Chapter 27. Working Together for Racial Justice and Inclusion | Community Tool Box

 

What is culture?

As community builders, understanding culture is our business. No matter where you live or work, you are building relationships with people whose experiences, identities, communities, and cultures influence how they understand and participate in the world.

What is culture? There is no single definition, but here is one useful way to think about it.

Culture refers to shared patterns of meaning, experience, values, practices, traditions, communication, history, and identity that develop within groups and communities. Culture can be connected with race, ethnicity, national origin, language, religion, region, social class, gender, disability, age, profession, family, or many other forms of identity and community.

People may belong to many cultures and communities at the same time, and those relationships can change throughout life. Moving to a new region or country, joining a profession or organization, becoming part of a disability community, changing economic circumstances, or developing new relationships may all shape how a person understands themselves and the communities to which they belong.

Culture is not fixed, and people who share a cultural identity are not all alike. Individuals may participate in cultural traditions differently, identify with several communities, or understand their own cultural experiences in ways that do not match other people's expectations.

Do you agree? How might this apply to you?

Why is culture important?

Culture can be an important part of people's lives. It may influence values, communication, humor, traditions, expectations, relationships, hopes, concerns, and ways of understanding community and the world.

At the same time, culture is only one part of a person. People who share a culture may differ in personality, beliefs, experiences, political views, religion, family life, economic circumstances, abilities, and many other ways.

As we explore culture, it is also useful to remember what people may have in common. People across cultures form relationships, care about others, seek meaning and opportunity, experience joy and loss, and develop hopes for themselves, their families, and their communities.

Recognizing common humanity does not mean ignoring cultural differences. Differences can matter greatly, particularly when they are connected with history, discrimination, unequal access to resources, exclusion from decision-making, or different community experiences.

This chapter will give you practical information about how to understand culture, establish relationships with people from cultures different from your own, act as an ally against racism and other forms of discrimination, create organizations in which people from different backgrounds can work together, understand internalized oppression, and build strong and diverse communities.

This section is an introduction to understanding culture, and will focus on:

• What culture is
• The importance of understanding culture in community building
• Envisioning your cultural community
• How to get started in building communities that encourage diversity

It is important to remember that everyone has a viewpoint and a role to play when it comes to culture. You do not have to be an expert to build relationships with people whose experiences differ from your own. You can continue learning, ask respectful questions, listen carefully, reflect on your own assumptions, and be willing to change what you think when new understanding develops.

Why is understanding culture important if we are community builders?

Communities include people with many different racial and ethnic identities, religions, languages, economic circumstances, abilities, family structures, histories, cultures, and life experiences.

In order to build communities that improve conditions and address shared concerns, we need to understand and respect cultural differences, establish relationships across communities, and make sure that people who have historically been underrepresented or excluded from civic life have meaningful opportunities to participate and lead.

Why?

• Communities are often more effective when people work across differences toward shared goals. Cooperation among different groups can bring together knowledge, relationships, skills, resources, and perspectives that might otherwise remain disconnected.
• Different communities bring different knowledge, histories, experiences, and perspectives. A wider range of voices can help identify problems that others may overlook and develop solutions that are more responsive to the people affected.
• Understanding culture can help communities address misunderstanding, discrimination, and conflict. Cultural understanding by itself does not eliminate racism, prejudice, or structural inequality, but it can support more respectful relationships and more informed efforts to address those problems.
• People affected by decisions should have meaningful roles in making them. Programs and policies are generally stronger when the people who will experience their effects help identify priorities, develop solutions, implement plans, and evaluate results.
• Respect for cultural diversity is connected with equity and belonging. Schools, workplaces, organizations, and communities are more inclusive when people do not have to hide or minimize important parts of their identity in order to participate.
• Understanding the contributions of different communities gives us a fuller view of history and society. Historical accounts that exclude the experiences of particular racial, ethnic, Indigenous, immigrant, disability, religious, gender, or other communities can leave important parts of the story untold.

Understanding culture also means avoiding assumptions. Learning about a cultural group can provide useful context, but it should never become a substitute for learning about the individual people you are working with.

As you think about diversity, it may be helpful to envision the kind of cultural community you want to build. If you hope to strengthen relationships across cultures, address inequities, resolve conflict, or build a diverse coalition, it helps to think clearly about what an inclusive community would actually look like.

What kind of cultural community do you envision?

Can you imagine the kind of cultural community you want to live or work in?

People have different ideas about what a diverse, multicultural, and equitable community should look like. Communities continue to discuss how people can maintain meaningful identities and traditions while also participating in shared institutions, civic life, schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, and public decision-making.

These questions may help start that discussion:

• How can people maintain meaningful cultural identities while also building a sense of shared community?
• Should participation in a larger community require people to assimilate, or can communities make room for multiple identities and traditions?
• Why can racism and other forms of discrimination persist even in institutions or communities that express commitments to equality?
• How can families pass along important cultural, moral, or religious values while also helping children understand people whose beliefs and experiences differ from their own?
• Are there policies, institutions, or economic conditions that create unequal opportunities or contribute to divisions among communities? How might they be changed?
• How can people support their own cultural communities while also participating in broader community life and cross-cultural efforts?
• What roles do laws, institutions, community norms, and individual behavior each play in addressing discrimination and oppression?
• How can communities support people who want to maintain their languages, traditions, and cultural identities while also navigating new institutions and environments?
• If your community or group is excluded from important decisions, what opportunities exist to increase representation, participation, and influence?
• How can families protect children from racism, sexism, ableism, religious discrimination, and other forms of harm while also helping them participate confidently in a diverse society?
• How much can individual changes in attitudes accomplish, and what changes also need to occur in organizations, institutions, policies, and systems?
• How can we recognize and challenge our own assumptions and prejudices?
• What forms of prejudice and discrimination continue today, including those that may be less visible or openly expressed?
• What helps people build respectful relationships when they have different identities, experiences, values, or perspectives?

What do you think about these questions? Which issues do you struggle with? What other issues are important to you or the communities you are part of?

As you envision the kind of diverse community you want, you and your neighbors may want to consider these kinds of questions. They reflect real tensions that arise when communities try to balance difference, belonging, identity, equity, freedom, and shared responsibility.

There are rarely simple answers. Communities may disagree about the best approaches, and people within the same cultural group may disagree with one another as well.

So, what kind of community do you envision for yourself? How will cultural differences be approached? What would meaningful inclusion look like? If your ideal community does not exist yet, what practical next steps could move it in that direction?

Here are some questions that may help you think about your community:

These questions can help you think about how to build the kind of community you hope for. What other questions are important in your community? What might your next steps be?

So, you may ask, “How do we get started?” Here are some ideas that can help create conditions for a diverse and inclusive organization or community.

Helpful tips to start building a diverse community

The following principles can help create an environment where people from different cultures, identities, and experiences can participate meaningfully.

Welcome everyone.

People are more likely to participate when they know that they are valued and that their perspectives matter. A welcoming environment communicates that people do not have to minimize or hide their identities in order to belong.

Welcoming everyone does not mean pretending that everyone has had the same experiences or that every group has had equal access to power and opportunity. It means creating conditions in which people are treated with dignity and have meaningful opportunities to contribute.

Focus on responsibility and growth rather than shame.

Conversations about racism, discrimination, privilege, and inequality can create discomfort. That discomfort does not necessarily mean the conversation is harmful, and it should not be used as a reason to avoid difficult issues.

At the same time, lasting change usually requires more than making people feel personally guilty. It requires opportunities to understand how inequities operate, reflect on one's own role, take responsibility when harm occurs, and identify concrete actions that individuals and organizations can take.

Treating everyone exactly the same does not always produce equitable results.

Fairness does not always mean giving every person the identical response. People and communities may face different barriers because of disability, language, discrimination, economic conditions, history, or other circumstances.

Recognizing those differences can help organizations respond more effectively. It can also help people understand one another more fully without assuming that any cultural identity determines exactly what an individual needs or believes.

Approach difficult issues with both realism and hope.

Racism, discrimination, exclusion, and inequality can be difficult subjects. Effective community building does not require minimizing those problems, but it should also help people identify possibilities for action.

A useful approach might be: “This is a serious problem, and we have strengths and relationships we can build on as we work to change it.”

Build a team around the work.

Institutional and community change rarely depends on one person alone. A group of people who communicate, share responsibility, challenge one another respectfully, and remain committed over time can provide support and continuity.

Build relationships with people who bring different experiences and perspectives. Avoid creating a team in which one person is expected to represent an entire racial, ethnic, religious, disability, gender, cultural, or other community.

Recognize diversity within groups as well as between groups.

Groups that appear culturally similar from the outside may contain significant differences in religion, language, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, socioeconomic background, age, political views, family structure, region, immigration experience, education, profession, and many other areas.

Recognizing diversity within communities can help prevent stereotyping and create space for people to describe their own identities and experiences.

Listen before assuming.

General knowledge about a culture can provide context, but it cannot tell you everything about an individual. Ask people how they describe themselves, what is important to them, and what they need in order to participate.

Listen especially to people who are directly affected by the issue you are trying to address.

Make participation accessible.

Inclusion depends on more than invitations. Consider whether people can actually participate.

Depending on the community, this may involve:

• Interpretation or translated materials
• Disability accommodations and accessible communication
• Childcare
• Transportation support
• Meetings at different times or through different formats
• Remote participation
• Plain-language information
• Compensation for community expertise when appropriate

Share decision-making power.

Diversity is not only about who is present. It is also about whose ideas influence decisions, who has leadership opportunities, who controls resources, and who is held accountable.

Ask whether people from different communities are participating early enough to shape priorities rather than being invited only after major decisions have already been made.

Expect learning to continue.

Culture changes, language changes, communities change, and people continue learning throughout their lives.

No training or set of guidelines will make someone an expert on every culture. Strong community builders remain curious, recognize mistakes, seek feedback, and continue developing relationships over time.

In Summary

Culture includes shared experiences, histories, identities, practices, values, traditions, and ways of understanding the world. People can belong to many cultures and communities at once, and no cultural group is internally uniform.

Understanding culture is important in community building because people affected by decisions should have meaningful roles in shaping them. Different communities bring knowledge, relationships, experiences, and perspectives that can strengthen programs, organizations, and public decisions.

Cultural understanding does not mean memorizing traits about groups or assuming that people behave a certain way because of their identity. It means listening, recognizing history and inequality, learning how people understand their own experiences, and avoiding stereotypes.

Building a diverse community also requires more than bringing different people into the same room. Communities should consider who participates, whose perspectives influence decisions, whether people face barriers to participation, and whether institutional practices distribute opportunities and resources fairly.

Welcoming people, addressing difficult issues without relying on shame, recognizing that equal treatment does not always produce equitable outcomes, sharing decision-making power, making participation accessible, and continuing to learn can all help create stronger and more inclusive communities.

The goal is not to erase differences or expect people to assimilate into a single culture. It is to create communities where people can maintain meaningful identities, build relationships across differences, participate fully in community life, and work together toward shared goals.

___ Culture is a group or community which shares common experiences that shape the way its members understand the world.

___ Culture is important because it influences their views, their values, their humor, their hopes, their loyalties, and their worries and fears.

___ The world is becoming increasingly diverse and includes people of many religions, languages, economic groups, and other cultural groups.

___ Including many cultures in a community helps communities achieve common goals, represent all members of the community, and overcome racial and ethnic divisions.

___ Welcome everyone to the community.

___ Eliminate guilt because it prevents productivity.

___ Recognize cultural differences.

___ Work together as a team. 

EXAMPLE 1: Two Communities Come Together For One Annual Celebration (New York City)

They tend to be insular and lead separate lives as a rule, but for a free, day-long event held in Manhattan’s Lower East Side and Chinatown, two immigrant communities unite to celebrate their diversity and cultural heritage. Jews from Eastern Europe and the Chinese shared the challenge of maintaining their cultures in the face of rapid change and have sought similar things in America: freedom from persecution and prejudice, and opportunities to advance economically and socially.

The annual Egg Rolls & Egg Creams Festival helps to introduce these two diverse communities to each other and to audience members from other cultural groups. By increasing awareness through art, they believe they will create an opportunity for understanding and dialogue. The festival features 30 folk artists and performance groups and pays tribute to the cultural practices of traditional language, arts, music, and dance.

This community-building event is sponsored by the Museum at Eldridge Street, and it fulfills two important aspects of their mission: (1) to preserve Eastern European culture and (2) to promote Lower East Side neighborhood cultural diversity and inter-group understanding. The entire festival incorporates hands-on activities through a variety of games, performances, and crafts, allowing visitors to participate directly and integrate what they are learning.

From the festival’s humble beginnings with 250 neighborhood visitors, attendance has grown to attract more than 9,000 people in 2014. Part of this dramatic increase includes many repeat visitors, attesting to the festival’s importance.

Photos courtesy of the Museum at Eldridge Street.

For more information, please contact www.eldridgestreet.org.

 

Relationships are powerful. One-to-one connections can help people understand one another, work through differences, and take action on shared community priorities. Building relationships across cultural differences can be especially important in diverse communities where people bring different histories, experiences, identities, languages, and perspectives.

Whether you want to improve education, expand access to health care, strengthen local economic opportunities, address housing or environmental concerns, or work on another community priority, you will likely need to collaborate with people whose backgrounds and experiences differ from your own.

Effective collaboration depends on more than simply bringing different people together. Relationships develop through trust, respect, reliability, curiosity, shared work, and a willingness to listen and learn.

Strong relationships can help people continue working together when disagreements arise, circumstances become difficult, or outside pressures create division. They can also make it easier to recognize when different communities experience the same issue in different ways.

Regardless of your racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic, disability, socioeconomic, or other identities, you will probably work with people whose experiences you know little about.

Each of us can build relationships that connect us with people, organizations, and communities beyond our own immediate circles. Those relationships can expand our understanding and strengthen our ability to work together on shared goals.

In this section, we are going to talk about:

• Becoming more aware of your own cultures and identities as one step toward understanding other people's experiences.
• Building respectful relationships with people from different cultural backgrounds.

But first, let's briefly return to what culture is. Culture is a complex concept with many definitions. One useful way to understand it is as shared patterns of meaning, history, experience, values, practices, communication, and identity that develop within groups and communities.

Culture may be connected with race, ethnicity, national origin, language, religion, region, social class, gender, disability, profession, family, or many other forms of identity and community. People may belong to many cultures and communities at the same time, and those relationships may change throughout life.

Culture is not fixed, and people who share a cultural identity are not all alike. Individuals may participate in cultural traditions differently and may understand their own identities in ways that do not match other people's expectations.

How do you learn about people's cultures?

Start by becoming aware of your own cultures and identities.

Learning about your own experiences can help you recognize that many of the values, expectations, communication styles, and assumptions that feel “normal” to you have also been shaped by family, community, institutions, history, and culture.

Reflecting on your own experiences can also help you listen more carefully when other people describe theirs. If you have experienced discrimination, exclusion, belonging, privilege, cultural pride, migration, disability, economic change, or another significant experience, you may be able to use that reflection to become more thoughtful about experiences that are different from your own.

Reflection does not mean assuming that another person's experience is the same as yours. It means becoming more aware of the perspectives you bring into a relationship.

What cultures and identities are part of your life?

Do you identify with one cultural community or several? What communities, experiences, and identities have shaped how you understand yourself and the world?

Culture can be influenced by family history and ancestry, but it is also shaped by present-day relationships, neighborhoods, institutions, language, work, religion, disability communities, migration, education, and many other experiences.

In addition to cultural communities, people may identify strongly with other groups or life experiences, such as being a parent, athlete, immigrant, student, small business owner, caregiver, veteran, worker, or member of a profession. These experiences may influence how people understand themselves and how others respond to them.

Exercise: Try listing some of the cultures, communities, identities, and experiences that have shaped you. The examples below are only starting points. Include whatever feels meaningful to you.
What is your: Religion or spiritual tradition Nationality or national origin Race Ethnicity Sexual orientation Gender identity Occupation Relationship or family status Age or generation Geographic region Language or languages	Are you: A woman A man Nonbinary, genderqueer, or another gender identity A person with a disability or part of a disability community From an urban area From a rural area A parent or caregiver A student An immigrant, refugee, or person with migration experience	Have you experienced: Military service Poverty or economic hardship Incarceration or involvement with the justice system Economic security or wealth Middle-income circumstances Working-class circumstances Significant changes in social or economic circumstances

Did this exercise help you think about your identities, cultures, and experiences? Which have had the strongest influence on your life? Which identities are most visible to others, and which may be less visible?

How do you build relationships with people from other cultures?

There are many ways to learn about people whose cultural experiences differ from your own while also building respectful relationships. The following ideas are starting points rather than a fixed sequence.

• Build genuine relationships across cultural differences.
• Participate respectfully in diverse community spaces and activities.
• Examine your assumptions and biases.
• Ask respectful questions when people are comfortable sharing.
• Learn from reliable sources about communities, cultures, and histories.
• Listen to people's experiences without expecting them to represent an entire group.
• Notice differences in communication and participation without assuming one style is the standard.
• Be willing to make mistakes, repair harm, and continue learning.
• Act in solidarity and challenge discrimination.

Build genuine relationships across cultural differences

Relationships across differences often develop through repeated contact, shared activities, work, school, community organizations, recreation, neighborhood life, faith communities, volunteering, or other everyday experiences.

Segregation, economic inequality, transportation, residential patterns, language, discrimination, and institutional practices can limit opportunities for people from different backgrounds to meet one another. Creating more opportunities for interaction can help, but relationships should not be treated as projects in which one person is trying to “collect” diverse friends.

Approach people as individuals. Friendship should develop through mutual interest, respect, trust, and choice, just as any other relationship does.

If someone has experienced discrimination or exclusion, they may reasonably be cautious in a new relationship. Do not assume that caution is something you need to “overcome.” Trust is earned through consistent behavior, respect for boundaries, honesty, and time.

Participate respectfully in diverse community spaces and activities

One way to expand your experience is to participate in public events, organizations, activities, or community spaces that bring together people from backgrounds different from your own.

This might include cultural festivals, public lectures, neighborhood events, community organizations, volunteer activities, sports, arts programs, public meetings, or other spaces where participation is welcomed.

Enter these spaces as a participant or guest, not as an observer studying other people. Pay attention to the purpose of the event, follow community norms, respect leadership, and avoid making yourself the center of attention.

If an event or gathering is intended primarily for a particular community, do not assume that outside participation is appropriate. Look for public invitations or ask respectfully.

Examine your biases and assumptions

Everyone develops assumptions about groups of people. These may come from family, school, media, institutions, personal experiences, or broader cultural messages.

Having learned a stereotype does not mean you must continue believing or acting on it. The important step is noticing assumptions, questioning them, and changing behavior when they are inaccurate or harmful.

One exercise is to think about groups you tend to generalize about and ask yourself:

• What messages did I receive growing up about this group?
• What did family members, peers, institutions, or media communicate through words and behavior?
• Did I have meaningful relationships with people from this community?
• What did I learn – or fail to learn – in school?
• Whose histories and experiences were absent?
• Are there people or situations I avoid because of assumptions or discomfort? Why?
• What evidence supports or challenges the assumptions I have learned?

These reflections can be useful privately, with a trusted group, or as part of structured learning. The goal is not simply to identify stereotypes but to understand how they may influence behavior and decisions.

Ask respectful questions when people are comfortable sharing

Thoughtful questions can help people get to know one another, but no one is obligated to explain their culture, identity, discrimination, family history, or personal experiences.

Consider the relationship and the setting before asking. Questions such as “Would you mind telling me more about that?” or “Is it okay if I ask about this?” give people an opportunity to decide what they want to share.

Avoid asking one person to speak for an entire racial, ethnic, religious, disability, gender, immigrant, or other community.

Learn about other people's cultures and histories

Do some of your own learning through books, articles, museums, oral histories, documentaries, community organizations, scholarship, and other reliable sources.

Background knowledge can help you understand historical context and ask better questions, but it should not lead you to assume you already know an individual's experience because you have learned something about a group they belong to.

People are experts on their own experiences. They are not automatically representatives or experts on every person who shares one of their identities.

Don't forget to care and show caring

Cultural awareness is not a substitute for basic human care. Relationships grow when people listen, follow through, show concern, respect boundaries, and treat one another as whole people rather than primarily as members of demographic groups.

Listen to people tell their stories

Personal stories can help us understand how people experience family, community, identity, discrimination, belonging, opportunity, and change.

Listening should be voluntary and reciprocal. People should have control over what they share and should not feel expected to disclose painful or personal experiences in order to educate others.

Listening to people who have experienced discrimination can deepen understanding in ways that statistics or general descriptions may not. At the same time, one person's experience should not be generalized to an entire community.

Exercise:

If participants are comfortable, invite people in your neighborhood or organization to share an experience that has shaped their identity or understanding of community. Make participation optional and allow people to choose what they want to discuss.

In a workshop or retreat, participants might take several minutes to describe an experience, tradition, community, relationship, or identity that has been important in their lives. In larger groups, smaller conversations may make it easier for more people to participate.

Notice differences in communication and participation; don't assume one style is the right way.

People communicate and participate differently for many reasons, including personality, culture, language, disability, organizational hierarchy, experience, confidence, previous treatment, and the structure of the meeting itself.

Avoid immediately interpreting quietness as disengagement or frequent speaking as leadership. A well-designed meeting provides multiple ways for people to contribute.

Example:

You are in a group discussion. Several people speak frequently, while others contribute very little. The people speaking most often begin to assume that the quieter participants have little to say.

How might the group understand and respond to this?

There may be many reasons people are not speaking. Some may prefer more time to think before responding. Some may be participating in a language that is not their strongest language. Some may have experienced interruptions or dismissal in previous meetings. Others may prefer writing, small-group discussion, or another communication method.

Rather than assigning a cultural explanation to people without asking them, structure the meeting so there are several ways to participate.

For example:

• Have people discuss a topic in pairs or small groups before the larger discussion.
• Invite each person to contribute while allowing anyone to pass.
• Use a guideline that gives people who have not spoken an opportunity before the same people speak again.
• Rotate facilitation and leadership roles.
• Discuss participation patterns openly and respectfully.
• Ask participants what meeting formats help them contribute.
• Provide written, digital, or anonymous ways to share ideas when appropriate.
• Provide interpretation, captioning, accessible materials, or other communication supports when needed.

Example:

A high school basketball player regularly misses some practices because of important family responsibilities and events. The coach is frustrated because the absences affect the team's schedule.

How might this be understood and resolved?

Begin by talking with the student and family rather than assuming that the conflict is caused by culture or that one set of priorities is more legitimate than the other.

Families may place different importance on athletics, academics, employment, caregiving, religious observance, family events, or other responsibilities. Coaches and families can discuss expectations, identify which commitments are flexible, and explore whether scheduling or communication can reduce conflict.

The goal is not to decide whether the team's values or the family's values are “right.” It is to communicate clearly, understand the circumstances, and identify an arrangement that respects the student, family, team, and commitments involved.

Be willing to make mistakes, repair harm, and continue learning

When building relationships across differences, you may say or do something that another person experiences as insensitive or harmful.

Fear of making a mistake should not prevent relationships, but good intentions do not erase impact.

If someone tells you that something you said or did caused harm, listen without immediately becoming defensive. When appropriate, apologize, make the necessary correction, and consider what you can do differently in the future.

Do not expect the person affected to spend extensive time educating you. You can often continue learning through your own reflection and research.

Act in solidarity and learn to be an ally

Relationships across cultures also involve how people respond when discrimination, exclusion, or inequity occurs.

Being an ally can include speaking up when harmful comments are made, supporting fair policies, sharing access or resources, challenging discriminatory practices, amplifying the leadership of people directly affected, and participating in efforts for change.

Allyship is not about acting on behalf of people who are assumed to be unable to act for themselves. Whenever possible, follow the leadership and priorities of the people most directly affected by the issue.

Continue educating yourself about the histories, policies, and current concerns connected with the communities you work alongside. Do not expect individual community members to provide all of that education, but remain open to learning from people when they choose to share their experiences and perspectives.

In Summary

Relationships across cultural differences can strengthen community work, but they cannot be built through formulas or by treating people as representatives of demographic groups.

Begin by reflecting on your own cultures, identities, assumptions, and experiences. Understanding how your perspective has been shaped can make it easier to recognize that other people's perspectives have also developed through complex histories and experiences.

Build relationships through shared activities, mutual respect, curiosity, listening, reliability, and time. Learn about communities and histories through your own research as well as through relationships, and remember that individuals are experts on their own experiences rather than representatives of entire groups.

Avoid cultural assumptions when differences or conflicts arise. Ask what is happening, listen to the people involved, and design meetings, programs, and organizations so people have multiple ways to participate.

When mistakes occur, acknowledge them, repair harm where possible, and continue learning. When discrimination or exclusion occurs, relationships also require a willingness to act rather than simply understand.

Strong communities are built when people can maintain meaningful identities, form relationships across differences, participate in decisions that affect them, and work together without being expected to assimilate or leave important parts of themselves behind.

___ Culture is a group or community which shares common experiences that shape the way its members understand the world.

___ Defining one's own culture helps to foster the ability to recognize cultural differences.

___ Build relationships and establish friendships with people of different cultures and identities.

___ Establish these relationships by reading, listening and learning.

___ Risk making mistakes.

___ Examine and learn from personally held stereotypes and prejudices.

Example 1: Hands Across the Hills Trailer

 

Bridging the divide through dialogue, cultural exchange, and community between folks from New England and Kentucky.

 

Example 2: Inclusive Dubuque

 

Inclusive Dubuque is a peer-learning network of partners committed to supporting an equitable and inclusive culture to meet the economic and cultural needs of their diverse community. The network works collaboratively to eliminate bias in their community.

Tool #1: Diversity and Community Strengths

Spend some time writing down your thoughts about how the different aspects of your culture or identity (gender, race, nationality, etc., listed below) have affected you as a community builder. For example, write down how being a female or male has given you strengths as a community builder, or how it has made the job more difficult.

