How the assets of multi-ethnicity too often get ignored

Sam Smith - As a white journalist who majored in anthropology, lived most of his life in a majority black Washington DC, played in jazz bands, and has four Puerto Rican nephews and nieces I am repeatedly struck by how much we treat multi-ethnicity as only a problem and not as a major asset.  There is no doubt in my mind that my own cross-ethnic experiences have provided enjoyment, education, pleasure and escape from cultural boredom, but I also realize how few share this view and how, especially in journalism, we far more often treat multi-ethnicity as a crisis. Here are a few contrary views I have gained along the way and some thoughts about how to handle it all a bit differently.

Stop using the term race so much: Race creates the illusion that our differences are mainly biological. This is simply not true. Culture is an overwhelmingly larger factor than say skin color. One study found that those identified as black around the world had less genetic similarity with each other than your average white and black in America. If we use the terms ethnicity and culture we start to realize that we are not trapped biologically; our differences are manageable.

Teach multi-ethnicity to our young. Part of my introduction to multi-culturalism was being one of six children. I learned early in life that other people didn't necessarily think or act like me. Then in ninth grade, I took what was then one of two high school anthropology courses in the country. As a teenager I was introduced to the true variety of cultures in the world and that what I believed and how I acted only reflected a small part of the human story. How powerful was this? When I got to Harvard, I became one of 20 anthropology majors and several of us came from my school. Don't think teaching the young can't help.

Teach the good news as well as the bad from history: I'm struck by how much I hear these days about slavery compared, say, to the modern civil rights movement. About the evils of the past with so few mentions of those who corrected them and how they did it. Psychiatrists know that people who can't move on from the wrongs of their childhood get trapped in how they handle the present and that is true of a society as well. We need to learn from those before us who produced positive change.

Show how some find common ground - I had black musical heroes when I was in junior high school where I started its first jazz band. Nothing helps improve one's notion of a different culture more than common interests and values. Art, music and sports are among sources of such inspiration.

Tell about multiculturalism working - I was struck by how little attention is given to Washington DC's local culture between the 1950s and 2011 when it was majority black. As a white guy there for much of that period I was never asked by others what it was like living in an ethnic minority even though I much enjoyed it. As Marya Annette McQuirter has noted 25% of the capital was black in 1800. Blacks were mostly free by 1830 and emancipation occurred in 1862. Yet most know nothing about this.

In short, if we want to improve ethnic relations we can't just treat them as a problem to be resolved, but rather as a new way of thinking that will make us wiser, more decent and happier.