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This Multicultural Self-Assessment is intended to enable you to become as effective a person in a Multicultural Environment as possible. Each exercise will ask you to complete the specific self-exploration tasks and then record your responses to the exercise in your own personal journal. This process will hopefully help you identify arenas in which you will need to change and grow so as to be more effective in be a person in our nations multicultural environment.

Your Ethnic and Cultural Background

Step 1: Community Genogram

Develop a visual representation of the community in which you were raised.

1. Consider a full blank page in your journal as representing your broad culture and community. It is recommended that you select the community in which you primarily were raised, but any other community, past or present may be used.

2. Place yourself in that community, either at the center or other appropriate place. Represent yourself by a circle, a star, or other significant symbol.

3. Place your own family or families on the paper, again represented by the symbol which is most relevant for you. The family can be nuclear or extended or both.

4. Place important and most influential groups on the community genogram, again representing them by circles or other visual symbols. School, family, neighborhood, and spiritual groups are most often selected. For teens, the peer group is often particularly important. For adults, work groups and other special groups tend to become more central.

5. Connect the groups to the focus individual, perhaps drawing more heavy lines to indicate the most influential groups.

Step 2: Now in your journal give at least three examples of the positive role models, mentors, organizations and community experiences in this community which contributed to you becoming the person you are today.

Step 3:  Now in your joural describe what aspects/qualities of your ethnic/cultural background are prominent in your life (e.g., language, religion, character traits) and the childhood experiences that reinforced them

Step 4: Finally for this exercise, in your journal describe the childhood and adolescent experiences or relationships that shaped your view of people who are culturally different than you. What is your current view of people who are culturally different than you?

Project Implicit Experience Part I

Go to Project Implicit Website at: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/  then click on DEMONSTRATION only. You will then see a series of Demonstration Tests. You will take 5 of these tests this week and then next week you will take five more.

In Week 3 you will take the following IAT tests:

1. Race (Black and White)
2. Asian
3. Native American
4. Arab Muslim
5. Skin Tone

Background: Project Implicit blends basic research and educational outreach in a virtual laboratory at which visitors can examine their own hidden biases. Project Implicit is the product of research by three scientists whose work produced a new approach to understanding of attitudes, biases, and stereotypes. The Project Implicit site (implicit.harvard.edu) has been functioning as a hands-on science museum exhibit, allowing web visitors to experience the manner in which human minds display the effects of stereotypic and prejudicial associations acquired from their socio-cultural environment.

After you have completed the five IAT tests then answer the following questions in your journal:

1. What implications are the results on this test for my future dealings with people of cultures different from mine?
2. How aware was I before taking these IAT tests of my perceptions of people of different cultures from my own?
3. What do I need to work on in myself to help me become as effective person with people of different cultures based on the results of this experience?

Project Implicit Experience Part II

Go to Project Implicit Website at: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/  then click on DEMONSTRATION only.

In Part II you will take the following IAT tests:

1. Religion
2. Sexuality
3. Weight
4. Age
5. Disability

After you have completed the five IAT tests then answer the following questions in your journal:

1. What implications are the results on this test for my future dealings with people of cultures different from mine?
2. How aware was I before taking these IAT tests of my perceptions of people of different cultures from my own?
3. What do I need to work on in myself to help me become as effective a person with people of different cultures based on the results of this experience?

Your Racial/Cultural Identity Development

Read the following descriptiong of the Racial/Cultural Identity Model (RCID) before answering the questions for this exercise in your journal.

The Experience of a Culturally Diverse Person

Interview a person from a different culture than your own and chose from any of the following groups: African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Arab/Muslim American, Native Americans, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual & Transgendered Americans, or Caucasian American. Use the following interview outline and then record your interview in your journal. 

Step 1: In your report on this interview in your journal first identify the following characteristics of the Interviewee:

a.    Cultural or Ethnic Background:

b.    Age:

c.    Gender:

d.    Education:

e.    Occupation:

Step 2: Next record in your journal  the interviewee’s responses to the following questions:

1. Please describe the most important values and beliefs of your culture.

2. Please describe important cultural events, celebrations, and practices in your culture.

3. What reading materials, films, or videos can help people from other cultures learn about your culture?

4. How do you think others outside your culture view your culture?

5. What are the fondest memories you have from your childhood?

6. Have you ever experienced prejudice or discrimination? Please elaborate.

7. How do people from your culture perceive people of my culture?

8. What issues or concerns do you think people from your culture would bring to relating to people of my culture?

9. When it comes to people of cultures getting along with one another, what approach or interventions do you think would help people from your cultural group the most in getting along with people from different cultures?

10. Is there anything else that you would like to add to help me understand your culture better?

My Cultural Perspective and its Impact on My Relating to Others from Different Races and Cultures

After you have completed an interview of a person from a different culture or race you are now to interview yourself and record your answers in your journal: