Diversity Managment

Student: Joseph

Diversity Management

January 7, 2009

In the article “A World View of Cultural Diversity” the author Thomas Sowell depicted several different examples to reflect his thought that cultural diversity has been in existence long before the term was assigned a meaning. He also took time to elaborate on what the term actually mean to him. For example in his writing he spoke about the entire history of the human race and the rise of man from the caves, which have been marked by transfers of cultural advances from one group to another and from one civilization to another. He went on further to explain that the historic sharing of cultural advances implied much more than cultural diversity, but that it also implied that some cultural features were not only different from others but better than others. This argument was supported by his statement that cultural diversity is not a static picture of differences but a dynamic picture of competition in which what serves human purposes more effectively survives, while what does not, tends to decline or disappear. A prime example of this was noted by Sowell which read “manuscript scrolls once preserved the records, knowledge, and thought of European or Middle Eastern cultures. But once paper and printing from China became known in these cultures, books were faster and cheaper to produce thus drove scrolls into extinction. Books were not simply different from scrolls; they were better than scrolls.” On the other hand, he made it clear that no one culture as a whole is better than the other, but that there are some norms from one culture that is better than some norms from another culture. He also noted that cultural difference is not due to genes, and that cultural competition is not merely a game, but it is what advances the human race (Sowell p.69-78).

Sowell would explain that in the workforce today the incorporation of cultural diversity among workers is far more beneficial to not only the employees but...