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Community Diversity Issues: Strategies for a Comprehensive Multicultural Framework

Karen DeBord, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
State Child Development Extension Specialist
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, North Carolina

Aaron Thompson, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
Human Development and Family Studies
University of Missouri-Columbia
Columbia, Missouri

Abstract Changes in our society make it imperative that academic professionals and other educators prepare for working with diverse families in the context of communities. For rural communities in particular, the use of community leadership infrastructures combined with grassroots initiatives is the cornerstone for successful programs for youth moving toward their adult years. The authors suggest a conceptual framework for community multicultural educators using Bronfenbrenner's (1979) social ecological framework and Gollnick and Chinn's (1983) goals for multicultural education. Qualitative data from 30 experienced community leaders focusing on the process of developing positive community understanding of cultural diversity provide rich experiential information. Their comments particularly focus on the importance of using a dynamic process to develop a sense of community diversity.

Demographics in the United States have shifted. The vacillating economy, the transfigured work force, the extended age range, the expansion of alternative lifestyles, and the diverse balance of race, class, and ethnicity have had a dramatic effect on educational and community processes. In addition, changes in society have affected the family structure over the past 30 years. Today about 26 percent of all children under 18 years of age are living with a divorced parent or stepparent (Behrman and Quinn 1994). The percentage of one-parent-headed families with children has increased from approximately 22 percent in 1985 to over 25 percent in 1992 (Casey Foundation, Kids Count Data Book 1995). The percentage is even higher within African American families, due to multiple factors (Lawson and Thompson 1995).

Comparative demographics in the labor force show that in 1990 females comprised 53 percent of the civilian labor force compared with 35 percent in 1960. Labor statistics for African American males (recorded only since 1973) and Hispanic males (recorded since 1980) have remained essentially unchanged, even though the overall population in the United States for these black and Hispanic males increased by 32 percent and 37 percent, respectively (U.S. Bureau of Labor 1991).

Shifts to the population have occurred through increased migration and increased birth rate among nonwhite groups. It is predicted that from 1990 onward, the Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, American Indian, and non-Hispanic black populations will increase, and the non-Hispanic white population will decrease proportionately (Lewitt and Baker 1994). Additional changes are reflected in the widening division between classes. Class differentials are noted in accelerated urbanization driven by unprecedented population growth rates creating housing deficits and strains to local economies and infrastructures (Camp 1990).

Rural America is comprised of a heterogeneous group of people representing a great diversity of cultures, occupations, wealth, lifestyles, and physical geography (Murray and Keller 1991). Rural America represents a microcosm of social problems with a variety of prevention programs in progress and under development. But prevention programs and organized interventions must recognize underlying factors that create and sustain high-risk conditions. For example, teaching youth to "just say no" is one strategy, but it does not provide a depth of understanding for youth to learn to manage multiple levels of risk. The development of constructive coping mechanisms and unbiased decisionmaking skills gives youth the tools they need to reject drugs and other substances, as well as to make other healthy lifestyle choices. The challenge is to empower youth with a range of skills to make sound decisions as they pave their way to adulthood.

Youth as tomorrow's leaders of communities are the focus of today's educators. The challenge, then, is in preparing today's educators to model and teach bias-free decisionmaking.

Communities Are Faced With Many Challenges

Rapid demographic shifts have created new challenges for individuals and communities. Multiple social issues on local agendas range from early pregnancy to homicide and are couched in racial or ethnic terms. The same can be said for research on substance abuse, in which ethnicity is characterized as a potent sociocultural factor (Trimble 1995). The reported consumption of substance abuse in rural America is proportionally equal with that of urban youth (Farrell et al. 1992), and adolescent substance use/abuse is reported to cross race, class, and gender lines comparably (Wallace et al. 1995).

In response to identified social concerns, rural communities in particular find grassroots initiatives critical to successful programs (Deaton 1992). Community leaders and decisionmakers struggle with innovative solutions for managing growth in their local economies while targeting various social issues with the parallel recognition of diversity in their populations. Strategies and experienced voices are needed to cope with rapid transition and encourage sensitive communication at the grassroots level.

