64 Great Sites and Articles on Diversity and Appreciating Differences

There are many dif­fer­ences that sep­a­rate each and every one of us. For me, that is one of the things that makes life so inter­est­ing and enjoy­able. Unfor­tu­nately, there are peo­ple who incor­rectly assume some­thing about another per­son or the group they belong to sim­ply due to a dif­fer­ence. When it comes to diver­sity and appre­ci­at­ing dif­fer­ences, no one can hon­estly say that they are not inter­ested in it. The rea­son for me stat­ing such a com­ment is because regard­less of who we are or where we come from, every­one has biases toward peo­ple we per­ceive to not be like our­selves. Whether it’s a dif­fer­ence in skin color (or shade of the same skin color), dif­fer­ence in lan­guage, or dif­fer­ence in gen­der, we all will have some form of nat­u­rally occur­ring pre­con­ceived opin­ion of a per­son who is not like our­selves. That is, until we edu­cate our­selves and/or sim­ply become a lit­tle more informed about the other person. 

Why do I say it’s a nat­u­rally occur­ring pre­con­ceived opin­ion? It’s because as human beings we all have a nat­ural curios­ity to know what goes on around us. At the same time, we as human beings have a pref­er­ence that every object (be it a per­son, place, or thing) have some form of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion or label. That’s where the nat­u­rally occur­ring pre­con­ceived notion comes in. When­ever we are not able to read­ily iden­tify or label some­thing, our nat­ural curios­ity and thought process will want to cre­ate some form of label in order to store that object within our mem­ory. That label may not be accu­rate and because of this, the mem­ory we store in our sub­con­scious about the object will be bias. The pre­con­ceived notion or ‘bias’ is based upon the infor­ma­tion that either was avail­able to us at the time the mem­ory was recorded or the infor­ma­tion we chose to pay atten­tion to. 

What is Your Thought?  

Even if a per­son doesn’t believe they are insult­ing some­one, they may in fact be doing so. At the same time, the per­son who unknow­ingly is insult­ing another per­son or group is doing noth­ing more than show­ing oth­ers their own lack of knowl­edge. 

Below are some exam­ples of a per­son mak­ing what they believe to be a polite or com­ple­men­tary com­ment but in actu­al­ity can be taken as demean­ing or insult­ing by the other party:

• A man­ager hir­ing for an open posi­tion com­ments on an appli­cant who appears to be His­panic or Black says, “I was really impressed with his way of com­mu­ni­cat­ing.  So proper and elo­quent.” (Would that per­son say the same thing about a per­son who appeared to be white Caucasian?)
• A super­vi­sor for a bus or other pub­lic trans­porta­tion com­pany, who is known to not give many com­ple­ments at all, tells two of his dri­vers (the only two who hap­pen to be female on his team), “I have to say that I’m really impressed with your dri­ving skills!”
• A col­lege stu­dent who is hav­ing trou­ble with a math class asks one of his peers in another class who is Chi­nese if he would mind help­ing him with a math prob­lem he is hav­ing in the other course.  The Chi­nese stu­dent asks him why him since he doesn’t know him out­side of the class they both share and the class they are shar­ing is an art course.

There are many web­sites and arti­cles on the inter­net that dis­cuss the sub­ject of diver­sity. Below is a list­ing of some of the bet­ter free sites and arti­cles I’ve come across on diver­sity and the appre­ci­a­tion of dif­fer­ences. These are by no means all the best sites and arti­cles out there, but sim­ply one listing.

The goal here is that you or some­one you know will ben­e­fit from the infor­ma­tion pro­vided in these web­sites and arti­cles. If there is a site or arti­cle, not listed below, that you believe will help oth­ers, please feel free to share it with the rest of us in the com­ment sec­tion at the bot­tom of this list!

