Diversity and Social Justice

Maurice W. Dorsey, Ph.D.National Program Leader for Public PolicyNational Institute of Food and AgricultureUnited States Department of Agriculture

Welcome!

• Focus of workshop is YOU! Who are You? How do you know?

• Use of Self as Instrument of Change (K.K. Smith, 1990)

• Individual, interpersonal, group, organization, and system levels of change

• Goals to achieve self-knowledge and self-management

Ground Rules

• Open mind• Assume a positive intent• Commit to engagement and listening• Open to deconstructing self• Open to rethinking self• Confidentiality

Sensitive Terminology

• Gender• Racial• Religions• Sexual Orientation• Social Class• Physical Characteristics • Others

Multiple Groups IdentitiesDominant and Subordinated Group

• White Black• Male Female• Christian Non-Christian• Heterosexual Homo, Bi, Trans• Rich Poor• Professional Non Professional• Abled Differently Abled

What Are Other Dominant and Subordinated Groups?

What Are Your Dominant Group

Memberships?

How do you feel being in these dominant groups?

How do you feel being in these groups?

What Are Your Subordinated

Groups?

.

.

Quadrant Behavior Theory (QBT) (Dr. Cathy Royal)

White/Male White/Female

+/+ +/-

Black/Male Black/Female

-/+ -/-

Claim, Accept, and Own Your Dominant and Subordinated Group

Identities

• We are a group society• Dominant groups have privileges • Dominant groups are difficult to enter• Dominant groups affects self-perception• Group identity brings alignment to self

Institutionalized and Internal Oppression (Barbara Love,1989)

• Institutionalized oppression is when the group, organization, or system maintains high dominant group identities.

• Internalized oppression is within you, when you deny your subordinated group identification.

Examples of Internalized Oppression

• Women who hate to work for women supervisors• Gays and Lesbians who are homophobic and

ashamed of other gays and lesbians• Blacks who hate their image and will kill other

blacks• Christians that condemn other Christians

Johari Window

Known Self Blind Self

Hidden Self Unknown Self

Johari Window

• Public Self are things you and others know about you (conscious)

• Blind Self are things that others know about you but you do not (unconscious)

• Hidden Self are things that you know about you and others do not (conscious)

• Unknown Self are things about you that you and others do not know (unconscious)

Self-Critique

• List public self

• List hidden self

• List blind self

• Unknown and new things you are learning

Cycle of Experience…on YOUGestalt Therapy

• Intra psychic Experience (core values)=thoughts, memories, dreams, sensations

• Individual Experience=bias, prejudices, bigotry, class, age, race, sexual, spiritual, abilities, etc.

• Environmental Experience=individual, family, groups, community, organization, nation, world, universe

Cycle of ExperiencesGestalt Therapy

List some of your intra psychic, individual, and/or environmental experiences that have impacted you.

Tracking Behaviors(Elsie Cross & Associates, Inc. & Delyte. D. Frost, et.al. 1994)

• Track group memberships• Who is in the group• Who is talking/silence• Who initiates• Who interrupts whom• What group patterns do you see• What is the IMPACT ON YOU!

Intervening Behaviors Subordinated Groups

• Use self to create change-YOU• Women’s intervention• Black intervention• Gay-lesbian intervention• Hispanic intervention• Physically challenged

What is the Impact on You?

• What is the impact on your internalized self?• How much are you in alignment with what

comes out of your mouth and what shows up in your actions?

• How oppressed do you feel inside yourself?• How will you reconstruct you dominant identity?

Path to Diversity CompetenceElsie Cross and Associates adapted by Jack Gant & Delyte Frost

Denial

Fear

Integration

Competence

Path to Diversity CompetenceElsie Cross and Associates

• Denial is a position of nothing is wrong

• Fear is of understanding what is before you but you are immobilized

• Integration is starting to make change or defrosting

• Competence is habit of doing the right thing

Getting Grounded in Who You Are

• Knowing your dominant and subordinated groups• Claiming and accepting your group identities• Understanding the privilege that comes with your

dominant group• Understand oppression: institutionalized and internal• Know your blind self and hidden self• Learn tracking, intervention, and impacts of group

identities on on YOU!

YOU

• Who are you?

• How do you know?

Self-Evaluation

• Do you understand the difference between dominate and subordinated groups?

• Do you claim, accept, own, your group identities?• Do you understand the concept of privilege?• Do you understand the concept of oppression?• Do you know more about your blind self?• Do you understand the concept of tracking, intervention,

and the impact of group identities on You?

Credits:NTL Institute for Applied and Behavioral Sciences

Program Specialist, Antonio McLarenLogo Design:  Annetta Barnes-Oates

Thank You!

Notes