Community decisionmakers, social workers, extension educators, church leaders, public officials, and other educators involved with culturally diverse populations are challenged to provide suitable models for community understanding in communities that are often comprised of a mainly dominant culture.

The general focus of this paper is to demonstrate the link between theory and application in adapting a comprehensive format for community dialogue and acceptance of cultural diversity. An integrated approach for community multicultural educators is offered using Bronfenbrenner's (1979) social ecological framework and Gollnick and Chinn's (1983) goals for multicultural education. This paper uses community leader insights to support this framework and is generally directed toward multicultural educators, but more specifically toward public service workers and community leaders.

Conceptual Framework

Work in communities requires a knowledge of the subject matter that surrounds a given issue plus a knowledge of community development processes. Community development processes involve a detailed awareness of the community climate, a wellûdeveloped perception of the formal and informal community leadership, an understanding of targeted audiences, and the incorporation of a variety of communication and trust building measures. Finding leaders and educators with this mix of expertise is difficult.

Whether multiculturalism becomes the content issue—or the issue is another risk factor— additional qualities to facilitate community understanding must be learned and applied in order to plan interventions with the socio-environmental conditions taken into consideration. By combining community processes and the understanding of multiculturalism, an alternative model begins to emerge. The model offered here is based on Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems perspectives to capture the community development aspects and is overlaid with Gollnick and Chinn's (1983) guide for multicultural education to capture the content needs.

Contexts of Diversity

As a context for understanding this model, definitions of culture, cultural diversity, and multiculturalism follow. Culture is defined as the values, norms, customs, and beliefs shared by a group within a particular society. Culture then becomes a universality that can be passed along to the people through a socialization process. Cultural diversity is an empirical descriptor that can be measured by the absence or presence of multiple cultures existing within one particular community. Although cultures within given communities can be described in a variety of ways (family structure, race diversity, gender diversity, ethnic diversity, sexual orientation, etc.), descriptions alone do not provide a conceptual framework that can guide thoughts, attitudes, and/ or behaviors.

Multiculturalism is the concept that better describes attitudes and the ongoing thought process that surrounds diversity. Multiculturalism involves recognizing and celebrating the fact that a monocultural (dominant) environment is insufficient for the needs of a social system. It is a belief system that promotes the idea that multicultures need to be in existence for members of a society to gain an opportunity to learn about the other in order to enrich all lives. Everyone then can be recognized as having uniqueness that is valuable to a given community.

Becoming a multicultural community means accepting and valuing cultural diversity. Any given community is comprised of separate individuals who are connected by some common thread of interest, proximity, or characteristic. Distinctively, communities vary in a range of individual factors—ages, ethnicities, family sizes. They also vary by the services available, economic conditions, job opportunities, health, and child care options. But within communities, there is commonalty—what Bronfenbrenner and colleagues (1984) term as "interlocking or integrated functional subsystems" (p. 286).

In the ecological model, Bronfenbrenner (1979) describes multiple societal systems, that when visually depicted, are concentric circles. The innermost circle of the ecological environment is referred to as the microsystem and represents the most direct day-to-day reality for children and families, such as their home, school, or neighborhood settings. Individuals within the system are viewed as dynamic and continually in development. Linkages or interrelationships between settings (i.e., home, school, workplace, neighborhood) are called mesosystems. Although depicted as a separate circle, this system actually represents a reciprocity and interaction between individuals and their multiple environments.

In a separate circle, exosystems refer to one or more settings that do not directly involve, but do affect persons. Examples include a parent's workplace and its indirect effect on a child, or a community network of friends who support one another. The outermost circle or system is referred to as the macrosystem. The macrosystem represents broad interconnected beliefs, attitudes, and social systems such as economics, media, immigration, or public policy decisions.

Within any culture or subculture, settings of a given kind (homes, schools, churches) tend to be similar; however, between cultures, settings are distinctively different. These complicated systems, referred to as "cultural blueprints," underlie institutional organizations, people's attitudes and assumptions, and the workings of political and economic systems (Bronfenbrenner 1979). These blueprints, however, can be modified. Garbarino (1982) contends that it is possible to "socially engineer" systems to cope with differences and developmental problems. This possibility for change is the door that many communities are trying to open in order to maximize the development of children and families.

