Creating Community: Diversity & Inclusion

Diversity and Inclusion can be approached from a wide variety of perspectives. If presented as an overview of vocabulary and statistics with an admonition to “do better,” it can often leave participants feeling overwhelmed and/or offended.

Dr. Cobb offers Non-threatening Diversity and Inclusion Training to help participants understand the background, historical decisions, and current events surrounding race and racism in a manner that allows them to own their cultural history and to better understand their communication styles and those of others with whom they work.

Dr. Cobb’s training offers integration of theory and practice, which allows participants to address societal events and personal experiences from the perspective of building the Beloved Community, a theory adopted by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Joshua Royce was a philosopher and a great thinker of the 19th century. One of his greatest philosophies was to build an infinite community of minds. He would call that the Beloved Community. He created an organization from this concept and he invited great thinkers to become a part of this community.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. became a member of Royce’s community. The main purpose was to build this Beloved Community around the world. Dr. King took this concept and applied it to the needs of the Black community during the Civil Rights Movement. He wanted to create a community of ALL of God’s children: Black and White, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, Men and Women - a community of love, of peace, of cooperation. This is the concept of the Beloved Community - where those of great minds come together and collaborate to build an effective working community.

Dr. Cobb has been working in the area of cultural competency, diversity, and inclusion, and race and racism for many years, in schools, parishes, and nonprofit organizations.