Colleagues and associates have made their own valuable contributions to Trainers’ Library. Frances Ferguson wrote the brilliant
Unequal Opportunities, for example, and Valerie Fawcett contributed one of my all-time favourite learning activities,
Land of the Nutritos.
It’s easy to become complacent about the need for equal opportunities and diversity training. After all, it’s 65 years since Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her bus seat for a white passenger, 57 years since Martin Luther King said, ‘I have a dream’, 51 years since the Stonewall riots.
In the UK, there have been 45 years since the Sex Discrimination Act, 44 years since the Race Relations Act and 10 years since the Equality Act was passed.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that was enough time to achieve change and perhaps that’s why, in a lot of organisations, equal opportunities and diversity awareness training has become little more than a tick box exercise.
Of course, in many countries, a lot of positive change has occurred over the last 50 years or so. But, if we’ve learnt one thing in recent days, it’s that there really is no room for complacency. And this isn’t just a problem for the US. Minority groups everywhere still face challenges and barriers that simply don’t exist for other people.
Righting the wrongs of hundreds of years is not something that can be fixed overnight. But we all have a role to play in confronting and challenging inequality where we find it.
And as trainers, I believe we have a special responsibility to drive forward change, in part by raising awareness of prejudice and unfairness and by building empathy and understanding between groups.
And we have a vital role to play in building diverse teams where every person is able to achieve their full potential. Where people of all shapes, sizes, creeds, races, beliefs, sexual orientations and identities trust and support one another.
The journey may have begun many years ago, but we are not yet at the destination.
Until next time…