Defying Racial Bias in the Workplace: Individual Action and Accountability

This course focuses on the employee as an individual and the ways unconscious bias adversely affects organizational culture, including stifling decision-making, productivity, innovation, and market competitiveness. Inclusion and multiculturalism take center stage. Through self-examination and reflection within the context of their own experiences, students will explore the concepts of identity, privilege, and conscious and unconscious bias, as well as their financial impacts on the organization. They will identify ways they can mitigate racial workplace bias by holding themselves and their organization accountable. The concept of allyship will also be explored. Students will learn how, by putting allyship into practice, they can contribute to the creation of an antiracist work environment. By building empathy, embracing difference, and using emotional intelligence techniques, they will learn how to foster diversity, inclusion, and equity. Throughout the course they will develop an understanding of the ways recognition of individual racial bias will unlock the potential of both themselves and the organization.

Sample textbooks: Diangelo, R. (2018). White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. Ross, H. (2014). Everyday Bias: Identifying and Navigating Unconscious Judgments in Our Daily Lives.

Read about what two former students thought about the course.