1. A Fair Go: A Com­mu­nity Kit for Action Against Racism — Pro­duced by the National NGO Coali­tion Against Racism. Catered to the needs of Aus­tralians who share a com­mit­ment to address­ing and erad­i­cat­ing racism, this can be trans­ferred to other areas where sim­i­lar issues occur.
2. Across Cul­tures — Through the lens of a cam­era, dis­cover some of the NFB col­lec­tion that doc­u­ments the con­tri­bu­tion made to Canada by dif­fer­ent ethno-cultural communities.
3. Action Plan on Lan­guage Learn­ing and Lin­guis­tic Diver­sity — Dis­cus­sion about the Euro­pean Union’s action on how to address the con­cern of lan­guage skills being unevenly spread across coun­tries and social groups.
4. Advan­tage Diver­sity — Canada — an ini­tia­tive of the Affil­i­a­tion of Mul­ti­cul­tural Soci­eties and Ser­vice Agen­cies of BC. This is intended as an orga­niz­ing tool for agen­cies and indi­vid­u­als work­ing on anti-racism activities.
5. All One Heart — a non-profit orga­ni­za­tion ded­i­cated to pro­mot­ing har­mony among all peo­ple and to encour­age tol­er­ance through raised con­scious­ness by edu­ca­tion and experience.
6. An Approach for Teach­ing Diver­sity — A dozen sug­ges­tions for enhanc­ing stu­dent learn­ing by Jim Win­ship. These twelve sug­ges­tions are not exhaus­tive but they are sup­ported by pub­lished lit­er­a­ture on teach­ing for diver­sity, on effec­tive col­lege teach­ing, and are ones that both col­leagues here at UW-Whitewater and I have found effec­tive in teach­ing our under­grad­u­ate students.
7. Appre­ci­at­ing Dif­fer­ences — Cel­e­brate Diver­sity! — teaches teens about reli­gions. Teens tak­ing part in the 2009-10 Cel­e­brate Diver­sity! pro­gram learned that peo­ple may prac­tice a dif­fer­ent reli­gion but are not all that much different.
8. Appre­ci­at­ing Dif­fer­ences And Sim­i­lar­i­ties: How to Rec­og­nize and Use 14 Com­pat­i­bil­ity Fac­tors to Open Up Cre­ative Inter­ac­tions — Inter­est­ing paper by Larry Byram and The Insti­tute for Spir­i­tual Part­ner­ship on the sub­ject. Please note that some areas of this paper may be inter­preted as a lit­tle too spir­i­tual in nature, but over­all the views and tech­niques out­lined by Mr. Byram may prove use­ful to many individuals.
9. Beliefnet — an inter­est­ing site that explores the spir­i­tual side of exis­tence and exam­ines tol­er­ance from a reli­gious point of view.
10. Coali­tion for Cul­tural Diver­sity — The mem­bers of the Coali­tion affirm that cul­tural diver­sity is a fun­da­men­tal human right and that coun­tries and gov­ern­ments must be entirely free to adopt the poli­cies nec­es­sary to sup­port the diver­sity of cul­tural expres­sion and the via­bil­ity of enter­prises that pro­duce and dis­trib­ute this expression.
11. Diver­sity and Com­plex­ity in the Class­room — Con­sid­er­a­tions of race, eth­nic­ity and gen­der. “There are no uni­ver­sal solu­tions or spe­cific rules for respond­ing to eth­nic, gen­der, and cul­tural diver­sity in the class­room, and research on best prac­tices is limited”.
12. Diver­sity and Gen­der Resources | BNET — White papers, case stud­ies, busi­ness arti­cles, and blog posts relat­ing to diver­sity and gender.
13. Diver­sity Appre­ci­a­tion, Train­ing and Man­age­ment — pro­vided by the Free Man­age­ment Library that pro­vides orga­ni­za­tions tools to accom­mo­date expand­ing mar­kets, increas­ing diverse work­force, and increas­ing pub­lic con­scious­ness about how busi­nesses should operate.
14. Diver­sity Cen­tral — Resources for Cul­tural Diver­sity at Work.
15. Diver­sity Coun­cil Aus­tralia — an inde­pen­dent, not-for-profit diver­sity advi­sor to busi­ness in Australia.
16. Diver­sity Helps Your Busi­ness – But Not The Way You Think — Good Forbes arti­cle on the strengths of diver­sity and how an orga­ni­za­tion may best ben­e­fit from it.
17. Diver­sity in Learn­ing: A Vision for the New Mil­len­nium — A very good and thought pro­vok­ing speech by Sey­mour Papert for the Diver­sity Task Force con­vened by Vice Pres­i­dent Al Gore. Links to a video of this speech is avail­able via this site.
18. Diver­sity Pledges Ring Hol­low — A new study shows that in spite of cor­po­rate promises to pro­mote diver­sity in senior man­age­ment, very lit­tle progress has been made.
