Wen Guang Li
English 101.0781
Professor Kelly Connelly
May 16, 2009
No Diversities in Diverse Society
When new immigrants move to America, they always will be surprised by its racial and
ethnic diversity. No matter where you are, it is easy to find many people who are from different
countries. Even the new president, Barack Obama, has a diversified family. This example can let
us know America is a racially and ethnically diverse country. However, people don’t really care
about the diversity. They care more about their own communities, and how to develop their own
communities better. They care more about creating relationships with more people who have
similar educational or cultural backgrounds. Although some people hope diverse communities
can be built, in reality, they will be hard to come true.
The culture often decides the habits and likings of the people. Therefore, people who have
different cultures like to live and work in the places and communities that have similar cultures.
For example, most Chinese American and Chinese immigrants only like to live and work in
Chinese communities, such as Chinatown, Flushing. Just as David Brooks says, “people are less
often tied down to factories and mills, and they can search for places to live on the basis of
cultural affinity” (23). And the late write James Chanpin also says that every place becomes
more like itself (23). Each place and community has its own culture. People who can use their
own languages live in their communities. People who can easily find friends who have similar
habits and likings and share their thoughts and tastes to these friends in their communities.
Brooks also says every community has similar tastes and preferences (24). For example, people
are living in fast-growing places such as Burnsvile, Minnesota. They are two and a half times as
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likely to buy Light n’ Lively Kid Yogurt. However, people are recent college graduates in places
such as Berkely, California and Gainesville, Florida. They are big consumers of DoveBars and
Saturday Night Live (24). If we make them live in diverse places or move to a different cultural
community, they can not tolerate these situations, because these will be no chance to share their
own thoughts and tastes to others and easily to find the food they like. Like Brooks describes,
asking a Democratic lawyer to move to the place that most Republican lawyers live would be
like you had just asked her to buy a pickup truck with a gun rack and to shove chewing tobacco
in her kid’s mouth (22). Therefore, people can live very well in their own community.
However, how can people care about diversity, even to build diversity communities if they
live very well in their own community? In each different cultural community, people care more
about how to make their own community develop better, and how can make more young people
learn more about their own culture. In the article, “A Letter to a Child Like Me”, Jose Torres
encourages his young friend, Pedrito, to save time and spend more time studying, especially
leaning about his own country’s culture and history. Torres says to him that he must learn his
own history (163) and be proud of his ethnicity and language (164). Naturally, people who live in
their own communities care more about their own culture and hope their communities can keep
these cultures forever and develop better.
The human nature is a very important part of the human mind. Many decisions and actions
are controlled and influenced by it. Actually, human nature also decides a true fate-no body cares
about diversity. Just as Brooks describes, it is human nature for people to want to be around
others who are roughly like themselves (25). Based on human nature’s influence, people just like
to marry or make friends with similar educations or backgrounds (24). In other words, they don’t
like to have relationships with people who have different backgrounds and educations. For
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example, in America, most companies have diverse employees. Employees come from many
different countries and have different cultural and educational backgrounds. Actually, like Joanne
Miller, the director and interim head of the Center for the New American Workforce at Queens
College, says, “Companies have diversity, but they don't do anything with it to make it work for
them” (Noble). The author, Barbara Presley Noble, also describes, especially in the personnel
department and into the strategic center of the corporate environment, at the most part they have
not taken the step beyond what would move diversity out of a pigeon hole (Noble). Based on
human nature, we can see that employees who have different race and culture are often separated
each in diverse companies.
Actually, racism often happens because of similar reasons and situations, no matter where it
is. John Edgar Wideman, in the article, “The Night I was Nobody”, describes how he wanted to
drink a perfect margarita in Clovis one night. However, he couldn’t enter into Kelley’s bar
wearing his Malcolm X hat. When he figured out the true reason was not that caps weren’t
allowed in Kelly’s, he felt that one minute you’re a person, the next moment somebody starts
treating you as if you’re not (67). He was so mad and produced a lot of thoughts about race
discrimination. He says our American racial weather is turbulent and unchanging in its
changeability (67) and as a result the black people die sooner and more violently than white men
and are more ravaged by unemployment and lack of opportunity (68). Because they are different,
and by the human nature’s influence, people don’t tolerate other people different from
themselves. Instead, people cut themselves off from everyone unlike themselves. Based on
human nature, people care more about themselves and care whether they can make more friends
who have similar cultural and educational backgrounds.
It will be hard to truly build diverse communities. Different cultural backgrounds and human
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nature decide that most places and communities are going to keep culturally homogeneous. This
situation can not be changed. We only can do this if we have chances, trying to spend some time
touching different cultural communities; at least it will bring us diverse experiences.
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Works Cited
Brooks, David. “People Like Us.” Across Cultures: A Reader for Writers. 7th ed. Comp. Sheena
Gillespie and Robert Becker. New York: Pearson, 2008. 22- 26. Print.
Wideman, John Edgar. “The Night I was Nobody.” Across Culture: A Reader for Writers. 7th ed.
Comp. Sheena Gillespie and Robert Becker. New York: Pearson, 2008. 65-68. Print.
Torres, Jose. “A Letter to a Child Like Me.” Across Cultures: A Reader for Writers. 7th ed.
Comp. Sheena Gillespie and Robert Becker. New York: Pearson, 2008. 161-65. Print.
Noble, Barbara Presley. “At Work: Still In the Dark on Diversity.” NYtime.com. 6 Nov. 1994.
Web. 26 Apr. 2009.
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