This exercise works much better if you do it with another person, or in a group. People should pair up and then spend some time writing down their answers. Once you are finished writing, have one person in a pair talk about their answers while the other person listens. Then have them switch roles. Afterwards, you can discuss the results in the bigger group.

Cultural factor:	Community-building strengths	Effect on difficulty of community-building
Gender
Religion
Race/Ethnic Group
National Origin
Geographic Region
Sexual Orientation
Religion
Parent's Occupation
Your Occupation
Disabilities
Parenting Experience
Age
Appearance
Education
Community
Marital Status
Athlete or Non-Athlete
Military Experience
Defining Life Experiences
Other Factors

Discussion Questions:

• What was doing this exercise like for you? What did you learn? Was doing this exercise fun? Was it awkward or uncomfortable?
• When talking in pairs, did you find you had more in common than you might have imagined? How was your experience different?
• Did you find that there were some areas that you've never had a chance to talk about?
• (If in a group) Would someone like to share what they learned in the whole group?

Most of us didn't go to schools that prepared us to live in a diverse world. People haven't been encouraged to talk about our cultures, or even recognize that they existed. So it is not surprising that talking about culture may be awkward, at first.

Tool #2: Stereotyping Exercise

Think of three common stereotypes you believe or prejudices you have. If you can't think of any right away, try a technique called "free association":

• Across the top of a sheet of paper, write the names of three different groups. (For instance, "Texans," Football players," and Skinheads.")
• Add "all" or "always" to each name. (Examples: "Texans all/always," "Football players all/always").
• Underneath each name, write the first three things that come to mind. Don't stop to think. Just write.

Your examples might look something like this:

• "Texans all own oil wells and wear boots and cowboy hats."
• "Football players all get lousy grades, take steroids, and date the best-looking girls"
• "Skinheads all hate Blacks, Jews, and gays and beat people up all the time."

Where do you think you learned your stereotypes? Do you have classmates, relatives, or friends who feel the same way? How about TV, the movies, the newspaper? (By the way, how many Texans, football players, and skinheads do you know personally?)

Exercise taken form the Community Leadership Project Curriculum. From the book, Respecting Our Differences by Lynn Duvall

Tool #3: What color are your jellybeans?

This resource contains a “jellybean exercise” to help participants explore their patterns of interactions.

What Color Are Your Jellybeans? (pdf)

 

 

Discrimination and oppression can affect people in many ways. They can restrict access to education, employment, housing, health care, political participation, safety, and other opportunities. They can also shape the messages people receive about their identities, communities, abilities, and place in society.

Repeated exposure to stereotypes or devaluing messages can sometimes affect how people see themselves or other members of their own communities. Researchers and community practitioners use terms such as internalized oppression, internalized stigma, or internalized racism to describe some of these processes.

These effects are not inevitable. People and communities respond to discrimination in many ways, including resistance, cultural pride, mutual support, advocacy, organizing, creativity, and community leadership.

In this section, we’ll examine discrimination, oppression, and internalized oppression and consider how community members and organizations can respond without blaming or pathologizing the people who experience discrimination.

What is discrimination?

In a social context, discrimination refers to unequal or unfair treatment based on characteristics such as race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, disability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, socioeconomic status, or other identities and circumstances.

Discrimination can occur between individuals, but it can also be built into organizational practices, policies, institutions, or systems.

Examples may include:

• An employer treating equally qualified applicants differently because of race, disability, religion, gender, or another protected characteristic.
• A person being denied housing, services, or access because of identity or disability.
• Harassment or exclusion based on race, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or another characteristic.
• Policies or practices that create barriers for particular groups even when discriminatory intent is not openly stated.
• Unequal access to resources, opportunities, participation, or decision-making.

Laws in many countries prohibit particular forms of discrimination, but legal protections do not necessarily eliminate discriminatory attitudes, practices, or unequal outcomes.

For our purposes, discrimination involves denying people equitable treatment, opportunity, participation, rights, or respect because of who they are or the groups with which they are identified.

What is oppression?

Oppression refers to sustained patterns of power, exclusion, exploitation, discrimination, or violence that disadvantage particular groups and limit their opportunities, rights, safety, or participation.

Oppression can involve individual behavior, but it is broader than individual prejudice. It may operate through laws, institutions, economic arrangements, cultural norms, political systems, or long-standing patterns of unequal power.

Historical examples include slavery and racial segregation in the United States, apartheid in South Africa, the Holocaust, colonial systems, genocide, political repression, and other systems in which particular populations were deliberately denied rights, safety, resources, or political power.

Different forms of oppression vary greatly in severity and historical context. They should not be treated as interchangeable simply because they involve inequality.

Community work with people affected by oppression should begin with listening to how people understand their own circumstances and supporting their ability to identify priorities, make decisions, organize, and act.

Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator and writer, used the term praxis to describe the relationship between reflection and action. His work emphasized that people affected by oppression should not be treated as passive recipients of help, but as participants capable of analyzing their conditions and acting to change them.

What is internalized oppression?

People who repeatedly encounter stereotypes, stigma, discrimination, or messages that devalue their communities may sometimes absorb or reproduce some of those messages. This process is often called internalized oppression.

Internalized oppression may affect how a person thinks about themselves, how people within the same community treat one another, or what people come to believe is possible for themselves or others.

It is important not to assume that everyone who experiences discrimination will internalize it. People respond in many different ways, and cultural pride, strong relationships, community organizations, family support, historical knowledge, faith, political participation, and many other sources of strength may help people resist harmful messages.

Membership in a community that has experienced discrimination does not tell you how a particular person thinks, feels, or understands themselves. Do not diagnose someone with “internalized oppression” simply because they belong to a marginalized group or because you disagree with their choices.

Internalized oppression may sometimes operate in two broad ways:

• At the individual level. A person may come to believe negative messages about their own identity, abilities, appearance, language, community, or potential.
• Within a community. People may reproduce stereotypes, status hierarchies, stigma, or forms of exclusion that originated in the larger society.

Examples might include:

• A person avoiding an opportunity because repeated discrimination has led them to doubt whether people like them will be welcomed or treated fairly.
• Someone feeling embarrassed about their accent, language, disability, cultural traditions, appearance, or other part of their identity because they have repeatedly been told that it is inferior.
• Members of a community reproducing colorism, classism, sexism, ableism, or other hierarchies that are also present in the broader society.
• People distancing themselves from others in their own community because they have learned that association with the group will result in stigma.
• A young person lowering their expectations for themselves after repeatedly encountering stereotypes about their community's abilities or future opportunities.

These examples describe possible patterns, not characteristics of particular groups. Similar behavior can have many causes, including individual personality, organizational culture, economic stress, family circumstances, trauma, conflict, discrimination, leadership problems, or other factors.

Internalized oppression should therefore be considered carefully and in context.

Why do community builders need to understand internalized oppression?

Community builders need to understand internalized oppression because harmful social messages can affect participation, relationships, leadership, confidence, and collective action.

At the same time, community work should not define people primarily through the harms they have experienced.

Communities that have experienced discrimination also hold knowledge, leadership, cultural traditions, relationships, organizations, creativity, resilience, and histories of resistance. Effective community building recognizes both the barriers people face and the strengths they use to confront them.

Understanding internalized oppression can help community organizations ask better questions:

• Are stereotypes affecting who feels welcome or qualified to participate?
• Are some forms of leadership valued more than others?
• Are people being interrupted, dismissed, or excluded?
• Are negative assumptions about language, disability, income, race, gender, age, or other identities influencing decisions?
• Are organizational practices reinforcing the same hierarchies the organization hopes to change?
• Do people have meaningful opportunities to influence decisions and develop leadership?

These questions focus on the environment and the organization as well as on individual attitudes.

How can people respond to and challenge internalized oppression?

There is no single method for addressing internalized oppression. People and communities may find different approaches useful depending on their experiences, goals, relationships, and circumstances.

Build supportive relationships.

Trusted relationships can provide encouragement, perspective, practical support, and opportunities for people to be seen as whole individuals rather than through stereotypes.

Friends, family members, coworkers, mentors, teachers, community leaders, and others can support one another by listening, taking people's experiences seriously, recognizing strengths, and challenging harmful treatment.

Support should not be based on the assumption that another person is damaged or needs to be rescued. Ask what support would actually be useful.

A young person who experiences discrimination may benefit from adults and peers who consistently communicate high expectations, provide opportunities, listen to concerns, connect them with resources, and support their goals.

The important principle is not that one supportive relationship will erase discrimination, but that reliable relationships can be one source of strength as people navigate difficult environments.

Take pride in and learn about your culture and community.

Cultural identity can be a source of history, connection, meaning, creativity, humor, language, traditions, values, and belonging.

Learning about the achievements, struggles, everyday lives, and contributions of people in one's community can provide a fuller picture than stereotypes or incomplete historical narratives.

Ways of strengthening cultural knowledge and pride may include:

• Reading and learning about the history and experiences of your community.
• Learning from elders, historians, artists, cultural leaders, family members, and community organizations.
• Participating in cultural celebrations, traditions, rituals, arts, music, language, storytelling, foodways, and other forms of cultural expression.
• Preserving oral histories, archives, photographs, documents, and other community records.
• Supporting cultural institutions and community-led educational programs.

Cultural events may also provide opportunities for people from outside the community to learn when organizers choose to make those events public. Outside participation should follow the expectations of the community hosting the event.

Create spaces for peer support and shared reflection.

Some people find it useful to meet with others who share similar identities or experiences of discrimination.

Affinity groups, peer-support groups, community circles, discussion groups, mentoring networks, or other gatherings can provide places to share experiences, recognize common patterns, exchange strategies, and build relationships.

Useful practices may include:

• Clear agreements about confidentiality and respectful communication
• Voluntary participation
• Opportunities for everyone to speak without pressure to disclose personal experiences
• Shared responsibility for the group's environment
• Attention to both challenges and community strengths
• Connections with practical resources, advocacy, leadership development, or other forms of action when participants want them

Some groups may benefit from a trained facilitator or mental health professional, particularly when participants are discussing trauma, violence, or other difficult experiences.

Peer support should not be treated as a substitute for professional mental health care when someone wants or needs clinical support. At the same time, not every emotional response to discrimination is a mental health disorder. Community, cultural, relational, and political forms of support may also be important.

Take action against discrimination and injustice.

Collective action can help people challenge the conditions that produce discrimination rather than treating its effects as solely individual problems.

Action may include:

• Community organizing
• Civic participation
• Advocacy
• Policy change
• Legal action
• Workplace or organizational reform
• Public education
• Cultural organizing
• Leadership development
• Mutual aid and community support

Historical movements for civil rights, disability rights, labor rights, women's rights, Indigenous sovereignty, LGBTQ+ rights, immigrant rights, and other causes demonstrate that communities experiencing discrimination have long organized to change laws, institutions, and public attitudes.

Collective action can also strengthen people's sense that they are participants in shaping their communities rather than simply subjects of decisions made by others.

When you notice harmful patterns within a group, examine them carefully.

Conflict, criticism, mistrust, leadership problems, or exclusion within a community should not automatically be labeled internalized oppression.

These patterns may result from:

• Organizational structure
• Unclear roles
• Poor communication
• Competition for limited resources
• Unresolved interpersonal conflict
• Unequal power within the organization
• Burnout or stress
• Discrimination or stigma
• Internalized forms of racism, sexism, classism, ableism, colorism, or other oppression
• Several of these conditions operating together

Before deciding what is happening, talk with the people involved and examine the organization's practices.

Questions might include:

• Are people repeating stereotypes or hierarchies about their own community?
• Does the pattern appear throughout the organization or only in a particular relationship or situation?
• Are certain people consistently interrupted, excluded, or overlooked?
• Do formal or informal leadership structures favor particular identities, communication styles, or social positions?
• Are people receiving enough information, resources, support, and opportunities to participate?
• Are external pressures, discrimination, or resource shortages affecting relationships inside the group?

The goal is to understand the problem accurately rather than fitting every conflict into one explanation.

What can you do when harmful patterns are affecting a group?

• Model respect. Listen carefully, recognize people's contributions, avoid personal attacks, and demonstrate the behavior you want the group to practice.
• Recognize strengths and accomplishments. Groups dealing with difficult issues may benefit from periodically identifying what has gone well and what participants appreciate about one another.
• Address problematic interaction directly without shaming people. Name interruptions, disrespect, exclusion, or other behaviors and establish clearer expectations for participation.
• Discuss internalized oppression when there is evidence that it may be relevant. Explain the concept as one possible influence rather than telling people what they must be experiencing.
• Create opportunities for reflection. Pairs, small groups, facilitated discussion, written reflection, or other formats may help people process conflict and return to the work more constructively.
• Set and enforce respectful group norms. Disagreement is normal, but harassment, personal attacks, discrimination, and repeated disrespect should be addressed.
• Welcome new participants. Make it easier for newcomers to understand how the group works, contribute ideas, and take on meaningful roles.
• Examine the organization itself. Consider whether leadership structures, meeting practices, accessibility, language, decision-making, compensation, or distribution of resources are contributing to the problem.

Ground rules can help establish expectations for respectful participation. Examples include listening without interruption, criticizing ideas rather than people, allowing people to pass, protecting confidentiality when appropriate, sharing airtime, and addressing harmful comments rather than ignoring them.

Support young people in understanding and responding to discrimination.

Children and adolescents may encounter stereotypes, exclusion, discrimination, or devaluing messages before they have language for understanding what is happening.

Adults can help young people make sense of these experiences in age-appropriate ways.

Useful approaches include:

• Teaching accurate history, including the histories and contributions of the communities young people belong to
• Helping children understand that unfair treatment is not evidence that something is wrong with them
• Encouraging cultural pride and a positive sense of identity
• Maintaining high expectations while providing appropriate support
• Taking discrimination seriously when young people report it
• Providing mentors and role models from a range of backgrounds
• Teaching young people how to seek help and advocate for themselves
• Creating schools and programs in which different histories, identities, families, languages, abilities, and cultures are represented respectfully

Schools and youth-serving organizations should also examine their own practices. Supporting young people is not only about teaching them how to cope with discrimination; institutions have a responsibility to prevent and address discrimination themselves.

In Summary

Discrimination and oppression can affect access to opportunities, safety, resources, participation, and power. They can also shape the messages people receive about themselves and their communities.

Internalized oppression describes situations in which some of those harmful messages are absorbed or reproduced by people who have been targeted by them. It is one possible response to discrimination, not an inevitable characteristic of people from marginalized communities.

Community builders should be careful not to use the concept to explain every conflict, personal decision, or difficulty within a community. Organizational structure, economic conditions, interpersonal relationships, leadership, stress, trauma, discrimination, and many other factors may also be involved.

Effective responses build on community strengths. Supportive relationships, cultural pride, peer connection, accurate history, inclusive organizations, leadership opportunities, collective action, and changes to discriminatory policies or practices can all help people and communities challenge harmful messages.

When people need mental health or other professional support, those resources should be available and accessible. Community support and professional care can complement one another.

The goal is not to “fix” people who have experienced oppression. It is to help create conditions in which people can define themselves, participate fully, develop and exercise leadership, support one another, and work together to change the systems and practices that create inequity.

___ A person who is targeted, discriminated against, or oppressed over a period of time develops internalized oppression where they make the myths and misinformation that society communicates to them about their group part of their own image.

___ Internalized oppression can operate on individual and group levels.

___ Internalized oppression holds people back from thinking well of themselves (causing mental or physical illness), from living full lives, supporting their own communities, and from standing up against injustice.

___ Celebrating culture helps heal the effects of internalized oppression.

___ Forming groups with others who have internalized oppression can also help the healing process.

___ The strongest antidote to internalized oppression is taking a stand against injustice and oppression.

Fed Up Honeys "Makes Me Mad" Report

This research paper, composed by six young, urban women of color from the Center for Human Environments at the Graduate Center of CUNY, is an exploration of the issues stemming from stereotypes, especially of women and racial minorities in urban populations. The project focuses on the following questions:

• What is the relationship between the lack of resources (eg., education) in a community and stereotypes of young urban women of color?
• What are the impacts of stereotyping on young women's well-being?
• How do stereotypes effect and reinforce your self-image? Your understanding of your peers? Your community?
• The "Makes Me Mad' report ends with a call to action for community builders and outlines what the communities of the Lower East Side need from a unique, inside perspective.

 

You're at a restaurant with a group of coworkers after work. You're telling them about your decision to buy a house in Western Heights and how excited you are. One coworker responds, “Are you sure you want to move there? I hear there is a lot of crime in that area. It's mostly a Black neighborhood. Did you consider Eastern Heights? You might fit in better there.”

You are surprised by the comment. The coworker has connected race with crime and assumed that you should live in a neighborhood where residents are more similar to you.

On your way home, you think more about what happened. Challenging one person's stereotype matters, but individual attitudes are only part of the issue. Housing opportunities may also be affected by real-estate practices, lending, zoning, appraisal, discrimination, public investment, and other institutional or structural conditions.

Addressing racial inequity therefore involves both interpersonal and systemic change. Communities may need to challenge stereotypes and discriminatory behavior while also examining policies, practices, institutions, and decision-making systems that create or maintain unequal treatment and opportunity.

This section focuses specifically on racial prejudice and racism. Many of the principles – such as examining bias, sharing decision-making power, changing discriminatory policies, and creating equitable systems – may also be relevant when addressing other forms of discrimination.

What is racial prejudice?

Racial prejudice refers to negative attitudes, assumptions, stereotypes, or judgments about people because of their perceived race, ethnicity, ancestry, or related identity.

Racial prejudice may be explicit and intentional, but it can also operate through assumptions that people have learned without fully recognizing them.

Examples might include:

• Assuming that a person is dangerous, unintelligent, dishonest, or unqualified because of their race.
• Treating someone's accent, name, clothing, hair, or cultural background as evidence that they do not belong.
• Expecting one person to speak for an entire racial or ethnic community.
• Making assumptions about someone's immigration status, income, education, neighborhood, or occupation based on race or ethnicity.

Addressing racial prejudice may involve education, reflection, conversation, relationship-building, accountability, and opportunities to challenge inaccurate assumptions.

Individual conversations can be useful, but they should not require the person targeted by prejudice to educate the person expressing it. Organizations and community institutions can also provide training, policies, expectations, and structures that support respectful behavior.

What is racism?

Racism is broader than an individual prejudiced belief. In this section, we use racism to refer to actions, policies, institutional practices, cultural patterns, or systems that create, reinforce, or maintain racial disadvantage or unequal access to rights, resources, opportunities, safety, or decision-making.

Racism can occur through intentional discrimination, but unequal outcomes may also be produced by policies or practices that appear neutral while creating barriers for particular racial or ethnic communities.

Examples might include:

• Discriminatory treatment in housing, lending, employment, education, health care, policing, or public services.
• Hiring or promotion systems that unnecessarily exclude qualified applicants from particular racial or ethnic communities.
• Housing practices that steer people toward or away from particular neighborhoods because of race.
• Rules, funding decisions, or organizational practices that consistently create unequal access or opportunity.
• Institutions ignoring or inadequately responding to documented patterns of racial harassment or discrimination.

Historical context matters. In the United States, racial inequality has been shaped by slavery, Indigenous dispossession, exclusionary immigration policies, segregation, discriminatory housing and lending practices, unequal access to political power, and other forms of institutional discrimination.

Racial prejudice can occur among people from many racial or ethnic backgrounds. At the same time, understanding racism requires attention to history, institutions, and power rather than treating every racial conflict as identical.

Racism can affect many areas of community life, including housing, education, employment, health, transportation, environmental conditions, media representation, policing, economic opportunity, public services, and civic participation.

Why is it important to reduce racial prejudice and racism?

Racial prejudice and racism can harm individuals, organizations, and communities.

• They can limit people's opportunities. Discrimination may affect access to employment, housing, education, health care, financial services, transportation, political participation, and other resources.
• They can prevent communities from benefiting fully from people's knowledge and abilities. Exclusion from leadership, employment, education, or civic participation can prevent individuals and communities from contributing as fully as they otherwise could.
• They can damage trust and relationships. Stereotyping, unequal treatment, and discriminatory institutions can make collaboration across communities more difficult.
• They can contribute to unequal health and well-being. Repeated exposure to discrimination, exclusion, environmental burdens, economic barriers, and chronic stress can affect health and quality of life.
• They conflict with principles of equal dignity, civil rights, and democratic participation.
• Many forms of racial discrimination are prohibited by law. Organizations should understand the requirements that apply to their work, services, employment, housing, education, or other activities.
• They can weaken community decision-making. Decisions are less likely to reflect the whole community when some groups are excluded from planning or leadership.

Racial prejudice and institutional practices can reinforce one another. Stereotypes may influence policies and decisions, while unequal systems may reinforce stereotypes by making existing disparities appear natural or inevitable.

This is why sustainable efforts usually need to address more than one level at a time.

Examples

• Residents see workers waiting at a common hiring location and assume that they are undocumented, unwilling to seek permanent employment, or otherwise responsible for their circumstances. Rather than relying on assumptions, community members can learn how local labor markets, immigration policy, transportation, employment practices, and worker protections affect the situation and can speak directly with workers and organizations that know the issue.
• A community initiative has difficulty involving Black residents. Instead of assuming that Black residents are uninterested, organizers can examine whether previous exclusion, meeting location, communication methods, organizational reputation, decision-making power, timing, transportation, or other barriers may be affecting participation. They can then work directly with residents and Black-led organizations to determine what meaningful participation would require.
• A community center wants to become more welcoming to residents from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. Changing posters, holding cultural events, or translating announcements may help, but inclusion also requires examining who participates in planning, who holds leadership positions, how decisions are made, how complaints are handled, and whether programs and policies create barriers for particular communities.

Addressing racism means addressing exclusion and inequity while expanding meaningful participation in community institutions and decisions.

How can you reduce racial prejudice and racism?

There is no single activity that eliminates racial prejudice or racism. Sustainable change usually requires work at several levels over time.

Communities may need to address:

• Individual attitudes and behavior
• Relationships among groups
• Organizational culture and practices
• Institutional policies
• Access to leadership and decision-making
• Distribution of resources and opportunities
• Accountability when discrimination occurs

Dialogue, training, cultural events, or relationship-building can be valuable, but they are not substitutes for changing discriminatory policies or practices when those are part of the problem.

Before selecting activities or strategies:

• Learn about the community and its history. Who lives there? What relationships exist among communities? What forms of racial exclusion or cooperation have shaped the area?
• Document the issue carefully. Depending on the situation, useful information may include community experiences, complaints, public records, organizational data, policies, demographic patterns, surveys, interviews, or other evidence.
• Include people directly affected. Do not rely only on established organizations or a single representative from each racial or ethnic group. Include people with different experiences within communities.
• Understand the nature and history of the problem. Is the concern new, longstanding, connected with a particular policy, or part of a broader pattern?
• Identify policies and practices that may need to change.
• Set clear short-term and long-term goals. Goals might involve reducing discriminatory behavior, changing a policy, expanding representation, improving services, increasing accountability, or addressing a racial disparity.
• Decide what meaningful progress would look like. Awareness may be an early step, but sustainable change may also require changes in leadership, policy, resources, representation, or outcomes.
• Identify available resources and needed support. This may include community relationships, facilitation, training, legal expertise, data, funding, staff time, or technical assistance.
• Consider urgency and timing. A discriminatory incident may require immediate response, while institutional reform may require sustained work over a longer period.
• Connect dialogue with action. Review the strategy to make sure it addresses both interpersonal experiences and organizational or institutional conditions when both are relevant.

Appropriate structures and processes are needed to implement and sustain these activities.

Things You Can Do in the Workplace

Use fair and inclusive recruitment and hiring practices.

Review where jobs are advertised, how qualifications are defined, who evaluates applicants, how interviews are conducted, and whether informal recruitment networks unnecessarily limit who hears about opportunities.

Build relationships with professional associations, educational institutions, community organizations, and networks that reach qualified candidates from a wide range of racial and ethnic backgrounds.

Recruitment is only the beginning. Examine retention, pay, promotion, professional development, leadership opportunities, workplace culture, and employee experiences as well.

Expand representation in leadership and decision-making.

Boards, executives, managers, committees, and other decision-making bodies should consider whether they reflect the communities, employees, or constituencies they serve.

Representation alone does not guarantee equity. People also need meaningful authority, access to information, opportunities to influence decisions, and fair pathways into leadership.

Ask employees about barriers and workplace experiences.

Organizations can use confidential surveys, listening sessions, employee-resource groups, interviews, grievance data, or other approaches to identify concerns involving discrimination, exclusion, harassment, promotion, workload, communication, or workplace culture.

Do not expect employees from marginalized communities to provide unpaid diversity expertise simply because of their identity.

Review organizational materials and communication.

Examine websites, reports, advertising, photographs, forms, publications, and other materials for stereotypes, exclusion, inappropriate terminology, or patterns in who is represented.

Create clear systems for preventing and responding to discrimination.

Organizations should have understandable policies, reporting processes, protections against retaliation, consistent investigation procedures, accountability, and appropriate follow-up.

Assign responsibility and monitor progress.

A committee, leadership team, equity office, human-resources function, or other structure may help coordinate the work, but responsibility for fair treatment should not be isolated in one committee. Leadership and the organization as a whole remain accountable.

Track whether policies and practices are producing the intended results and adjust them when necessary.

Things You Can Do in the Media

Respond when coverage relies on racial stereotypes or excludes important perspectives.

Community members can contact editors, reporters, producers, publishers, or other media organizations when coverage uses unnecessary racial identification, relies on stereotypes, excludes affected communities, or presents misleading information.

Letters to the editor, public comments, meetings, corrections requests, and other communication can help identify concerns.

Build relationships between media organizations and diverse communities.

Journalists can benefit from relationships with community organizations, researchers, professional journalism associations, local leaders, and residents who can provide context and identify sources.

Community members should not be treated merely as representatives who explain an entire racial or ethnic group. Journalists should seek multiple perspectives within communities.