19. Diver­sity Uni­ver­sity — For those inter­ested in acquir­ing tools to help oth­ers explore the areas of diver­sity, this site offers award-winning diver­sity e-learning pro­grams, facil­i­tated diver­sity train­ing work­shops and follow-up e-courses to help reduce bar­ri­ers & improve pro­duc­tiv­ity. Helps Reduce Bar­ri­ers & Improve Pro­duc­tiv­ity Helps Reduce Bar­ri­ers & Impro
20. Diver­sity Web — An inter­ac­tive resource hub for  higher edu­ca­tion. The Diver­si­ty­Web project is housed within the Office of Diver­sity, Equity and Global Ini­tia­tives at the Asso­ci­a­tion of Amer­i­can Col­leges and Uni­ver­si­ties (AAC&U).
21. Diver­sity World-Workforce Diver­sity Index — Great site that takes the time to be on the look­out for online resources that pro­mote work­force inclu­sion of all peo­ple. They cat­e­go­rize what they find accord­ing to a list.
22. Diversity(MDPI) — an Open Access jour­nal of the sci­ence and tech­nol­ogy con­cern­ing diver­sity con­cepts and appli­ca­tions, diver­sity assess­ment and diver­sity preser­va­tion, is pub­lished by Mol­e­c­u­lar Diver­sity Preser­va­tion Inter­na­tional (MDPI) online monthly.
23. Diver­sity, Learn­ing Style and Cul­ture — New Hori­zons. Edu­ca­tors do not believe that all learn­ers are the same. Yet vis­its to schools through­out the world might con­vince us oth­er­wise. Too often, edu­ca­tors con­tinue to treat all learn­ers alike while pay­ing lip ser­vice to the prin­ci­ple of diversity.
24. Diver­sity: Beyond a Num­bers Game — Today, this work­place goal is more about inclu­sion than meet­ing quotas.
25. DiversityBusiness.com — the nation’s pri­mary resource por­tal for small busi­nesses and large orga­ni­za­tional buy­ers (i.e., For­tune 1000 Com­pa­nies, Gov­ern­ment Agen­cies and College/Universities).
26. DiversityInc.com — Diver­si­ty­Inc is the lead­ing pub­li­ca­tion on diver­sity and busi­ness. DiversityInc’s mis­sion is to bring edu­ca­tion and clar­ity to the busi­ness ben­e­fits of diversity.
27. DiversityIncBestPractices.com — The one place for the lat­est research, analy­sis, met­rics, trends, best prac­tices and real-life solu­tions on diver­sity man­age­ment from the nation’s lead­ing expert, Diver­si­ty­Inc. Fresh weekly con­tent on diversity-management trends, in-depth research, diversity-department struc­tures, and diver­sity col­lat­eral material.
28. Diversity’s Miss­ing Ingre­di­ent — Appre­ci­at­ing one another’s dif­fer­ences, as opposed to just get­ting along, can trans­late into truth-discovering and real com­pet­i­tive advantage.
29. Embrac­ing Diver­sity: Toolkit for Cre­at­ing Inclu­sive, Learning-Friendly Envi­ron­ments — Site with a down­load­able toolkit that con­tains an intro­duc­tory book­let and nine Book­lets (includ­ing three spe­cial­ized book­lets), each of which con­tains tools and activ­i­ties for self-study to start cre­at­ing an inclu­sive, learning-friendly envi­ron­ment (ILFE).
30.  ERIC — the Edu­ca­tion Resources Infor­ma­tion Cen­ter — an online dig­i­tal library of edu­ca­tion research and infor­ma­tion that con­tains links to over 20, 000 papers and arti­cles on the sub­ject of diver­sity. Type in the word “diver­sity” in the search field.
31. Euro­pean Cul­tural Co-operation (ECC)-Council of Europe — seeks to develop through­out Europe com­mon and demo­c­ra­tic prin­ci­ples based on the Euro­pean Con­ven­tion on Human Rights and other ref­er­ence texts on the pro­tec­tion of individuals.
32. Fac­ing His­tory and Our­selves — a site that deliv­ers class­room strate­gies, resources and lessons that inspire young peo­ple to take respon­si­bil­ity for their world.
33. Improv­ing Learn­ing Resources Through Diver­sity — Link to an ini­tia­tive of the Asso­ci­a­tion of Edu­ca­tional Pub­lish­ers. An edu­ca­tional pub­lish­ing indus­try that mir­rors the diver­sity of America’s class­rooms is essen­tial if the goal of edu­ca­tional equity is to be met. Build­ing a diverse work­force requires a sys­tem­atic and sus­tained effort.
34. Inter­na­tional Net­work for Cul­tural Diver­sity (INCD) — a world­wide net­work of artists and cul­tural groups ded­i­cated to coun­ter­ing the homog­e­niz­ing effects of glob­al­iza­tion on culture.
35. Inter­na­tional Net­work on Cul­tural Pol­icy (INCP) — an inter­na­tional forum where national min­is­ters respon­si­ble for cul­ture can explore and exchange views on new and emerg­ing cul­tural pol­icy issues and to develop strate­gies to pro­mote cul­tural diver­sity in an infor­mal venue.
