Race, Class, Gender & Sexuality

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Your identity consists of multiple dimensions, which we might also call group memberships. Some of the most salient of these identities include your race, ethnicity, gender, social class, sexuality, physical and mental ability, nationality, and/or religion. Take a look at The diversity wheel (Links to an external site.) for a visual representation of all of the identities you might potentially have. Those at the center of the circle usually have the greatest impact on one’s life chances and are most immediately visible to the rest of society.

 

For this journal assignment, you will explore your own identities by addressing the following:

 

Considering at least three of your core identities, give an example of how each impacts (or is noticeable in) your daily life.

Of the identities you listed above, which has contributed most to your overall identity? Does the identity you feel is most significant in your life vary depending on the social context you may be in? In other words, does the identity you feel is most important vary throughout the day depending on the social situation you are in? Be sure to explain why or why not.

Thinking about these three identities, do you feel that your membership in these groups leads you to experience certain privileges or certain inequalities in our society? Give examples of these privileges and/or inequalities.

The following short videos may help you address these questions:

 

Identities & Inequalities (Links to an external site.)

Race, Class, Gender & Sexuality (Links to an external site.)

What is Privilege? (Links to an external site.)

 

Sample Solution

Differences in human experience can be processed in a variety of ways, and it is this parsing that leads us to our discussion of “race,” “gender,” “class,” and “sexuality” as study topics in organizational communication. Individuals, groups, organizations, communities, and nations all enjoy fair and equitable access to civil/participative liberties, food, clean water, health, housing, education, and meaningful job as a result of social sorting of diversity. Researchers can use communication perspectives to look at how difference is created, maintained, and modified through symbolic means. Communication, in other words, organizes difference. The communicative organization of race, gender, class, and sexuality is discussed in the discipline of organizational communication.

Teamwork plays an essential role within both Fiedler’s Contingency Theory and Chelladurai’s Multi-dimensional model particularly regarding leader-member relations, if the group are familiar and trusting of the leader policy implementation becomes much simpler. Similarly to leadership, understanding and adapting to the situation is key to a leader being able to implement policies that ensure a group work as a team. Teamwork is a product of good leadership, and is again the responsibility of the leader to ensure the group are working successfully together. Highly functioning teams are essential within organisations to increase productivity and member satisfaction, by utilising the talents of all group members effectively within the constraints of the task, personal relationships and the group goals (Pettinger, 2007). Figure 2: Tuckman’s Model of Group Development (Agile Scrum Guide, 2019) Tuckman in his Model of Group Development provides easily identifiable stages that a groups performance can be measured against, making it useful for monitoring performance, Figure 2 shows Tuckman’s model. Ranking group performance against this scale can provide leaders with a clear understanding of how the group are functioning, allowing them to implement policies to change this if performance is unsatisfactory (Pettinger, 2007). Within organisations, the theory can be loosely applied to creating teams by grouping familiar individuals with the aim that they will reach the norming and performing stage of the model quicker. For short and simple tasks this is an extremely effective way of organising groups, due to the increased short term productivity. However there are significant issues with grouping individuals in this manner, particularly when tasks become more complex, and ultimately the model should mainly be used for monitoring the progress of groups (Pettinger, 2007). Figure 3: Belbin’s Team Roles (PrePearl Training Development, 2019) A more functional approach of grouping individuals is to utilise Belbin’s Team Theory (Belbin, 2017). Belbin identifies 9 key roles that must be fulfilled within a group to ensure success, the role

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