Review hiring, promotion, sourcing, and editorial practices.

Media organizations can examine:

• Who works in the newsroom or organization
• Who holds leadership positions
• Which communities are regularly used as sources
• When race or ethnicity is considered relevant to a story
• How crime, immigration, poverty, neighborhoods, and public policy are described
• Whether corrections and complaints are handled consistently
• Whether photographs and headlines reinforce stereotypes

Professional associations such as the Asian American Journalists Association, South Asian Journalists Association, and National Association of Black Journalists may provide useful perspectives and professional resources.

Things You Can Do in Schools

Create opportunities for students to learn about race, racism, history, and diverse communities.

Student organizations, classroom discussions, cultural programs, historical study, speakers, arts activities, and other approaches can expand understanding.

Cultural celebrations can be useful, but anti-racism education should not be limited to holidays, food, or festivals. Students also need opportunities to understand history, institutions, civic participation, discrimination, resistance, and the contributions of different communities throughout the curriculum.

Review curriculum and instructional materials.

Ask:

• Whose histories are included?
• Whose perspectives are missing?
• Are racial and ethnic communities represented only through oppression, conflict, or cultural celebrations?
• Are students learning about the ordinary lives, achievements, ideas, institutions, and contributions of many communities?
• Do instructional materials rely on stereotypes or outdated terminology?

Examine school policies and outcomes.

Schools can review admissions, course placement, discipline, special programs, hiring, promotion, extracurricular activities, family engagement, accessibility, reporting procedures, and other practices for racial disparities or barriers.

Create clear procedures for responding to racist harassment and discrimination.

Students, families, faculty, and staff should know how concerns can be reported, how they will be reviewed, and what protections exist against retaliation.

Include students and families in developing solutions.

Policies are stronger when the people affected by them participate in identifying concerns, developing responses, and evaluating whether conditions improve.

Things You Can Do in Your Neighborhood

Welcome newcomers and communicate that the neighborhood is open to people from different backgrounds.

Neighborhood organizations can provide information about local services, meetings, schools, transportation, recreation, emergency resources, and opportunities to participate.

Welcoming efforts should be voluntary and respectful of privacy. New residents should not feel required to explain their race, ethnicity, religion, immigration experience, or other personal information in order to belong.

Create opportunities for neighbors to know one another.

Community meals, recreation, neighborhood meetings, cultural events, public-space projects, gardens, cleanups, arts activities, and other shared experiences can create opportunities for relationships across racial and ethnic differences.

Interaction can be valuable, but contact alone does not eliminate prejudice. The quality of the interaction, the surrounding power relationships, and how people are treated also matter.

Review housing and neighborhood policies for discrimination or exclusion.

Examine whether lending, real-estate practices, rental policies, homeowners' associations, zoning, neighborhood organizations, public investment, or other institutions create or maintain racial barriers.

Housing discrimination may involve steering, unequal treatment, discriminatory advertising, lending practices, appraisal practices, or other barriers. Communities should use current legal and housing resources when addressing a specific concern.

Organize residents and relevant professionals when a pattern needs investigation.

Depending on the issue, a working group might include residents, tenant organizations, fair-housing organizations, legal professionals, housing organizations, lenders, real-estate professionals, local government, researchers, and others with relevant knowledge.

Neighborhood associations should also consider who participates in meetings and leadership and whether meeting times, language, accessibility, communication methods, or organizational culture create barriers.

Things You Can Do in Your Community

Respond visibly to racist harassment, vandalism, or violence.

When racist graffiti or other hateful material appears, communities can document it, report it through appropriate channels, support people targeted by it, and arrange removal when authorized.

Public art, vigils, educational events, community statements, or other activities may also communicate community values.

Build cross-sector partnerships to examine institutional practices.

Community coalitions may include residents, civil-rights organizations, schools, businesses, health organizations, housing organizations, media, public agencies, faith communities, youth organizations, and others.

Coalitions should include people directly affected by racial inequities and should not rely only on institutional leaders to define the problem.

Areas for review might include:

• Hiring and contracting
• Housing and land use
• Education
• Transportation
• Environmental conditions
• Health and human services
• Public safety
• Civic participation
• Language access
• Public investment

Expand participation in civic leadership.

Candidate forums, voter education, voter registration, leadership-development programs, public boards and commissions, youth civic programs, and other activities can help residents participate more fully in public life.

Communities can also examine whether appointment, election, recruitment, or meeting processes create unnecessary barriers for racial or ethnic groups that have been underrepresented.

Hold community forums, listening sessions, or other opportunities to discuss racism.

These activities can help residents describe experiences, identify priorities, discuss disagreements, connect with others, and develop possible actions.

Skilled facilitation may be helpful, particularly when participants have experienced harm or when significant conflict exists.

Forums should connect with follow-up action. Asking people to repeatedly describe experiences of discrimination without changing conditions can create frustration and reduce trust.

Develop a long-term community strategy.

A sustained strategy may involve local government, community organizations, businesses, schools, health systems, media, housing organizations, and other institutions.

Each participating institution can identify:

• Where racial inequities appear in its own work
• Which policies or practices should be reviewed
• Who should participate in that review
• What changes will be implemented
• How progress will be measured
• How the organization will remain accountable over time

Support community-led cultural events and institutions.

Festivals, museums, arts programs, cultural organizations, historical projects, language programs, and other community activities can contribute to cultural pride, relationships, and public understanding.

Support should reflect the priorities of the communities organizing the activities rather than treating culture as entertainment for outsiders.

Use peaceful civic action when appropriate.

Vigils, demonstrations, rallies, petitions, public comments, community meetings, and other lawful forms of civic participation may be appropriate responses to racist incidents, discriminatory policies, or institutional inaction.

Organizers should consider the goals, people affected, safety, accessibility, applicable laws, communication, and what follow-up will occur after the event.

Things You Can Do as an Individual

Individuals can also contribute to reducing racial prejudice and racism.

• Respond to racist comments and stereotypes. Depending on the situation, you may question the assumption, provide accurate information, state that the comment is inappropriate, support the person targeted, or use an organizational reporting process.
• Continue learning. Read history, journalism, research, literature, and work created by people from different racial and ethnic communities. Cultural heritage months can provide opportunities for learning, but education should continue throughout the year.
• Examine your workplace, school, organization, or community. Notice who participates, who holds leadership, whose experiences are represented, and whether policies or practices create unequal barriers.
• Help children develop accurate and respectful understandings of race and culture. Provide books, history, art, relationships, and experiences that represent many communities without reducing them to stereotypes or occasional celebrations.
• Build relationships across racial and ethnic differences. Approach people as individuals rather than as representatives of a group.
• Listen when people describe discrimination. Avoid immediately explaining away or debating another person's experience.
• Use your role and influence responsibly. If you participate in hiring, budgeting, education, housing, public policy, media, or other decision-making, examine whether your decisions contribute to equitable access and treatment.
• Support people directly affected by discriminatory policies or incidents. Ask what support would be useful rather than assuming what they need.
• Recognize mistakes and change course. People can learn inaccurate ideas or act on assumptions without intending harm. When that happens, acknowledge the effect, make appropriate corrections, and continue learning.

In Summary

Racial prejudice involves stereotypes, assumptions, or negative judgments based on race or ethnicity. Racism extends beyond individual attitudes to include actions, policies, institutional practices, and systems that create or maintain racial inequity.

Addressing racial prejudice and racism therefore requires more than changing individual attitudes. Communities should also examine how decisions are made, who has access to opportunities and resources, who holds leadership, how discrimination is addressed, and whether policies produce unequal barriers or outcomes.

Effective strategies usually work at several levels. Education and relationships can challenge stereotypes. Inclusive participation can strengthen community decision-making. Organizational reforms can change hiring, promotion, services, curriculum, communication, or complaint procedures. Policy and institutional change can address barriers that individual goodwill alone cannot resolve.

People directly affected by racism should have meaningful roles in defining problems, setting priorities, developing solutions, and evaluating results. No single representative can speak for an entire racial or ethnic community.

Anti-racism work should also avoid treating racial and ethnic communities primarily through experiences of harm. Communities hold histories, institutions, relationships, cultural traditions, expertise, creativity, leadership, and longstanding traditions of organizing and resistance.

Sustainable change requires continued attention. Organizations and communities should monitor progress, respond when discrimination occurs, examine unintended effects, and revise strategies when they are not producing more equitable conditions.

The goal is not simply to create more positive attitudes about racial difference. It is to build communities in which people are treated with dignity, have equitable access to opportunity and participation, and can influence the institutions and decisions that affect their lives.

___ To be racially prejudiced means to have an unfavorable or discriminatory attitude or belief towards someone else or another group of people primarily on the basis of skin color or ethnicity.

___ Racism occurs when racial prejudice is supported by institutions and laws.

___ Strategies to address discrimination on the basis of race should be thorough and multifaceted so that both individual attitudes and institutionalized practices are affected.

___ Changing a group of people's prejudiced attitudes and an institution's racist actions doesn't happen overnight.

Example: Inclusive Dubuque

 

Inclusive Dubuque is a peer-learning network of partners committed to supporting an equitable and inclusive culture to meet the economic and cultural needs of their diverse community. The network works collaboratively to eliminate bias in their community.

Tool: What color are your jellybeans?

This resource contains a “jellybean exercise” to help participants explore their patterns of interactions.

What Color Are Your Jellybeans (pdf)

 

"Mind your own business."

Does that phrase sound familiar? Many of us heard some version of it growing up.

There are certainly times when respecting privacy and boundaries is important. But community building also asks us to pay attention when other people are being excluded, mistreated, or denied opportunities. It may require us to listen, offer support, challenge harmful behavior, share resources, and work alongside people whose experiences differ from our own.

That is part of what allyship can mean.

If we want strong partnerships and coalitions, people and groups need to be able to support one another across differences. We may not experience the same forms of discrimination, exclusion, or disadvantage, but we can still work together toward communities in which people are treated fairly and have meaningful opportunities to participate.

What is an ally? An ally is a person who acts in solidarity with people or communities experiencing discrimination, exclusion, or inequity and supports their rights, leadership, priorities, and ability to act for themselves.

Most people have experienced times when support from someone else made an important difference. Perhaps someone believed you when others did not, defended you from unfair treatment, shared information or resources, helped you navigate an unfamiliar institution, supported your leadership, or stood beside you during a difficult situation.

In this section, we will focus on how people can practice allyship across differences in race, ethnicity, culture, religion, gender, disability, sexual orientation, socioeconomic background, age, immigration experience, and other identities or circumstances.

Allyship does not require having experienced the same form of discrimination as another person. It does require listening carefully, learning about the issue, recognizing how power and access may differ, and avoiding the assumption that you know what another community needs better than its members do.

Experience with discrimination can help someone recognize injustice, but it does not automatically make a person an effective ally to every other group. Allyship is an ongoing practice that involves relationships, learning, accountability, and action.

Why do we become allies to others?

One reason is that community well-being is interconnected. Exclusion, discrimination, and inequity affect not only the people directly targeted but also the institutions, relationships, and communities around them.

Allyship can also reflect a commitment to dignity, fairness, shared responsibility, and the belief that people should be able to participate fully in community life.

In this section we will talk about:

• What allies are
• Why community builders should understand and practice allyship
• How to support people and communities across differences while respecting their leadership and priorities

What are allies?

Allyship can take many forms.

• A coworker speaks up when sexist jokes or comments are made at work and supports clear expectations for respectful behavior.
• An experienced employee shares information with a newer coworker about how decisions are made, how to access opportunities, and where to seek support.
• A community member supports a candidate from a historically underrepresented community through fundraising, volunteering, voter outreach, or another form of participation.
• A professional working with a neighborhood organization helps residents develop facilitation, organizing, and planning skills while making sure residents retain decision-making authority.
• Students, families, and school staff work together to address harassment of LGBTQ+ students and create clear policies and support systems for all students.
• A resident challenges stereotypes about immigrant workers and supports the workers and organizations directly involved in identifying the issues and solutions that matter to them.
• A family provides temporary care or practical support to a young person whose household is experiencing a crisis, with appropriate consent and coordination.

Allyship may involve listening, encouraging someone, sharing information, challenging discriminatory comments, supporting another person's leadership, providing access to resources, participating in advocacy, or standing with people during a crisis.

It may also mean knowing when not to speak. Sometimes the most useful role for an ally is to create space, provide support, and make sure that people directly affected have an opportunity to speak for themselves.

Like many community-building practices, allyship involves skills that can be strengthened over time.

If you are not a member of a particular community, your role will be different from that of people who directly experience the issue. You may have access to institutions, information, professional networks, funding, decision-makers, or other resources that can be useful.

Having that access does not mean that you understand the issue better than the people living it. Your contribution is strongest when you combine whatever access or resources you have with the knowledge, leadership, and priorities of people directly affected.

Additional important points to remember about allyship:

• You do not always have to wait to be personally invited before challenging discrimination or changing your own behavior. At the same time, when entering another community's organizing space or taking action that affects that community, pay attention to existing leadership, goals, and boundaries.
• People from any background can support people from other communities. Allyship does not require identical experiences.
• Allies will sometimes make mistakes. When that happens, listen, take responsibility, repair harm where possible, and change your approach rather than allowing fear of mistakes to prevent action.
• Allyship is demonstrated through actions and relationships, not simply by claiming the label.
• Allyship can be reciprocal. People and communities may support one another in different ways and around different issues.

Why practice allyship?

Allyship can strengthen both relationships and collective efforts for change.

• Communities are diverse. Working across differences can help residents and organizations address shared priorities while recognizing that people may experience those priorities differently.
• Support can strengthen relationships and cooperation. People are often more able to work together when they know others will listen, follow through, and respond when unfair treatment occurs.
• Systemic problems usually require broad participation. Coalitions among affected communities, community organizations, professionals, institutions, and other supporters may be needed to change policies or systems.
• Speaking up can help establish community expectations. Challenging discrimination communicates that harassment, exclusion, or unequal treatment should not simply be accepted as normal.
• Allyship can reduce isolation. People experiencing discrimination may feel more supported when others take concerns seriously and act alongside them.
• Communities benefit from broader participation. Institutions and community initiatives are stronger when people with different experiences can contribute knowledge, leadership, ideas, and relationships.
• Allyship can expand understanding and responsibility. Working alongside people whose experiences differ from our own can help us recognize how community conditions affect others and what roles we may have in changing them.

Consider your motivations.

Good intentions do not automatically lead to useful allyship. It can help to reflect on why you are getting involved and what role you are taking.

Avoid approaching allyship as a way to:

• Distance yourself from your own community or prove that you are different from other members of it.
• Relieve personal guilt without changing behavior, relationships, or institutional practices.
• “Save” people or assume that your education, income, professional status, or social position makes you better able to decide what they need.
• Receive praise or recognition for supporting a marginalized community.
• Take over leadership from people who are directly affected.

Discomfort, guilt, or other emotions may arise as people learn about discrimination or recognize ways they have benefited from unfair systems. Those emotions do not need to be ignored, but they should lead toward reflection, responsibility, changed behavior, and action rather than becoming the center of the work.

How do you become an effective ally?

Build genuine relationships across differences.

Friendships and other relationships can help people understand one another as whole individuals rather than primarily through stereotypes or social categories.

Relationships across differences may develop through neighborhoods, work, schools, community organizations, recreation, faith communities, public events, shared projects, or everyday life.

Do not approach friendship primarily as a strategy for learning about an “oppressed group.” Relationships should be mutual and based on genuine interest, respect, trust, and choice.

If someone has experienced discrimination or exclusion, they may be cautious in new relationships or institutions. Do not treat that caution as something that must be overcome. Trust develops through consistent behavior, respect for boundaries, reliability, and time.

If someone tells you that something you or your organization has done caused harm, listen without immediately becoming defensive. Honest feedback can be important to sustaining a relationship.

Learn about histories, communities, and current issues.

Allyship includes doing your own learning rather than expecting people from marginalized communities to provide all of your education.

Books, research, journalism, oral histories, museums, community organizations, documentaries, archives, public lectures, and other sources can provide important context.

For example, someone seeking to understand Japanese American experiences in the United States might learn about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II as well as Japanese American community life, activism, culture, and experiences before and after that period.

Someone interested in age discrimination might learn about how older adults experience employment, health care, transportation, housing, caregiving, social participation, and public policy while also recognizing the wide diversity among older adults.

Historical knowledge should provide context, not create new assumptions about individuals.

Examine your own assumptions and biases.

People absorb messages about race, class, gender, disability, religion, age, sexuality, immigration, and other identities from family, peers, schools, media, institutions, and society.

Those messages can influence expectations and behavior even when people do not consciously endorse them.

Useful reflection questions include:

• What messages did I receive about this community while growing up?
• Which groups were represented positively, negatively, or not at all?
• Whose histories did I learn?
• What assumptions do I make about people's abilities, values, safety, income, education, family life, or behavior?
• Do I respond differently to the same behavior depending on who is doing it?
• Whose leadership do I naturally trust?
• Are there communities I avoid because of discomfort or stereotypes?
• What could I learn that might challenge those assumptions?

There is no single method for examining prejudice. People may use structured reflection, facilitated dialogue, education, affinity groups, workshops, supervision, counseling, community conversations, or other approaches.

The important goal is to recognize inaccurate or harmful assumptions, understand how they may affect behavior, and practice different responses.

Participate in dialogue and reflection.

Small-group dialogue can provide opportunities for people to examine assumptions, hear experiences different from their own, discuss difficult issues, and consider possible action.

These conversations may include participants from different backgrounds or, in some circumstances, affinity groups in which people who share an identity or social position reflect together.

For example, people directly affected by racism may want a space to discuss experiences and priorities without having to explain those experiences to others. White participants may choose a separate space to examine racial socialization, privilege, responsibility, and ways to challenge racism.

Similar approaches may be useful around disability, gender, class, religion, sexual orientation, or other forms of identity and inequality.

Dialogue should be voluntary, respectful, and connected with action when participants want change. No particular emotional response – such as crying, anger, grief, or discomfort – should be treated as proof that someone is learning or changing.

Take action when people are treated unjustly.

One of the most important parts of allyship is responding when discrimination, harassment, exclusion, or inequity occurs.

The appropriate response depends on the situation.

Possible actions include:

• Challenging a discriminatory comment
• Supporting the person targeted
• Reporting harassment through an appropriate process
• Documenting a pattern of discrimination
• Supporting an affected community's advocacy campaign
• Attending a public meeting
• Writing public comments or contacting decision-makers
• Joining a peaceful demonstration or vigil
• Supporting policy or organizational change
• Helping obtain legal, financial, technical, or other resources when requested

Before taking public action on behalf of another community, consider whether people directly affected have already identified priorities or strategies. When possible, support their leadership rather than creating a separate response that competes with it.

Support leadership and remove barriers to participation.

Marginalized communities do not lack leadership. Often the issue is that institutions fail to recognize, support, fund, or share decision-making power with existing leaders.

Allyship can include helping remove barriers that limit people's access to leadership opportunities.

Useful actions may include:

• Inviting people into meaningful decision-making roles
• Providing leadership-development opportunities when participants want them
• Sharing information about how decisions are made
• Supporting campaigns for elected or appointed leadership
• Providing childcare, transportation, interpretation, disability access, or other supports that make participation possible
• Compensating community members for substantial expertise and labor when appropriate
• Examining whether meeting practices, organizational culture, or informal networks favor some people over others

Leadership support should continue after someone enters a new role. All leaders benefit from information, mentoring, relationships, resources, and honest feedback.

Support should not become control. New leaders should have the authority to develop their own approaches rather than being expected to follow the person who helped open the door.

Follow communities' priorities on the issues that affect them.

Do not assume you can identify a community's most important needs after a few conversations.

Ask:

• What issues are people already organizing around?
• What have residents or community organizations identified as priorities?
• What work is already happening?
• What kind of support would be useful?
• What resources can you offer without taking control?

Support might include funding, technical assistance, research, transportation, meeting space, communications support, legal expertise, professional networks, or other resources.

The type of support should come from the situation and from what the affected community identifies as useful rather than from assumptions about what a particular racial, ethnic, immigrant, disability, or economic group needs.

Share resources and access while supporting community self-determination.

Some individuals and organizations have greater access to funding, institutions, professional networks, media, elected officials, technical expertise, or other resources.

Allies can use that access to help communities pursue priorities they have already identified.

This might mean:

• Supporting a community organization in developing a grant proposal
• Connecting residents with technical or legal expertise
• Helping community leaders access decision-making spaces from which they have historically been excluded
• Supporting tenant or resident efforts to preserve housing
• Sharing fundraising or communications resources
• Advocating for community organizations to receive direct funding rather than routing resources through outside organizations

The goal is not to make communities dependent on allies. Whenever possible, allyship should strengthen people's ability to exercise their own leadership and control resources that affect them.

Reduce barriers to participation without demanding assimilation.

People may participate in community life in different ways. Some may have strong connections within their own cultural, religious, linguistic, disability, neighborhood, or other communities and may not want those connections weakened in order to participate in broader institutions.

Rather than trying to bring supposedly “isolated” groups into a cultural mainstream, ask whether institutions themselves create unnecessary barriers.

Barriers might include:

• Language access
• Disability access
• Transportation
• Scheduling
• Cost
• Discrimination
• Lack of representation in leadership
• Unwelcoming organizational practices
• Immigration-related concerns
• Limited information about how to participate

Solutions might include interpretation, accessible communication, transportation assistance, schedule changes, community-based outreach, inclusive programming, leadership opportunities, or changes to policies and practices.

Inclusion does not mean expecting people to abandon their languages, cultures, disability identities, community organizations, or other important relationships.

Work to change systems that create or maintain inequity.

Individual support matters, but allyship should not stop at helping people navigate systems that remain unfair.

Use the "But Why?" technique or another root-cause approach to examine why a problem exists.

For example:

If residents with lower incomes have difficulty accessing job training, ask whether transportation, childcare, eligibility requirements, schedule, cost, disability access, broadband, or other barriers are involved.

If entrepreneurs from historically underrepresented communities have difficulty obtaining financing, examine lending criteria, credit systems, collateral requirements, access to banking relationships, historical discrimination, business-development resources, and other possible factors rather than assuming that the entrepreneurs lack knowledge or ability.

Allies can help examine how institutions distribute resources and opportunities and can support affected communities in seeking changes to those systems.

This might include participating in public decision-making, changing organizational policies, supporting legislation, reviewing lending or hiring practices, improving accessibility, expanding representation, or reallocating resources.

Help other people practice allyship.

One person can make a difference, but large institutional or community changes usually require many participants.

Organizations can create opportunities for people to learn about discrimination, examine their own roles, practice responding to harmful behavior, and develop strategies for supporting communities affected by inequity.

People learning to be allies also need accountability. A group should not become a place where participants congratulate one another for good intentions while avoiding feedback from the communities whose concerns they claim to support.

Build alliances across communities.

Allyship is often reciprocal and may involve many communities working together.

Coalitions may form around housing, education, disability access, worker rights, public health, environmental justice, immigration, racial equity, LGBTQ+ rights, youth opportunity, transportation, or other shared priorities.

Communities do not have to experience the same forms of discrimination in order to cooperate. Strong coalitions can recognize differences among groups while identifying areas of shared interest and responsibility.

When inviting another group to support your issue, explain the concern, listen to their priorities, and recognize that they may have different capacities or strategies. Reciprocal support should grow from relationships rather than obligation.

In Summary

Allyship means acting in solidarity with people and communities experiencing discrimination, exclusion, or inequity while respecting their leadership, knowledge, priorities, and right to speak for themselves.

Allies can challenge discriminatory behavior, share access and resources, support leadership, participate in advocacy, build relationships, examine their own assumptions, and help change organizational or institutional practices.

Effective allyship does not depend on rescuing people, speaking for them unnecessarily, or assuming that outside perspectives are more objective. It begins with listening and understanding how the people most directly affected define the issue.

Allyship also requires attention to systems. Helping an individual navigate an unfair institution may be valuable, but lasting change may require examining why the barrier exists and changing policies, practices, resources, or decision-making structures.

People will make mistakes while learning to work across differences. What matters is being willing to hear feedback, take responsibility, repair harm, and adjust behavior.

Strong alliances recognize both shared interests and differences among communities. They do not require people to assimilate or give up important identities in order to participate.

The goal is not simply to become a person who calls themselves an ally. It is to build relationships and communities in which people support one another, challenge injustice, share access to resources and decision-making, and work together toward conditions in which everyone can participate with dignity and meaningful influence.

___ An ally is any person who supports, empowers, or stands up for another person or a group of people.

___ People from targeted or oppressed groups are systematically bombarded by society with discrimination and are in need of support from those people who are not targeted in the same ways.

___ There are many different ways to be an ally, but, overall, being an ally helps build stronger communities.

___ Allies do not fulfill this role due to feelings of guilt or superiority.

___ Being an effective ally means looking at the history of the culture that needs allies.

___ Allies take a stand when groups are targeted with unjust treatment.

___Allies promote leadership in diverse groups and train others to be allies.

Tool 1: #TalkAboutTrayvon: A Toolkit for White People

#TalkAboutTrayvon: A Toolkit for White People is a digital toolkit containing sample content for Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, as well as images to share with your networks to continue the conversation about the serious implications of anti-Blackness and prejudicial policing and legislation on black people. 

• Why is identifying similarities, differences, and assets important?

• How can opportunities to identify similarities, differences, and assets be created in your community?

• How do you initiate a process to help people from different groups find common ground and share their assets?

• What types of events can you coordinate to celebrate the community's diversity and assets?

• What activities can you conduct to help people understand the histories and conditions that shape community experiences?

• What challenges should you be aware of, and how can they be addressed?

Why is identifying similarities, differences, and assets important?

"They are always speaking a language I don't understand. I don't know much about their community. What could we possibly have in common?"

"We both care about our children's education, so I assumed we would have the same experience dealing with the school. I didn't realize that language access, discrimination, or previous experiences with institutions might make that process different."