Although they know it is a lengthy and sensitive process, some community leaders are making strides to engineer public attitude relative to multicultural understanding. The key to successful negotiation between settings is to first recognize the coexistence of subsystems and linkages between mesosystems that are already woven together in many integrated ways (Bronfenbrenner et al. 1984).

Maximizing Community Systems Development

Along with Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems, he offers many hypotheses about developmental potential. By using the hypotheses as a framework to understand community systems, it may be possible to maximize the developmental potential of groups interacting in communities.

Bronfenbrenner (1979) hypothesizes that to maximize the developmental potential between systems, we must ensure that the demands on individuals in different settings are compatible. When changes occur in settings, changes also occur in the individual's position or role in that new setting. For example, a transition in role occurs when a new parent is presented with his or her newborn child. A change in role for a working individual occurs when there is a change in jobs or after retirement. Roles must be in agreement with what the individual can manage.

According to Bronfenbrenner (1979), another component to maximizing developmental potential between individuals is to ensure that there are supportive linkages between settings and that an individual's entry into a new setting is made in the company of one or more persons with whom she or he has participated in other settings. The link with an unfamiliar group or individual can be eased through others. Locating someone who is at ease in both settings and knowledgeable about both environments can build bridges between settings and between people. Such a person is referred to as a "primary link" (Bronfenbrenner 1979) and can help provide entry for newcomers into new settings, and also help in translating the dialogue between people who are different in language, beliefs, communication style, and culture. Examples here can range from entry into a gang setting to attending a new church.

The most productive mode of communication between settings is personal or face to face. To build multicultural communities, open two-way communication between settings must be evident, with as much inclusion of family members in the communications network as possible (Bronfenbrenner 1979). Entry into new settings without two-way communication and supportive linkages can lead to imbalances between systems and, perhaps, to misplaced decisions.

Positive changes between individuals and systems are secure when changes produced in an individual carry over into other settings (Bronfenbrenner, 1979). School teachers report examples of transitions between settings when adolescents who learn about conflict resolution at school attempt to assuage flaring tempers at home. Additional evidence that changes are transpiring is when linkages between settings encourage growth, trust, goal consensus, and a continual appraisal of new information (Bronfenbrenner 1979). Such an example would include policymakers seeking out the opinions of those affected by the policy.

Further evidence of developmental change is a shift in the balance of power (Bronfenbrenner 1979). For a shift in power to in fact occur, individuals and groups have to be able to yield personal power while trusting emerging power structures.

These selected Bronfenbrenner's hypotheses can be intertwined with the goals of multicultural education offered by Gollnick and Chinn (1983). Their goals are to promote the strength and value of cultural diversity, human rights, and respect for those who are different from oneself; to promote alternative life choices for people, social justice and equal opportunity for all people; and support equity in the distribution of power among groups. But the goals themselves are not enough to ensure a positive multicultural community experience. Successful implementation of these goals, in many cases, means overcoming a culturally embedded ideology.

Gollnick and Chinn's conceptual framework for inviting a safe place for cultural diversity to occur can be seen as a foundation for Bronfenbrenner's systems model. Bronfenbrenner's work interacting with Gollnick and Chinn's (1983) work creates a holistic model that allows a reciprocity in building a vibrant community. These combined frameworks can be seen as a way of promoting multiculturalism as a philosophy and cultural diversity as a real possibility for community growth.

Growing communities are defined by strong social support networks of families, workplaces, and social agencies. Since the community provides a critical educational and socializing base for its citizens, multiple factors influence whether or not its citizens will adopt an activist ideology to promote agendas that in turn set the tone and provide the climate and context for change (Garbarino and Kostelny 1992). In communities, the context and readiness for change varies broadly. Many educators and community leaders, however, share high hopes. As community leaders call for a change and seek research-based support, it is the responsibility of researchers and educators to assist communities to prepare for change. The question that should be examined is, How can information effectively be used to eliminate the influence of ascriptive criteria in order to look at the value of cultural diversity? Understanding community leaders' perceptions regarding cultural diversity is the first place to learn about promoting community multicultural education programs. This research focuses on the perspectives and practices of community leaders who have experience in affecting community attitude through multicultural educational programs.

