Instructions:
- Post a new discussion related to the topics covered in this module. Your post needs to provide specific lessons learned with examples from this module helping you enhance your leadership capacity at work.
- After posting your discussion, review posts provided by other students in the class and reply to at least one of them.
11 Comments
Cultural diversity is the presence of different cultures and ethnicities within a community. Public safety members need to stay updated on cultural diversity within their community. This helps officers to communicate more effectively with people from different cultural backgrounds and to be more sensitive to their needs and concerns.
Agencies should provide training and resources to their officers so they may relate to people from different cultures. They should also hire people from diverse backgrounds to ensure that their agency reflects the community they serve.
By understanding and respecting cultural diversity, public safety members can build trust with the community they serve, reduce misunderstandings, and prevent conflicts. It is essential for officers to be aware of cultural differences and to approach every situation with an open mind and a willingness to learn.
In conclusion, cultural diversity is a crucial aspect of public safety. Officers need to stay informed and respectful of cultural differences in their community. This will help them to communicate more effectively and build trust with the people they serve. By embracing cultural diversity, public safety members can help create a safer and more inclusive community.
Society and by extension, public safety, is becoming more and more diverse and the ability to manage cultural diversity is becoming essential. Public safety professionals can improve their cultural awareness by learning their own culture, learning about the cultures of the people in their community and the officers they work with, and learning about the communication styles of different cultures. As stated by Chief Perry in the lecture, building trust is key and understanding different backgrounds is essential. Learning about the dimensions of diversity can help relate neutrally to the dimensions of others and understand how they relate to you.
Good refresher on cultural diversity and it’s impact on everyone including the public safety field. I believe it is very important to learn about other cultures. It helps in understand people and the vast diversity that makes this country great. By learning about these differences, it helps us in the public safety field better be able to serve them because there are some differences that should be known. Things like communication style differences are good to know because it can make interactions easier. For instance, a lot Hmong cultures find eye contact rude. WIthout this context, a LEO could interpret a person not looking at them as a sign of disrespect or even being dishonest. There are also a lot of cultural groups that have a distrust for law enforcement based historical context. The golden rule is to treat everyone with respect and dignity, regardless of a person’s various diversities and characteristics.
I agree it is important to learn about other cultures as society becomes more diverse. Often times conflict between two people from different cultures is because of misunderstandings, education and knowledge can help reduce these misunderstandings and improve communication and relationships. In public safety cross-cultural awareness is very important to provide the best service to every citizen.
In today’s society, biases and prejudices can be observed everywhere in all major walks of life. They can be primary based (race/gender/orientation) or secondary based (economic/religion/geographic); both of which are externally viewed in the jurisdiction worked, as well as internally being rank/clique/salary/vaccinated. These can be observed more prevalent due to factors of social media and the ability to send information at the click of a finger or the emotions charging behavior. We as a “whole” must remain vigilant to keep a biased or prejudiced decision be made for the wrong reasons.
In my opinion, social media’s effect on cultural diversity acceptance has been a double edged sword. On the one hand, if you emerge yourself in a wide range of diversity, you will grow in understanding which can be hugely beneficial. On the other hand, if you use social media to only interact with your beliefs and your “groups”, I feel it can have the opposite effect and actually create a further divide. As you pointed out, vaccination status has been a hot-button issue in the last few years and was certainly a dividing factor.
Hopefully soon, as a collective society, we agree that being different is actually the norm. America is the great melting pot and without these differences, it’d be a pretty boring life. Some of my favorite conversations with strangers (State-side and abroad) have been around cultural norms. I find it fascinating how we may have ended up in the same place (whether work or at the same vacation destination), but took such different paths to get there and have such different backgrounds. Hearing people’s life experiences will never stop being interesting. I think that’s why “Humans of New York” has always interested me. So much diversity in one place really is great.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this critical issue. You are correct that biases and prejudices exist in all significant facets of our society. We must remain vigilant and work towards eliminating these biases, whether primary or secondary based. The advancement of social media and technology has made it easier to spread information. Still, it has also contributed to spreading misinformation and amplifying negative biases and prejudices. We must take responsibility for our own biases and work towards creating a more inclusive and equitable society for all. Thank you for highlighting this crucial issue.
Learning about different cultural backgrounds has helped in this field. People of different cultures have had rough past with law enforcement and look upon us negatively no matter their skin color. I like to show inmates that just because I wear this uniform does not mean that I am any less of a human being. I will treat them with respect and communicate with them properly and as a human as well. We are here to provide a positive outlook on law enforcement not negative.
You make a great point that I just thought of, law enforcement is a type of culture that most people don’t understand if they aren’t a part of it. Being a member of any law enforcement agency you immediately become a brother/sister in that family. With that comes a lot of responsibility and one of those responsibilities is treating all citizens with respect. Many individuals don’t trust members of public service because of past experiences or experiences members of their family had. As a member of public service it is important for each of us to have a better understanding of cultural differences and treat everyone like we would like to be treated, over time this will change the negative outlook on law enforcement to a positive outlook.
Cultural diversity are constantly changing in the United States and as public safety members it is our responsibility to ensure that we continue to be informed about the cultural diversities within our community. Having a good understanding of the different cultures allows public safety members to effectively communicate with individuals as well as understand why and how they operate as individuals and family units. This isn’t only important for the community but also for the deputies. It improves officer safety and community relationships which also decreases the risk of miscommunication between citizens and public safety members. This allows for better interactions, improved relationships and builds trust amongst the citizens and public safety members (Perry, 2017).
Reference
Perry, D. (2017). Cultural diversity. 2.7, Week # 7. National Command and Staff College. Retrieved from https://cloud.scorm.com/content/
courses/NAGVXPB5E6/CulturalDiversity064376e8-fb40-4622-ac7b-94547c590eb1/2/index_lms.html
You are absolutely correct. It is extremely important to understand and know your environment. That’s taught to us right out of the academy. Part of our environment is cultural, which having that lack knowledge can be harmful to all involved. Being able to use good judgement and have an awareness is important, especially with regards to the verbal and non-verbal cues observed/displayed by the people you encounter.