The Future of White Men and Other Diversity Dilemmas

This study reminds us that research is always conducted in a social context, released in a social context, and put to some social use. Sometimes that social use is positive. And sometimes it isn’t.

private roles within the family—one of the main roles into which all women are typecast.

reproductive function isn’t their primary identification, as it still often is for women.

They are all classic portrayals: the “ball-breaker,” then the piece of fluff, and now the Perfect Woman. The latest is far more positive than the others, but what will happen when she errs? Is there room in this image for human failure?

We aren’t used to seeing anyone other than a (tall) white man be in charge of the really big things. Thus, anyone else is seen as incompetent. Flaws that could be overlooked in commanding (preferably wealthy) white men seem magnified in others.

As we make room at the table, we need to bring our own preconceptions to the surface. That way we can make a rational assessment about whether the old data bank is giving us accurate information for our current lives.

life through the screen of our stereotypes. So it’s a zigzag process.

These images, because they are so often subtle, are one of the main barriers to our getting closer. Yet getting close to people from a formerly little-known group is one of the best ways of learning to see past the stereotypes to the people who are usually much like ourselves—with some interesting new perspectives we may never have considered.

still think these things sometimes (which I call my cartoon-thoughts, for they aren’t really “thinking”) in spite of a doctorate in multicultural education, decades of leadership on diversity, and a life that has been full of differences.

No matter how much we do, diversity isn’t something we “get,” and then that’s it. Because of the emotional charge that accompanied our introduction to the old images, it’s a constant process. We get it as we live and then we forget it sometimes too, when we hear about behaviors that reinforce our former images (and those are surely the ones we remember the most).

I can testify to the persistence of the old images. I’ve had lots of practice with cultural change—it’s my business—yet I notice with shock that I have a moment of wondering how a woman who has gotten a major appointment will know how to supervise four thousand people, and I never wonder this about a man.

no longer talks about the purple and green people, because he knows “them” now, and they have become “us.”

Unlearning the untrue images we have of each other (and ourselves) is a lifelong process, for the old images are pervasive and are continually reinforced, as media studies have repeatedly demonstrated.