"I've heard people make negative assumptions about that community. I haven't actually asked residents how they understand the issue themselves."

Comments like these show how easy it is to make assumptions based on either perceived difference or perceived similarity.

If we focus only on differences, we may reinforce stereotypes or treat people as representatives of a cultural group rather than as individuals. If we focus only on similarities, we may overlook important differences in history, identity, access to resources, discrimination, political power, or everyday experience. If we focus only on problems, we may overlook community strengths, relationships, knowledge, institutions, and leadership.

Community building works best when people have opportunities to identify what they share, understand where experiences differ, and recognize the strengths and assets that different people and communities bring.

Consider an effort involving residents and business owners from different racial or ethnic communities in the same neighborhood. If the effort focuses only on learning cultural traditions, participants may gain useful knowledge but still leave with simplified ideas about how members of each community are expected to behave.

If the effort focuses only on similarities, participants may overlook important differences in how people experience housing, employment, education, public institutions, discrimination, or political influence.

And if the effort focuses only on problems, participants may come away seeing communities primarily through deficits instead of recognizing existing organizations, relationships, knowledge, businesses, cultural institutions, leadership, and other assets.

A stronger process can help people:

• Build relationships, trust, familiarity, and empathy
• Identify shared interests and community priorities
• Challenge stereotypes and misinformation about one another
• Understand how history, policy, political power, economic conditions, discrimination, and other factors may shape different community experiences
• Recognize and build on the knowledge, relationships, organizations, traditions, skills, and other assets already present in the community

Helping people recognize similarities, differences, and assets is only one part of community building. Dialogue and learning should connect, when appropriate, with changes in behavior, organizational practice, policy, access, or decision-making.

How can opportunities to identify similarities, differences, and assets be created in your community?

Use a multi-part strategy. Create opportunities for people to identify common ground, discuss meaningful differences, learn about community histories and present-day conditions, recognize assets, and connect what they learn with action.

For example, a community might combine facilitated conversations, cultural or community events, asset mapping, public education, and collaborative projects.

Build on issues that people identify as shared priorities. These might include healthy children, safe and accessible streets, clean parks, affordable housing, care and support for older adults, recreation, education, transportation, economic opportunity, or other concerns.

Shared goals can provide opportunities for people to work together, while still recognizing that the same issue may affect communities differently.

Include the people and communities affected by the work from the beginning. If the effort involves different racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, linguistic, disability, age, gender, sexual-orientation, or other communities, make sure participation is broad enough to reflect important differences within those communities as well.

Keep in mind: Existing organizations may have different relationships with the community. Some may be widely trusted, while others may have histories of exclusion, conflict, or limited representation.

Learn about those histories before deciding how organizations will participate. Do not assume that one organization or one highly visible leader speaks for an entire community.

Existing organizations can still play valuable roles, but their participation should be transparent and should not prevent additional residents or organizations from having direct input.

Do not invite important communities only after major decisions have already been made. Participation is more meaningful when people are included early enough to influence the purpose, structure, priorities, and activities of the effort.

New participants should also be able to join later without being treated as outsiders. Provide orientation, explain previous decisions, and create opportunities for them to contribute meaningfully.

Tip: Avoid placing one person in the position of representing an entire racial, ethnic, religious, disability, gender, or other community. When possible, include several people with different experiences and perspectives.

When scheduling meetings, ask participants about access needs, schedules, religious observances, caregiving responsibilities, transportation, and other considerations.

Do not assume what a particular religious or cultural group needs based only on general knowledge. For example, religious observance during Ramadan may affect meal timing or schedules for some Muslim participants, but individuals and communities may observe differently. Ask participants what would make attendance possible and comfortable.

Pay attention to the meeting location. Choose a space that is physically accessible, easy to reach, welcoming, and not strongly associated with exclusion or control by one group when that association could discourage participation.

Also consider transportation, parking, public transit, restrooms, childcare, interpretation, captioning, sensory conditions, technology access, and remote participation where relevant.

How do you initiate a process to help people from different groups find common ground and share their assets?

Begin with a goal or question broad enough for different people to see themselves in it. Examples might include “What would make this community healthier?” or “What would make this neighborhood a better place to live, work, learn, and participate?”

At the first meeting, allow time for people to become comfortable with one another before moving immediately into difficult issues.

Icebreakers can be useful, but avoid activities that pressure people to explain their names, immigration history, ancestry, religion, identity, or other personal information. Offer questions that participants can answer at whatever level they choose.

For example:

• What is one place in the community that matters to you?
• What is one strength you see in this community?
• What brought you to this conversation?
• What is one thing you hope this community will be like in the future?

Then select a broad topic such as “healthy community,” “belonging,” “opportunity,” or “quality of life” and invite participants to describe what it means to them.

As people describe their experiences, listen for existing community assets: organizations, businesses, faith communities, cultural institutions, informal networks, skills, languages, relationships, meeting spaces, traditions, knowledge, and leadership.

For example, a participant might identify a neighborhood organization that provides language classes, workforce support, youth programming, food distribution, arts activities, or another resource. That organization and the people connected with it are community assets.

Facilitation questions:

• What does “community” mean to you? You can also invite participants to draw or otherwise represent their idea of community.
• Where do you see yourself in the community? What roles do you play?
• In what ways does your community reflect your idea of what a community should be? In what ways does it not?
• What would make the community better for you, your family, or the people you care about?
• What existing cultural resources, organizations, relationships, activities, knowledge, or other assets could help move the community toward that vision?
• What is missing? Why might it be missing? What can residents, organizations, institutions, and public agencies do individually or together?
• Who is not yet part of this discussion but should be?
• Are some people or communities experiencing the issue differently from others?
• What decisions, policies, or institutions may influence the issue?

As one dialogue develops, continue learning from it. Additional conversations may involve different residents or organizations, but avoid creating a process in which participants are repeatedly asked only to recruit “leaders.” People without formal leadership titles may have equally important knowledge and experience.

What types of events can you coordinate to celebrate the community's diversity?

Community events can complement dialogue and collaborative work by creating opportunities for cultural expression, learning, enjoyment, and relationship-building.

Whenever possible, the people whose traditions or histories are being presented should help decide what is shared and how it is represented.

Festivals, holidays, commemorations, arts events, performances, exhibitions, markets, storytelling, and other activities can all create opportunities for learning and connection.

If you create a community calendar, verify dates and names each year with reliable sources or participating communities. Cultural and religious calendars vary. Some observances follow lunar, lunisolar, solar, or other calendar systems, and dates may shift from year to year.

Libraries, community centers, museums, schools, parks, faith communities, cultural organizations, and other public or community spaces may host displays, programs, discussions, performances, or educational activities.

Do not treat cultural diversity only as food, clothing, holidays, or entertainment. These can be meaningful parts of culture, but communities also have histories, institutions, political experiences, languages, artistic traditions, beliefs, challenges, and forms of leadership that deserve attention.

Food-centered events can still be valuable when communities choose to share culinary traditions. Present food as one form of cultural expression rather than as an easy or “non-threatening” way to experience difference.

Communities may also mark heritage months and other recognized periods of cultural or historical significance. These observances can provide useful opportunities for learning, but cultural history and representation should not be limited to one month each year.

Initial questions to guide event planning include:

• What celebrations, commemorations, traditions, or events are important to you or your community?
• How are they observed, and how much variation exists within the community?
• What would you like to share with the broader community?
• Are there connections with traditions or experiences in other communities?
• Are there aspects that should remain private or within the community rather than being presented publicly?
• Who should lead the planning and interpretation?

What activities can you conduct to help people understand the histories and conditions that shape community experiences?

Community education can help people understand why different groups may experience the same institutions, policies, or community conditions differently.

These activities may occur in small groups, schools, workplaces, public forums, community events, media, online spaces, museums, libraries, or public education campaigns.

The goal should not be to define a group only through oppression. Strong education includes histories of discrimination and inequality as well as cultural life, resistance, achievement, leadership, institutions, creativity, and everyday community experience.

Are groups treated differently in your community? What histories, policies, or conditions contribute to those differences?

Photographs, maps, archival documents, newspaper articles, oral histories, public data, artwork, historic places, and other materials can help begin discussion.

Select materials carefully. Avoid repeatedly representing Black communities only through slavery, Asian American communities only through labor exploitation, Muslim communities only through religious symbols, Indigenous communities only through historical images, or any group only through trauma or discrimination.

A community might also examine the meaning of a local statue, street name, school name, neighborhood boundary, historic building, memorial, highway, public institution, or other feature.

Ask participants:

• What does this place, name, image, or symbol mean to you?
• What history does it represent?
• Whose experiences are included?
• Whose may be missing?
• Has its meaning changed over time?

Residents who have recently arrived in a community and people whose families have lived there for generations may bring different but equally valuable perspectives. Learning can be reciprocal rather than treating long-time residents as teachers and newer residents as people who simply need to be introduced to local history.

Public education campaigns can also address misinformation or unequal conditions. Use current, credible evidence together with the experiences of residents and organizations directly connected with the issue.

Possible public education activities include:

• Articles, interviews, podcasts, videos, or other media about the experiences, contributions, concerns, and priorities of communities represented locally
• Community education about racial, ethnic, disability, health, economic, environmental, or other disparities and the factors that may contribute to them
• Posters, exhibits, signs, digital displays, or public art highlighting community histories and assets
• Visits, open houses, or public programs hosted by faith communities, cultural organizations, museums, community centers, and other institutions that choose to welcome outside participants
• Facilitated discussions in schools, neighborhood organizations, businesses, public agencies, and other community settings about racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, classism, and other forms of discrimination

Give people accessible ways to learn more or become involved. Depending on the community, this may include websites, email, text messaging, QR codes, online forms, printed materials, phone numbers, community meetings, or in-person sign-up opportunities.

Collect only the contact information you need, explain how it will be used, and protect it appropriately.

What challenges should you be aware of, and how can they be addressed?

People may have previous experiences – positive or negative – with coalitions, dialogue efforts, public institutions, or cross-cultural initiatives. Those experiences may affect whether they trust a new process.

Do not automatically attribute previous difficulties to “cultural barriers” or communication styles. Conflict may also result from unclear expectations, unequal power, poor facilitation, language access, institutional history, exclusion, competition for resources, discrimination, or other factors.

Learn what happened before. Talk with people who participated in previous efforts, review available records, and ask what would need to be different for people to participate again.

Conversations about racism, discrimination, power, privilege, history, religion, immigration, or other difficult topics can create tension.

Develop clear agreements for discussion. Ground rules might include listening without interruption, criticizing ideas rather than people, avoiding stereotypes, allowing participants to pause or pass, protecting confidentiality when appropriate, and addressing harmful comments directly.

Facilitators should be prepared to respond when stereotypes emerge. For example, if someone repeats a stereotype about Jewish people and money, Asian Americans and academic ability, Black men and crime, immigrants and public benefits, or another community, do not leave the stereotype standing simply because it came up during an open discussion.

Name the stereotype, clarify why it is inaccurate or harmful, and redirect the conversation toward evidence, individual experience, and the actual issue under discussion.

Participants may also compare histories of oppression or argue about which community has experienced the greatest harm.

Avoid turning oppression into a competition. Histories such as slavery, colonialism, caste discrimination, genocide, forced displacement, segregation, and other forms of oppression have different contexts and consequences. Those differences should be understood rather than collapsed into a single ranking.

Facilitators can acknowledge the seriousness of each history while helping participants focus on what they need to understand about one another and what collective action is possible in the present.

Dialogue also needs a clear connection to action when participants are being asked to address a community problem.

Be explicit about why people are being invited, what decisions they can influence, what resources exist, and what outcomes are possible.

Communities can become frustrated when they are repeatedly asked to share experiences without seeing any change in policy, funding, programming, leadership, or institutional behavior.

Before beginning, make sure there is enough time, staff, funding, facilitation, accessibility support, and organizational commitment to carry the process through.

Develop a budget and action plan that matches the available resources. If necessary, work in phases and identify what can realistically be completed in each phase.

At the end of each phase:

• Review what was accomplished
• Ask participants what worked and what did not
• Identify barriers to participation
• Review whether decisions reflected community input
• Identify what should change in the next phase
• Communicate clearly about what will happen next

In Summary

Community-building efforts should help people understand both what they share and how their experiences may differ.

Focusing only on similarities can hide important differences in history, discrimination, access, identity, or power. Focusing only on differences can reinforce stereotypes and make groups seem more separate than they are. Focusing only on problems can obscure the strengths, relationships, organizations, knowledge, culture, leadership, and other assets communities already possess.

Strong processes combine relationship-building, honest discussion of differences, asset identification, community education, and opportunities for action.

Participation should begin early enough for people to influence goals and decisions. No one person or organization should be expected to represent an entire racial, ethnic, religious, disability, cultural, or other community.

Cultural events can contribute to learning and belonging, but diversity should not be reduced to holidays, food, clothing, or entertainment. Communities also need opportunities to understand histories, institutions, discrimination, political and economic conditions, and the ways these factors affect present-day experiences.

Difficult conversations require thoughtful facilitation, sufficient resources, accessible participation, and clear expectations. When stereotypes or harmful statements arise, facilitators should address them rather than allowing them to stand unchallenged.

Finally, dialogue should connect with action when communities are trying to change conditions. Residents should know why they are being asked to participate, what influence they will have, what resources are available, and what will happen with the information they provide.

The goal is not to make everyone the same or to emphasize difference for its own sake. It is to help people understand one another more accurately, recognize community strengths, address inequities, and work together on priorities they share.

___ Identifying similarities, differences, and assets are important to community group work,
but this process must be followed up by actions.

___ It is important for communities to hold discussions to find common ground and share their assets.

___ Creating opportunities for people to share their similarities, learn about differences,
and celebrate diversity helps bring communities together.

___ Communities can celebrate diversity by recognizing traditions and events of all cultures and discussing how to
build on them.

___ Public education seminars and events can educate people about a group or culture's identity
and current situation.

___ Community should discuss the challenges of creating diverse opportunities and
how to overcome them.

Example: Bridging the Divides in Our Communities and in Our Nation

 

The Hands Across the Hills experience initiated in the small community of Leverett, Massachusetts, with Letcher County Kentucky was powerful and positive. They listened to each other, learned from each other, and actually left loving each other. It gave them hope that the divisions in this country can be overcome.

A neighborhood is experiencing significant demographic change. Residents who have lived there for many years are increasingly joined by Black, Latino, immigrant, multilingual, and other residents whose experiences and community connections may differ from those historically represented in the neighborhood association.

The neighborhood association has continued using the same communication methods it has used for years: newspaper notices, mailed newsletters, and announcements about meeting times. Yet its membership and leadership have not become more representative of the neighborhood.

Some residents see the association as an organization shaped primarily by the people who have historically participated in it. They may not see their communities, languages, priorities, or experiences reflected in its communication, leadership, programs, or decision-making.

The association therefore needs to do more than invite people to existing meetings. It needs to learn how different residents already organize, communicate, solve problems, build relationships, and participate in community life. It also needs to examine whether its own practices create unnecessary barriers to participation.

Organizational change can be difficult. People may be attached to familiar routines, roles, communication styles, or decision-making processes. Different participants may also hold legitimate but conflicting perspectives.

Building a culturally competent and responsive organization requires patience, learning, honest assessment, flexibility, and a willingness to change both individual behavior and organizational practices.

What is a culturally competent organization?

What is "culture?"

Culture refers to shared patterns of meaning, history, experience, values, traditions, communication, practices, identity, and community that develop among groups of people.

Culture may be connected with race, ethnicity, language, nationality, religion, region, disability, social class, gender, profession, family, age, or many other forms of identity and community.

People may belong to many cultures and communities at the same time. Individuals within the same cultural group may also differ substantially in beliefs, practices, communication styles, identities, and experiences.

Culture is not a fixed set of rules. It changes over time and is shaped by history, institutions, migration, relationships, technology, economics, geography, and individual experience.

Organizations also develop cultures. Policies, routines, leadership styles, decision-making processes, communication practices, expectations, and unwritten norms all shape how an organization operates.

An organization's culture may unintentionally make participation easier for some people than for others. Building cultural competence therefore involves examining the organization itself, not simply learning facts about the communities it serves.

What is the difference between "cultural knowledge," "cultural awareness," "cultural sensitivity," and "cultural competence?"

Organizations such as the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative have demonstrated the value of resident leadership, representative governance, and community participation in neighborhood development. The specific strategies an organization uses will vary by community, but meaningful representation and shared decision-making are important parts of building an inclusive community.

These terms describe related ideas, but they should not be treated as a simple ladder that an organization completes once and for all.

• Cultural knowledge involves learning about histories, communities, institutions, identities, traditions, and experiences that may be relevant to the people an organization serves or employs.
• Cultural awareness involves recognizing that our own assumptions, values, communication styles, and organizational practices are also culturally influenced.
• Cultural sensitivity involves recognizing and respecting differences without automatically judging one way of communicating, organizing, or participating as superior to another.
• Cultural competence refers to the ability of an organization to use knowledge, reflection, relationships, policies, resources, and practices to work effectively with people from different cultural backgrounds.

Cultural humility is also important. Cultural humility emphasizes continued learning, self-reflection, awareness of power differences, and recognition that no individual or organization becomes an expert on every culture.

Cultural competence should not mean expecting staff to memorize characteristics of different groups. It means developing organizational practices that allow people to describe their own identities, needs, strengths, and experiences and ensuring that those perspectives can influence decisions.

A Cultural Competence Model: 5 Essential Principles

1. Valuing diversity

Valuing diversity means recognizing and respecting differences both between and within communities. People who share a racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious, disability, or other identity do not necessarily share the same beliefs, behaviors, experiences, or priorities.

Individuals may also identify with several communities at once. Race, ethnicity, language, gender, disability, social class, religion, geography, generation, family, profession, and other experiences can intersect in different ways.

Avoid assuming that a person's identity tells you everything about what they value or how they will behave.

2. Conducting cultural self-assessment

Organizations should regularly examine their own policies, norms, assumptions, communication practices, physical environment, leadership, staffing, and decision-making processes.

For example, rather than assuming that physical distance, eye contact, touching, meeting style, or another behavior has one cultural meaning, organizations can ask whether staff are making assumptions about behavior and whether people have multiple ways to communicate and participate comfortably.

Surveys, interviews, focus groups, accessibility reviews, demographic information, service-use data, community feedback, and staff discussion can all contribute to organizational self-assessment.

3. Understanding the dynamics of difference

Historical and present-day discrimination, exclusion, unequal treatment, and previous experiences with institutions can affect how people approach an organization.

For example, Indigenous peoples, Black communities, immigrant communities, people with disabilities, LGBTQ+ people, religious minorities, and other communities may have histories of unequal or harmful treatment by public or private institutions. Those histories may influence expectations and trust, although individuals within each community will respond differently.

An organization that has changed leadership or practices should not assume that the community will immediately recognize or trust those changes. Trust is developed through transparent communication, consistent behavior, accountability, and time.

4. Institutionalizing cultural knowledge

Cultural competence should be reflected throughout the organization rather than limited to occasional training.

Policies, services, staffing, communication, accessibility, evaluation, budgeting, outreach, leadership development, complaint procedures, and decision-making should all reflect the organization's commitment to serving and including diverse communities.

5. Adapting to diversity

Organizations should be willing to change practices when existing approaches create barriers or fail to meet community needs.

Adaptation may involve language access, disability accommodations, different outreach methods, new partnerships, changes in meeting schedules, revised hiring practices, different service-delivery approaches, or changes in who participates in decision-making.

What types of diversity should an organization consider?

Organizations should avoid ranking forms of diversity as inherently more or less important. Which identities or experiences are most relevant depends on the organization's purpose, community, history, and the barriers people encounter.

Relevant dimensions may include:

• Race
• Ethnicity
• Nationality and national origin
• Language
• Gender and gender identity
• Sexual orientation
• Social class and socioeconomic circumstances
• Religion, spirituality, and belief
• Disability
• Age and generation
• Education
• Family and household structure
• Health-related experiences
• Skills, knowledge, and talents
• Ideas, perspectives, and experiences
• Military experience
• Geographic background
• Housing and property-ownership status
• Occupation and employment experience
• Immigration, migration, and refugee experiences
• Justice-system experience

These characteristics may intersect. Organizations should therefore avoid assuming that one identity is always the most important part of a person's experience.

Why is it important to be culturally competent?

Communities and organizations include people with different cultures, identities, languages, abilities, histories, and experiences. Cultural competence can help organizations work more effectively with that diversity.

It is important not because diversity is a new phenomenon, but because organizations may have historically developed around the expectations and experiences of only part of the population they now serve.

Benefits of building an organization's cultural competence can include:

• Increasing respect and mutual understanding
• Bringing a wider range of perspectives and ideas into problem-solving
• Helping organizations identify barriers or unintended effects earlier
• Expanding meaningful participation
• Strengthening trust and cooperation
• Helping staff respond more thoughtfully when differences or misunderstandings arise
• Supporting inclusion and equitable access
• Improving the fit between services and the people who use them
• Strengthening accountability to the communities the organization serves

These outcomes are not automatic. Simply having a diverse staff or holding cultural-awareness activities does not guarantee trust, creativity, inclusion, or equity. Organizations need structures and practices that allow different perspectives to influence decisions.

When does an organization need to become culturally competent?

Cultural competence should be an ongoing organizational responsibility rather than something addressed only when a crisis occurs.

It is especially important when:

• The communities served by the organization are changing
• Some groups use services at lower rates or report different experiences
• Participation or leadership does not reflect the community
• Language or disability access is inadequate
• Complaints or conflicts suggest problems with inclusion or discrimination
• The organization is developing new programs or expanding into new communities
• Policies or practices appear to produce unequal outcomes
• Staff or community members identify cultural responsiveness as a priority

Organizations do not need to wait until they have identified every community need before beginning. A strong process includes ongoing learning, participation, evaluation, and adaptation.

How do you create a culturally competent organization?

Indicators of cultural competence:

• Recognizing that organizational norms, policies, and institutions are shaped by history and culture and may advantage some ways of communicating, leading, or participating over others
• Understanding how our own backgrounds and experiences influence how we interpret other people
• Avoiding assumptions that all members of a cultural group share the same beliefs, practices, or needs
• Recognizing that past experiences with institutions may influence present relationships and trust
• Building on the strengths, knowledge, relationships, and resources of different communities
• Allocating resources for staff learning, accessibility, language access, community engagement, and leadership development
• Identifying and changing discriminatory or exclusionary policies and practices
• Sharing meaningful decision-making authority with people from different backgrounds and communities
• Evaluating cultural competence and responsiveness on an ongoing basis
• Making participation accessible to people with different language, disability, transportation, scheduling, technology, and caregiving needs
• Establishing clear accountability when discrimination or exclusion occurs

Cultural differences can strengthen an organization when people are able to contribute meaningfully and when differences are not treated as problems to be managed. Reaching that point requires deliberate planning and organizational change.

Action Steps for Achieving Cultural Competence

Leadership support matters, but cultural competence is unlikely to become part of the organization if it is treated only as a top-down requirement.

Include staff, leadership, governing bodies, community members, and people who use the organization's services in planning and evaluation.

• Build support and accountability throughout the organization. Who is committed to change? What concerns or resistance exist?
• Identify the people and communities who should participate in planning, implementation, and evaluation.
• Identify barriers. What is making participation, employment, leadership, or service access difficult?
• Assess current strengths and gaps in cultural competence and responsiveness.
• Identify the resources needed, including funding, staff time, translation and interpretation, accessibility, training, community expertise, and technical assistance.
• Develop measurable goals, responsibilities, timelines, and implementation steps.
• Evaluate progress continuously and make changes when results show that the organization is not meeting its goals.

How to begin building a multicultural and culturally responsive organization

Create a structure for accountability.

A committee, working group, leadership team, equity office, or other structure may help coordinate cultural-competence work.

It should include people from different organizational levels and, where relevant, people from the communities the organization serves.

The group should not carry sole responsibility for organizational change. Senior leadership, supervisors, staff, and governing bodies all have responsibilities.

Write or review your mission and values.

Make sure cultural competence, accessibility, inclusion, and equitable participation are connected with the organization's actual mission rather than treated as separate activities.

Learn from other organizations and develop partnerships.

Other organizations may have useful experience with language access, disability inclusion, community engagement, recruitment, service delivery, evaluation, or other areas.

Learn from their approaches, but adapt them to your own community and organizational context rather than copying them without assessment.

Use current technical assistance and professional resources.

Public agencies, universities, professional associations, community organizations, disability organizations, language-access organizations, and other institutions may offer guidance, training, tools, or technical assistance.

Evaluate resources for relevance, evidence, accessibility, and whether they reflect current terminology and practice.

Conduct a comprehensive organizational assessment.

Examine mission, leadership, hiring, promotion, compensation, service delivery, communication, accessibility, language access, community participation, complaints, evaluation, budgeting, and organizational climate.

Use the results to develop a long-term plan with measurable goals.

Understand who lives in the community and who uses your services.

Learn about the racial, ethnic, linguistic, disability, socioeconomic, religious, age, gender, and other forms of diversity relevant to your service area.

Then ask:

• Who currently uses the organization's services?
• Who does not?
• What barriers might explain the difference?
• How do people experience the services?
• Who participates in planning and decision-making?
• Are some communities being reached primarily through other organizations rather than directly?

Do not interpret differences in participation automatically as lack of interest. Examine outreach, reputation, accessibility, eligibility requirements, cost, language, transportation, trust, scheduling, and other possible factors.

Create ongoing opportunities for staff discussion and learning.

Staff meetings, workshops, case discussions, facilitated conversations, supervision, learning groups, and other formats can help people examine assumptions and improve practice.

Cultural competence should not depend on a single luncheon, annual event, or one-time training.

Ask staff about their learning and support needs.

Staff may need support related to cross-cultural communication, language access, disability inclusion, working with interpreters, responding to discrimination, community engagement, trauma-informed practice, inclusive supervision, or other areas relevant to their roles.