Method

Sample and Data Collection

Qualitative data from 30 experienced community leaders focused on the process of developing positive community understanding of cultural diversity. A cross-sectional approach was used to select a sample of community leaders. Leaders were located through personal and professional networks by inquiring about individuals who had been active in affecting community understanding of multiculturalism or diversity. A nonrandom selection process was used to develop the sample. Contacts were made by phone, through two focus groups, and mail. Eleven community leaders were contacted by telephone and agreed to be interviewed. Telephone and face-to-face interviews lasted on the average 45 minutes to 1 hour. This first group of community leaders included three school district administrators, four college faculty members, and four community development youth project leaders. There were seven men and four women interviewed: four were African American, five were white, one was from India, and one was from China.

Two focus groups totaling 19 people from different occupations and communities shared ideas from their experiences in community-based programs. Included in the group were school personnel, representatives of social services, police officers, educators, ministers, and other human service professionals. These people were participants in a diversity training program and were asked the same questions as the first group.

Instruments

For both telephone interviews and face-to-face interviews, open-ended questions were posed about the community factors and actions the leaders perceived as critical in cultivating community acceptance of diversity. In general, the questions focused on changes in human development as framed by Bronfenbrenner (1979). The questioning framework included factors that create linkages between settings; factors that encourage growth, trust, and goal consensus; how community leaders continue to appraise new information; and how the balance of power is managed.

The format of the interviews generally began with a question about the community and its multicultural activities. Following this discussion, the interviewer probed about the sorts of multicultural activity that had been tried and accepted within the community. Questions about the community leaders' personal involvement in affecting community attitude were followed by questions about their perceptions of the community climate and receptivity. Examples of these questions include:

1. What is your perception of the current attitude of the community at large regarding its understanding of diversity?
2. What key things need to happen in order to form a positive respect for differences?
3. What roadblocks do you foresee?
4. What aspects of the community will work in your favor to accomplish your goals?
5. What aspects of the community will work against accomplishing your goals?

The political climate and balance of power in the community was explored with questions such as:

1. How would you describe the current leadership in the community in regard to their willingness to respond to this issue?
2. Do you feel that you have a thorough understanding of how your work group will interact with local officials, schools, media, law enforcement, decisionmakers, etc?

Growth of the family, development of mutual trust, and public awareness were probed with questions such as:

1. What planned ways do you think families could/should be involved in the work of the diversity coalition? How have families been involved?
2. What do you think are some of the most pressing needs for families and children?
3. Are parents fairly motivated toward involvement in this issue?
4. What methods of communicating with and educating the public do you think work best in your community?

In addition to the interviews, 16 participants who had enrolled in a continuing education course on multiculturalism were asked to complete a questionnaire nearly 3 months after an educational session. Respondents represented 11 different States and had occupations such as Head Start teachers, child care center directors, and school administrators.

The open-ended questionnaire asked respondents to indicate how they had approached the topic of community acceptance of multiculturalism in their community and to indicate important components that could be learned from their experiences. Other than their State and position, no other demographic information is available on the respondents.

Collective Results

Collectively, community leaders provided a rich backdrop of experiential information and reflected many common themes, many of them paralleling Gollnick and Chinn's (1983) multicultural education goals. However, in addition

to the goals, comments highlighted the importance of the process of developing a sense of integrated diversity in the context of the community.

Developing a Sense of Community Diversity

The process of community understanding about multiculturalism and diversity is as important as the content. As expressed by one community leader, "This is not a short term process . . . but one that must evolve through collaborative empowerment." All interviewees agreed that a broad representative core of community leaders must be involved in order to build a foundation for community action. In their words:

• "Resist the temptation to simply focus on the dominant minority. Broaden definitions of diversity to include all ethnicities, classes, and oppressions."
• "Be cautious of some subgroups who may act counterproductively to the mission of the coalition. Fold these persuasions into the overall operation of the coalition."

