| This study investigates Americans' consciousness with regard to social and cultural diversity. Specifically, it explores the motivations of some Americans to participate in a community-based intergroup dialogue program in Tempe, Arizona. The program consisted of ninety minutes of facilitated dialogue per week in groups of ten to fifteen people. Dialogue participants were interviewed before, during, and after the six-week long program; these interviews were analyzed using phenomenological description, reduction, and interpretation within a methodological framework of participatory action research.; Results suggest that participants experience diversity in terms of personal experiences, contextual conditions, and ideological lenses such as whiteness and individualism. Consciousness about both diversity and dialogue, furthermore, is characterized by dialectical tensions between honoring and transcending differences, between individual- and group-level identities, and between communicative and instrumental rationalities. Findings, finally, indicate that facilitated intergroup dialogue leads to increased perspective taking and changes in participants' communicative action, but that social change involves inherent risk due to its implicit unpredictability. Implications for further research, theory, and educational practice are considered. |
