Can you explain the theoretical models used to discuss sensitivity to difference, such as the Bennett scale, in addition to an understanding of the...

There are several different models used to understand how people perceive cultural differences and how culturally sensitive they are. Cultural sensitivity is the acceptance of differences among people without assigning a negative or positive value to these differences. For example, Dr. Milton Bennett developed the Bennett scale, also referred to as the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS). According to this scale, people are arrayed along six stages of cognitive development with regard to how well...

There are several different models used to understand how people perceive cultural differences and how culturally sensitive they are. Cultural sensitivity is the acceptance of differences among people without assigning a negative or positive value to these differences. For example, Dr. Milton Bennett developed the Bennett scale, also referred to as the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS). According to this scale, people are arrayed along six stages of cognitive development with regard to how well they can integrate and understand cultural differences. For example, the first stage is denial of difference, in which people perceive of their culture as the only one. Later stages include defense against difference, minimization of difference, acceptance of difference, adaptation of difference, and integration of difference. In the last stage, people can shift cognitive sets to take on different world views. 

Ron Takaki's A Different Mirror discusses the ways in which race can be a metaphor (an idea from Toni Morrison) that explains how people in the U.S. integrate an understanding of diversity into their ideas about American identity. If people perceive of America as white, they see non-whites as not American, so this myth affects the way in which diversity is handled in the U.S. In what Takaki calls the "Master Narrative," the United States is defined as white, although that is a myth rather than reality. Takaki writes about the ways in which the multicultural reality of America is changing people's conceptions of this myth.