This story begins in early childhood. It really has a lot to do with my family’s history. Both of my parents lived in very international settings and were a strong influence in my life. Most Americans only know American culture. Even Americans who have been living side by side with other cultural groups for years seem to know very little about their non-Anglo neighbors.
My father grew up in San Francisco and his entire family loved Asian cultures. As a child, I heard many stories about Japanese culture, Chinese cuisine, and my father even knew how to write many Chinese characters. He taught me how to count to ten in two different Southern Chinese dialects. I learned how to use chopsticks early on as well. I “forced” or coerced my father to teach me the ancient Chinese game of “Go” or wei-chi (baduk in Korean). He was an expert at the game, and after many years of struggle, I too became a fairly decent player — although not as good as he was even after 37 years of playing. It is hard to compete intellectually with a father who was an MIT graduate.
My mother incidently also had a lot of family members in the San Francisco area, but had a completely different cultural orientation. I learned about the Arabic culture, as she grew up in an Arabic speaking country. I also became acquainted with Indians (Hindustanis) and Indian spirituality which has been a huge plus in my life. Since my mother lived in New York for many years, she was living very closely to Spanish speaking people at a time where very few other parts of America had any hispanics.
So, the influence of the two sides of the family connected me to a wide variety of very rich cultures — and it was fascinating. As a child, I had the opportunity of meeting people from around the world. This really shaped my life in many ways. In my University days, I had even more opportunities to meet even more people from even more places. I had never met Africans before I went to college, and I have many fond memories of all of the African parties I went to, and how nice the music and food was too.
An interest, or a means for survival?
In the beginning, I thought that understanding diversity was merely an interest. Connecting with cultures that meant something to me was a passion, but I didn’t see it as being important for my life. I thought that America was 90% culturally American, and that the others just lived in separated areas, or were scattered throughout the mainstream. This was 30 years ago when I was having the thought that understanding diversity was merely fascinating. America has changed, and the world has changed. The world is very connected these days. People travel from country to country much more often these days than ever before. International travel used to be the leisure of the upper class, but now it is something even the poor do from time to time. The demographics of America have changed tremendously, and continue to change. When I was a child, whites were more than 80% of the population. NOW, whites represent less than 50% of the birthrate. The diverse people are now destined to be the majority — and understanding them is my key to survival in the world today. As an example, I went to a wine tasting yesterday in Los Angeles — not a cultural event — but, 90% of the people there were non-anglos. Without a thorough understanding of diversity, it would have been hard to interact with anyone there!
Additionally, for my future, my psychic has told me many times that he sees a brilliant career in international trade between various Asian and Middle Eastern countries. I hope he is right. We will find out.
It has not all been a walk in the park
The down side of diversity, is that I often feel lonely. I live in a very diverse place, but find that people are not so friendly to you if you are not from their group. This has been the case since early childhood, when I was often rejected by people from other communities…
My friend came up with a brilliant saying which I will remember forever. He said this to me…
“You like diversity, but diversity doesn’t like you”