Passive Tolerance

A couple of weeks ago in the Guardian, I read a joyful article about race relations. It was celebrating how communities experiencing an influx of people from foreign cultures eventually learned to move forward. Fear moved through resistance and separation towards acceptance and finally true integration.

Essentially the article argued that all that was required to achieve this breakthrough was time. Once we live next to people from other cultures the fears dissipate. We see how they are human beings just like us, with strange ways but big hearts. Some of their strange ways and our strange ways merge into even stranger ways, ways that develop humanity further.

I am privileged to live for much of my time in New York City. Queens is the most ethnically diverse borough in the whole USA, which I guess makes it the most diverse in the whole world. I love it. Many days I can laugh and learn by simply observing all the cultures and how they interact. I won’t claim that there is equality of wealth or opportunity or even happiness, but there is plenty of mutual respect, and also plenty of learning. How do you think Fusion restaurants got started?

In Queens, we have the advantage that everyone is packed so close to each other that we cannot live apart even if we wanted to. There are a few blocks where each group has its base – most Filipinos live in Woodside, for example – but the Columbians and Greeks are so close down the road that the boundaries merge over time. Each community retains local customs, and offers support to members in need and new arrivals, but people also look beyond their own culture. It is a wonderful model, and a great place to live. Parts of London have something of the same, and cultural diversity also drives places like Dubai and Singapore, but I don’t think there is anywhere quite like New York.

Last weekend my wife and I had the honour of attending the wedding of two people who have grown up in well-integrated societies. Not surprisingly their guests were also very diverse, and the resulting atmosphere was joyfully multi-cultural. Many in the younger generations have such advantages, and it is my main reason for optimism about humanity. If we can take the benefits of globalization to progressively learn to live as a single human race, we can achieve miracles. Many of the things holding us back could be conquered, including inequality, war and lack of sustainability.

When I was working, it took me a while to really understand the power of diversity. I initially saw it as a compliance or fairness issue, since that is the way it tends to be approached in companies. I thought I was a paragon, since I made sure I had a fully diverse team. It was only afterwards that I learned that the diverse team was a more powerful one, if I only allowed that power to emerge by really using the difference. Later, I put down a lot of any success my teams had to the diversity of the group and our willingness to really embrace and value that difference.

Indeed, if we think of God as CEO of humanity, that might be his current change project. Previous change projects have offered technology and globalization. This one is more difficult though, since it requires staff to change attitudes.

This thought set me thinking about ethnic and cultural integration in a new way. It helped me to understand more about the issue and what we might do to overcome obstacles to change.

For obstacles are many. A depressing share of current popular politics is about fear of difference. Most European countries have far right parties pandering to fear of immigration and disrespect of rival traditions. In tough economic times, these parties are growing. So far, the only way to stop them seems to have been to allow them into positions of power and seeing them fail (since such policies don’t really help in government).

Pandering to fear of difference, and its sister, patriotism bordering on supremacy, have been behind most wars and genocides in history. Arguably, the US only gets away with its disastrous bullying foreign policy because of the patriotism card it plays so readily at home (and sometimes even starts to believe).

God the change-leading CEO might start to despair of the integration project given so many setbacks. That is why stories like Queens are so important, and so is the apparent emergence of successful integration highlighted in the Guardian. It shows that there may be a way through the resistance.

And isn’t that just like all change projects? Think of all the models we are taught about change. There is SARAH – Shock, Anger, Rejection, Acceptance, Healing. There is the model of new teams – Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing. These and many other models point to a curve whereby things must get worse before they get better.

It is significant that scare-mongering seems to work best in areas where integration has not yet happened. The BNP and UKIP in the UK have their strongholds not in multi-cultural areas but in white areas. The people there are in the earlier stages of the model – denial or anger – and open to arguments pandering to their fear of change. Once some degree of integration has taken place, the vote for such parties declines again. The same could be said of whole nations: the UK is more ready to be frightened of Bulgarians and Romanians before they actually arrive (and, of course, prove not just harmless but beneficial).

Given these parallels, those of us looking to help society through this change process would do well to look at change literature for ideas. Kotter’s eight step model could be helpful. Or we can examine well-established realities about change for their relevance.

One fact about change is that we all have different expectations and fears. Some of us are more welcoming of change, others more fearful. Language that might work for me might not work for other groups. A common theme is that marketing is often left to those who are positive about the process. Inevitably these people choose messages that do not work.

Other imperatives in change situations are to address fears head on and to continue to promote a positive big picture message. It might be argued that most politicians run away from these needs. Some underplay the likely extent of immigration, or make promises that they cannot deliver. An overall positive message is sadly rare, not just about immigration but also on related topics like trade liberalization or the EU.

The integration that becomes inevitable with globalization is truly a wonderful opportunity for humanity. In our youth and in places like Queens we can already see where it can lead, for individuals and for society. Making this work is a worthy change project for all of us. We should not be surprised to find resistance, and we should all we can learn from change literature to help to facilitate the journey.