The Use of Humor to Help Bridge Cultural Divides: An Exploration of a Workplace Cultural Awareness Workshop

Abstract

Humor can be used to ease tensions and create a safe place to dialogue across cultural differences in educational initiatives that seek to address social inequality. Little is written however on the appropriate use of humor within these educational programs. This article explores how group facilitators utilized specific types of humor to challenge ill-informed or intolerant statements while still maintaining a safe space to dialogue across difference. Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal worldviews on the understanding and use of humor are contrasted to help inform group facilitators on the knowledge and skills needed to appropriately utilize humor within their work.On September 21, 2008, Brian Sinclair died in the emergency room of a large urban hospital after waiting 34 hours for treatment of a bladder infection. Brian Sinclair was a 45-year-old homeless Aboriginal 1 man who was well known to hospital staff. He was also a double amputee after losing both his legs to frostbite and had suffered from a speech impediment since childhood. Brian would have survived his infection if he had been treated with antibiotics in a timely fashion. The death of Brian Sinclair set off a firestorm of criticism of the treatment of Aboriginal people within the health care system. Questions were immediately raised about whether racism played any role in the death of Brian Sinclair. An Aboriginal leader commented in the

Implementing Anti-Racism Interventions in Healthcare Settings: A Scoping Review

“…Many articles focused on developing a new or original tool, training, workshop or curricula to varying degrees of success [ 19 , 20 , 23 , 30 , 31 , 33 , 34 , 44 , 45 , 49 , 51 , 56 ]. The evaluation of an Undoing Racism workshop [ 31 ] aimed at highlighting the role of racism in contributing to the Black–White gap in infant mortality found that the workshop was helpful in offering a common language and framework to discuss racism and identify changes to reduce disparities.…”

“…The aim is to address the root cause of racial health disparities, which is racism. To disrupt the status quo, training programs need to work towards systemic change, informed by critical theories [ 51 ]. A study found that healthcare providers believed that any system, such as healthcare, which is put into place by dominant culture should work equally well for everyone regardless of race, highlighting the need to tackle harmful misconceptions [ 30 ].…”

“…Provide workshops for healthcare providers focusing on privilege and cultural competency training [ 20 , 23 , 30 , 33 ], the impact on clinical decision-making [ 37 , 38 ], on cultural schemas [ 45 ] and other strategies like appropriate humour [ 51 ] and relational accountability [ 58 ].…”

Affective spaces, humour and power in 24-hour care institutions for young people in vulnerable positions

“…Well-timed humour can release tension and diffuse conflicts. Rocke's (2015) study of the use of humour in workshops in health care organizations argues that the use of humour can provide safe spaces and help promote consensus in discussions between staff on sensitive, potentially troublesome issues, for instance, social inequality, prejudice and asymmetrical access to treatment. Some researchers even argue that humour played (and still plays) an essential role in the development of advanced thinking and, as such, in the evolution of higher-order intelligence in human beings (Porteus, 1989).…”

“…Laughter, jokes, jesting, irony, teasing, sarcasm, in short, an array of types of humour, plays an essential role in interpersonal relationships because humour often serves as a social bridge in facilitating social relationships. Multiple researchers have demonstrated how humour works as a lubricant in the establishment of a commitment to new relationships (Gitterman, 2003; Rocke, 2015; Ziv, 2010). Humour also has the capacity to highlight and make visible the less obvious dynamics of interpersonal, asymmetrical power dynamics.…”