The Need for Multicultural Communication

In this lesson, you’re asked to take the Implicit Bias Test, created in 1998. The Midwives Alliance of North America reports that

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report. The IAT may be especially interesting if it shows that you have an implicit attitude that you did not know about...The IAT measures the strength of associations between concepts (e.g., black people, gay people) and evaluations (e.g., good, bad) or stereotypes (e.g., athletic, clumsy). (2016)

You could end up showing a preference for a particular race. Does it mean you’re prejudiced? Researchers say no. As Project Implicit reminds us, "the IAT shows biases that are not necessarily endorsed and that may even be contradictory to what one consciously believes" (2011).

In the field, where you’re communicating with diverse audiences, it’s a good idea to first examine your own views and understandings—and biases. "Based on what we know about how implicit biases form," Project Implicit counsels, "we recommend that people consider what gets into their minds in the first place" (2011).

Most of what gets into our mind comes from—you guessed it—the media.

Stereotypes

Sinan Gökçen, in discussing rights for the Roma people in Europe, offers an extended discussion of what can get into our minds, focusing in particular on stereotypes:

According to journalist Walter Lippmann, who coined the term, a stereotype is a "picture in our heads." Lippman also contended that our imagination is shaped by the pictures seen; "consequently, they lead to stereotypes that are hard to shake"....Media is a powerful agent in the creation and maintenance of racial stereotypes, but many other social factors shape the perceptions seeping into everyone's minds to slowly galvanize the pictures in our heads. (n.d.)

One strategy for combating these images, according to the IAT researchers at Project Implicit, "could mean going out of your way to watch television programs and movies that portray women and minority group members in positive or counter-stereotypical ways" (2011).

This course will, of course, address tactics for engaging multicultural audiences effectively and in non-stereotypical ways. It starts with you examining your own thoughts.

Diversity

The examples at the beginning of this lesson provide evidence of the need to learn how to effectively reach multicultural populations—in other words, be inclusive.

But is there a need to reach out to these groups separately in the first place? The answer is yes. Just look at our country’s increasing diversity.

Lumen Learning notes that "the United States is a diverse country, racially and ethnically, with over six races officially recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau" (n.d., para. 1). In November 2016, The Washington Post examined U.S. trends in its article The Increasingly Diverse United States of America, highlighting the fact that the landscape is rapidly changing in areas not typically known for diversity, while "already diverse cities become increasingly mixed with immigrants from Asia, Africa, and Latin America" (Keating & Karklis, 2016).

The Post's Keating and Karklis describe their research:

To quantify how America is changing, we used the diversity index, which measures the chance that two people chosen at random will not be the same race and ethnicity. A high score means a county has people of many races and ethnicities, while a low score means the community is made up of a single dominant group.

To make these maps, we calculated the racial and ethnic diversity in every county in the contiguous United States for 2000, and again with the latest data from 2014. (2016)

Counties were identified as

• not diverse, but changing fast (northern New England through the Midwest);
• already very diverse (the South and Southwest);
• diverse and getting more so (Boston, Seattle, Orlando, and other large cities throughout the country); and
• not diverse and staying that way (the Texas–Mexican border).

Referring to the 2016 presidential race, Keating and Karklis note that,

before and since the election, diversity has been at the heart of issues such as the Black Lives Matter movement, resistance to political correctness,...and attitudes about immigration.

Perceptions of "other" people lead not only to misunderstandings, experts said, but also to hostility. (2016)

You may have observed this hostility yourself. Urban and rural America are becoming increasingly polarized. Race politics trend daily on Twitter. In 2018, the terms racial divide or divided nation were commonly used in headlines. Videos spread on social media platforms of encounters in stores, schools, nightclubs, neighborhoods, and even churches involving races colliding. Some were violent and deadly.

Keating and Karklis explain these kinds of collisions with the following example:

Residents in a multiethnic urban society can think that they live in a cooperative community of people coming together but disparage rural areas as backward. Meanwhile, people in rural communities prize their tight relationships but describe cities as crime-ridden and harsh. Both sides are shocked at the generalizations used by the other side. (2016)

Bridging the Divide

In November 2017, 29-year-old rapper Joyner Lucas put the Black–White division in a song and video titled I’m Not Racist. In media interviews, the artist said that the rap, which features a White man wearing a red hat inscribed with “Make America Great Again” (a slogan used by Donald Trump in his successful 2016 presidential campaign), faces off with a Black man, having a tense, uncomfortable talk about race relations. The video ends with these words on the screen: We were all humans until race disconnected us, religion separated us, politics divided us, and wealth classified us. If you listen, be warned: The song contains explicit content and language.

Dialogue is good, whether it’s rapped, tweeted, or spoken. Often, however, there's not enough. Why? Because we’re all told from a young age not to talk about certain things in public, or in polite company, or at the dinner table—things like religion, politics, money, and race.

A course on effective communication with multicultural populations can cover them all.

To have the conversation, it’s important to get on the same page about a few common terms, understand the changing demography of U.S. society, and review the media's role in race and society.