36. Learn to Ques­tion — A por­tal that exam­ines the mul­ti­ple facets of hate and diver­sity, this site offers inter­ac­tive infor­ma­tion on hate groups, gen­der issues, self-identity, multi-racialism and social movements.
37. Learn­ing From Diver­sity (N. Y. Times Opin­ion) — An inter­est­ing opin­ion arti­cle about the Sixth Cir­cuit Court of Appeals uphold­ing the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan Law School’s admis­sions pol­icy, in which race is one of the many fac­tors that can influ­ence a deci­sion. Writ­ten by Jef­frey S. Lehman, dean of the Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan Law School at the time.
38. Learn­ing the Value of Diver­sity — arti­cle by Leah Davies on how children’s iden­tity and self-respect are related to how oth­ers treat them, and ulti­mately to their future suc­cess. There­fore, school per­son­nel need to pro­mote a safe, humane envi­ron­ment where inclu­sive­ness, jus­tice and an appre­ci­a­tion of indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences are evident.
39. Learn­ing to Under­stand Diver­sity: Get­ting Stu­dents Past Com­mon (Non)Sense — Paper by Pat Gold­smith (Instruc­tor at the Uni­ver­sity of Wisconsin-Parkside) that presents a ped­a­gog­i­cal method for teach­ing sen­si­tive, diver­sity related sub­ject mat­ter. The method is intended to develop a deeper under­stand­ing of how social processes pro­duce racial and eth­nic inequality.
40. LearningDiversity.com — This site fea­tures a vari­ety of “racial vignettes” — descriptions of prob­lem­atic inter­ac­tions between white peo­ple and peo­ple of color.  Each vignette comes with a com­men­tary exam­in­ing what might be trou­bling for the per­son of color in the inter­change and the prob­a­ble under­ly­ing racial mind set of the white participant.
41. Learning-through-Diversity (CIRTL) — The Cen­ter for the Inte­gra­tion of Research, Teach­ing, and Learn­ing seeks to con­tribute to this goal by enabling present and future STEM fac­ulty to enhance the learn­ing of all stu­dents whom they teach irre­spec­tive of, but not lim­ited to, pre­ferred learn­ing styles, race, eth­nic­ity and cul­ture, gen­der, sex­ual ori­en­ta­tion, dis­abil­i­ties, reli­gion, age or socioe­co­nomic backgrounds.
42. Mon­di­al­ogo — Encour­ag­ing inter­cul­tural dia­logue and exchange all over the world. Seeks to pro­mote inter­cul­tural dia­logue, under­stand­ing and exchange among young people. 
43. More than Tol­er­ance: Embrac­ing Diver­sity for Health — web­page on the Vic­to­rian Health Pro­mo­tion Foun­da­tion web­site that dis­cusses how dis­crim­i­na­tion is not only an issue of social jus­tice. There is grow­ing evi­dence that it can have a dev­as­tat­ing impact on health.
44. Museum of Tol­er­ance — link to a museum that chal­lenges vis­i­tors to con­front racism and bigotry.
45. Ontario Con­sul­tants on Reli­gious Tol­er­ance — this site offers insight on dozens of the reli­gions prac­ticed around the world and encour­ages peo­ple to accept that all reli­gions have a right to exist, regard­less of an individual’s deci­sion of which reli­gion to practice.
46. Poyn­ter Insti­tute — an all-encompassing data source for jour­nal­ists has a diver­sity digest and inter­est­ing arti­cles on how the media should expand its diver­sity report­ing after Sept. 11 and incor­po­rate it into every­day coverage.
47. Pre­cious Chil­dren: Diver­sity in the Class­room — Arti­cles pro­vid­ing sug­ges­tions on how to pro­mote racial and cul­tural aware­ness at school and at home from the early child­hood edu­ca­tion PBS tele­vi­sion net­work. These arti­cles pro­vide sug­ges­tions on pro­mot­ing racial and cul­tural aware­ness at school and at home.
48. RACE — The Power of an Illu­sion — online com­pan­ion to Cal­i­for­nia Newsreel’s 3 part doc­u­men­tary about race in soci­ety, sci­ence and history.
49. Race for Oppor­tu­nity — Race for Oppor­tu­nity (RFO) is com­mit­ted to improv­ing employ­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties for eth­nic minori­ties across the UK.  It is the only race diver­sity cam­paign that has access to and influ­ence over the lead­ers of the UK’s best known organizations.
