Monthly Memos

Cultural Diversity: Business As Usual?

Charles I. Mundale
Executive Director of MCCR

September 1992

During the Republican Convention in Houston, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Jack Kemp, told an interviewer that we are suffering from a self-induced paralysis on the subject of welfare reform because as soon as the topic is mentioned, someone cries "racism." Mr. Kemp conceded some justification for the charge, but he argued that we cannot hope to address the real needs for reform if this kind of knee-jerk reaction continues.

We run a similar risk with "family values." Again, there is evidence to be cited, but the use of the term to contrast the "culturally correct" with a variously renegade "them" evokes the same automatic response that Mr. Kemp correctly laments with respect to "welfare reform."

Cultural exclusivism is not going to make America work. No single group--no matter how defined--can claim "to own" the American culture. American culture is not a pure-bred but a vigorous, constantly evolving hybrid.

The founders of the republic were careful that no single group should ever hold all the cards. The division and separation of powers they built into our political framework has been reinforced socially and culturally by our guarantee of religious freedom and economically by our commitment to the open market.

The choice of E pluribus unum as the nation's motto is generally understood as referring to the forging of one nation out of 13 former colonies. The explanation is correct but inadequate. Massachusetts and Maryland, New Jersey and Georgia were not only different political entities, they were also different cultures.

The real task and promise of American history has been to forge something unified out of something different, and that something is cultures. We have never been entirely successful. And we have tended to think of our cultural differences as social and political problems.

This, too, is correct but inadequate. It is a business problem as well. Cultural diversity is America as usual, but it has not been business as usual. Fortunately, many business leaders now understand the need to change. Both markets and workforce will be increasingly diverse in the future. CEOs who have hosted MCCR Diversity Roundtables have seen the future and know that it will not work without well prepared employees and loyal customers.

Neither of these basic business goals can be achieved with a call to cultural arms.

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