Building Bridges Beyond Stereotyping and Prejudice

Objectives:

To engage participants in a process of examining and understanding their own identity along the lines of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and socioeconomic class. To facilitate the exploration of how these identifiers shape an individual s attitudes and perspectives.

To examine the role of education, the media, and other influences on individual identity development, social understanding, and the development of bias and stereotyping.

To acquaint participants with a positive, problem-solving approach to the obstacles within themselves, their work groups, and their organizations that keep them and their co-workers from reaching their potential.

To name and own personal prejudices while controlling inappropriate behavior. To learn self-management skills.

To analyze the barriers to communication, cooperation and creativity that cultural and racial stereotyping might create.

To do away with ethnocentrism, that is, the tendency to judge all other groups according to our own group's standards, behaviors and customs and to see other groups as inferior by comparison. Different cultures have different ways of behaving and interpreting behaviors.

Participants will learn to:

Identify perceptions and stereotypes and how they the influence working relationships.
Recognize racial and cultural differences and understand that because people do things differently does not mean they are inefficient, stupid, or inconsiderate.
Show respect for their counterparts. Avoid stereotyping and acknowledge personal bias.
Be more tolerant of differences. Being different should not be seen as necessarily negative.