American business reflects its societal environment: robust, bold and subject to the same tensions of race, ethnic and cultural diversity that can be a creative - or destructive - spark to the interpersonal dynamic. Within such a context, multi-ethnic diversity training in corporate environments becomes an imperative organizational tool for success-oriented leadership, rather than the "extracurricular enrichment" program status to which it is so often relegated. Examining why such a program is so necessary - and why such programs are often under-appreciated - will be one of the key purposes of this paper.
In the aftermath of the so-called "Rodney King Riots" in Los Angeles last year, no leader - political, social, business or interest group - downplays the importance of multi-ethnic cooperation as a means for "keeping the peace." This is in belated acknowledgement of the fact that the previous eleven years - years corresponding to the Reagan-Bush Administrations in Washington - had brought public policy advancements in this field virtually to a halt. The "New Frontier" and "Great Society" policies of the 1960s introduced into the mainstream American consciousness concepts of multi-ethnic equality; the decade of the 1970s saw "affirmative action" programs striking down legal and organizational barriers to equal participation in the societal environment. But the psychological conversion from a racially/ethnically/culturally-divided nation into one where those divisions are immaterial was still a struggling process in 1980 - when the Ronald Reagan presidency announced the beginning of a new class-conscious era.
Within the context of 1980s' societal and corporate philosophy, "multi-ethnic" consideration was limited to international understanding vis-a-vis Japan: simplified, American interest in the issue could be summarized as "Japan is so economically successful: what are they doing that we aren't?" Hardly the basis for tru...