Allocate resources for ongoing development.

Review your budget for training, accessibility, interpretation, translated materials, community engagement, evaluation, and other resources needed to implement the organization's goals.

Keep in mind: Discussions about culture, discrimination, power, identity, and organizational practice can create disagreement or discomfort.

Skilled facilitation may be useful, particularly when trust is low or previous conflict exists. Establish clear expectations for respectful discussion and a process for addressing harmful comments or unresolved concerns.

The goal is not to prevent all discomfort. It is to create a process where difficult issues can be addressed constructively and where people understand what will happen after concerns are raised.

Include cultural responsiveness in job expectations where relevant.

Job descriptions and hiring processes can identify skills such as respectful communication, working effectively with interpreters, serving diverse communities, inclusive supervision, accessibility, community engagement, or other competencies appropriate to the role.

Avoid using vague cultural-competence requirements without explaining what effective performance looks like.

Make facilities, programs, and communication accessible and welcoming.

Consider physical accessibility, transportation, operating hours, signage, restrooms, sensory conditions, communication access, language access, cost, safety, privacy, and other factors that may affect participation.

Do not assume that particular seating arrangements, eye contact, forms of address, or decor are appropriate or inappropriate for everyone from a cultural group. Ask participants what helps them feel comfortable and respected.

Maintain current learning resources.

Provide staff with reliable information on communities, histories, language access, disability inclusion, discrimination, communication, and other relevant topics.

Materials should be reviewed periodically because terminology, research, community conditions, and recommended practices change.

Build relationships with community members and organizations.

Residents, cultural organizations, faith communities, disability organizations, businesses, schools, service providers, and other community partners may have valuable knowledge about local priorities and barriers.

Avoid describing community members as “informants.” Treat lived experience as expertise, and compensate substantial community labor or consultation when appropriate.

Do not rely on one individual to represent an entire community.

How to manage the dynamics of building culturally competent organizations

Vision and context

It can take time for organizations and communities with histories of exclusion, discrimination, conflict, or broken commitments to develop trust.

People from marginalized communities may also be asked repeatedly to educate coworkers about racism, disability, culture, language, religion, or other issues. Organizations should not place the responsibility for everyone's learning on the people most affected.

All participants should take responsibility for learning, while also listening carefully when community members choose to share their experiences.

People should not be expected to conform to a single communication style, leadership style, or organizational norm simply because it has historically been dominant.

Include people from different backgrounds in developing the organization's vision, priorities, and measures of success.

Recruitment and outreach

Include people from diverse communities early enough to influence the organization's development rather than recruiting them after major decisions have already been made.

Representation is only a first step. Examine whether people have real authority, access to information, opportunities for leadership, and meaningful influence over decisions.

Outreach should use communication methods that people actually use and should address barriers involving language, disability, transportation, technology, scheduling, childcare, cost, or organizational reputation.

Training and organizational learning

Training can help staff examine stereotypes, learn skills, and understand community experiences, but one-time diversity training rarely changes an organization by itself.

Reinforce learning through supervision, policy, leadership expectations, evaluation, accountability, hiring, service design, and continued community feedback.

Keep in mind: Cultural learning should not become a list of traits associated with racial, ethnic, religious, or national groups. Such lists can easily become new stereotypes.

Organizational structure and operating procedures

Examine how work, information, authority, resources, recognition, and decision-making are distributed.

Create multiple ways for people to participate, including large-group discussion, small groups, written feedback, remote participation, surveys, one-on-one conversations, and other formats where appropriate.

Make sure quieter participants, people using interpreters, people with disabilities, and those who prefer different communication methods have meaningful opportunities to contribute.

Develop and enforce policies that address racism, sexism, ableism, religious discrimination, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, harassment, and other forms of discrimination.

Periodically evaluate meetings and decision-making processes. Ask who participated, whose ideas shaped the outcome, who may have faced barriers, and what should change.

Communicating

Use respectful and inclusive language and avoid assuming that everyone understands unwritten organizational rules.

Learn people's names and how they want to be addressed. Do not make judgments about intelligence, professionalism, or competence based on accent, grammar, communication device, speech pattern, or language proficiency.

Listen for what people are actually communicating rather than interpreting behavior through cultural stereotypes.

Ask clarifying questions when needed. Provide information in plain language and accessible formats, and make sure people have several ways to ask questions or contribute.

Tips:

• People may differ in how comfortable they are with confrontation, self-disclosure, public praise, eye contact, silence, disagreement, or speaking in groups. Do not assume the reason is culture without asking.
• Forms of address may differ by person, community, generation, profession, or setting. When unsure, ask people respectfully how they prefer to be addressed.

How to address language barriers:

• Arrange qualified interpreters when interpretation is needed. Bilingual staff or volunteers may help in some settings, but people should not automatically be expected to interpret simply because they speak more than one language.
• Design meetings so participants can contribute in the languages they use most comfortably. Depending on the group, this may involve simultaneous or consecutive interpretation, multilingual small groups, or separate sessions covering the same issues.
• Translate essential organizational materials into the languages needed by the people the organization serves, based on actual language-access needs and applicable requirements.
• Use plain, respectful language and explain technical or organizational terms that may not be familiar to everyone.
• Make interpretation and translated materials accessible to people with disabilities as well, including through captioning, accessible documents, sign-language interpretation, or other communication supports when needed.

Keep in mind:

Words can carry different meanings because of language, history, profession, politics, personal experience, or community context. Rather than assuming that a term has the same meaning for everyone, ask participants how they understand important words and explain how the organization is using them.

Understanding both common ground and difference

Avoid assuming that people have either more similarities or more differences. Both matter.

Shared goals can support collaboration, while important differences in history, identity, access, discrimination, communication, or community experience may affect how people understand those goals and what they need in order to participate.

Maintaining the commitment

Cultural competence requires continued attention. Organizations should periodically review their staffing, leadership, services, communication, accessibility, partnerships, policies, and outcomes.

Public statements about diversity and inclusion can communicate organizational values, but they should be supported by measurable practices and accountability.

Providing strong leadership

Create multiple pathways into leadership and make sure leadership development is available to people who have historically had less access to formal organizational power.

Mentoring, shared projects, committee leadership, training, succession planning, and transparent selection processes can help develop leadership.

Mentoring should support people's own leadership styles rather than expecting them to reproduce the style of an existing leader.

Providing activities

Integrate cultural responsiveness into the organization's regular programs rather than limiting it to occasional heritage celebrations or international events.

Community projects, recreation, public meetings, arts programs, advocacy, neighborhood improvement, education, service delivery, and other activities can all be designed so people from different backgrounds can participate meaningfully.

Cultural events, forums, panels, and dialogues can also be useful when communities themselves help determine the topics, format, leadership, and goals.

If participation does not reflect the community, do not assume that particular groups are uninterested. Examine outreach, trust, accessibility, timing, transportation, cost, language, program relevance, previous experiences, and who has decision-making power.

In Summary

Building a culturally competent organization requires more than changing how individuals think about people from different cultures.

It means examining how the organization communicates, hires, promotes, makes decisions, provides services, distributes resources, responds to discrimination, develops leaders, and includes the communities affected by its work.

Cultural knowledge can be useful, but it should not become a collection of stereotypes about how particular groups supposedly communicate, lead, behave, or make decisions.

People within the same racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious, disability, or cultural community may have very different experiences and preferences. Strong organizations therefore combine cultural knowledge with humility, listening, self-assessment, community participation, and ongoing evaluation.

Representation matters, but simply changing the demographic appearance of staff or leadership is not enough. People also need meaningful authority, access to information, equitable opportunities, and the ability to influence decisions.

Cultural competence also requires practical supports such as language access, disability access, flexible communication, appropriate outreach, staff development, transparent policies, and accountability when exclusion or discrimination occurs.

The work is ongoing. Communities change, organizations change, language changes, and new barriers may emerge. Culturally competent organizations continue learning, measuring results, listening to the people they serve, and adapting their practices over time.

___ Culture is defined as the shared traditions, beliefs, customs, history, folklore, and institutions of a group of people.

___ Cultural knowledge is defined as knowing about some cultural characteristics, history, values, beliefs, and behaviors of another ethnic or cultural group.

___ Cultural awareness is being open to the idea of changing cultural attitudes.

___ Cultural sensitivity is knowing that differences exist between cultures, but not assigning values to the differences.

___ Cultural competence means having the capacity to bring into its system many different behaviors, attitudes, and policies and work effectively in cross-cultural settings to produce better outcomes.

___ To become culturally competent, organizations should identify the needs and outcomes required to change.

___ Forming partnerships with similar organizations and using free resources can help facilitate change.

___ Organizational budget and job requirements should address cultural competence.

___ Organizational facilities and resources should respect cultures and educate staff on culture differences.

___ A network of natural helpers can help sustains cultural competence within an organization.

___ Diversity outreach, training, and communication are required to manage a multicultural organization.

Tool #1: Exercise - Building Cultural Competence

Answer each of these questions, and then form small groups for discussion. The questions ask about aspects of culture.
Answer each question for yourself (personally) and then for a local community you may be familiar with.
In the small groups, use your answers to discuss either Option A or Option B.

Option A: Reflect on how you would use your understanding of your culture and that of the local community to establish a relationship with people in the local community.

Option B: Reflect on how you would use your understanding of your culture and that of the local community to design an intervention intended to benefit people in the local community

• What is your self-identity? (e.g. female, Hispanic, professional)
• Who resides in the community served by the organization?
• What historical events have shaped your life experiences?
• What have your life experiences been like? (e.g. success, inequity)
• What is valued? (e.g. respect, responsibility, pride, self-determination, interdependence)
• Valued differences from others?
• What gives you a sense of belonging? (e.g. religion, occupation, history)
• Valued relationships between people, genders, generations?
• Valued religious beliefs?
• What language is used?
• What are important customs?
• Valued emotions?
• Important beliefs for solving problems? (e.g. federal government, local community)
• Valued institutions? (e.g. school, church)
• Important features of family?
• Valued features of marriage?
• Most valued form of social organization?
• Value of formal education?
• Most valued community unit? (e.g. neighborhood, city, county)
• Attitudes about others or outsiders helping to solve problems?
• Attitudes about solving problems myself?
• Most valued help-giving person?
• Economic conditions?

If I cannot answer these questions -- how would I obtain information to understand more about these cultural issues?

Tool #2: Personal Competencies

Be nonjudgmental.

This means shutting down the tendency to view another person in a negative light or viewing them with disfavor.

Be flexible.

This means readjusting quickly and effectively to changing situations.

Be resourceful.

Know how to quickly get the things you need to respond well to any situation.

Personalize observations.

Express your personal feelings, thoughts, ideas, and beliefs in a warmly personal way whether or not they are the same as someone else's. Use "I-messages" rather than "you-messages" (e.g. "I disagree" rather than "You're wrong."). Repeat back what you are hearing in conversation ("Am I hearing you say?"). Listen actively by giving verbal indicators regularly while in conversation ("Uh huh" or "yes.")

Pay attention to your feelings.

Take your feelings seriously and keep in touch with how you feel about what the other person is saying in conversation. You put yourself in better charge of yourself and in better command of the interpersonal situation.

Listen carefully and observe attentively.

This helps increase sensitivity to the whole message and not just what is being said in words.

Assume complexity.

Recognize in an ongoing way that in a culturally diverse environment, perspectives and outcomes are multiple.

Tolerate the stress of uncertainty.

In an overlap with #3, avoid showing irritation or annoyance in a culturally diverse situation.

Have patience.

It's a positive way to respond to stress.

Manage personal biases.

Look beyond your personal view so that you can treat the person with you as an individual.

Keep a sense of humor.

Cultivate an awareness of the absurdity that often is part of differences converging. Avoid taking yourself so seriously that you can't laugh at yourself.

Show respect.

Go out of your way to express in a genuine manner your understanding, honor, and esteem of the person with whom you are dealing.

Show empathy.

Put yourself in the other person's shoes. This is critical in the culturally diverse encounter.

Tool #3: Inclusivity Checklist

Use this checklist to measure how prepared your organization is for multicultural work, and to identify areas for improvement. If you cannot check off an item, that may indicate an area for change.

• The leadership of our organization is multiracial and multicultural. (A complication of this issue would be if the target population of an organization is not multiracial or a minority, and with prejudiced attitudes, too. It doesn't mean that multiracial leadership and staff shouldn't be hired, but that they should be prepared for some "hard traveling" for a time. Minority staff members might need to be tough, courageous, and patient, no matter how much support they have.)
• We make special efforts to cultivate new leaders, particularly women and people of color.
• Our mission, operations, and products reflect the contributions of diverse cultural and social groups.
• We are committed to fighting social oppression within the organization and in our work in the community.
• Members of diverse cultural and social groups are full participants in all aspects of our organization's work.
• Speakers from any one group do not dominate meetings.
• All segments of our community are represented in decision making.
• There is sensitivity and awareness regarding different religious and cultural holidays, customs, recreational preferences, and food preferences.
• We communicate clearly, and people of different cultures feel comfortable sharing their opinions and participating in meetings.
• We prohibit the use of stereotypes and prejudicial comments.
• Ethnic, racial, and sexual slurs or jokes are not welcome.

Tool #4: Cultural Diversity Barriers: 5 Assumptions in U.S. Mainstream Culture

There are many barriers to building cultural awareness, cultural sensitivity, and cultural competence in organizations. Awareness of the following themes is key in overcoming cultural barriers.

The United States is a "level playing field" for someone, no matter what his or her culture.

In the U.S. socialization process (and other Western countries) schools and media regularly project institutions as being "color-blind" and present the culture as being fair to everyone (a so-called "level playing field"). The assumption is that if someone doesn't succeed it is because they are lazy or have personal faults -- and that it is the fault of the individual and not the mainstream culture.

Americans don't have a culture.

This is an unconscious norm for mainstream American culture, based on the Wild West pioneer philosophy of the "rugged individual" -- we are "lone rangers" who can self-determine our fate, unaffected by a larger influence. Even though this may be the land of myth and fantasy, many people live there.

If it's different, it's wrong.

This assumption has been referred to as racism, but relates to many "antis", such as anti-Semitism, and to anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, and anti-non-white biases. The popular belief in the race concept dates back to at least 1600 when Europeans built overseas empires in the Americas, Asia, and Africa. The race concept supported the decimation and impoverishment of the people on these continents.

You shouldn't talk about cultural diversity.

This assumption is based on the policy of "Anglo conformity," which seems ironic in light of the "rugged individual" mindset previously mentioned. Many think that if you talk about cultural differences it perpetuates problems and is "divisive" -- and just brings up problems that are already solved. It also involves the concept of invisibility -- if you don't talk about different groups, they aren't there. This approach included the forced assimilation of many groups including Native Americans and African Americans. This assimilation has brought about a loss of cultural heritage, other than European.

You shouldn't admit to being prejudiced.

This is another age-old approach. If you don't admit to even a perception of prejudice or institutional and system inequities, it supports the idea that life is on a level playing field -- and then you don't have to do anything about it.

Tool #5: Tips for Accessing and Involving People of Color in a Significant Way

(adapted from Telesford, 1994)

Identify community leaders.

These natural leaders can be found in churches, schools, public housing project resident councils, Head Start programs, day care programs, senior citizen centers, teen parent programs, or neighborhood watch organizations.

Respect geographic neighborhood boundaries.

Work with community leaders to identify geographic boundaries that residents respect. While one community might regard its boundaries as extending five or six blocks, a public housing complex may regard the boundaries of its neighborhood as the boundary of the housing facility.

Meeting sites, times, and dates

Hold meetings within each of the identified geographic neighborhoods in a location accessible by walking or public transportation. People may fear muggings after dark, so schedule meetings between 4:30 and 7:00 p.m. if possible. Due to church activities, Sunday is often not a good day for meetings.

Publicity

For those who have them, telephones and regular mail delivery are good methods for publicizing upcoming meetings. For those without those resources, fliers in Laundromats, clinics, churches, schools, grocery stores, public transportation stops, and day care centers are a good idea. Announcements can be made at PTA, church, Head Start, and resident council meetings. Public service announcements can be placed on local radio and television stations. Individuals can be encouraged to spread the word.

Incentives

Publicity and fliers should announce that childcare and food will be provided.

Identification of issues

Ask the people and groups you want to involve what they consider to be the important issues and what they want from an initiative -- don't just assume you know what their issues are and assign issues to them.

Prompt follow-up

Follow up the first meeting with a second meeting within the next month. Do not let time pass or the momentum will be lost. The sooner organization members can address identified issues, the sooner they will develop an appreciation of the group and its investment in success.

Empowerment

It is the challenge of the empowerment process to help participants feel good about themselves and channel positive energy into action that will improve their lives.

Collaboration

Out of the increasing sense of empowerment will hopefully come collaborative working relationships among many cultural groups and participation in community-based decision making.

Tool #6: Culturally Effective Communication

Communication is an essential skill in any cultural competent organization. It is important to identify belief systems of all cultural groups in order to spot blocks to communication.

ETHNOCENTRISM

Inability to accept another culture's world view. ("My way is best.")

DISCRIMINATION

Differential treatment of an individual due to minority status, actual and perceived. ("We just aren't equipped to serve people like that.")

STEREOTYPING

Generalizing about a person while ignoring the presence of individual differences. ("She's like that because she's Asian -- all Asians are nonverbal.")

CULTURAL BLINDNESS

Differences are ignored and one proceeds as though differences do not exist. ("There 's no need to worry about a person's culture -- if you're sensitive you'll do OK.")

CULTURAL IMPOSITION

Belief that everyone should conform to the majority. ("We know what's best for you. If you don't like it you can go elsewhere.")

Concepts for bridging cultural differences (ETHNIC)

• Everyone has a culture.
• Take time to collect relevant cultural information.
• Hold all judgments. Be careful about interpreting culturally different behavior.
• Notice and negotiate differences in understanding.
• Involve cultural resources as appropriate.
• Collaborate to develop objectives and strategies.

 

Communities and organizations often need to work across racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious, disability, socioeconomic, and other differences in order to address issues that no single group can solve alone.

Yet simply declaring meetings open to everyone does not necessarily create broad participation. An organization may advertise publicly and still find that some communities do not see themselves reflected in its leadership, priorities, communication, meeting practices, or decision-making.

For example, an organization may say, “We want more participation from communities that are not currently involved, but we don't know why people aren't coming to our meetings.”

Another organization may recognize that the racial, ethnic, linguistic, or cultural makeup of its neighborhood has changed and discover that its established outreach methods no longer reach everyone it hopes to involve.

These situations require more than recruiting people into structures that were designed without them. Organizations may need to examine how they communicate, who has influence, where meetings occur, how decisions are made, what barriers people face, and whether existing community organizations and leaders are treated as genuine partners.

This section discusses how organizations can collaborate effectively across cultural differences while building trust, sharing decision-making, reducing barriers to participation, and respecting the knowledge and leadership of the communities involved.

What is multicultural collaboration?

First, it is useful to distinguish among coalitions, collaborations, and multicultural collaborations.

A coalition generally involves two or more organizations working together around a shared issue or set of issues. Coalition members may coordinate advocacy, services, information, funding, public education, or other activities that are difficult to accomplish independently.

Some coalitions are temporary, while others continue for many years. The structure depends on the issue, the organizations involved, and the goals they share.

A collaboration involves two or more organizations working together in a coordinated way toward shared goals. Collaboration may involve joint planning, programs, funding, services, advocacy, policy development, evaluation, or other activities.

Collaboration usually requires organizations to share information, resources, responsibility, and some degree of decision-making authority. Mutual respect, clear roles, communication, accountability, and trust are therefore important.

Organizations sometimes protect their own funding, authority, relationships, visibility, or areas of responsibility. Those concerns are understandable, but collaboration may require participants to decide where sharing control will produce stronger results while still protecting legitimate organizational responsibilities.

A multicultural collaboration is a collaboration in which participants include people or organizations from different cultural backgrounds or communities, or in which the work affects culturally diverse populations.

Relevant differences may include race, ethnicity, language, religion, nationality, Indigenous identity, disability, gender, socioeconomic background, migration experience, region, organizational culture, or other identities and experiences.

Cultural difference does not automatically create a barrier. Difficulties are more likely when organizations make assumptions about one another, fail to provide language or disability access, overlook histories of exclusion, use unfamiliar or inaccessible processes, distribute power unequally, or expect participants to adapt to one dominant way of working.

Effective multicultural collaboration therefore requires both a shared purpose and organizational practices that allow people with different experiences to participate meaningfully.

Participants may differ in how they understand leadership, disagreement, time, formality, decision-making, or organizational relationships. Those differences should be explored through communication rather than predicted from racial, ethnic, or cultural identity.

Multicultural collaboration requires planning, patience, flexibility, relationship-building, and a willingness to examine established practices. Participants may enter for different reasons and bring different levels of organizational capacity, funding, experience, or authority.

Clear goals, meaningful participation, defined roles, shared decision-making, accessible communication, and realistic timelines can help organizations work through those differences.

Why is multicultural collaboration important?

• It brings together people and organizations affected by a shared issue. Complex community problems often involve several institutions, neighborhoods, or populations. Collaboration can help participants understand how their work and decisions affect one another.
• It helps identify both common interests and meaningful differences. Participants may share goals while experiencing the issue differently because of history, discrimination, language, geography, access to resources, organizational role, or other factors.
• It can improve communication among groups. Working together can help organizations clarify expectations, learn how others understand the issue, and create communication practices that work for participants with different needs.
• It brings different forms of knowledge into the work. Community experience, professional expertise, cultural knowledge, organizational relationships, technical skills, and historical understanding can all contribute to stronger planning and decision-making.
• It can increase collective capacity. Organizations may be able to combine relationships, staff, information, funding, facilities, political influence, technical expertise, and other resources.
• It can strengthen community relationships. Repeated, respectful collaboration can create opportunities for trust, familiarity, and reciprocal support to develop.
• It can support more equitable decisions. Policies and programs are more likely to reflect the community when people directly affected have meaningful roles in defining problems, establishing priorities, and developing solutions.

These benefits are not automatic. Bringing culturally diverse organizations together will not by itself produce trust, equity, or agreement. The structure of the collaboration matters.

When should you commit to multicultural collaboration?

Human connection and shared concern can be reasons to work together across cultural differences. Collaboration may be particularly useful when:

• People directly affected by an issue are not meaningfully involved in developing the response.
• Several organizations are working on related concerns but are duplicating efforts, competing for limited resources, or making decisions without adequate coordination.
• The issue affects several communities or systems and cannot be effectively addressed by one organization.
• Organizations are willing to make a sustained commitment to communication, relationship-building, shared planning, and organizational change.
• A community condition may worsen if organizations continue working separately.
• Participants want to identify additional people and organizations affected by the issue and create meaningful ways for them to join the work.
• Participating organizations understand what the collaboration requires and believe the work is relevant to their missions and communities.
• The collaboration can include multiple perspectives from the communities involved rather than relying on one person or organization to speak for an entire group.
• Leadership is prepared to maintain focus, work through disagreement, communicate transparently, recognize progress, and uphold agreed-upon expectations.

Collaboration should not be undertaken simply because it sounds inclusive. Organizations should understand what each participant is being asked to contribute, what authority the collaborative will have, what resources are available, and whether collaboration is actually the best structure for the issue.

Some partnerships are encouraged or required by funding, policy, public emergencies, or institutional mandates. When organizations have not chosen one another as partners, additional time may be needed to clarify expectations, establish trust, and agree on how decisions will be made.

Disagreement does not necessarily mean collaboration is failing. Participants may have legitimate differences in priorities or strategy. The goal is not unanimous agreement on everything, but a process that allows disagreements to be addressed fairly while participants continue working on areas where cooperation is possible.

What are some guidelines for multicultural collaboration?

Cultural identity and experience can influence collaboration, but they should not be used to predict how an individual will communicate or behave.

• Learn about communities without turning cultural information into stereotypes. Historical and cultural knowledge can provide context, but individuals should be allowed to describe their own identities, experiences, and preferences.
• Develop cross-cultural collaboration skills through practice. Listening, facilitation, interpretation, conflict resolution, inclusive meeting design, and relationship-building improve through experience and reflection.
• Question assumptions about the “right” way to communicate. Directness, formality, eye contact, silence, emotional expression, disagreement, and other behaviors may vary by individual, situation, organizational role, language, disability, personality, and culture.
• Treat communication problems as shared problems to solve. Rather than deciding who communicated incorrectly, ask what changes in process, language, format, interpretation, or facilitation could improve understanding.
• Listen actively and empathetically. Try to understand how another person sees the issue without assuming that you can completely place yourself in their experience.
• Respect people's choices about participation. People and organizations may choose not to participate, may participate only in some activities, or may want more information before making a commitment.
• Examine your own practices when collaboration becomes difficult. Consider whether meeting style, terminology, scheduling, accessibility, leadership, decision-making, or organizational behavior may be creating barriers.
• Be prepared to discuss history. Previous discrimination, broken commitments, exclusion, competition, or institutional harm may affect current relationships. Acknowledge relevant history rather than dismissing it as unrelated to the present.
• Pay attention to power. Organizations may enter the collaboration with different amounts of funding, staff, political influence, institutional status, information, or decision-making authority.
• Remember that cultural patterns do not determine individual behavior. When you are unsure what someone's behavior or communication means, ask rather than interpreting it through a group-based assumption.
• Ask participants about preferences rather than assigning cultural expectations. Meeting times, forms of address, food, decision-making, communication, religious observance, and other practices should be planned with participants rather than based on stereotypes about their racial, ethnic, regional, or cultural backgrounds.

How do you build a multicultural collaboration?

There are three broad steps to developing a collaboration:

1. Understand the issue and context
2. Establish a shared direction
3. Implement, evaluate, and adapt the plan

Multicultural collaboration also requires attention to participation, power, communication, accessibility, leadership, history, and organizational culture.

Formulate and clearly state the vision and mission of the collaboration.

