Social diversity-and related issues...

Social diversity-and related issues of that kind as social inequities, prejudice, and ethnocentrism-have passionately transactioned me since I began my career in communication more than 20 years ago. Then, as now, I was drawn to this field because I firmly believe that communication theories, research, and teaching have extraordinary potential to diminish a certain number of of the inequities and narrow good senses that impoverish individual lives and undermine the possibilities of a healthy civil society.

In my remarks I will focus forward social diversity in our research and teaching. After briefly discussing different views of social diversity, I will identify three specific implications of diversity for teaching and scholarship. Then I will situate interest in social diversity within the broader connections of our field and higher education.

VIEWS OF SOCIAL DIVERSITY

Awareness of social diversity is individual of the most pronounced and important inclinations of our era (Gergen, 1991; Keye 1992; Prusank, Duran, & DeLillo, 1993; Seligman, 1990) Whereas about people applaud and others disparage diversity, the fact of social diversity cannot be disputed. The one time prominent view of America as a melting crock has given way to other metaphors that mirror greater respect for differences among nation

The Reverend Jesse Jackson has described the United States as a family quilt in which there are many different patches, each with its possess independent integrity, and each also an integral part of a larger overall pattern. Using the metaphor of a salad hollow historian Flora Davis (1991) points revealed that in a good salad, unlike in a stive cooked in a melting cup each ingredient simultaneously maintains its autonomous attributes and contributes to the complication totality of the salad. I have oftentimes used the metaphors of weavings and mosaics to allude to that society is made up of multiple parts that simultaneously have independent identity and contribute to a larger collective identity.

Each of these metaphors, unlike that of the melting cup respects the distinct integrity of parts that make up a larger whole, further doesn't lose sight of that larger whole.

Both popular and academic answers to diversity have been varied. sum of two units general approaches merit our attention.

Resisting and Judging Dierence

Historically, the most numerous common response to diversity has been to devalue whatever differs from our hold identity and way of life. This happens when the community deliberately or inadvertently interpret others from their confess standpoint, which may distort the meaning of communication that is informed by dint of distinct traditions and values.

We view this response to diversity when European Americans disparage African American communication styles; when Westerners misjudge Asians' grace as passivity; when men dismiss women's talk as trivial and when women describe men as unable to be intimate simply because many men don't talk at longitudinal dimensions about personal feelings. In each case, the ballasts are made from a perspective that neither mirrors nor respects diverse values and communication norms. Years ago de Tocqueville identified egoism as the greatest threat to a civil society because it encourages each character to live apart from, rather than with others. And this self-center orientation slams the door close up on conversation.

Learning From Difference

There is an alternative way of responding to diversity-one that must issue from within us. As Don Eberly noted in Building a Community of Citizens (1994) a dutiful society can't be achieved solely from doling out entitlements, enacting laws, or legislating rights. Instead, a society in which everyone can participate is causeed in respect for differences, as well as similarities, among us. Communication scholars and teachers can encourage this answer to diversity through teaching and research that further understanding and appreciation of diversity as an essential foundation for a civil society.

IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING AND RESEARCH

Merely calling for value for and appreciation of diversity is insufficient. To be effective, that abstract proposal must be accompanied from specific suggestions for integrating social diversity into teaching and research. I will briefly discuss three compound implications of a serious commitment to weaving diversity into our writing and our classrooms.

Thorough Attention to Cultural Diversity

The first implication, it be seens to me, is that we must realize that communication and refinement are profoundly related. Stated another way, communication is shaped by the agency of culture and shaping of tillage Because communication and culture are inseparable, our research and teaching should resoundingly recognize cultural influences upon human interaction.

Yet mostly existing textbooks do not incorporate cultural diversity adequately. about continue to present European American, middle-class communication as normative, or calm universal. Other texts deal with diversity through including diversity boxes or sidebars that spotlight anything that isn't European American and middle class as different, or other. This strategy represents the normalization of whiteness and middle class economic status (as well as heterosexuality, able bodiedness, and in the same manner forth).