Occupational Therapy’s Dance With Diversity

Abstract

Abstract As the demographics of the United States continue to change and we become a more pluralistic society, the increased diversity of the occupational therapy workforce and our consumers calls for an examination of the profession’s stance on multiculturalism and diversity. Using the metaphor of dance, this article identifies the dance partners as the organization’s leaders and its members. A historical review of the profession from the 1940s to the present traces the partners’ steps to determine which led the dance of diversity during the profession’s development. In this review, I discovered that the period when the profession most effectively and productively explored issues of diversity was during the early- to mid-1990s—a time when the organization and its members worked in harmony. At that time, occupational therapy’s dance with diversity flowed with rhythm and synchronicity.