A Person-Centered View of Diversity In South Africa

Abstract

The work of Carl Rogers and Ruth Sanford in South Africa during the 1980's was continued in the form of person-centered diversity awareness workshops. This article describes action and qualitative research on participants’ experiences during and after these workshops. Post workshop interviews indicated that organizational change agents and consultants were exposed to new ways of facilitating learning opportunities which are not based on using classroom techniques and methods, but on their own realness, respect for and ability to put themselves in their client group’s frame of reference. The results highlighted South Africa’s never-ending journey of healing and the showed the need for South Africans’ to integrate race and gender splits, subgroup and individual identities, and denigrated and idealized parts of the self