• Make an explicit commitment to meaningful participation from the communities affected by the work. Representation should extend beyond appearance to include influence over goals, strategy, resources, implementation, and evaluation.
• Identify the forms of diversity and experience relevant to the issue.
• Respect differences within as well as between racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious, disability, gender, and other communities.
• Build an environment in which different histories, languages, cultural expressions, communication methods, and ways of contributing can be present without requiring everyone to work in exactly the same way.

Conduct strategic outreach and membership development.

• Include affected communities early. People should have opportunities to influence the collaboration before its priorities, structure, and strategies are already decided.
• Make broad participation a deliberate priority. Consider who is missing and whether language, accessibility, scheduling, transportation, childcare, cost, technology, organizational history, or other barriers are limiting participation.
• Build relationships with existing community organizations and networks. Attend public meetings or community events when invited, explain the collaboration clearly, ask about community priorities, and follow up personally when appropriate.
• Remember that demographic diversity is only a beginning. Examine whether participants have meaningful authority and whether the collaborative's practices support equitable participation.
• Value different forms of contribution. Community relationships, lived experience, facilitation, technical expertise, language skills, organizing experience, historical knowledge, administrative work, and many other contributions may be important.
• Provide the resources people need to participate. This may include compensation, interpretation, childcare, transportation, meals, accessibility, technology, or scheduling changes. These supports should reduce barriers rather than be treated as incentives for demographic representation.
• Respect organizational autonomy. Some organizations or communities may prefer partnership on selected issues rather than formal membership in the collaboration. Maintain relationships without assuming that full integration is the only legitimate form of cooperation.
• Develop shared expectations for participation. Ground rules should reinforce respectful communication, accountability, confidentiality where appropriate, and procedures for addressing harmful behavior.
• Support patience, empathy, curiosity, accountability, and trust. These qualities are built through consistent behavior rather than simply requested from participants.

In some collaborations, affinity groups or language-specific groups can provide participants with additional opportunities to discuss issues, build relationships, or prepare for larger meetings.

These structures should be voluntary and responsive to what participants identify as useful. They should not be based on assumptions that racial, ethnic, or linguistic groups need to be separated before they can work together.

Establish structures and operating procedures that reinforce equity.

• Create decision-making structures that provide meaningful influence to communities affected by the work, not merely advisory roles without authority.
• Make sure staff, governing bodies, committees, and other leadership structures are responsive to the communities the collaboration serves. Include participants in designing activities and show clearly how their input affected decisions.
• Provide multiple ways to participate, including in-person meetings, small groups, individual conversations, phone, video, email, text, surveys, and written or digital feedback where appropriate.
• Make sure public presentations and leadership roles reflect meaningful participation rather than using people as symbolic representatives of diversity.
• Structure meetings so that no small group of participants dominates discussion. Use facilitation methods that create opportunities for people who have not spoken to contribute while allowing anyone to pass.
• Develop policies and practices that address racism, sexism, ableism, religious discrimination, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, harassment, and other forms of discrimination.
• Review meetings and decision-making periodically. Ask who participated, whose ideas shaped decisions, what barriers appeared, and what should change.

Practice accessible and flexible communication.

Ask participants what they need in order to communicate and participate effectively.

Depending on the group, this may include:

• Qualified spoken-language interpreters
• Translated written materials
• Sign-language interpretation
• Captioning
• Large-print or accessible electronic materials
• Audio formats
• Plain-language materials
• Assistive listening or communication technology
• Additional time for interpreted discussion

Do not automatically ask bilingual participants, family members, children, or community volunteers to interpret. Interpretation requires accuracy, confidentiality, and appropriate skill, especially when discussions involve health, legal issues, conflict, or other sensitive subjects.

When several languages are used, meetings may use simultaneous interpretation, consecutive interpretation, multilingual small groups, separate language-specific sessions covering the same agenda, or another approach developed with participants.

• Use inclusive and respectful language and provide different ways for people to communicate.
• Ask participants about communication preferences instead of trying to memorize the “etiquette” of entire cultural groups.
• Communicate sincerely and avoid exaggerated praise or symbolic gestures that are not supported by meaningful participation.
• Do not assume you can interpret someone's silence, eye contact, facial expression, body language, or other nonverbal behavior based on cultural identity. Ask when clarification is needed.
• Explain unfamiliar terms, acronyms, procedures, and references rather than assuming everyone understands organizational language or unwritten rules.
• Do not allow name-calling, stereotypes, harassment, or other disrespectful behavior. Use people's names and forms of address as they identify them.
• Use humor carefully. Responsibility for responding to an insulting joke should not fall only on the person targeted. Facilitators, leaders, and other participants can intervene and reinforce group expectations.
• Review language access regularly as participation changes.

Create leadership opportunities and share decision-making authority.

• Develop multiple leadership roles and ways for leaders to work together, such as steering committees, working groups, rotating facilitation, project leadership, and committee roles.
• Examine whether people from historically underrepresented communities have access to meaningful leadership positions, information, resources, and authority.
• Support leadership development through mentoring, training, shared responsibilities, succession planning, and opportunities to develop new skills. Do not assume that marginalized communities lack leadership; the issue may be whether the collaboration recognizes and supports it.

Engage in activities that support inclusion and challenge discrimination.

• Integrate cultural responsiveness into regular activities instead of limiting diversity to occasional festivals or cultural dinners.
• Hold meetings and events in locations that participants can access and that do not create unnecessary barriers or communicate that one institution controls the process. Consider transportation, disability access, safety, language, technology, and community history.
• Develop projects in which people from different communities can work together around shared goals while recognizing that participants may have different experiences of the issue.
• Allow voluntary affinity groups when participants find them useful for discussion, support, leadership development, or preparation for larger collaborative work.
• Provide forums, workshops, panels, dialogues, and other opportunities for learning about histories, discrimination, community priorities, and cross-cultural collaboration.
• If participation does not reflect the community, work directly with people who are not participating to understand why. Adjust activities, leadership, outreach, location, language access, timing, or decision-making rather than assuming lack of interest.
• Review the collaborative's history and current practices. Examine complaints, discrimination, harassment, exclusion, unequal participation, and previous responses, and identify organizational changes that are needed.
• Use training as one part of a broader strategy. Workshops on bias, cultural responsiveness, communication, or discrimination may be useful, but lasting change also requires policy, leadership, accountability, resources, and continued evaluation.
• Build relationships with organizations addressing discrimination, equity, language access, disability inclusion, civil rights, community development, or related concerns.

Maintain the collaboration over time.

Multicultural collaboration is not completed when diverse organizations join the same committee.

Continue asking:

• Who is participating?
• Who is missing?
• Who has decision-making authority?
• Are language and disability access adequate?
• Are resources distributed fairly?
• Are some organizations carrying more work than others?
• Are community members being asked to provide substantial unpaid labor or expertise?
• Are disagreements being handled fairly?
• Are participants seeing their priorities reflected in the work?
• What has changed because of the collaboration?
• What needs to change next?

Trust can be damaged when organizations ask communities to participate repeatedly without sharing authority, following through on commitments, or producing visible results.

Communicate about progress, explain delays or changes, acknowledge mistakes, and make responsibilities clear.

In Summary

Collaboration occurs when organizations work together toward goals that they cannot achieve as effectively alone. It may involve shared planning, information, resources, responsibility, programs, advocacy, evaluation, and decision-making.

Multicultural collaboration adds an important responsibility: ensuring that people from different cultural backgrounds and communities can participate meaningfully without being expected to conform to one dominant way of communicating, organizing, leading, or making decisions.

Cultural difference itself is not the problem. Barriers often arise from inaccessible communication, stereotypes, histories of exclusion, unequal power, lack of trust, token representation, organizational practices, or failure to provide the resources people need to participate.

Effective multicultural collaboration therefore requires more than demographic diversity. It requires early and meaningful participation, shared authority, accessible communication, attention to history and power, respect for organizational autonomy, leadership opportunities, resources for participation, and clear accountability.

Cultural knowledge can help provide context, but it should never become a list of assumptions about how members of racial, ethnic, religious, linguistic, or other groups supposedly behave. Ask participants about their own experiences and preferences.

Strong collaborations also recognize differences within communities. No individual or organization should be expected to speak for an entire racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, disability, religious, or other group.

Finally, collaboration requires continued evaluation and adaptation. Communities change, organizations change, relationships develop, and new barriers may emerge. Participants should regularly examine who is involved, who has influence, how resources and responsibilities are shared, and whether the collaboration is producing the changes it was created to achieve.

___ A coalition is is two or more organizations working together on an issue.

___ Collaboration is two or more organization working together on multiple issues and goals in a long-term commitment.

___ Multicultural collaboration is is two or more organizations comprised of different cultural backgrounds working together.

___ Multicultural collaboration is important because it gets everyone involved, emphasizes common interest, and creates, both, community and a more just society.

___ Multicultural collaboration is built by stating objectives clearly, conducting outreach and membership development, creating leadership positions for everyone, and engaging in culturally sensitive activities.

Example: Defining and Unpacking the Social Determinants of Health and Health Equity–A Culture of Health Webinar

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) held the first webinar in its Culture of Health Webinar Series on November 29, 2018. The National Academies report Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity identified nine social determinants of health and how these determinants impact our health and the health of our communities. It features an example of actively engaging non-English-speaking communities. The report also defines health equity as the state in which everyone has the opportunity to attain full health potential and no one is disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of social position or any other socially defined circumstance. Read more.

Tool #1: Six Fundamental Patterns of Cultural Differences

These descriptions point out recurring causes of cross-cultural communication difficulties. Next time you find yourself in a confusing situation, and you suspect that cross-cultural differences are part of the problem, review this list. Ask yourself how culture may be shaping your reactions, and try to see the world from others' points of view. Remember that the ways people communicate vary widely between and sometimes within cultures.

Different communication styles

• Language usage is one aspect of communication style. Across cultures words and phrases are often used in different ways. For example, even in countries that share the English language, the meaning of "yes" varies from "maybe, I'll consider it" to "definitely so," with many shades in between.
• The degree of importance given to non-verbal communication is a major aspect of communication style. It includes facial expressions and gestures, seating arrangement, personal distance, and sense of time.
• The appropriate degree of assertiveness in communicating can add to cultural misunderstandings. For example, some white Americans consider raised voices a sign of a fight, while some Black, Jewish, and Italian Americans feel that an increase in volume is a sign of an exciting conversation among friends. So, some people may react with alarm to a loud discussion, when others may not.

Different attitudes toward conflict

• Some cultures view conflict as a positive thing, while others view it as something to be avoided. In the U.S., conflict is not usually desirable, but people often are encouraged to deal directly with conflicts that arise.
• Face-to-face meetings customarily are recommended as the way to work through problems that exist in the U.S. But in many Eastern countries, open conflict is seen as embarrassing or demeaning. As a rule, differences are best worked out quietly . A written exchange might be the favored means to address conflict.

Different approaches to completing tasks

• Various cultures move toward completing tasks in different ways. Factors involved are different access to resources, different judgments of rewards associated with task completion, different notions of time, and varied ideas about how relationship-building and task-oriented work should go together.
• When working together effectively on a task, cultures differ regarding importance placed on establishing relationships early in a collaboration. For example, Asian and Hispanic cultures tend to attach more emphasis on task completion toward the end as compared with European-Americans. European-Americans tend to focus immediately on the task at hand, and let relationships develop as they work on the task. This doesn't mean that people from various cultural backgrounds are more or less committed to accomplishing the task, or value relationships more or less, it just means they may pursue them differently.

Different decision-making styles

• In the U.S., decisions are frequently delegated, an official assigns responsibility for a matter to a subordinate.
• In many Southern European and Latin American countries, a strong value is placed on the individual having decision-making responsibilities.
• Majority rule is a common approach in the U.S., but consensus is the preferred mode in Japan.

Different attitudes about open emotion and personal matters

• In some cultures it is not appropriate to be frank about emotions, about the reasons behind a conflict or a misunderstanding, or about personal information.
• When dealing with conflict, be aware that others may feel differently than you about what they are comfortable revealing. Questions that seem natural to you (e.g., What was the conflict about? What was your role in the conflict? What was the sequence of events?) may seem intrusive to others.
• Variation in attitudes toward disclosure should be considered before concluding that you understand the views, experience, and goals of people you're working with .

Different approaches to knowing

• There can be big differences among cultural groups about how people come to know things (epistemologies).
• European cultures tend to believe that information acquired through cognitive means (counting, measuring) is more valid than other ways of gathering information.
• African cultures prefer symbolic imagery and rhythm as a mode of learning.
• Asian cultures tend to emphasize the validity of knowledge gained through striving for enlightenment or perfection.
• Some may want to do library research to understand a shared problem and identify solutions, while others may prefer to visit places and people who have experienced challenges like the one being faced to get a feeling for what has worked elsewhere.
• Research shows that Western society is paying more attention to other ways of knowing, because this can reveal different approaches to analyze and resolve problems.

Adapted from the AMPU Guide

Tool #2: An Exercise: Exploring Myths and Stereotypes

Instructions: This exercise helps people to practice listening and understanding, while simultaneously dealing with the content of some typical stereotypes. It is a useful group-building experience, particularly for people who want to share their ideas about the language of oppression. It requires a group leader/facilitator to provide the directions and help debrief the personal reactions of each pair.

Write the following myths on a flip chart or hand them out to everyone. (You can also have the group generate its own list of myths.)

• Immigrants take jobs that belong to real Americans.
• Blacks ruin every neighborhood they move into.
• Jews are powerful and control the media.
• Asians are model students and have educational advantages.
• All Latino men are macho and hot-tempered.
• Women belong in the kitchen.

Have people select a partner from a different ethnic, color or cultural background, or alternatively, the group leader can put people together in pairs.

Everyone should select one of the myths and discuss it with their partner.

• Person A states their position, opinion, or conflict about the myth, while B listens.
• Person B then restates or summarizes A's position while A listens.
• Person A corrects and clarifies what B said, until A's original position is accurately portrayed.
• Then A and B reverse roles.

The facilitator then reconvenes the full group to discuss:

• How does it make us feel to see and hear these statements?
• What is the impact of these kinds of myths and stereotypes?
• What have you done or what could you do to eliminate these stereotypes?
• How does it feel to listen and be listened to?

Adapted from materials in "Making the Grade: Community Workbook."

Tool #3: Collaboration Checklist

Use this checklist to assess to what degree you or your group is satisfied with the action or changes to be considered/discussed with partner(s).

Rate each factor from 1 to 5. Closer to 1 means "less satisfied" and closer to 5 means "more satisfied."

1. The scope of the project is clear:

• The benefit to clients is clear.
• Overall goals and objectives are defined.

2. Benefits to us are clear:

• Organizational benefits are sought.
• Individual needs/interests are met.

3. Responsibility/accountability is clear:

• Who is going to do what and by when?
• A mechanism for monitoring and correcting/adjusting plans is in place.

4. We can depend on each other:

• The appropriate people are involved.
• There is enough trust and respect for this project to work.

From: Support Center for Nonprofit Management/National Minority AIDS Council

Tool #4: Sample Ground Rules for Multicultural Collaborations

Many groups that collaborate find it useful to create ground rules for group behavior and collaboration operation. Agreeing to abide by these ground rules can help members to develop group norms and design an ideal environment where everyone feels comfortable .

You can create one set of rules that apply to all meetings, or create special rules for different occasions. Make sure that all participants have input into creating or approving the Ground Rules, and give each person a copy, or post them on a poster or on newsprint in a visible location. These rules relate specifically to multicultural issues. Use them with your group to create a climate that will work for you. These are just examples. Your collaborative group can make up its own.

The group agrees to...

• Share information about our groups and learn from others about theirs.
• Be respectful of the way that others want us to treat them. We will not demean , devalue, or in any way put people down (no making jokes at the expense of others ).
• Give new voices a chance, and not dominate the discussion.
• Combat actively and correct misinformation about the myths and stereotypes about our own groups and other groups.
• Keep our discussions here confidential, and respect people's privacy.
• Treat our own and other people's ideas and emotions with respect.
• Listen and not interrupt while one person speaks at a time.
• Not blame, accuse, or make generalizations.
• Disagree as long as nobody's feelings are hurt.
• Treat people as individuals, not as representatives of an entire group.
• Respect everyone's uniqueness and our differences.

Adapted from "From the Ground up! A Workbook on Coalition Building and Community Development."

Tool #5: How to Bridge Language Barriers in a Group

Arrange for bilingual translators or volunteers. Accommodating language differences may be time consuming but it is absolutely essential in a multicultural collaboration .
Determine whether meetings will be bilingual, or how to use translation. If at least half of the group speaks another language, have total translation of each statement. You may want to break up into small groups, each conducted in a different language, to ensure understanding and participation. The "report-back" and summary can be translated. If only a few people do not speak English, someone who is bilingual can sit near them and translate or answer their questions as the meeting progresses.
Encourage participants to raise questions or make statements in their primary language. You can provide translation for the rest of the group.
If a large contingent speaks another language they may want to hold their own separate meetings. In this case, make sure that the same agenda and issues are used in the parallel meetings. Request that answers to specific questions or a list of ideas will be brought back from both groups to connect the separate discussions and move the collaboration ahead.
Make sure that all written materials are produced, read, and used in all languages that the group speaks.
Consciously build a multicultural vocabulary, using terms and phrases that describe cultural relations as they should be. Be prepared for words to change action, and actions to change the collaborative in real ways.

Adapted from: "From the Ground Up! A Workbook on Coalition Building and Community Development."

• What is conflict transformation?

• Why is transforming conflicts in diverse communities important?

• How can conflicts be transformed?

• What are some of the challenges in transforming conflicts?

What is conflict transformation?

Conflict is a natural part of relationships, organizations, and community life. People may respond to conflict differently depending on personality, experience, culture, power, relationships, previous treatment, and the particular situation.

Conflicts can occur between individuals because of differences in goals, values, opinions, responsibilities, communication, or behavior. In some situations, conflict resolution techniques can help the people involved understand the disagreement, identify possible solutions, and reach an acceptable outcome.

Community conflicts may be more complex. They can involve organizations, neighborhoods, racial or ethnic communities, institutions, governments, or other groups. They may also be connected with unequal power, discrimination, competition for resources, historical harm, misinformation, institutional practices, or disagreement about public priorities.

In those situations, resolving the immediate dispute may not address the conditions that produced or continue to reinforce it.

Conflict transformation is a process for addressing an immediate conflict while also examining the relationships, structures, patterns, and conditions that contribute to it. The goal is not simply to end disagreement, but to create more constructive relationships, fairer processes, and lasting ways to address future problems.

Conflict transformation does not require people to erase meaningful differences or agree on everything. It can involve clarifying disagreement, changing harmful policies or practices, increasing meaningful participation, improving communication, repairing harm where possible, and developing ways for people or organizations to continue working together.

Why is transforming conflicts in diverse communities important?

Diversity itself does not cause conflict. Communities made up of people with different racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, linguistic, socioeconomic, disability, political, or other identities can cooperate effectively.

Conflict may become more difficult when differences interact with:

• Different experiences of the same issue. Communities may be affected differently by housing, education, transportation, public safety, environmental conditions, economic change, or other concerns.
• Histories of discrimination, exclusion, or harmful interaction. Previous experiences may shape current expectations and trust.
• Stereotypes, misinformation, or incomplete information. Media, political messages, institutions, social networks, and personal experience can all influence how groups understand one another.
• Unequal access to power or resources. Groups may have different levels of influence, funding, institutional authority, information, or representation in decision-making.
• Competition over real or perceived scarce resources. Housing, public funding, employment, school resources, land, services, or political influence may become sources of conflict.
• Communication and participation barriers. Language access, disability access, transportation, scheduling, technology, meeting practices, or unfamiliar procedures may prevent some people from participating fully.

Transforming these conflicts can take time, patience, humility, skilled facilitation, sustained participation, and a willingness to examine uncomfortable issues.

The effort can be worthwhile because communities often need continuing ways to make decisions across differences. Demographic change, migration, economic shifts, climate-related events, public emergencies, development, policy changes, and other conditions may bring new issues and relationships into community life.

Strong conflict-transformation processes can help communities respond to disagreement without treating difference itself as the problem.

How can conflicts be transformed?

The following four steps provide a general framework. Conflict transformation is not always linear. Groups may return to earlier steps as new information emerges, circumstances change, or relationships develop.

Participants may also move at different speeds. Do not force people toward reconciliation or agreement before they are ready or before serious concerns have been addressed.

• The people and institutions affected by the conflict recognize that a problem exists and identify who needs to be involved in addressing it. (Acknowledgement)
• Participants examine the conflict's underlying causes, experiences, harms, structures, and power relationships and determine what forms of repair, accountability, or change may be needed. (Reconciliation and Repair)
• Participants develop a shared understanding of what should be different in the future and identify strategies for getting there. (Envision and Strategize)
• Participants develop structures, relationships, resources, and accountability systems that help maintain progress and respond to future conflict. (Sustain)

Acknowledgement does not require every participant to accept the same explanation immediately. It does require enough recognition of the problem for people to begin examining it seriously.

Some participants may withdraw from the conflict, deny that it exists, blame another group, or fear that participation will expose them to further harm. Others may believe previous attempts at dialogue produced little change.

Useful questions include:

• What is happening?
• Who is affected?
• How do different participants describe the conflict?
• What evidence is available?
• What previous events or decisions may be influencing the current situation?
• Who has decision-making authority?
• Who has not yet been included?

What are some techniques for helping groups acknowledge the problem and decide whether they can work on it together?

• Facilitate dialogue or listening sessions in which participants can describe the conflict and how it affects them.
• Present relevant information, including community experience, public records, research, service data, or other evidence that can clarify the issue.
• Bring together respected participants, community leaders, institutional representatives, and people directly affected who are willing to publicly support a fair process for addressing the conflict.
• Hold smaller preparatory meetings when participants need additional information, support, or space to clarify their concerns before meeting with other groups.
• Develop a shared statement describing the problem, the purpose of the process, and what participants are committing to do.

Cultural traditions, languages, community organizations, faith communities, social networks, and other community resources may support conflict transformation. At the same time, participation may be limited when meetings lack interpretation, accessibility, transportation, or other needed supports.

Rather than treating culture or language as the obstacle, identify the specific conditions that help or hinder participation.

Example:

Families at a school are in conflict over how limited instructional and student-support resources are being used. Some parents believe their children are not receiving adequate academic attention, while others believe important language, disability, mental-health, or other supports are being unfairly blamed for broader problems at the school.

Instead of organizing parents into opposing racial or ethnic camps, a community organization works with families, students, teachers, administrators, interpreters, and other relevant participants to examine the available data and hear how different families experience the issue.

Separate listening sessions are offered when useful, followed by facilitated discussions involving people with different perspectives. Participants identify areas of agreement – such as wanting students to receive strong instruction and appropriate support – as well as areas where their experiences differ.

The group then identifies questions about staffing, resources, communication, language access, student support, and school decision-making that need to be addressed by the institution rather than attributing the problem to another community.

Reconciliation and Repair: Reconciliation can mean different things in different conflicts. It may involve rebuilding enough trust for people to cooperate, acknowledging harm, correcting misinformation, changing discriminatory practices, making restitution or reparation when appropriate, or creating more equitable relationships and institutions.

Reconciliation does not always mean restoring a previous relationship. In some situations, there was no healthy relationship to restore. The appropriate goal may instead be accountability, changed behavior, safer interaction, fairer institutions, or the ability to work together on specific issues.

Forgiveness should not be required as a condition of participation. People who have experienced serious harm should not be pressured to forgive, reconcile personally, or develop friendships before institutional or interpersonal problems have been addressed.

Conflict-transformation processes can help participants:

• See people as individuals rather than only as representatives of groups.
• Recognize discrimination, unequal treatment, historical harm, or other forms of injustice when evidence supports those concerns.
• Identify personal, organizational, and collective responsibilities for change.
• Find areas where cooperation is possible while respecting cultural identity, disagreement, autonomy, and different experiences.
• Develop strategies to address racism, discrimination, exclusion, or other structural causes of the conflict.

Approaches may include:

• Create voluntary opportunities for participants to spend time together through meals, community projects, recreation, cultural activities, faith communities, or other shared experiences.
• Invite participants who want to do so to share personal experiences related to the conflict. Storytelling, listening circles, a speak-out technique or fish-bowl method, or other facilitated formats may help people understand experiences different from their own.
• Bring together people involved in the conflict to compare their explanations of its causes and identify which concerns can be addressed collectively.
• Conduct public education about the conflict's root causes, including relevant history, institutional practices, discrimination, economic conditions, policies, and community experiences.
• Analyze structural relationships that may contribute to the problem, such as unequal access to services, housing, transportation, health care, education, employment, political influence, or other resources.
• Use cross-group perception exercises carefully. Participants may compare how they understand themselves, how they believe others see them, and what assumptions need clarification. Facilitators should intervene when stereotypes are repeated as facts.

Personal relationships can support conflict transformation, but friendship should not substitute for institutional change. People can care about one another while still disagreeing about policy, resources, accountability, or power.

Envision and Strategize: Conflict transformation looks beyond the immediate disagreement and asks what relationships, policies, institutions, and community conditions should look like in the future.

A visioning process can give participants an opportunity to identify what should change and translate that vision into practical strategies.

Skilled facilitation may be especially important when the conflict involves significant harm, unequal power, discrimination, trauma, or long-standing mistrust.

Questions may include:

• Where are we now?
• What is likely to happen if nothing changes?
• What do we want conditions and relationships to look like?
• What changes would move us toward that future?
• What can individuals, community groups, organizations, and institutions each do?
• Who has authority or resources needed to make those changes?
• How will people affected by the conflict participate in decisions?
• How will progress and accountability be measured?

Sustain: Conflict transformation is not complete once participants reach an agreement or complete a dialogue.

Communities need structures that help preserve progress, respond to new concerns, and prevent harmful conditions from re-emerging.

