Forced Diversity: Detrimental Effects.
With the rise of civil rights movements in 1960’s the first diversity trainings started taking place. They were educating people to make them culturally aware, showing the oppression people were facing in their daily lives. It is almost impossible to underestimate how important the work was that people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X have done to create an equal society, where the people of different races could live in harmony. Cities with incredible racial diversity, like New York, can be a great example of how far the United States have grown since then. In more recent years many schools and companies nationwide are attempting to forcefully increase the diversity by implementing different …show more content…
As an international student, I have spent three years in a very liberal private school in New England and have witnessed the negative impact of forced diversity and diversity trainings firsthand. It seemed that a select population of open minded people was positively impacted by all the speakers and activities. However, the majority reacted very negatively and in some cases even in an aggressive manner. Increase in racist comments and jokes was very noticeable after, and kids who never said anything politically incorrect started being openly negative towards minorities. New students came in through the programs and immediately started to form separate groups. They did not like to interact with other students and it started lowering productivity of the group work in class. At this point racial tension in the schools’ community started to rise. As a result, the school was gradually increasing the amount of trainings every year, but results kept getting more and more …show more content…
Similar opinion was raised by two sociology professors from Harvard University in their article “Why Diversity Management Backfires (And How Firms Can Make it Work)”. Their research shown that the tests that were first used to determine most fit candidates for the management positions actually decreased the amount of white women getting jobs and did not help the minorities at all. Despite the negative results majority of companies in the United States still use performance evaluation systems today. That results in a significant decrease of diversity in companies and growth in amount of discrimination complaints. The research also shown that the mandatory diversity trainings, designed to make managers aware of their bias, end up hurting the diversity even more. “One reason may be that, as some psychological studies show, rather than quashing bias, diversity training can activate it.” And similar results are achieved in many schools, where students developed prejudice to minorities after the diversity trainings. In article “Unintended Negative Effects of Diversity Management” by C.W. Von Bergen, Barlow Soper and Teresa Foster authors are trying to explain why negative results are often achieved and what are they. Some of the common mistakes that companies make are hiring incompetent trainers, making trainings too uncomfortable to people, starting trainings only in response to existing crisis.
With the rise of civil rights movements in 1960’s the first diversity trainings started taking place. They were educating people to make them culturally aware, showing the oppression people were facing in their daily lives. It is almost impossible to underestimate how important the work was that people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X have done to create an equal society, where the people of different races could live in harmony. Cities with incredible racial diversity, like New York, can be a great example of how far the United States have grown since then. In more recent years many schools and companies nationwide are attempting to forcefully increase the diversity by implementing different …show more content…
As an international student, I have spent three years in a very liberal private school in New England and have witnessed the negative impact of forced diversity and diversity trainings firsthand. It seemed that a select population of open minded people was positively impacted by all the speakers and activities. However, the majority reacted very negatively and in some cases even in an aggressive manner. Increase in racist comments and jokes was very noticeable after, and kids who never said anything politically incorrect started being openly negative towards minorities. New students came in through the programs and immediately started to form separate groups. They did not like to interact with other students and it started lowering productivity of the group work in class. At this point racial tension in the schools’ community started to rise. As a result, the school was gradually increasing the amount of trainings every year, but results kept getting more and more …show more content…
Similar opinion was raised by two sociology professors from Harvard University in their article “Why Diversity Management Backfires (And How Firms Can Make it Work)”. Their research shown that the tests that were first used to determine most fit candidates for the management positions actually decreased the amount of white women getting jobs and did not help the minorities at all. Despite the negative results majority of companies in the United States still use performance evaluation systems today. That results in a significant decrease of diversity in companies and growth in amount of discrimination complaints. The research also shown that the mandatory diversity trainings, designed to make managers aware of their bias, end up hurting the diversity even more. “One reason may be that, as some psychological studies show, rather than quashing bias, diversity training can activate it.” And similar results are achieved in many schools, where students developed prejudice to minorities after the diversity trainings. In article “Unintended Negative Effects of Diversity Management” by C.W. Von Bergen, Barlow Soper and Teresa Foster authors are trying to explain why negative results are often achieved and what are they. Some of the common mistakes that companies make are hiring incompetent trainers, making trainings too uncomfortable to people, starting trainings only in response to existing crisis.