50. Rela­tion­ships Improve­ment Resource Cen­ter — This site pro­vides mate­r­ial, arti­cles and resources to help you improve your rela­tion­ships at home and at work. It is updated fre­quently as we come across new mate­r­ial wor­thy of inclusion.
51. Six Tips for Teach­ing Diver­sity — Effec­tively Incor­po­rat­ing Diver­sity in the Class­room. Learn to teach diver­sity effec­tively to all age groups with these six reli­able techniques.
52. South­ern Poverty Law Cen­ter — Teach­ing Tol­er­ance Project — Founded in 1991 by the South­ern Poverty Law Cen­ter, Teach­ing Tol­er­ance is ded­i­cated to reduc­ing prej­u­dice, improv­ing inter­group rela­tions and sup­port­ing equi­table school expe­ri­ences for our nation’s children.
53. Stone Speaks: Appre­ci­at­ing Dif­fer­ence — Glenda Stone CEO of Aurora, the inter­na­tional orga­ni­za­tion work­ing for the eco­nomic advance­ment of women looks at how to iden­tify and erad­i­cate dis­crim­i­na­tion in the work­place and ben­e­fit from diversity.
54. Tal­ent Not Tokenism: the Busi­ness Ben­e­fits of Work­force Diver­sity — paper from the Equal­ity and Human Rights Com­mis­sion. An orga­ni­za­tion that recruits its staff from the widest pos­si­ble pool will unleash tal­ent and develop bet­ter under­stand­ing of its cus­tomers. It will also enable it to spot mar­ket opportunities.
55. Teach­ing Kids Tol­er­ance and Diver­sity — great and con­cise arti­cle on the subject.
56. The Anti-Defamation League — one of the nation’s pre­mier civil rights/human rela­tions agency, ADL fights anti-Semitism and all forms of big­otry, defends demo­c­ra­tic ideals and pro­tects civil rights for all.
57. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) — an inter­na­tional non-governmental orga­ni­za­tion based in the United States. Describ­ing itself as “the nation’s pre­mier civil rights/human rela­tions agency”, the ADL states that it “fights anti-Semitism and all forms of big­otry, defends demo­c­ra­tic ideals and pro­tects civil rights for all”.
58. The Value of Diver­sity to Learn­ing Orga­ni­za­tions — A very good paper by Daniel Cochece Davis, Ph.D. and Viviane S. Lop­uch, M.A. pre­sented at the Inter­na­tional Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Association’s annual con­fer­ence, in Dres­den, Germany.
59. The Value of Fem­i­nine Speech in the Work­place — Very good arti­cle from the Scotts­dale National Gen­der Insti­tute. Their free online newslet­ter “Gen­der Jour­nal: Men and Women Work­ing Together” is a free, on-line newslet­ter that addresses a vari­ety of thought pro­vok­ing arti­cles on gen­der issues in the workplace.
60. Under­stand­ing Race: Are We So Dif­fer­ent? — Look­ing through the eyes of his­tory, sci­ence and lived expe­ri­ence, the RACE Project explains dif­fer­ences among peo­ple and reveals the real­ity – and unre­al­ity – of race.
61. United Nations Edu­ca­tional, Sci­en­tific and Cul­tural Orga­ni­za­tion (UNESCO) — works to cre­ate the con­di­tions for dia­logue among civ­i­liza­tions, cul­tures and peo­ples, based upon respect for com­monly shared values.
62. Valu­ing Dif­fer­ences and Diver­sity in the Work­place — dif­fer­ences strength­ens an orga­ni­za­tion by pro­vid­ing it with a vari­ety of resources that can be tapped and max­i­mized. Hav­ing peo­ple with a vari­ety of styles, abil­i­ties, and moti­va­tions pro­vides room for flex­i­bil­ity, cre­ativ­ity, and dynamic interactions.
63. Vic­to­ria Mul­ti­cul­tural Com­mis­sion — an inde­pen­dent orga­ni­za­tion that pro­vides inde­pen­dent advice to the Vic­to­rian Gov­ern­ment to inform the devel­op­ment of leg­isla­tive and pol­icy frame­works as well as the deliv­ery of ser­vices to our cul­tur­ally, lin­guis­ti­cally and reli­giously diverse society.
64. WhereWomenWantToWork.com — a free online ser­vice for women to research and com­pare orga­ni­za­tions and com­ment on com­pa­nies that have the best diver­sity pro­grams and ini­tia­tives. It shows what orga­ni­za­tions are doing to deal with dis­crim­i­na­tion and allows employ­ees to see where their com­pany ranks among the rest.

Rec­om­mended Read­ing
 

Sphere: Related Content

Related Posts

• Think Your Too Old to Learn Some­thing New? Think Again…. (2)
• How Does Your Com­pany or Orga­ni­za­tion View Diver­sity? (2)

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