Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1998 13:04:31 -0700 To: nvc@spiraldynamics.com, Chris Cowan , Roger Ruth From: Caleb Rosado Subject: Diversity Training Article Cc: pcg9r@virginia.edu, rosadoj@coyote.csusm.edu Status: RO Fellows: Here is the that I am now happy with. Give me your input on this one. I really think it reads much better and clarifies a alot of issues, while raising soem real challenges. Feeback, meistros, please. Caleb What's Wrong With Diversity Training? The Need for a New Model By Caleb Rosado, Ph.D. Since the 1970s, but increasingly from the mid-1980s, consultants have been addressing the issues of workforce diversity, prejudice, discrimination, sexism, and racism as social cancers eating away at the heart of America and world society, and how to do social surgery. Yet, it appears that all this training in diversity and human relations is not having the much anticipated results for a more inclusive workplace and caring society. Rather, one group, threatened by a perceived loss of power, exercises social, economic, political, and religious muscle against the Other to retain privilege by restructuring for social advantage. World renowned corporations, even after much diversity training, still retain patterns of privilege and practices of discrimination that result in mega lawsuits. What's the problem? Why the difficulty in creating ethical, equitable, efficient environments? Are conventional diversity training programs part of the problem, where the medicine exacerbates the disease? Where lies the solution? There is no biological basis for race. So why do we keep focusing on biological differences, such as skin color and other forms of phenotype? Roger Bastide long ago exposed this fallacy when he declared: "Color is neutral; it is the mind that gives it meaning." The problem is that biology affects racism by providing physical markers, which separate us first in our minds. Out of these mental constructs come the social constructs that then separate us in society, and are undergirded by power-the preservation of privilege! Both of these constructs, however, are merely surface issues, differences in one dimension. The problem with the usual approaches to diversity training to resolve racial, ethnic, gender, and other forms of conflict, is that they are primarily focused on surface, superficial differences-the human container and how its looks (race, skin color, gender, and physiological differences)-rather than on the contents of the container, the deep-level Value Systems within-our paradigms-that determine how we "see" the world, and think and act in harmony with that vision. Based on this horizontal approach, conventional diversity training models spend a great deal of time getting people in small groups to talk about how it "felt" to be "different" from others, whether by color, gender, sexual, physically challenged, class, or cultural differences, such as language, religion, and education, and how all these differences shape our values and view of the world. Some do "cultural audits" to determine how these differences result in conflict. The training then shifts to discussions of what is diversity, prejudice, stereotypes, discrimination, and eventually to racism and sexism, as attitudes and behaviors of innate superiority. The training ends with some "how-to's" of celebrating, valuing, and managing diversity. This model is replicated and implemented a thousand times every day around the globe by diversity gurus and consultants doing "surface analysis," who often, unbeknown, leave their audiences, primarily White and male, with the impression that they are insensitive, greedy, ethnocentric, and responsible for most of the social evil in the world today. Yet, it seldom works! Since deep-level belief and value systems are not addressed, at best, what comes out of this approach is a temporary respite to discrimination, and a "feels good" attitude that "I am now 'trained'." At worst, it leaves people angry, confused, resentful, divided, and often more balkanized, crying "reverse discrimination," "unfair," "preferential treatment," and pushing legislation that results in Prop 209 and 227 (California) that support anti-affirmative action and limit educational language choices. But this is largely due to faulty diversity training models that fail to recognize that racism and other forms of exclusion function on two dimensions-Horizontal and Vertical-not just one. And here is where a new model, a fresh approach to diversity training, is needed. It is one that shifts the focus from surface horizontal differences of race, color, gender, language, to vertical, below the surface Value Systems and core ways of thinking, believing, and seeing the world and acting toward the same. This new model, called "Spiral Dynamics®", developed by Don E. Beck and Christopher C. Cowan of the National Values Center, Inc. in Texas, derives from the seminal work of Dr. Clare W. Graves, late Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Union College in New York, whose research gave rise to the Theory of Human Levels of Existence. "Human beings exist at different 'levels of existence,'" Graves declared. "At any given level, an individual exhibits the behavior and values characteristic of people at that level." These levels are open-ended, as there is no "final stage." The implications of this theory for diversity training are rather simple but profound ones. Racism is not a problem, it is a symptom of a problem. Prejudice, discrimination, sexism, concerns for diversity are not social problems; they are social symptoms of a larger problem. The problem? Emergent Value Systems at the deep decision levels within people that evolve in response to life conditions. These Value Systems serve as social "magnets" that attract or repel beliefs, behaviors, and bureaucracies-the cultural "filings"-that give shape, surge, and substance to racism, sexism, and other expressions of exclusion, aligning them with congruent lifestyles or rejecting them if out of sync. They are the "invisible forces" within people and systems from which emerges the various "isms" that fail to recognize variance in the human family. Result? An insensitivity to human needs. Spiral Dynamics® is a bio-psycho-social-spiritual framework for understanding human development and human systems. It unveils the hidden codes and dynamic, spiral forces that shape human nature, create global diversities, and drive social change. Emerging from two converging streams of thought-primarily, Clare W. Graves' Value Systems theory of 'levels of human existence' and, secondarily, biologist Richard Dawkins' concept of 'memes'-Spiral Dynamics® explores the new science of memetics, the study of ideas and their cultural transmission. Memes are cultural units of information that self-replicate by means of thought-contagion, using the human mind as a host, and attach themselves to individuals, organizations, entire cultures, and societies. They culturally impact our social formation, just like genes, the code carriers of DNA, biologically impact our physical formation. Spiral Dynamics® shifts