Monthly Memos

Differences: Do They Divide Or Distinguish?

Charles I. Mundale
Executive Director of MCCR

June 1992

In one of his monologues, Garrison Keillor recalled a delicate encounter in the warming house at Lake Woebegone's ice rink. Reflecting on the experience, he observed, "Sex is not a problem, it's a mystery." His message to the obsessed and the prudish was clear: Perception shapes reality. And behind the perception lies attitude. This is not to say that reality has no existence apart from perceptions. Surely it does, but the human brain seldom takes a message from the senses at face value. It is always categorizing, and its categories are socially and culturally created. Culture is the original Spin Doctor.

In every culture, there are three categories of behavior: • Encouraged. • Accepted. • Opposed. The attitudes with which we approach a different group or culture's behavior has great influence on how we react to those differences. If we are defensive/aggressive, we will see the differences as dividing us from them.

If we are open/curious, we will see the differences as distinguishing them from us. The latter attitude fosters a wider range of accepted behavior and, thus, more latitude for individual and minority variation.

If this seems like splitting hairs, so be it. It's a very important hair to split. Americans obviously need a new way to think about the differences we are allowing to divide us. Recent events in Los Angeles are only an exclamation point added to handwriting that has been on the wall for a very long time.

If ethnic and cultural diversity in the workplace is something we must grudgingly endure, getting rid of the "grudgingly" would at least move the phenomenon from "opposed" to "accepted" and thus increase the level of tolerance.

If, on the other hand, we can adopt the attitude advocated by U.S. West CEO Ron James at MCCR's second Diversity Roundtable last month, we can make diversity -- and the differences implied -- part of our "encouraged" category.

The number and kinds of behaviors falling into each of these categories is a measure of a culture's level of tolerance. This country has long been perceived as the world's leading agent and locus of tolerance. The perception went well beyond reality, yet it shaped the reality of thousands of immigrants who voted with their feet to come here.

If the perception could now become reality, surely it would distinguish us in the world and not divide us from it.

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