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Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)
Diversity and A Self-Management Lifestyle
For over 200 years, there has been strong support in America for certain ideals and entitlements of citizenship, among them life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now comes another notion that some see as equally worthy as these tried, true, tested and universally-celebrated standards. Meet diversity.
Diversity is a sound ideal. While the U.S. may be more diverse today than ever, diversity is hardly a new idea for this nation built and nurtured by immigrants. Of course, not everyone has always been enamored by varied manifestations of diversity, as seen in such unpleasantries as the war between the states, the war over civil rights and similar conflicts. Still, everyone has had at least a theoretical right to be included, considered, attended, respected and accommodated for several decades, if not from the get-go in 1776. Unlike during an earlier time in US history, the idea of the country as a "melting pot" society is not so popular today. Not everyone wants to be melted into some type of blend, as used to be the case.
Diversity gets contentious when government edicts are used to promote workplace and other entitlements associated with diversity. While most people have no problems with diversity as a general idea, reasonable and decent people can and do hold varying perspectives about the details of promoting it. In particular, details or rules as to when, how, for whom and under what conditions diversity is necessary or desirable are the kinds of specifics that are divisive, which is not the same as diverse!
A contemporary danger is that all of this might be seen in the extreme annoyances of the politically correct movement. This hazard is wickedly captured in a Gary Larson "Far Side" cartoon in which a part-frog/part-man (seated before wine glasses at an elegant table set in a bog) says to his girlfriend, "Well, actually Doreen, I rather resent being called a `swamp thing.' I prefer the term `wetlands challenged mutant.'"
Potential problems with workplace diversity might arise if funds are scarce and resources (like jobs) limited. This might prompt some groups to make Orwellian claims to being "more equally diverse" or impaired than some other group. We see this when one group demands entitlements at the expense of another. We see it when government-initiated and sponsored accommodations for one group discriminate against another, and when "numerical goals" (quotas) and other compensations for past injustices prove injurious to inter-group harmony. In my view, "affirmative action" programs are government enforced generators of racial and ethnic tensions that threaten to Balkanize the country. Under such conditions, fair-minded men and women, themselves of "diverse" backgrounds, may find the details of a good concept hard to take.
These kinds of broad civil contentions have had little or no impact on self-management or health promotion programming, even at the corporate level. A few years ago, a health promotion organization named WELCOA commissioned a publication entitled Health Promotion for All by a friend of mine named Stephen Ramirez. It was designed to advance the goal of full inclusion for all groups in health promotion, a goal nobody opposed. However, it did address another matter related to diversity, which was and remains controversial, namely, the just-mentioned diversity in hiring and advancement via affirmative action programs.
The Ramirez book listed some of the issues that had to be overcome if diversification efforts were to succeed. It was intended to encourage a transition from government-enforced quota systems that generated racial and ethnic tensions toward more cooperative, tolerant and ethnic/racially-blind conditions at the organizational and social levels of society.
Anyone who cares about personal excellence should be interested in ways to bring people together, identify our connections, celebrate tolerance and inculcate responsibility. There is a need to reach those at highest risk of illness due to self-destructive lifestyles with health promotion messages, and many in this category are in the sub-cultures meant to be helped by diversification efforts. It is important to forthrightly address barriers to diversity acceptance and to avoid platitudes of cultural sensitivity. There truly is value in promoting tolerance and concrete ideas for responsibility and cost constraints. However, the best way to do it is not with preferential treatments, or incentives for some and not others, multiple language requirements and other actions that divide rather than unite divergent groups of people.
In a recent address, Associate Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas pointed out that by focusing so passionately on the differences among us, we overlook much that we have in common. Let's respect our differences while doing what we can to defuse tensions and build on commonalities.
That's my take on this issue. What do YOU think? Cheers.
Domain: mentalSubdomain: stress management
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