By being given primary responsibility for change, members of the dominant-culture remain in the driver s seat they are still in power, they are still the ones with options. Minorities are kept dependent on the choices of dominant-culture members if a white male trainee chooses to do nothing different after attending the training program, then discrimination continues. So, awareness-based training may actually backfire. It may maintain the very power imbalance that it seeks to alter. In spite of these factors, let s grant that information about cultural differences is presented, and that it is learned.
Awareness is achieved.
Too often, trainees are left in the dilemma of the automobile mechanic who knows how to fix the problem, but lacks the tools to apply her knowledge. Tools that are equally powerful, no matter whose hands are at the controls. Tools that make no value judgment, explicitly or implicitly, about whose side of a difference is more right. Tools that work. Self Mediation is such a tool indeed, it may be regarded as a core competency of a multicultural workforce.