Leaders indicate that it is critical for a core group of community leaders to move cautiously through a series of steps to build trust and group ownership within the leadership group by reaching goal consensus before extending into the larger community. These excerpts illustrate their concerns about a deliberate consensus building group process:

• "Community collaboration is empowering."
• "Community partnerships are more empowering."
• "There must be a shared vision with all partners."
• "There must be shared resources."
• "Some groups merely communicate. Communication leads to learning and problem solving. A higher level of group processing is cooperation. Cooperation leads to coordination of people and resources in order to achieve individual objectives. The group interaction level at which most community programs are most successful and more fully institutionalized is when efforts are collaborative. Collaboration leads to integration and a systems change. There is shared vision, shared resources, shared accountability among all players."

In order for the core group to work through their own philosophy and develop a plan for the larger community, skilled leadership is essential. As one leader said, "Communities need good full time leadership to pull efforts together." Community leaders note that a dynamic leader can carry the process through many critical phases.

Several community leaders recommended constantly reaffirming the agreedûupon definition of diversity and the goals of the intercommunity leadership group. By developing a collective community diversity definition, a starting point and common ground is developed from which to build strategies using individual expertise and community services. This step appears seemingly simple, but as one leader commented, "There is a necessity to constantly revisit the group mission . . . having a plan is a must."

Community leaders recognize the value of developing a positive community-specific systematic approach to recognize difference but also to promote shared power through collaboration among leaders and community groups. Acknowledging existing community power structures is critical before planning for collective action. Among the statements to support this notion is:

"There are inequities in power and inequities in resources. . . . It is necessary to rebuild the paradigm of communities as segmented and specialized. We do not yet operate in a holistic manner."

The following excerpt from an interview conducted with an urban school superintendent clearly depicts the delicacy of confronting a power and privilege issue in one neighborhood to ensure linkages between settings:

Having the support from the black church has been difficult. . . . The white element doesn't want the change. The white group has counterorganized a group to reduce crime and keep blacks families out of the neighborhood. We are trying to include both factions in the community effort to overcome this friction.

Gollnick and Chinn (1983) emphasize that multicultural education must promote social justice and equal opportunity while Bronfenbrenner (1979) recognizes the value of continuing to appraise new information. This is evidenced by the ongoing battle of affirmative action and workplace rights: It is clear that to create an environment that is socially just and equitable requires laborious time and great patience. Community leaders reflected upon the arduous process with comments such as:

• "This is social reform, and social reform is not easy."
• "There is a necessity to constantly revisit the group mission."
• "It is not a recipe, it has glitches."
• "Change is often painful."
• "Collaboration is a process—not a goal. It may take 3 to 4 years to communicate and coordinate before you can collaborate—don't give up."

Discussion

It is critical to understand that community efforts toward most social issues should be viewed through a lens of multiculturalism. And in turn, developing community plans to deal with social issues must be viewed as a series of interrelated processes. Melaville and Blank (1993) emphasize that community development is a process of change powerful enough to overcome layers of resistance in attitudes, relationships, and policies. The participation of a broad representation of people in a community-based process leads to greater changes.

As community leaders, each of these respondents saw himself or herself as having a responsibility to recognize the needs of their community and take action to address the needs. Once multicultural education was identified as a community need, these leaders became multicultural thinkers and facilitators to promote multiculturalism. In conjunction with Gollnick and Chinn's goals, these respondents became engaged as part of the multicultural community system. Reflecting Bronfenbrenner's hypotheses, these leaders became an underlying force in actively fostering cultural diversity issues. A resulting reciprocity was created to support the original notion that ideology and action must interact holistically.

In multicultural communities addressing family and youth risk factors, active facilitators in turn help communities understand each person's role and responsibility in regard to that issue. To consider this in rural America, there should be a recognition that prevention efforts cannot ignore factors that create and sustain high-risk environments. Risk status is based on a wide variety of factors; thus, interventions should relate to existing socio-environmental conditions of the larger social arena in which families and youth function (Collins 1995).

Professionals must give close consideration to the demographics of the community, the community ideology, and the interplay of systems within the community. Educators, service agency representatives, and community leaders must realize that collective action occurs by assessing need, and then addressing the need with personal and collective contributions to realize the strength found in convergent visions.

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Last Updated 11-7-02