Diversity Continuum

Towards the "non-diversity" (hate) side of the continuum is racism, such as white supremacy and nazism. On the other end of the scale would be such people as John Howard Griffin, who wrote Black Like Me, and Martin Luther King. Towards the middle are characters such as Archie Bunker, who was probably right smack dab in the middle of the continuum as he was continually being pushed and pulled by various forces from both sides, e.g., his wife Edith would try to pull him towards the diversity side while his upbringing would push him back in the opposite direction.

          nazism                   Archie Bunker                    Martin Luther King

Hate <--|---|-----------|-----------------|-------|----------> Diversity

            white supremacy                                  John Griffin

Since this continuum contains a wide variety of people, then learning programs, such as education and training do help, however, depending upon the location that someone is initially located on the continuum, will determine the effectiveness of the learning program for that person. There are many training programs that will help to move the center group towards the diversity side of the continuum. However, such programs will probably not move a person all the way towards the end of the diversity side (after all, it is a continuum). So instead of picturing diversity training as a one-shot affair that is done in hours or days, we need to picture diversity training as being "continuous" with the goal being o steadily to move along the continuum. This means if someone is more towards the "hate" side of the continuum, such as a white supremacist, then it is going to take a greater initial push and a whole lot more training, coaching, etc. to get him or her moving towards the "diversity" side of the continuum.

Group and Individual Locators

In addition, a gay man does not mean that he knows what all other gay men are going through, just as an old white man does not mean that he knows what all other old white men are going through. This is because there are two major placements that show where a person is located on the diversity continuum:

1. The group placement is composed of race, religion, cultural and other factors that place the person within a group. The group locator normally remains stable and it is only through great paradigm shifts that it moves up or down the continuum or scale. For example, the civil war changed both black and white group positions on the continuum. Later, the civil right movement again changed the positions.
2. The individual locator is composed of a person's personal life experiences. So while a person might be black, which is a group locator, her personal life experiences that make her an individual determine her actual individual placement upon the continuum.

If we only limit diversity to certain "group placement" factors, then we start assuming that some groups have diversity and others do not...those that have it are in the right and those that do not have it are in the wrong. Yet, true diversity is on a continuum, so while everyone has various portions of it, no one has all of it. While a person's "group placement" tends to place him or her somewhere on the continuum (and continues to try to push or pull him or her across the continuum, it is the individual uniqueness of each person that gives diversity its greatest strength -- the power for each individual to learn and grow, which in turn allows him or her to determine her rightful position on the continuum.