
Prejudice—unfavorable bias based on an
unsupported judgment. May be felt or
expressed.
Stereotype—a mental picture that
overgeneralizes racial or ethnic
practices or behavior. Makes all people
in a particular group look and act the
same way.
3.5
The root of many of these
negative attitudes is . . .

Fear based on ignorance of others.

Lack of understanding about how they
are like us.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.6
However . . .

Learning to understand others is
essential if communities are to meet
future challenges and develop both
socially and economically.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.7
How groups came to live where
they currently are

Rural African-Americans in the South
worked in the region’s cotton fields as
tenant farmers, sharecroppers, or
agricultural laborers.

Mechanization did away with many of the
jobs these individuals held.

Many moved to urban centers in the
North, but several stayed in the rural
South.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
389
How groups came to live where
they currently are (cont.)

Hispanics in the Southwest came in
waves from Mexico, particularly after the
Mexican Civil War of 1910.

Often, only available employment was as
agricultural workers.

Many have moved to urban areas, but
some low-skilled, poorly-educated
Hispanics have remained in the rural
Southwest.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.9
Current Facts

More than 9 out of every 10 rural African-
Americans reside in the South, and half
are found in the South Atlantic states.

There are 276 counties in the South with
an African-American population of 30
percent or more.

More than 2.5 million of the 5 million
rural African-Americans live in these 276
counties.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.10
Current Facts (cont.)

Nearly half of all rural Hispanics live in
the West and Mountain regions.

Most reside in the states of Arizona, New
Mexico, and Colorado.

Another 40 percent of the rural Hispanic
population lives in the South, mainly in
Texas.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.11
This module suggests that . . .

Racially and ethnically linked economic
inequalities in rural areas occur, in part,
because of the difficulties AfricanAmericans and Hispanics experience in
securing good-paying jobs in the local
economy.

These obstacles are frequently linked to
a lack of understanding and tolerance for
members of these groups.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.12
Current Conditions—Employment

Minority ethnic groups members face
more restricted occupational choices
than whites.

More than 40 percent of rural African-
American men hold manufacturing jobs;
85 percent of al jobs held by AfricanAmerican women are in manufacturing
and service industries.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.13
Current Conditions—Employment
(cont.)

Areas of the rural South with high
concentrations of African-Americans
remain saddled with slow-growing,
stagnating, or declining industries.

Opportunities in the Black Belt are at the
low-wage, low-skilled end of the job
ladder.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.14
Current Conditions—Income

African-Americans and Hispanic workers
in rural areas earn less than their urban
counterparts.

Within rural areas, the income gap
between white workers and workers in
the two minority groups also has
widened
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.15
Current Conditions—Income
(cont.)

Rural African-Americans and Hispanics
are disproportionately concentrated in
the lowest income categories.

The economic situation for AfricanAmerican and Hispanic households has
actually deteriorated since the 1980s.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.16
Current Conditions—Education

The number of African-Americans and
Hispanics with an 8th-grade education or
less has increased since the 1980s.

But, the proportion of rural whites with
an 8th-grade education or less is much
smaller, while the percent with a college
education is much higher than for rural
African-Americans or Hispanics.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.17
Programs and Policies

The current mood in the country is that
poverty and economic development
issues are most appropriately addressed
at the local level.

Local efforts can be problematic if public
policy decisions are made with limited
information and understanding of other
cultural groups in the community.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.18
Programs and Policies (cont.)

Citizens of all cultural backgrounds are
important stakeholders and their input
should be valued at every part of the
public policy process.

What would be worthwhile is the
promotion of multicultural education as
a means for fostering real, democratic
policy decision-making initiatives.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.19
Multicultural Education

Multiculturalism is reflective of policies
that take into consideration differences
among groups that were formerly
excluded from the mainstream of
American society.

For rural communities to advance, they
must engage in clear discussions of the
ways people of divergent cultural
backgrounds develop and maintain their
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
own racial and/or cultural heritage.
3.20
Multicultural Education (cont.)

Local citizens must develop a mutual
respect for divergent cultural ways so
that all groups of people will have the
opportunity to develop their human
capital resources and apply them to the
overall development of the community.

Multicultural education promotes an
understanding of both positive and
negative features of American racial and
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
cultural relations.
3.21
Multicultural Education (cont.)

Its goal is that all students of all color
and cultures be given the knowledge,
skills, and attitudes needed to function
effectively in a culturally and ethnically
diverse state, nation, and world.

Multicultural education programs
represent a way to bring diverse people
together in mutual respect for one
another.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.22
Multicultural Education (cont.)

Diverse groups of people can overcome
their diversity by focusing on those
issues and values that they share.

Fear of individual loss is replaced by a
newly gained knowledge that cultural
diversity, racial differences, and a variety
of religious creeds enrich the vitality of
the community.
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.23
Prepared by
Lionel J. Beaulieu
Southeastern Louisiana University
John A. Rutledge
University of Florida
March 2000
Community Choices:
Promoting Multicultural
Awareness
3.24