Diversity

Workplaces, school settings and social settings are a mixture of cultures, ages, genders, religions, sexual orientations, occupations, personalities, and skill levels. To be able to understand each individual person, one must understand and embrace these individual differences. A person cannot effectively understand another person, without considering the impacts their ethnicity, gender, age, status, religion has on their individual personality. Billy Dexter, president of New York-based Hudson Inclusion Solutions, offers three reasons that diversity has not been encouraged in the workplace: lack of support from leadership, no clearly defined business case for diversity, and a general intolerance of differences. Mr. Dexter states "For an organization to embrace diversity, it must be supported from senior leadership and built into the foundation of the organization. Companies need to appreciate and value the unique differences, perspectives, and experiences of every employee." (Clarke, R. D. 2005 para 3) Each individual brings a distinct set of beliefs, values and attitudes to work, where they may clash. These disagreements, misunderstandings, frustrations may arise because people from different generations have different work and communications styles, different views of authority, and different expectations abut the employer-employee relationship. To reduce the possibility of these miscommunications it is important to understand the impact cultural diversity has.

When considering a person’s different ethnicity, many other factors come into play. A person’s ethnicity will also impact one’s political views, dialect, dialogue, customs and even attire. In organizational settings it is important to understand the diverse amount of information and differences ethnicity can bring to the table. Ethnicity does not solely revolve around the country that a person came from. Two people from India can have completely different ethnic backgrounds, because the religion may be different. Even if they both classify themselves as Hindu, their cultural responsibilities, languages, dialect and customs could still be completely unlike. Some of the languages and cultures in India who embrace the Hindu religion are Gujurati, Marathi, Hindi, Uthra-Pardesh, Bengali, and Jain. Although all of these cultures follow the Hindu religion, they each have their own cultures. Even if one were to examine two individuals who are from the state of Gujurat, speak Gujurati; these two individuals will undoubtedly have different dialects and customs that have been ingrained in them through their own family’s beliefs, views, and practices. Although Webster’s New World Dictionary (1990) defines ethnicity has an ethnic classification or affiliation, understanding ethnicity goes beyond just that definition. Ethnicity involves understanding a person’s roots, and individual customs that may have been instilled through generations of family traditions.

In discussing ethnicity, religion is a very similar topic. Religion can be the most intrusive area of cultural difference, in the sense that each individual person’s belief may be offending to another person, which the main barrier being just the initial difference. Many events that happen in the world today are focused on religious differences. Centuries of war have been caused by differences in religion; India and Pakistan have been at war for three hundred years due to their religious differences, and the war has become masked into the ownership of a land called Kashmir. Kashmir was once a beautiful land purely of natural beauties, which now has become a no-man’s land tainted by a war zone and destroyed.

Recently in the news there was a worldwide riot caused after twelve editorial cartoons, most of which depicted the Islamic prophet Muhammad, were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten on September 30, 2005. They stated they had published these cartoons as part of a debate regarding criticism of Islam and self-censorship. For weeks afterwards, numerous huge demonstrations and other protests against the cartoons took place worldwide. On February 4, 2006, the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria were set ablaze, thankfully no one was hurt. In Beirut, the Danish Embassy was set on fire, leaving one protester dead. All together, at least 139 people were killed in protests, mainly in Nigeria, Libya, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Several death threats and rewards were proposed for killing those responsible for the cartoons having been made, resulting in the cartoonists going into hiding. This all could have been avoided with the understanding the religious and cultural implications depicting that cartoon had. The Islamic religion embraces the theory of Aniconism, which is the absence of representations, specifically of God. The Islamic religion condemns pictorial representations of any kind. When the Taliban was in power in Afghanistan, they banned television, photographs and images in newspapers. In Muslim societies, for a Muslim to insult the prophet Muhammad is one of the most serious crimes anyone could commit and that any insult to Muhammad warrants death. (Wikipedia n.d.)

The previous example provided depicted the worst outcomes of misunderstanding or misrepresentation of religion, but the offenses can be minor as well. In the Hindu religion many Indians do not eat meat, specifically beef because of their religious limitations, as in some Islamic religions they do not eat pork. Understanding each person’s religion is a very important aspect in being respectful and courteous.

Gender can also play a large role in the workplace. With the laws of affirmative actions there are not occupations anymore that are specified towards one gender. Women are driving trucks now, and men are just as effective nurses and secretaries as women. Studies have shown for a long time that men are more apt to understand academics that deal with science and math, and women more apt to excel in academics such as English and Communication. These stereotypes have been proven wrong and many