Question

Does the video address the major issues of diversity as described in this week's readings of Diversity in the Workplace? Why or Why not? This week's reading was about A Framework for Understanding Individual Perspectives of Diversity

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgOTjSp6vwY

Answer 1

Note: This response is in UK English, please paste the response to MS Word and you should be able to spot discrepancies easily. You may elaborate the answer based on personal views or your classwork if necessary. Also, you haven’t mentioned the major issues highlighted in your reading assignment. Therefore, I will mention the major issues in the video and you may reference your chapter wherever necessary.

(Answer) The video talks about diversity from the perspective of their organisations or their individual experience. However, diversity in the workplace is best addressed with a careful consideration of the issues that are most commonly dealt with.

For instance, an institution that focuses on the rights of Asian individuals could be futile if the company has more homosexual minorities than Asian minorities.

The video highlights the factor that “manpower” is the greatest resource that a company could have. The contributions that a company that is diverse can offer is often more varied and rich as compared to the contributions of a single-ethnicity workplace.

Although the data on this matter is scarce, one would need to look at this issue from a macro perspective in order to understand it better. Let us assume that a patient in Australia suffers from a few unusual symptoms that would consist of a wide differential. There are two teams of doctors who use this patient’s symptoms as a good opportunity to practice. Group A consists of doctors that are all Australian Caucasians. Group B consists of Africans, Asians, Americans and what have you. It turns out that the doctor who was able to precisely recognise, diagnose and treat the patient were the doctor that hailed from India and Botswana. This is because the patient suffered from Malaria. A disease that is generally uncommon in Australia but familiar in other continents.

The point of this illustration is not to put down a Caucasian in terms of qualifications. The purpose of encouraging diversity has never been to repeat the mistakes of the past but only by shifting the status quo and putting down a different race for the next few centuries. The purpose of this illustration is to highlight the richness of perspective and ideas that a motley crew could have harebrained.

Despite the organisation, the role and the goal, diversity has always been about generating ideas that are the apotheosis of thoughts from varied individuals. A healthy diverse culture is not one where colour and race is ignored, rather it is one where the unique contributions of races are acknowledged and even celebrated.