• Leadership support – Include people with formal authority, community leaders, residents, and others responsible for implementing or sustaining changes.
• Ongoing coordination – Establish a committee, working group, advisory body, or other structure that can monitor progress, respond to emerging conflicts, and maintain communication.
• Communication – Use the media and communication channels that participants actually use, including community media, radio, print, email, text, websites, social media, public meetings, and other accessible formats.
• Evaluation – Regularly examine whether relationships, participation, policies, services, resource distribution, or other conditions have changed because of the effort.
• Reflection and revision – Use evaluation and community feedback to revise the vision, strategies, responsibilities, and future actions.

Build facilitation and leadership teams that have credibility with the different communities and institutions involved in the conflict.

Avoid assuming that one “insider” can represent an entire community or that an “outsider” is automatically more neutral. Instead, consider relevant relationships, lived experience, facilitation skill, institutional role, language, community trust, and potential conflicts of interest when selecting facilitators or leaders.

The conflict-transformation process can be summarized as moving from an understanding of current conditions toward a desired future through intentional steps involving acknowledgement, analysis, repair, strategy, action, and continued evaluation.

What is happening today? Where is the conflict?	Who and what institutions need to be involved?	What does the desired future look like?
Who is directly affected by the conflict? What are the likely consequences if the conflict is not addressed? What concerns are most urgent? How is the conflict affected by local political, social, economic, cultural, or institutional conditions? What existing community, organizational, and institutional resources can support the process? What cultural traditions, relationships, community organizations, or participation barriers are relevant?	Who can help build relationships, facilitate communication, or move the process forward? Who has knowledge, relationships, trust, authority, or lived experience relevant to the conflict? What additional knowledge, skills, access, or support do participants need? Which organizations, social networks, agencies, institutions, and community groups can help sustain progress?	What is the long-term vision for relationships, participation, equity, and community well-being? Who will help maintain commitment to that vision? What systemic, organizational, policy, or resource changes are needed? What mechanisms will help ensure that affected communities continue to participate in decision-making?
Tools for Understanding Listening sessions Applied research Power analysis Community education Storytelling and speak-outs Affinity groups or caucuses Facilitated dialogue	Tools for Building Community Community organizing Leadership development Asset mapping Mediation and facilitation Cross-group projects	Tools for Supporting the Effort Community visioning Coalition building Community advisory groups Anti-racism and anti-discrimination learning Policy and systems change Evaluation

 

Transforming community conflict is rarely easy. Before beginning, participants should understand that the process may require significant time, funding, staff, facilitation, community expertise, interpretation, accessibility supports, data, and continuing organizational commitment.

What are some of the challenges in transforming conflicts?

It takes time and resources.

Long-standing conflicts are rarely transformed by a single meeting, dialogue, training, or public statement.

Break larger goals into manageable steps. Develop clear responsibilities and timelines, recognize progress, and communicate honestly about what has and has not changed.

Do not ask residents or community organizations to contribute substantial unpaid time indefinitely. Budget for facilitation, community expertise, interpretation, accessibility, outreach, childcare, transportation, data collection, evaluation, and other needs where appropriate.

Trust may already be low.

Participants may have experienced discrimination, previous failed collaborations, broken commitments, institutional harm, or conflict with one another.

Trust cannot be required at the beginning of the process. Begin with transparency, clear expectations, reliable follow-through, and structures that allow participants to hold one another accountable.

Power may be unequal.

One participant may control funding, employment, public policy, land, services, information, or other resources that directly affect another participant.

A process should not treat all parties as equally responsible when the underlying situation is unequal. Facilitators should examine what authority and resources each participant holds and whether additional protections, independent advocacy, or changes in process are needed.

Language and communication access may be inadequate.

A person should not have to be fluent in English in order to understand or participate meaningfully in a community process conducted by institutions serving a multilingual community.

Depending on participants' needs, provide:

• Qualified spoken-language interpreters
• Translated written materials
• Sign-language interpretation
• Captioning
• Accessible electronic or large-print materials
• Plain-language information
• Additional time for interpreted discussion

Consecutive interpretation may work in smaller meetings. Simultaneous interpretation can be more practical when several languages are involved or when time is limited.

Interpretation and translation should be planned and budgeted from the beginning rather than treated as an optional addition after meetings have already been designed.

English-language learning opportunities can be valuable when community members want them, but English classes are not a substitute for providing meaningful language access to public meetings, services, programs, or conflict-transformation processes.

Participants may disagree about the goal of the process.

Some participants may want restored relationships. Others may want a policy changed, resources redistributed, harmful behavior stopped, an apology, compensation, greater representation, or simply a fair way to coexist.

Clarify goals early and revisit them throughout the process.

Dialogue may not be enough.

If the conflict is connected with discriminatory rules, unequal resources, inaccessible services, harmful institutional practices, or other structural conditions, improving communication alone will not resolve it.

Link dialogue with specific action, responsibility, timelines, and evaluation.

In Summary

Conflict is a normal part of community life, but some conflicts involve more than interpersonal disagreement. They may be connected with history, discrimination, institutional practices, unequal power, competition for resources, or different experiences of community conditions.

Conflict transformation addresses both the immediate dispute and the relationships, systems, and conditions that contribute to it.

A useful framework includes acknowledging the conflict, examining root causes and needed repair, developing a vision and strategies for change, and creating structures that sustain progress.

Diversity itself should not be treated as the cause of conflict. Cultural, racial, ethnic, linguistic, religious, disability, and other differences can become relevant when institutions fail to provide access, stereotypes shape decisions, historical harms remain unresolved, or power and resources are distributed unequally.

Reconciliation should also not be confused with forced friendship, forgiveness, or agreement. Depending on the situation, successful conflict transformation may mean rebuilding relationships, changing policy, repairing harm, increasing accountability, redistributing resources, creating safer processes, or developing ways for people with continuing disagreements to work together fairly.

People directly affected by the conflict should have meaningful roles in defining the problem, identifying priorities, developing strategies, and evaluating results. No single individual should be expected to represent an entire racial, ethnic, cultural, or other community.

Effective processes require adequate time, resources, language and disability access, skilled facilitation, attention to power, and a connection between dialogue and action.

The goal is not simply to reduce visible disagreement. It is to create relationships, institutions, and community processes that are better able to address disagreement fairly and prevent the conditions that caused the conflict from continuing.

___ Conflict transformation is important in diverse communities to resolve conflicts and to promote peace among groups of different race, ethnicity, and culture. It is a process that takes time, patience, humility, a long-term commitment, and a willingness to trust and to take risks.

___ Acknowledging conflict is the first (often most difficult) step toward resolving it.

___ Reconciliation allows participants to move past their differences by making amends and offering restoration to bring groups together.

___ Envisioning and strategizing has participants think ahead to the future to move from dialogue to resolving the conflict through action.

___ Sustaining asks how can we ensure that the transformed conflicts and strengthened alliances remain that way?

___ To transform conflict, diverse groups must be brought together to discuss problems and causes and to
work together to address the problems.

___ It is important to create environments for diverse groups to participate in activities and
share common ground.

___ These groups need safe places to envision common goals and strategize for the future.

___ Communities should establish ways to sustain abilities to work together and
prevent future conflict.

EXAMPLE 1: Solidarity Mural in Dubuque, IA

In 2020 the City of Dubuque, IA, was approached by Voices Productions and a local artist Shelby Fry to create the Solidarity Mural as a visual embodiment of unity and message of inclusiveness. City Manager, Michael C. Van Milligen approved the design for implementation on the East side of Five Flags Civic Center on Main Street in downtown Dubuque, providing the opportunity for that visual statement to be placed on a public building, demonstrating the City's support for Black Lives Matter and ongoing effort to inspire a change in the mindset of what Dubuque is and can be.

A full description of the mural, it's creation, and it's meaning can be find at this link to the city of Duquque website.

In order to work effectively in a culturally and ethnically diverse community, a community builder needs to understand how people are already connected, how information moves, where people seek support, and who has influence or responsibility in different settings.

It is not uncommon to hear someone say, “We were not able to engage that community because they are not organized. They have no leaders.”

That conclusion may reflect the observer’s expectations more than the community’s reality. Many communities have formal and informal networks, trusted relationships, institutions, organizations, businesses, cultural groups, faith communities, family networks, online spaces, and other ways of sharing information and providing support. These structures may not look like the organizations or leadership models that outsiders expect.

Understanding those relationships can help community builders identify appropriate partners, recognize existing strengths, avoid duplicating work that is already happening, and create more meaningful opportunities for participation.

What do we mean by social organization? Social organization refers to the relationships, networks, groups, institutions, and patterns of interaction through which people stay connected, share information and resources, make decisions, provide support, and participate in community life.

Within these networks, different people may exercise leadership. Leadership can be formal or informal. A leader may hold an elected or appointed position, coordinate a community organization, organize around a specific issue, provide cultural or religious guidance, connect people with resources, mentor young people, operate a business, or simply be someone others trust and turn to.

No single leader should automatically be assumed to represent an entire racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, linguistic, disability, or other community. Different people may have influence around different issues, and communities may contain substantial differences in experience, politics, class, religion, generation, migration history, geography, and other areas.

In this section, you will learn how to recognize different forms of social organization and leadership and how to build respectful relationships with the people and organizations already active in a community.

Take a moment and think about a community or group you know well.

Where do people go for information or help? What organizations, institutions, businesses, informal networks, or relationships connect people? Who is trusted around different issues?

Now consider a community you know less well.

What assumptions might you be making about how that community is organized? What would you need to learn directly from its members?

How do culture and other factors affect the social organization of a community?

Culture can influence how people understand family, community responsibility, leadership, religion, communication, mutual aid, education, work, decision-making, and other parts of social life.

But culture is only one influence. Social organization may also be shaped by:

• History
• Migration and settlement patterns
• Racism, discrimination, and exclusion
• Economic conditions
• Geography
• Language
• Religion and spirituality
• Age and generation
• Disability
• Housing patterns
• Schools and educational institutions
• Employment and occupational networks
• Technology and social media
• Public policy and institutions
• Relationships with a place of origin or other communities

Cultural knowledge can provide useful context, but it should not be used as a shortcut for predicting how a particular person or community will behave.

Communities change over time. Younger and older generations may participate differently. New organizations may form while others become less important. Migration, economic change, technology, political events, neighborhood change, and new relationships can all reshape social networks and leadership.

Family and kinship networks

Family and extended-family relationships can be important sources of support in many communities. Relatives may help one another find housing, employment, childcare, transportation, financial assistance, health care, or other resources.

The importance and structure of family networks vary widely. Do not assume that a person's racial, ethnic, or national background tells you who they consider family, who makes decisions, or who holds authority.

Instead, ask how people describe their own support networks and relationships.

Mutual-aid, hometown, and regional associations

Some communities have organizations based on a shared hometown, region, language, profession, migration experience, cultural background, or other connection.

For example, some Chinese American communities have historically included regional or hometown associations sometimes known as huiguan. These organizations have served a variety of social, cultural, business, charitable, and community functions.

Similar hometown, regional, mutual-aid, and cultural associations exist in many communities throughout the world.

Their importance varies from place to place. Before assuming that a particular association is influential, ask residents what role it currently plays and who participates in it.

Faith communities

Churches, mosques, synagogues, temples, gurdwaras, and other faith communities can provide spiritual support as well as social connection, education, mutual aid, advocacy, cultural activities, food assistance, youth programs, and other services.

Historically, Black churches in the United States have played important roles in civil-rights organizing, mutual aid, education, political participation, and community leadership. Faith institutions have also played important roles in many immigrant, refugee, Indigenous, rural, and other communities.

At the same time, not everyone participates in a faith community, and the political or social role of a religious institution can vary greatly.

Do not assume that the most visible religious leader is automatically the primary leader for every issue.

Cultural, recreational, and social networks

Sports leagues, arts organizations, cultural associations, dance groups, community gardens, parent groups, neighborhood events, social clubs, and other activities may connect people who do not participate in formal civic organizations.

Soccer, basketball, cricket, baseball, dance, music, and many other activities can create social networks in particular communities. Rather than assuming that one activity is especially important because of ethnicity or nationality, observe what residents actually participate in and ask which activities matter locally.

Savings, business, and economic networks

Informal and formal financial networks can also support community life.

Rotating savings and credit groups exist in many parts of the world and may be known by different names, such as susu, tanda, hui, or other locally used terms.

Businesses may also serve as important gathering places and information networks. Grocery stores, restaurants, barber shops, salons, markets, professional associations, and other businesses may connect residents and help circulate information.

These institutions should be approached as potential partners rather than simply as places to gain access to a particular population.

Schools, language programs, and cultural education

Schools, parent organizations, after-school programs, language schools, colleges, libraries, and other educational institutions may play important roles in community networks.

Some communities establish language or cultural-education programs to help children and adults maintain or develop language skills, cultural knowledge, or relationships across generations.

These organizations can be valuable partners when the issue is relevant to their participants, but participation should be based on mutual goals rather than treating educational programs as convenient places to recruit people.

Digital and online networks

Community organization increasingly occurs through text messaging, social media, messaging applications, neighborhood groups, email lists, online forums, livestreams, and other digital platforms.

Some highly influential community members may have no formal title or physical organization but may connect large networks of people through digital communication.

At the same time, do not rely entirely on digital outreach. Internet access, platform use, disability access, language, privacy concerns, and technology preferences vary.

How do culture and other factors affect community leadership?

Communities rarely have only one kind of leader.

Leadership may include:

• Elected or appointed leaders
• Neighborhood and resident leaders
• Faith leaders
• Business owners and professional leaders
• Organizers and advocates
• Youth leaders
• Older adults with longstanding community relationships
• Cultural leaders, artists, and tradition-bearers
• Educators
• Health and human-service professionals
• Leaders of tenant, parent, worker, disability, immigrant, or other community organizations
• Informal connectors who regularly help others find information or resources
• People with lived experience of the issue being addressed

A person may be influential around one issue but not another. A respected pastor may be an important partner on housing or youth concerns in one community but may have little role in business development or disability advocacy. A business owner may have strong economic relationships but limited influence among young people. A youth organizer may have stronger connections with young residents than a formal neighborhood association does.

Leadership is therefore best understood as a network rather than a single hierarchy.

Ask:

• Who do residents trust on this particular issue?
• Who has direct experience with the issue?
• Who already organizes or communicates with people affected?
• Who has formal decision-making authority?
• Who has relationships across different parts of the community?
• Whose perspectives are often missing from formal leadership?
• Are there younger, less visible, or informal leaders who should also be included?

How can you learn about the social organization and leadership of a community?

Begin with humility and curiosity.

Do not assume that the same organization, institution, or type of leader plays the same role in every community.

Be open about what you do and do not know. You might say:

“I want to make sure we understand how people in this community are already connected and what organizations or relationships are important. I don't want to assume that I know who speaks for everyone. Who do you think we should talk with, and what should we understand before moving forward?”

Asking people to share their knowledge does not mean expecting them to provide extensive unpaid cultural education. If someone is contributing significant time, expertise, facilitation, interpretation, or consultation, consider appropriate compensation.

Look for both formal and informal networks.

Formal organizations may include neighborhood associations, schools, businesses, nonprofits, faith communities, professional associations, advocacy organizations, mutual-aid groups, libraries, cultural organizations, and public agencies.

Informal networks may exist among neighbors, parents, workers, caregivers, young people, tenants, recreation groups, extended families, online communities, or other relationships.

Ask several people rather than relying on one community contact.

Different people may identify different leaders and organizations. That difference can provide useful information about the diversity within the community.

Questions might include:

• Where do people go when they need information or help?
• What organizations or institutions do people trust?
• Where do people gather?
• Who organizes community activities?
• Who communicates with different generations or neighborhoods?
• Who has influence on this particular issue?
• Who may not participate in the most visible organizations?
• What previous community-building efforts have occurred?
• What worked and what created problems?

Identify gathering places and communication networks

Residents may connect through community centers, libraries, cultural events, neighborhood meetings, markets, schools, sports leagues, faith communities, restaurants, businesses, parks, online groups, or other spaces.

Participate in public gatherings when participation is welcomed. Introduce yourself and explain why you are there rather than observing people as though they are subjects of research.

Ask organizers how people learned about the event and what communication channels they use.

Community newspapers, radio, podcasts, newsletters, websites, social media, bulletin boards, and other local communication can also help identify organizations and issues.

Include networks that formal leadership may overlook

Parent and caregiver networks, tenant groups, youth organizations, disability communities, worker networks, mutual-aid groups, neighborhood volunteers, and other informal relationships may contain leaders who are not visible through traditional civic structures.

Do not assume that women should be approached primarily through grocery stores, schools, salons, or caregiving roles. Ask where people already gather and organize rather than assigning networks according to gender.

Work with established leaders without treating them as gatekeepers

Established community leaders can provide history, relationships, knowledge, and credibility. Their involvement may be extremely valuable.

At the same time, no leader should have to give outsiders “permission” to speak with every other member of the community, and no single leader should be treated as the sole representative of the group.

Engage established leadership while also creating direct opportunities for residents, younger leaders, people with different political perspectives, and others whose voices may be less visible.

Some leadership structures may reflect unequal access based on gender, class, race, caste, disability, age, immigration status, or other factors.

Respecting a community does not require ignoring inequity. At the same time, outside community builders should avoid arriving with the assumption that they understand a community's internal relationships better than its members do.

Listen to people affected by the inequity, support their leadership, and examine how your own process can avoid reinforcing exclusion.

Involve young people without making them responsible for adult language access

Young people may have valuable knowledge about schools, social networks, recreation, digital communication, neighborhood life, and relationships across generations.

They should be included as community participants and leaders when appropriate.

However, children and adolescents should not routinely be expected to interpret sensitive information for parents or other adults simply because they are bilingual.

Use qualified interpreters when interpretation is needed, particularly for health care, legal matters, education decisions, public services, conflict, or other sensitive situations.

Connect with organizations that already work with the community

Local, regional, and national organizations may provide useful relationships, research, advocacy, technical assistance, or community connections.

Depending on the issue, relevant partners may include civil-rights organizations, immigrant and refugee organizations, Tribal organizations, disability organizations, cultural associations, professional associations, worker organizations, legal-service organizations, faith communities, or others.

The most useful organization may not be the largest or most nationally recognized one. Local organizations may have deeper knowledge of current relationships and concerns.

Connect through programs when the partnership is relevant to participants

English-language learning programs, citizenship programs, workforce programs, libraries, schools, health organizations, cultural programs, and other services may connect with many residents.

Do not treat service programs simply as convenient recruitment sites. Work with the organization and its participants to determine whether the community-building effort is relevant, whether outreach is appropriate, and how people want to participate.

Learn from culturally significant neighborhoods without treating them as field sites

Places such as Chinatowns, Little Indias, Koreatowns, historic Black neighborhoods, immigrant business districts, Tribal communities, and other culturally significant areas may include businesses, cultural institutions, community organizations, places of worship, public art, community media, and other important resources.

Visit public spaces respectfully, support local institutions, and build relationships with people and organizations rather than simply walking through the area looking for people who can provide access to the community.

What challenges should you be aware of, and how can they be addressed?

Different people may identify different leaders.

A community contact may believe that they are the most appropriate person to represent the community or may have strong opinions about other leaders.

Listen without immediately choosing sides. Explain that you are learning about the community and want to hear from multiple people before deciding how participation will be structured.

Avoid sharing private comments that one person has made about another.

People may have questions about who you represent.

Be transparent about your organization, funding, goals, authority, and what decisions have already been made.

Ask about previous community-building efforts. Who initiated them? What happened? Were commitments fulfilled? Did residents have meaningful influence? Were some communities excluded?

An advisory group or planning group with people from different parts of the community may help guide the effort, but it should not become a substitute for broader participation.

You will not know everything about every community.

Cultural humility is more useful than pretending to be an expert.

Be willing to say that you do not know something, conduct your own research, ask respectful questions, and listen when people explain how they understand their community.

Do not place the full responsibility for your education on community members.

Being part of the community does not mean you understand every member of it.

A community builder may share a racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, language, disability, or other identity with some participants.

Shared identity can provide useful experience, language skills, relationships, or familiarity, but it does not make someone representative of everyone in the community.

Differences in age, class, gender, politics, migration history, neighborhood, religion, profession, disability, generation, or other experiences may still matter.

Diverse community-building teams can bring together different relationships and forms of knowledge, but demographic diversity alone does not guarantee credibility or fairness. Team members also need strong facilitation skills, accountability, cultural humility, and clear roles.

Communities contain disagreement and internal diversity.

Political disagreement, competition for resources, class differences, regional identities, religion, organizational history, personal conflict, or other factors may produce different factions or perspectives within a community.

Do not treat disagreement within a racial or ethnic community as evidence that the community is disorganized.

Reach out broadly, understand the source of disagreement, and avoid creating a process that unintentionally gives one faction authority over everyone else.

Community leaders and organizations may identify needs for additional support.

Some organizations may want assistance with leadership development, fundraising, facilitation, technology, evaluation, coalition building, language access, communications, or other skills.

Ask what support would be useful rather than assuming that local leaders need to be “trained” by outsiders.

Support may involve connecting organizations with funding, technical assistance, peer organizations, consultants, public agencies, universities, or other resources.

Whenever possible, strengthen existing community capacity rather than creating unnecessary dependence on outside organizations.

In Summary

Communities are rarely “unorganized.” People usually have formal and informal relationships through which they share information, provide support, solve problems, maintain culture, and exercise leadership.

Those networks may include families, neighborhood groups, mutual-aid organizations, businesses, schools, cultural associations, sports and recreation groups, faith communities, online networks, advocacy organizations, and many other forms of connection.

Culture can influence social organization and leadership, but cultural identity does not determine how an individual or community will behave. History, migration, discrimination, economics, geography, institutions, generation, technology, and other factors also shape community relationships.

Strong community builders therefore avoid using cultural profiles as formulas. They ask residents how the community is organized, identify several sources of leadership, understand differences within communities, and examine who may be missing from formal decision-making.

Established leaders can be important partners, but no single leader or organization should automatically be treated as the voice of an entire racial, ethnic, cultural, religious, linguistic, disability, or other community.

Relationship-building requires transparency, humility, time, language and disability access, respect for community knowledge, and follow-through on commitments.

The goal is not to learn the “correct” leader or organizing style for every cultural group. It is to understand how people in a particular community are actually connected, recognize the assets and leadership already present, and create opportunities for those people and organizations to shape the work that affects them.

___ Culture affects the social organization and leadership structure of groups.

___ Different cultures have different social organization. Communities should identify structural points in order to bring diverse groups together.

___ Meeting with ethnic and cultural group leaders, discussing group members' culture and heritage, and gathering information on the cultural groups in your community can facilitate building community between diverse groups.

___ Various institutions (e.g., churches, families) function differently in different cultural groups. Learning how different groups interact with institutions can help guide efforts to make change.

___ Building on existing cultural traditions in a group is important in order to engage the members.

Example: Communities Driving Health Equity - Kokua Kalihi Valley

Kokua Kalihi Valley is enacting a vision of health that extends beyond the clinic and into the community. It combines health care and culture, such as connecting with the land, to create holistic community health. See how Kokua Kalihi Valley is moving health equity beyond just the clinic.

The information in this section is based on previous work by Chavis, Lee, and Buchanan (2001). This work was supported, in part, by grants from the Ford Foundation, Mott Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and American Psychological Association.

Communities are continually changing. Migration, demographic shifts, economic change, development, displacement, public policy, natural disasters, and other forces can bring people with different racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious, socioeconomic, disability, and other experiences into closer relationship.

Diversity is not new to most communities, nor does demographic change itself create exclusion. The more important question is whether community institutions, organizations, services, public spaces, and decision-making processes allow people with different backgrounds and experiences to participate fully and equitably.

What is an inclusive community?

An inclusive community:

• Respects the dignity, identities, experiences, and contributions of all community members and works to ensure equitable access to resources, opportunities, services, and participation.
• Works to prevent and address discrimination, exclusion, harassment, and other forms of inequity.
• Engages people meaningfully in decisions that affect their lives and communities.
• Values diversity while also recognizing differences in history, access, power, and experience.
• Responds promptly and appropriately to racist and other discriminatory incidents.
• Examines whether policies, programs, institutions, and decision-making practices create unnecessary barriers for particular communities.
• Makes participation accessible through appropriate language access, disability access, transportation, scheduling, childcare, technology, and other supports.

Why is building an inclusive community important?

• Exclusion and injustice based on identity or circumstance can cause harm and limit people's opportunities, participation, safety, and well-being.
• People affected by community decisions should have meaningful opportunities to help shape those decisions.
• Diversity can strengthen community life by bringing together different experiences, relationships, histories, skills, knowledge, cultures, and ideas.
• Inclusive institutions are better able to understand and respond to the people they serve.
• Communities are stronger when residents can participate without being expected to hide, minimize, or abandon important parts of their identities.

Acts of discrimination or hate can reveal problems that communities had not adequately addressed, but inclusion should not begin only after a crisis. Communities can build relationships, equitable systems, and responsive institutions before harm occurs.

When should you build an inclusive community?

An inclusive community can and should be built at any time. Inclusion is an ongoing responsibility rather than a project that begins only after a discriminatory incident.

The need may become especially visible when:

• A discriminatory or hateful incident occurs.
• Residents report exclusion, unequal treatment, or barriers to participation.
• Community demographics are changing.
• Leadership or decision-making bodies do not reflect the communities affected by their decisions.
• Some populations experience poorer access to services, resources, or opportunities.
• Conflict exists among communities or between residents and institutions.
• A new policy, development, institution, or economic change may affect communities differently.

It is useful to understand what is motivating the effort because that motivation may affect:

• The strategies and sequence of activities selected. A community responding to an immediate discriminatory incident may need safety, accountability, communication, or conflict-transformation strategies first. A community beginning proactively may start with assessment, relationship-building, policy review, or public education.
• The resources available. Institutions, foundations, governments, community organizations, businesses, and residents may contribute different kinds of funding, expertise, relationships, space, or staff time.
• The level of support and resistance. Groups and institutions with greater formal power may support, resist, or remain neutral toward proposed changes. Understanding those positions can help communities plan realistically.
• The pace of progress. Progress may occur more quickly when people with decision-making authority and communities directly affected both support the effort.
• The outcomes expected. Raising awareness, changing relationships, improving accessibility, changing policy, redistributing resources, expanding leadership, and reducing disparities are different goals and require different measures of success.

