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Training
MDCR is committed to preventing discrimination and bridging gaps in understanding and trust. The department provides training and educational services on a range of civil rights topics.
To Request Trainings, fill out the online request form here.
General Civil Rights Presentation
Provides an overview of civil rights laws, including areas and bases of unlawful discrimination, how to prevent violations, and the work and procedures of the department. This presentation is usually one hour including Q&A, and can be customized for a business or organization.
Understanding Your Fair Housing Rights
Provides an overview of fair housing laws, including areas and bases of unlawful discrimination, application of the laws and emerging trends. Depending on the audience, this training is usually 2-3 hours in duration including Q&A, and can be customized for a business or organization.
Sexual and Other Forms of Discriminatory Harassment
Designed to help audiences gain an awareness and understanding of sexual and other forms of discriminatory harassment, its impact on the workplace and what they can do to prevent and address harassment in organizations. Provides key definitions to help identify discriminatory harassment and increase knowledge of audience responsibilities as an employee and/or employer, covers general discriminatory harassment complaints investigation issues, and helps audiences see how they might create and foster a harassment-free workplace. This presentation is approximately 2 hours in duration.
Michigan law prohibits discrimination practices based on:
- Religion
- Race
- Color
- National Origin
- Sex, including pregnancy
- Sexual harassment
- Gender identity
- Sexual orientation
- Familial status
- Arrest record (misdemeanor)
- Age
- Height
- Weight
- Marital Status
- Disability
- Retaliation
Bias Motivated Crime
Designed to help audiences gain an awareness and understanding of bias/hate and bias motivated crime. This training answers to common questions such as: What is a hate crime? Are hate crimes different than other crimes? Why do we have specific laws covering hate and bias, and what do they do? Why -- and what -- do I need to know? This presentation is usually 2 hours in duration and can be customized for a business or organization.
Special Subjects in Civil Rights
Working with the customer for a targeted audience, MDCR will develop specialized training, conference workshop, or breakout session regarding important civil rights issues such as bias/hate crimes and community response, police/community relations, general civil rights, or other questions/concerns generated following a community-specific incident. This presentation is usually 1 to 1.5 hours in duration and can be customized for a business or organization.
Our training solutions introduce an overall approach for advancing equity through an approach centered on promoting critical thinking and increasing organizational diversity and inclusion knowledge.
Workshops are customized to address specific organizational needs and most sessions range from 4 to 8 hours in length. Additional follow up services such as coaching strategies to implement an equity lens are offered. Specific training concepts include:
The Business Case for Diversity
Explores how a more diverse workforce brings with it more innovation, creativity and a greater variety of perspectives. Research shows that businesses with a more diverse workforce have more customers, higher revenues and profits, greater market share, less absenteeism and turnover and a higher level of commitment to their organization.
Systems of Advantage – the Narrative
Explores how societal messages sustain a message that is oppressive to some and advantageous to others. Strategies to recognize these messages along with ways to proactively create new narratives are reviewed.
Implicit Bias and the Impact of In-and-Out Group Predispositions, Polarized Messages and Cognitive Scripts
Explores the impact of the human pre-disposition to form in-and-out groups, messages that differentiate groups based on socially-constructed categories and the unconscious association processes rooted in cultural conditioning. Strategies to interrupt the unintended consequences of these processes are discussed.
A Common Language Through an Equity Lens
Explores the importance of defining the terms we use in conversations about equity and provides clear definitions that promote shared understanding and a foundation for equitable change.
Ideal Culture vs. Real Culture – Dissonance Between Conscious and Unconscious Values
Explores the dissonance that exists between our egalitarian conscious values and our unconscious biases and provides a venue to identify and interfere with factors that shape the disconnect between what we believe we do and what we actually practice.
Discrimination and Harassment
Incorporates an overview of state and federal civil rights law, including sexual and other forms of discriminatory harassment, and employee/service provider rights and responsibilities. This material will include the MDCR Investigation/Enforcement process, key definitions related to a quid pro quo or hostile work environment, how to maintain a harassment-free space, and offer opportunities to incorporate specific policies and procedures for reporting and investigating complaints of discrimination and harassment.
Michigan law prohibits discrimination practices based on:
- Religion
- Race
- Color
- National Origin
- Sex, including pregnancy
- Sexual harassment
- Gender identity
- Sexual orientation
- Familial status
- Arrest record (misdemeanor)
- Age
- Height
- Weight
- Marital Status
- Disability
- Retaliation
Racial Equity Trainings
MDCR's training solutions focus on race extensively but not exclusively as we recognize the intersectionality and multilayers of systemic advantage and disadvantage. For organizations to advance equity and incorporate it across departmental lines, action plans that endorse equity and inclusion are essential to effectively create the long-term implementation of equitable practices, policies and procedures.