Culture of Silence

My class had a chance to discuss unequal social relations. Specifically, we discussed how this can create a "culture of silence" that instills the oppressed with a negative, passive, and suppressed self-image.

I work at a training non-profit where we deliver training to workers in the energy industry. We are seeing a bit of a revolution in how we approach, train, and accept non-native English speakers. These workers have certainly been a group that is not one with power and privilege in our community. In fact, they have been excluded from work in our industry due to safety concerns around their language skills. This is all changing. 

But, there is definitely a "culture of silence" that leads them to have a passive response and approach to training and to the industry. Goodman (2012) writes that the more dominant groups in a society, in this case, English speakers, and for the most part white, English-speaking men, inherently create systems that reinforce their more dominant roles. This has certainly been the case in our community. What's startling is to be on the leading edge of supporting the change in our community, especially in terms of training. The question I might have is how will these changes to this group of workers effect there self-image? How will they become less passive? Less negative? How might they become more effective and emboldened?

Reference

Goodman, D. J. (2012). Promoting diversity and social justice: Educating people from privileged groups. SAGE Publications.