the focus from the what of human behavior, the surface issues, beliefs, actions, attitude, and values-the memes (rhymes with "themes")-that fragment or unify human groups, to the why and how of such behavior-the vMEMEs (pronounced "vee-memes" for value-memes-the core Value Systems awakened by changing life conditions and manifested as a dynamic spiral of levels of human development. Memes operate on two levels, horizontally and vertically. The Horizontal dimension is the surface level of human relations, the area where our differences-color, gender, status, language, physical features, culture, values, sexual orientation, and national origin-conflict. To focus on these surface differences, the what, is to miss the larger picture, the Vertical dimension, the why and how of human action. Meaning in life is understanding the why behind the what of human action. This is the area of Value Systems, the big memes, or vMEMEs-the core intelligences, conceptual schemes, and organizing frameworks for beliefs and behaviors, from which emerge the surface differences, the little memes. Ninety-five percent of all diversity training, workshops for unlearning racism and sexism, conflict resolution, and motivational training for law enforcement, education, corporations, government agencies, religious groups, and social policy planning focus on these surface differences, the Horizontal dimension. So also does much of multiculturalism on college campuses and in corporations, which merely celebrate biocultural (surface) differences. Of greater importance than the superficiality of surface, biocultural differences, such as skin color, gender and language-the memes-are the profound differences in active, deep decision Value Systems and levels of thinking-the vMEMEs-beneath, from which choices emerge that impact what happens at the surface. Here is where genuine multiculturalism can effect change by showing the impact of diverse Value Systems on the development of human societies and groups. What this new approach of Spiral Dynamics® enables us to understand is that human diversity at the deep levels of cultural values and thinking systems may be the greatest diversity of all, for these determine how people think, not just what they value. And it exposes how this thinking often results in different socioeconomic outcomes between groups. Our struggle, then, is not with human types, but with deep-level cultural Value Systems that like migrating, bio-psycho-social-spiritual tectonic plates, on colliding, release energy that reverberates to the surface in conflict over group differences and competition for scarce resources. The problem is not that we are White or Black, male or female, environmentalist or logger, First World or Third World, atheist or believer. It is the vMEMEs within us that are at war. Since vMEMEs are deep decision systems in people, not types of people, they transcend race, gender, age, class, culture, and societies. There is a danger here that must not be overlooked. Some campuses, corporations, and communities are barely beginning to acknowledge, respect, and celebrate the diversity of their constituencies, albeit at the surface level-food, lifestyles, culture, books, art, music, etc. Others are not even there yet. To come along and say, "Hey, that's nice, but you're barking up the wrong tree; focus on the roots-look below the surface to the source of differences," can cause some trauma. For it places people in the position of arriving late at the feast of diversity as the lights are about to be put out. So, while acknowledging the value of differences and what each can bring to the common table, we must move people from there to the real source of the differences, people's Value Systems from which emerge the choices of life that influence what they say and do. The idea is not to discourage those that are barely starting to make an effort to finally get onboard in respecting differences, by telling them "Forget it, that's not where its at." Such an attitude can result in their returning to the old vomit, and saying, "See, I was right in the first place. All this diversity stuff is hogwash." The idea behind the model presented here is, while valuing people's efforts at inclusiveness, move them quickly from temporary surface solutions to more lasting results, based on deep-level analyses of root causes and core memetic ways of thinking. Racism and sexism are memes-contagious ideas-that infect individuals, organizations, entire cultures, and societies. And, like a deadly virus, they have contaminated all areas of life. What divides us in society, however, is not our genes, but our memes. We look different because of our genes; we think and act different because of our memes. Our genes are only Horizontal differences. It is the deep, memetic, bio-psycho-social-spiritual magnetic forces on the Vertical axis that attract and repel humanity. Racism and sexism manifest themselves differently depending on the memetic level they are located. Failure to understand this results in a Flatlander approach, the approach taken by most diversity trainers. "Flatlanders" are persons unable to recognize the vertical, spiral structure of human existence, and thus focus on superficial, horizontal differences, rigid categories, simplistic types, and on labels to put on people. They put everyone through the same car wash, one-size-fits-all approach, paint only with broad horizontal brush strokes, as "flavor-of-the-month" consultants who project their own values, fears, biases, and prejudices on others. The result is an insensitivity to the needs of individuals, organizations, and nations at different levels of existence. To concentrate efforts only along the Horizontal axis, is merely to catalogue biosocial traits and inventory differences. To address problems of human relations requires managing both axes. However, the solution cannot come from the surface level, the Horizontal, but from the root sources, the Vertical. The question then becomes not one of how to "manage diversity," but one of how to "awaken the natural flows," the next level of development of people, organizations, systems, and environments, in order to understand the futures global diversity will taken in the next century. This is the new direction for diversity training, leadership, and the management of change in the 21st century. It is also the direction of consulting for ROSADO CONSULTING for Change in Human Systems, a firm that specializes in organizational change, global workforce diversity, futures, and the alignment of human systems. [Caleb Rosado, Ph.D., is a former university professor of sociology and is writing a book, The Futures of Racism: Memetics, Multiculturalism, and the Millennium. He has been a diversity consultant since 1978 and is president of ROSADO CONSULTING for Change in Human Systems, McKinleyville, CA. Email: rosado@humboldt1.com; website: www.rosado.net. For more information on Spiral Dynamics® and memes see Don E. Beck and Christopher C. Cowan, Spiral Dynamics: Mastering Values, Leadership, and Change (Blackwell 1996), or their website, www.spiraldynamics.com]