In my orientation class, we had a guest speaker come to discuss the Diversity Awareness Workshop with us. It was the most interesting workshop I have attended so far. I never knew just how large of an impact diversity had on our lives.
             Mr. Jon, the speaker, said diversity is the collective mixture of people and organizational differences and similarities. In 1964, the Civil Rights Act was made to protect race, gender, religion, nationality, etc. and subsequent acts of age and disability. He said that gays and lesbians are not protected directly by the Civil Rights Act but are often protected under the disability act. The main people differences are race, gender, age, sexual identity, nationality, disability, religion, socio-eco class, ethnicity, and culture.
             Mr. Jon also taught us that no matter who you are, you are prejudice in some way. Prejudice is an unfavorable notion toward certain cultural or ethnic groups; it is often learned from family, societal norms and expectations, school curriculum, and the media. He had us do a activity where we had a partner of different gender and nationality or race, we had to tell our partner who we are prejudice against and then tell them the top five things that come to mind about them. We also did another activity where Mr. Jon would say a category from the people differences, if you took part in that category you would stand and the class would cheer for you. That was a really great experience because it made you proud of who you are and what you stand for.
             Another thing I learned in our Diversity Awareness Workshop was to restrain from discriminating and stereotyping. Discrimination is the favoring of one group over another based on sex, culture, age. Stereotypes are a view held of a group different from one's on, usually based on non factual or untruthful information. Because no one is exactly alike, you should always respect all differences, agree to disagree, ...