Project summary and challenge

After the public slaying of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, MN, on March 25, 2020, conversations about systematic racism and social justice filled the Marketing and Communication department at Miami University. Many white employees looked for the few employees of color to lead the conversations about race and white privilege. 

These workplace conversations led to the thinking; How can the script be flipped, and how can we educate the white majority about race, discrimination, and privilege in a safe environment? How can individuals make real change and the privileged majority be responsible for closing the gap of race inequality—instead of the burden to educate and foster change falling onto the shoulders of people of color?

Methodology

This research was conducted under the direction of Critical Theory and Black Feminists Thought. These theories challenge the current workplace culture, structure, and cultural assumptions toward minority groups based on race and ethnicity and fight institutionalized racism, social, and economic injustice. Qualitative research such as surveys, interviews, and co-design, were used to gather participants’ thoughts and experiences.

Finding and results

Based on the research three themes emerged, 

• building social justice, 
• current institutional culture,
• and the opportunity for personal and institutional growth. 

Based on primary and secondary research findings, I was led to explore design concepts related to fostering empathy and education about race through intergroup dialogue, perspective-taking, and goal setting.

• Intergroup dialogue is a facilitated conversation between two or more social identity groups that strives to create new levels of understanding, relating, and action (Zúñiga, 2003).
• Perspective-taking is a technique to build empathy toward others. Taking the perspective of another person is the ability to understand how a situation appears to another person and how that person is reacting cognitively and emotionally to the situation (Johnson, 1975). 
• Setting goals to improve someone’s job performance can be adapted to diversity training by asking participants to set specific, measurable, and challenging yet attainable goals related to diversity in the workplace (Lindsey, King, Membere, & Cheung, 2017).

The intervention’s learning goals were based on Bloom’s Taxonomy framework which consists of six major categories: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation (Armstrong, 2010). This framework believes knowledge and understanding is necessary for putting learned skills and abilities into practice. 

Design intervention

Cultural Conversations

“Cultural Conversations” is a 12-month, employee-required initiative to encourage conversations about race, culture, and inequity. This program prepares employees to be culturally conscious leaders and brand ambassadors. Conversation topics include  but are not limited to:

• cultural consciousness,
• importance and history of allies, 
• racial injustice and social movements, 
• current world events,
• the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma.

Employees will be divided into a Culture Crew consisting of 8-10 people from across campus. A trained leader “Culture Captain”, will help facilitate the monthly Cultural Conversations. Each Culture Crew is a stratified sample of employees (classified, unclassified staff, and faculty). The stratified sampling will ensure diversity of race, ethnicity, and background among Culture Crew members. Culture Captains (Captains) are certified employees recruited across campus to guide

Culture Crews in their culturally conscious journey. Captains will participate in a five-day training on the university’s Cultural Conversations initiative. In return for their leadership and time commitment, they will receive compensation for training and subsequent sessions. The Cultural Conversations team is located within the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, which conducts “Culture Captain” training, assigns employees to “Culture Crews”, conducts participant surveys and addresses any concerns with “Culture Captains”. 

Monthly Conversations are guided by Captions using intergroup dialogue and an ongoing course schedule. Conversations use perspective-taking and goal setting techniques prompting participants to imagine themselves in someone else’s shoes to make a more impactful and lasting learning experience.

Testing

The prototype, Cultural Conversations, was guided by Bloom’s Taxonomy framework to test the learning of the focus group. The three participants completed a pre-and post-training audit, gauging their own cultural competency.

Results

The following themes emerged from the conversation from the focus group:

• The workplace at Miami operates as a clique culture and participants are excluded because they are not in the “popular” group.
• Participants try to be inclusive allies, and when they make a mistake they learn from the situation. They also know that everyone makes mistakes, and appreciate when colleagues stop and correct themselves or later apologize for their comments or actions.
• Religious and cultural assumptions lead to strife when being excluded. Their work environments have made them feel ignored or less than other colleagues. 

Participants were able to empathize and hear about other experiences from across campus. Hearing from employees from across the university brought to light the common struggles divisions, departments, and offices experience as well as, building new relationships with employees from other parts of the university.

The work culture perpetuates inequality, exclusion, and a hostile work environment.

There is a need for a centralized message and timely communication from the university leadership when issues arise.

The university needs to educate students and all employees about race issues with a unified training program.

Further research is necessary to replicate and expand on the findings of this study. A larger and more accurate representation of the university employees’ would allow for a deeper understanding of issues or struggles that could arise in the “Cultural Conversations” program. Further development of the courses is needed to test a full cohort of employees. As current events happen, it is important to regularly add topics of discussion to ensure the best possible learning. 

References

Armstrong, P. (2010). Bloom’s Taxonomy. Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching. https://cft.vanderbilt.edu/guides-sub-pages/blooms-taxonomy/.

Johnson, D. W. (1975). Cooperativeness and social perspective taking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 31(2), 241–244. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0076285

Lindsey, A., King, E., Membere, A., & Cheung, H. (2017, July). “Two Types of Diversity Training That Really Work.” Harvard Business Review, 2hbr.org/2017/07/two-types-of-diversity-training-that-really-work.

Zúñiga, X. (2003). Bridging differences through dialogue. About Campus: Enriching the Student Learning Experience, 7(6). doi:10.1177/108648220300700603