Racial Milestone and Diversity Training

The Wall Street Journal's article entitled "U.S. Nears Racial Milestone" in its June 11, 2010 edition, detailed the demographic shift taking place in the U.S. as the white majority becomes a white minority. According to the article, as soon as 2011, could see the white majority of European descent becoming the white minority - which incidentally has already happened in anchor states such as California and Texas.

Interesting statistics from the Wall Street Journal article include:

• Traditional minorities made up 35% of the U.S. population between July 2008 and July 2009, up from 31% in 2000, according to Census numbers
• Hispanics accounted for 54.7% of the total population increase between July 2008 and July 2009, with two thirds of that growth coming from births
• Among Hispanics, there were approximately nine births for every death, among whites it was almost a one-to-one ratio

What effect will this majority/minority shift have on politics, economics and workplace diversity training? How will we shift the emphasis we put on diversity as it relates to ethnicity? Will age, socioeconomic status, or other factors come more into play more than they have in recent iterations of diversity in the workplace? And, will affirmative action as we know it become a dead issue? Or, will voters blocks become the influencing factor in U.S politics and education? What will this mean for U.S. businesses and organizations? Only time will tell, and we'll know soon as we watch this play out here in the U.S.

Trainer's Toolchest provides a wide variety of diversity and inclusion educational and learning tools. We carry the classic A Tale of O, a program originally designed to focus on tokenism. Without ethnicity or gender specified, the "O" could easily be any group or groups of individuals in the workplace based on race, national origin, gender, socioeconomic status, or political affiliation. It's a wonderful resource to enhance continued awareness on majority/minority issues. Diverse Teams at Work (based on the book by Lee Gardenswartz and Anita Rowe) looks at the layers of diversity that make up us all. It's a timeless tool for creating a deeper understanding of the diversity that exists within us all and reminder that diversity is more than what we see on the surface.