Do your homework and gather information about the community.

Learn who lives, works, studies, owns businesses, uses services, and participates in community life. Consider racial and ethnic identity, language, disability, age, socioeconomic circumstances, religion, migration history, housing status, geography, and other factors relevant to the issue you are addressing.

Also learn about the community's history. How have migration, development, displacement, discrimination, public investment, economic change, housing, transportation, schools, and other institutions shaped present-day conditions?

Sources may include local government and planning agencies, Census data, community assessments, public records, schools, libraries, local media, universities, community organizations, neighborhood groups, businesses, and residents themselves.

Walking, rolling, biking, or traveling through the community can also provide useful information, but observation should not replace conversations with people who live there.

Keep in mind: Community members may associate you with the organization, funder, institution, government agency, or identity group they believe you represent.

Be transparent about who you are, why information is being collected, who is funding the effort, what decisions have already been made, and how community input will be used.

Work with people from different parts of the community, but do not expect a few individuals to represent everyone who shares their identity.

Ask about the characteristics, histories, institutions, and experiences that shape different parts of the community. Avoid treating racial or ethnic identity as the only meaningful difference.

Learn about the social organization of different communities, including formal organizations, informal networks, gathering places, communication channels, mutual-aid systems, institutions, and leaders.

Identify major events and decisions that have affected the community. These might include elections, development projects, closures of major employers, changes in housing costs, natural disasters, public-health emergencies, changes in transportation, school policies, immigration enforcement, environmental hazards, or other events.

Pay attention to whether those events affected different communities in different ways.

Tip: Equitable participation does not necessarily mean collecting the exact same number of interviews from every racial, ethnic, or cultural group.

Instead, develop a sampling and outreach approach that reflects the purpose of the assessment, the size and diversity of different communities, who is most affected by the issue, and whose perspectives have historically been missing.

Use multiple methods – such as interviews, focus groups, surveys, listening sessions, community meetings, observation, and existing data – so that conclusions are not based on one type of participant or one highly visible leader.

Participate respectfully in community events and activities when attendance is welcomed. These events may provide opportunities to learn about community priorities, organizations, histories, and networks.

Do not treat cultural events primarily as opportunities to collect information or recruit people. Be clear about your purpose and respect the event's focus and organizers.

Engage residents, community organizations, and leaders from the beginning.

Do not wait until a plan has already been developed to invite communities that will be affected by it.

Consider establishing a community advisory group, planning committee, resident council, or another structure that brings together people with different experiences and perspectives.

Formal leaders can be valuable participants, but include people without formal titles as well. Young people, renters, people with disabilities, workers, parents and caregivers, residents with lived experience of the issue, small-business owners, multilingual residents, and others may hold knowledge that formal institutions do not.

Be especially attentive to communities that have historically had less access to formal decision-making.

Identify community strengths and assets as well as needs and barriers.

Work with participants to identify entry points and strategies for building an inclusive community.

Ask how different people describe the issue and what they believe is causing it.

When discrimination or exclusion is involved, distinguish among:

• People and communities experiencing harm
• People, organizations, policies, or institutions responsible for the harmful action or condition
• People or institutions with the ability to intervene
• People who may not yet recognize how the issue affects them

Avoid reducing complex situations to fixed categories of “perpetrators,” “victims,” or “bystanders” without examining the actual circumstances.

Some people may be ready to support change immediately, while others may need more information, relationship-building, evidence, accountability, or institutional pressure.

Create equitable opportunities to participate and influence decisions.

Inclusion does not simply mean inviting everyone into the same room.

Consider who has:

• Decision-making authority
• Access to information
• Funding or staff resources
• Time to participate
• Transportation
• Language access
• Disability access
• Childcare
• Technology
• Confidence that their participation will matter

Processes and procedures should help participants contribute meaningfully even when they enter the process with different levels of institutional power.

Provide qualified interpreters, translated materials, captioning, sign-language interpretation, accessible electronic formats, plain-language information, and other communication supports when needed.

Tip: When several concerns have been identified, consider:

• How serious or urgent each concern is
• Who is most affected and how
• What may happen if the concern is not addressed
• Whether the community has the authority, partnerships, resources, and capacity needed to address it
• Whether addressing the concern could reduce significant inequities or remove barriers for people who have been underserved
• What residents and relevant data identify as priorities

A shared goal can help people work together, but a concern should not be prioritized only because it affects the largest number of people. An issue affecting a smaller group may still involve serious harm or inequity.

Create opportunities for people from different communities to identify similarities and differences.

Relationships across differences can help people see one another as individuals rather than as stereotypes or representatives of an entire group.

At the same time, focusing only on shared experiences can hide meaningful differences in history, discrimination, economic conditions, power, language, disability, immigration experience, or access to resources.

Use broad ideas such as “quality of life,” “belonging,” “opportunity,” “healthy community,” or “safe and accessible neighborhoods” as starting points for discussion, and ask participants what those ideas mean to them.

Build in voluntary opportunities for informal conversation, shared meals, community projects, recreation, arts, or other activities that allow relationships to develop naturally.

Community festivals, public art, heritage events, cultural programs, storytelling, and other activities can help residents learn about one another when the communities represented help determine how their traditions and histories are presented.

Help participants understand the conditions that shape different community experiences.

Learning about one another's traditions is valuable, but inclusion also requires attention to structural conditions.

Depending on the issue, those conditions may include:

• Racism and other forms of discrimination
• Housing and land-use policy
• Employment and wages
• Education
• Transportation
• Health care
• Environmental conditions
• Public safety
• Immigration policy
• Disability access
• Political representation
• Access to financial resources

Without attention to these conditions, an inclusion effort may improve relationships while leaving important barriers unchanged.

Identify and build on community assets.

Assets are not limited to cultural traditions or identity.

They may include:

• Residents' knowledge and lived experience
• Community organizations
• Businesses
• Cultural and faith institutions
• Languages
• Artists and cultural workers
• Professional expertise
• Youth leadership
• Older adults' knowledge and relationships
• Mutual-aid networks
• Parks, libraries, schools, and community spaces
• Advocacy and organizing experience
• Community history
• Relationships with public institutions and other communities

Create opportunities for communities to share these assets with one another without reducing people to cultural exhibits or expecting them to provide unpaid education.

Community media, local journalism, podcasts, radio, exhibits, public programs, websites, and other communication channels can help highlight community assets and challenge misinformation.

Identify, address, and transform conflict.

Conflict may arise because people have different priorities, because stereotypes or misinformation shape perceptions, because past harm remains unresolved, or because groups and institutions have unequal access to resources or power.

Cultural difference itself should not be treated as the cause of conflict.

People vary in how they express disagreement for many reasons, including personality, organizational role, previous experiences, language, culture, and power.

Avoid assigning particular conflict styles to whole racial, ethnic, religious, or cultural groups.

The goal is not to eliminate disagreement. It is to create fair processes for discussing disagreement, addressing harm, resolving issues where possible, and working together where shared interests exist.

A skilled facilitator may be useful when conflict is significant.

Select facilitators based on relevant skill, trust, experience, accessibility, language capacity, understanding of the issue, and potential conflicts of interest. Do not assume that a facilitator is more or less neutral simply because of their identity.

Ensure institutional support for inclusion, equity, and justice.

Institutions such as local government, schools, health systems, businesses, media organizations, community organizations, and faith communities can strongly influence whether inclusion efforts succeed.

Their policies, funding, services, facilities, hiring practices, public communication, and decision-making authority can either reduce or reinforce barriers.

Equity involves creating fair access, opportunities, resources, and conditions while recognizing that different people may face different barriers.

Justice involves fair treatment, rights, accountability, and changing conditions or systems that produce or maintain inequity.

Engage institutional leaders where their authority or resources are relevant, but also identify the staff, residents, workers, students, customers, or community members who experience the institution's practices directly.

Ask institutions to identify concrete actions rather than relying only on statements of support.

These might include:

• Policy changes
• Budget commitments
• Accessibility improvements
• Language access
• Changes in hiring or contracting
• Community representation in decision-making
• Improvements to complaint and accountability processes
• Data collection and public reporting

Acknowledge and celebrate successful collective action.

Shared accomplishments can strengthen relationships and show that cooperation produces meaningful results.

Take time to recognize progress, including smaller milestones.

Celebrations may include a shared meal, community event, public recognition, storytelling, an open house, arts activities, or another form chosen by participants.

Make sure recognition reflects the range of people and organizations that contributed, including community members whose work may have been less visible.

Celebration should not replace evaluation. Participants should also examine what remains unfinished and whether some communities experienced the effort differently from others.

Sustain relationships, strategies, and changes at multiple levels.

Building an inclusive community is not a one-time event. Communities, institutions, relationships, and challenges continue to change.

Progress may be uneven. An initiative may succeed in one area while encountering resistance or unintended effects in another.

Sustain the relationships, policies, programs, communication systems, and accountability structures that have been useful.

Create continuing opportunities for cooperation among residents and organizations.

When a successful program or partnership should continue, identify sustainable staffing, funding, leadership, and institutional responsibility rather than relying indefinitely on temporary grants or volunteer labor.

Keep in mind: Inclusive-community efforts are sometimes framed as either/or choices: dialogue or action; assets or needs; race or class; individuals or institutions; relationships or neighborhood improvement.

These approaches often work best together. A comprehensive effort may address relationships, individual behavior, organizational practice, policy, access, resources, and community conditions at the same time.

Establish an accountability group, committee, resident council, or other mechanism to monitor commitments and changes related to inclusion.

Accountability might include:

• Regular public progress reports
• Resident feedback
• Review of participation and leadership
• Evaluation of disparities or barriers
• Tracking institutional commitments
• Public meetings or hearings
• Transparent complaint and response systems

Encourage people who demonstrate commitment to inclusion, equity, accountability, and community participation to take on leadership roles in public institutions, community organizations, businesses, schools, and other settings.

In Summary

Building an inclusive community means creating conditions in which people from different backgrounds and experiences can participate meaningfully, access community resources and opportunities, influence decisions, and be treated with dignity and fairness.

Inclusion requires more than celebrating diversity or inviting people into existing structures. Communities should examine whether those structures themselves create barriers through language, disability access, transportation, scheduling, cost, representation, institutional history, discriminatory practices, or unequal decision-making power.

Effective efforts begin with learning about the community. Gather information from several sources, understand local history, identify formal and informal networks, and include people directly affected by the issues being addressed.

No single leader or organization should be expected to represent an entire racial, ethnic, cultural, linguistic, religious, disability, socioeconomic, or other community.

Strong inclusion efforts recognize both shared goals and meaningful differences. They build on community assets while also addressing discrimination, institutional barriers, unequal access to resources, and other structural conditions.

Conflict should be expected at times, but cultural difference itself should not be treated as the source of conflict. Fair processes, skilled facilitation, accountability, and attention to power can help communities work through disagreement constructively.

Institutions also have important responsibilities. Statements of support should be connected with concrete policies, resources, accessibility, language access, representation, evaluation, and accountability.

Finally, building an inclusive community is an ongoing process. Relationships, programs, leadership, policies, and community conditions need continued attention and evaluation.

The goal is not simply to create a community in which different groups coexist. It is to create a community in which people can participate fully, maintain meaningful identities, influence the decisions that affect them, and work together to create more equitable conditions.

___ The first step to making change is for communities to acknowledge their need to become inclusive and discussing how to make an effort.

___ Strategies to change should target multiple levels-individuals, groups, and institutions.

___ The most influential leaders representing the major groups in the community should be engaged from the start to provide guidance.

___ Community councils can often help identify potential entry points and/or strategies for building an inclusive community.

___ Any effort for change should bring together people representing different groups as equals in terms of power, respect, and importance.

___ Creating opportunities for members of different groups to identify and share their similarities, differences, and assets can foster unity within a team.

___ Conflicts should be identified, respected, and transformed to improve capacity and relations in the community.

___ Involved institutions should support promoting inclusion, equity, and justice.

___ Any successful collective action should be celebrated.

___ Relationships, strategies, and changes at should be sustained at multiple levels, including the individual, group, and institutional levels.

Example: Inclusive Dubuque

 

Inclusive Dubuque is a peer-learning network of partners committed to supporting an equitable and inclusive culture to meet the economic and cultural needs of their diverse community. The network works collaboratively to eliminate bias in their community.

Tool #1 Association for the Study and Development of Community. A planning guide for valuing diversity. Gaithersburg, Maryland.

Planning Guide
Getting Ready fro Promoting the Value of Diversity:
Issues for Consideration

This guide was produced for the Association for the Study and Development of Community.
The development of this guide was made possible by a grant from the Ford and Mott Foundations.

CONTEXT

An Advisory Committee that comprises a diverse group of leaders and institutional representatives can be useful to advise an organization or project about ways to promote the value of diversity. These members could include staff from the organization and project. They provide the vision for what it would take for their community to value diversity. Their vision lays the groundwork for the valuing diversity project.

USING THIS GUIDE

The purpose of this guide is to help you stimulate further thinking about:

• Establishing the Advisory Committee;
• Planning the process for identifying the focus of your initiative and assessing needs and challenges for valuing diversity; and
• Determining the process for adopting and adapting promising strategies to help your community value diversity.

This guide is not intended to be a prescription for a valuing diversity project, instead it is intended to guide you in developing a process that enables members of your community to come together to develop a way for how they want to value diversity. Examples are provided to clarify each step and dilemmas that might be encountered during the planning process.

THE ADVISORY COMMITTEE

Roles and expectations

It is important to consider the role of the Advisory Committee for your project as early in the process as possible.

The Advisory Committee can have several roles:

Information access

Committee members can be used to access information on several levels, such as to obtain demographic information that has been collected by the city government; to find out about the grassroots leadership in a particular community; to engage a particular community group; and to learn more about available resources for valuing diversity in the community.

Technical assistance

Committee members can be used to assist project staff depending on their areas of expertise, such as cultural understanding, group dynamics, conflict transformation, community organizing, strategic communication, fundraising, and advocacy.

Networking

Committee members can be used as a link to additional and wider networks, such as nonprofit organizations, informal community networks, businesses, government agencies, and private funders. Committee members can also help provide access to grassroots leaders, policy makers and other potential participants.

Facilitation   Committee members can be used to facilitate collaboration, such as among groups that traditionally do not work together; leaders across community sectors (e.g., businesses and youth development groups); and groups that have similar missions. Committee members can also serve as facilitators during learning activities (e.g., small group discussions), help provide translation, and gain access to meeting space in the neighborhoods. Modeling behavior Committee members can become an example or model for cross-cultural collaboration. It represents the possibility of people from diverse backgrounds working together to use the diversity among themselves and in their community as an advantage to accomplish their goals. Advocacy Committee members can be used to advocate for funding and other supports for community issues by participating in other national or local efforts, coalitions, task forces, or steering committees.

Issues for you to consider when selecting Advisory Committee members: Is the Advisory Committee representative of the groups and institutions that you would like to engage? Are leaders of the most affected groups as well as the most powerful groups invited to participate? What is the level of leadership that is committed? (e.g., is the vice president of a local corporation a member or is it his/her administrative assistant) Is the invited person a legitimate leader in the community (has constituency as part of an informal or formal institution) and what is his/her history of leadership (e.g., ability to maintain momentum, strong ties with government agencies and other large institutions)? How does the invited person frame issues related to demographic changes and other forms of diversity (e.g., is it an asset or is it a conflict)? Does the person have time to participate in the Committee and is willing to work with members from other groups? Is there anyone else who should be invited regardless of the size of his/her community or organization in order to ensure inclusion of all racial and ethnic groups? Have the expectations for membership been communicated clearly to Committee members (e.g., purpose, number of meetings they are expected to attend)?

Policy

Committee members can be used to influence policymakers, such as convincing county officials to establish stricter enforcement against absentee landlords

STRUCTURE AND ORGANIZATION

Once the role and expectations for the Advisory Committee have been defined, it is important to establish a structure that works for everyone.

Leadership

The Committee can elect a chairperson. The chairperson can be communicating with the local facilitator, communicating with all the members, determining when it is necessary to meet, and/or developing meeting agendas.

Facilitation and other support

The Committee should decide what is the function of the local facilitator and staff of the grantee organization.

Communication

The members must decide on the best method and frequency of communication. A useful tool for keeping all the members informed of the project's activities is meeting minutes. The minutes not only update members that cannot attend a meeting, it also helps document the process of the project.

Decision-making

The Committee must agree on how decisions are made (e.g., number of votes or by consensus). Some members may not be able to attend meetings or provide feedback and they need to decide if the other members can make the decision.

Authority The grantee organization and the Committee must determine the extent of the Committee 's authority. Can the Committee make decisions and if so, regarding which matters.

It is important to acknowledge what each Committee member brings to the table to increase their sense of ownership for the effort, equality, and adopt an assets perspective.

Subcommittees or task forces

Subcommittees or task forces can be established to divide the responsibilities of the Advisory Committee. A smaller subcommittee can dedicate more time to a particular issue or component of the project and/or provide a specific expertise. The members must then decide if a subcommittee can make independent decisions, or if the subcommittee merely gathers information to submit to the entire Advisory Committee for final decisions. A staff person or member must be assigned to coordinate the subcommittees or task forces to ensure that there is no duplication of activities and timely progress.

Process versus Action It is not unusual to have members with different working styles-some may be more process-oriented, while others may be more task- or action-oriented. For instance, some Committee members may want to develop their own valuing diversity skills, while others may want to focus on decision making. The Committee must be clear on its role and expectations-does it come together for discussions or merely to make decisions? The best approach is a balance of both and to develop a process that leads to action.

Initially, it is critical to give the Committee members adequate time to share information about each other (e.g., how did they come to live in the community, what do they do) and about their personal vision for a community that values diversity. Their stories must be acknowledged and legitimized by the larger group.

A common language and key concepts

Coming up with a common vocabulary is one of the most important first steps. The Advisory Committee must come to a consensus on a common language for the valuing diversity work it is about to conduct. For instance, the term "cross-cultural" may be more appropriate than "multicultural" because the former implies more interaction and exchanging across cultures. Or, the term "valuing diversity" can mean relations between African Americans and European Americans (different racial groups), youth and senior citizens (different age groups), or tenants and homeowners (different socioeconomic groups). The Advisory Committee should also keep in mind the ten principles for strengthening intergroup relations and if appropriate, develop additional key concepts. Further, Committee members should not assume that the terms they use mean the same thing to everyone. The common language that the Committee develops for itself should be consistent with the language that will be used to convey the goals of the project to the neighborhoods and/or institutions targeted.

Evolving membership

The planning process must include a periodic reassessment of the Advisory Committee's membership to assess whether the Committee is comprised of the "right" people. The membership can change depending on the needs of the project and its developmental stage. A process must also be established to orient new members. New members can receive an orientation packet and/or meet with a few "older" members to get a historical perspective of the project.

PLANNING

With the assistance of the Advisory Committee and its members' knowledge, skills, and resources, the planning process can begin for identifying the project's focus area and considerations, assessing needs and challenges for valuing diversity, and designing the action process.

FOCUS AREA AND OTHER CONSIDERATIONS

Geographic:

There may be neighborhoods or subsections with:

• A history of conflict,
• Major demographic changes,
• Large number of immigrants,
• Agencies and organizations lacking capacity to adequately address the needs of residents from diverse backgrounds,
• Clear boundaries that have already been drawn, and
• Outside actors who have intervened and had a negative or positive impact on the neighborhoods or subsections.

Institutional:

There may be specific institutions where residents come together and result in conflict. For instance, the project may focus on a housing development where residents are not getting along and there is no forum for addressing the tensions.

Geographic and Institutional:

The program will focus on the nonprofit and public institutions within a neighborhood that are operating independently or lacking adequate capacity to serve the needs of diverse groups.

Issues to consider for target area selection:

• Which neighborhoods or subsections are experiencing an increase or enclaves of a particular racial or ethnic group?
• Which institutions are most affected and are not adequately addressing the needs or tensions of their diverse constituencies?
• Where are the opportunities for residents from diverse backgrounds to come together around an issue?
• Where are the tensions and conflicts-on the systems level because it is traditionally a White-power structure; intergenerational because the youth are loitering on street corners and offending the elderly residents; or interracial because the Koreans have bought out the local convenience stores in a primarily African American neighborhood?
• Is there charismatic and indigenous leadership?
• How will the neighborhoods' leaders and residents deal with the media for wider information dissemination?

 STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT

It is important to understand the demographics, tensions, and issues in the area of focus (i.e., neighborhood, subsection, and/or institution), and the challenges of conducting valuing diversity work in that area. The following questions need be answered before the appropriate strategy can be developed:

• What are the issues shared by all residents?
• For example, criminal activities, housing conditions, lack of alternative activities for youth, closing down of a community health center, etc.

What are the challenges of bringing residents together?
Some of the challenges may include:

• More intensive effort (e.g., resources, leadership training, and technical assistance) required to organize the communities;
• Tensions between established gatekeeper organizations and fledgling grassroots groups that serve particular groups, which makes collaboration or access to certain communities difficult;
• Certain communities, particular recent immigrants have more urgent needs that must be addressed first, such as housing, food, clothing, and health;
• Intergroup tensions exist within a larger sociopolitical context (e.g., city government, education board);
• Incompatible civic participation practices among groups; and
• Need for translation services in several languages.

What has been done and what is out there? What are examples of successful organization and projects and what strategies did they use that brought people together?
It is important to explore previous efforts to organize the community or address conflicts and learn from those efforts' successes and failures.

Who are the key players (individuals and institutions)?
Getting acquainted with the key players serve several purposes:

• Ensure that you are not "stepping on someone's toes,"
• Obtain their buy-in to lend credibility to the valuing diversity effort,
• Gain access to their networks,
• Learn from their intergroup relations; and
• Build upon their knowledge and experiences.

In some cultures, a great deal of deference is given to their community leaders. Getting to know the key players who are most likely also the community leaders will demonstrate respect and cultural sensitivity.

How much does the valuing diversity project engage in power structures?

The grantee organization and Advisory Committee needs to consider this question in advance. In some neighborhoods, the intergroup tensions may be nested within a larger power structure and institutionalized racism may be prevalent. In order to strengthen intergroup relations, the valuing diversity project may have to get involved in larger institutions. This involvement can increase the visibility of the project and this may be positive or negative depending on whose perspective. This involvement can also require the grantee organization and Advisory Committee members to take sides on an issue.

METHODS

There are several ways to gather information to respond to the above questions.

Strategy session

Strategy sessions can be conducted with Advisory Committee members, community leaders, and other key players to answer the above questions.

Focus groups

Focus groups can be conducted with different groups-public officials, representatives of nonprofit organizations, grassroots leaders, youth, senior citizens, or by ethnic group.

One-on-one interviews

While this method can be time consuming, it may be more effective when asking about more sensitive issues.

Archival sources

For example, census reports and community assessments.

Reports

There may be existing reports that have been previously conducted by the state, county, or local agency, and nonprofit groups. Programs are usually required to submit annual reports to their funders. Therefore, if you identified any past or current efforts that addressed the needs of residents, be sure to ask for reports that they had to submit to their funders.

Newspaper articles

Newspaper articles, especially local community newspapers are useful sources for information on conflicts and community activities. Local community newspapers also tend to publicize celebrations and ceremonies to recognize activists and leaders, and are a great resource for identifying community leaders.

ANALYSIS OF INFORMATION   The information gathered should be analyzed to identify specific themes in the following areas. Areas of conflict Conflicts may exist within a group (e.g., Latinos with different nationalities), between two racial groups (e.g., African Americans and European Americans), newcomers and long-time residents (e.g., African Americans and Salvadorans), institutions (e.g., police and local businesses, or established nonprofits and grassroots groups), generations (e.g., youth and senior citizens, or first generation Mexicans and second generation Mexican Americans), groups of different socioeconomic status (tenants and homeowners), groups of different religions (e.g., Muslims and Christians), or groups with different political status in their home countries (e.g., Ethiopians and Eritreans).

It is essential to remember that some cultures, particularly the Asian cultures tend to have members that are less comfortable speaking up in a large group. In this case, one-on-one interviews may be more effective. Some cultures are based on an authoritarian structure and their members are encouraged to please the authority or authoritative figure. Other cultures may have a history of oppression and are suspicious of anyone or any institution that resemble their oppressor. It is important that the Advisory Committee considers and ensures that the messenger for the valuing diversity project is a person or an institution that is perceived with trust and has credibility.

Common issues faced by residents from different backgrounds

For example, the African American and European residents may be struggling with criminal activities in their neighborhood, Latino and Vietnamese communities may both be struggling with poor housing conditions in a particularly housing development, or a lack of recreational activities for both youth and senior citizens.

Opportunities to meet challenges facing groups through funds and capacity building efforts

The information must be analyzed to see how resources (funds, technical assistance, and training activities) can be used to address challenges groups face and whether the groups have come together before on common issues. For instance, African American and Latino tenants have come together before to try and get the housing management to improve their living conditions. However, because of language barriers and lack of organization, they have been unsuccessful. There is an opportunity for the valuing diversity project to provide funds for translation services and to mediate other cultural barriers.

Existing efforts and community resources

The valuing diversity may be able to build on existing assets. There may be another initiative or coalition in the neighborhood that need additional resources to enhance its efforts.

Communication channels and outreach strategies

What are the best methods for communicating and reaching out to the communities? For example:

• Faith institutions (mosque, temple, church)
• Local community newspapers
• Newsletters distributed by organizations and groups in the neighborhood
• Spanish radio station
• Library
• Asian grocery stores
• Vietnamese cable program
• Social service agencies
• English as A Second Language classes
• Restaurants