Diversity Workseet

Associate Program Material

Diversity Worksheet

Answer each question in 50 to 150 words. Provide citations for all the sources you use.

1. What is diversity? Why is diversity valued?

Diversity can be defind as “ to refer to many demographic variables, including, but not limited to, race, religion, color, gender, national origin, disability, sexual orientation, age, education, geographic origin, and skill characteristics..” (u.s department) Diversity is valued because things would not be they way it is today if we did not have it. It make everyone different.

2. What is ethnocentrism? In what ways can ethnocentrism be detrimental to a society?
Ethnocntrism can be defined as “the preferencing of an individual’s culture over the cultures of any other group.(wisegeek)” Ways that ethnocentrism can be determed in society is by the way that someone looks, or dresses. It can so be determed my the way they do things or the food that they cook. We know this day and time that we all judge people in these ways and make them stand out.

3. Define emigration and immigration.
Immigration can define as have citizenship in another country but going to another country to live permanent (Immigration). Immigration is also where you once lived some where then moved to the other country to live. Emigration is almost the same thing, but it is not living in the coutry permanent. These two words are the most missed used words. (immigration)

4. What are some of the ways groups of people are identified?

Groups are people are identified in different ways and for many different reasons. People are identified by their religious beliefs, the color of their skin tones, the features of their face, the way that they talk, their clothing or the style, and even the types of music that they listen to. I do feel that that most common way that people are identified is by the tone of their skin. People are put in categorize such as White, Blacks, Hispanics, Asian, and Indian, and recently Muslim. Someone may have dark hair and dark completion and many people would identify that they are Hispanic, when in all actuallity they may not be of Hispanic decent at all but of Italian decent or European decent. I also feel that another very common way that people are identified is the way that specific religions dress. If I were to see a group of woman wearing a long skirt, with hair pinned up in a bun and no makeup.

5. Why do people label and group other people?

There are many reasons why people label and group other people. Labeling and grouping other people originally began as a defining tool. An example of the labeling was to call Native Indians by their tribal name and later was changed to the labeling of Indians. The same would go for any type of ethnic background, instead of calling a group of people Mexicans; it was changed to Hispanic, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, to Asians. Today people label because they may be stereotyping or are unaware of what is politically correct. Another reason that people will label a group of people is to feel superior about who they are or the type of group that they belong to or that they do not belong to a group. People have become so accustom to believing what they are taught either by example or by specific influences that they will assume a group to be a certain way. In the past 10 to 12 years we as Americans have been influenced by certain events that would lead us to believe that Muslims are terrorists. When we seen a person of Muslim decent we automatically become on alert and suspect that they might be a member of a terrorist group. Although there are only a few groups that have given the Muslims a label, we have been so influenced by actions and the media, we have a difficult time realizing that we have labeled the entire Muslim community incorrectly.

6. Define culture. Is culture limited to racial and ethnic backgrounds? Explain.

Culture is the beliefs, behaviors, objects, and other characteristics common to the members of a particular group or society. In other words the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits, etc. Some of the most perplexing problems arise from the vagueness of the term and phenomenon called ethnicity, and from its indefinite and ever-expanding domain. [ One of the central arguments of this essay will be that ethnicity is not a single unified social phenomenon but a congeries, a "family," of related but analytically distinct phenomena. The foundations of ethnicity, the "markers" of ethnicity, the history of ethnicity, the aims and goals of ethnicity—these vary from case to case. For instance, in one circumstance religion may be the decisive distinction between two ethnic groups (say, in Northern Ireland), while in another language or history or race or any number of other qualities may serve the same function.

http://www.answers.com/topic/race-ethnicity-and-culture-cultural-expectations-and-student-learning
http://www.fdu.edu/visitorcenter/diversity.html