9/11 Legacy: A Marriage of Cultures Doomed for Divorce.

The most disturbing result of the decade that followed the tragedy of September 11, 2001, when al- Qaeda executed a surprise attack on New York's World Trade Center towers and Washington's Pentagon, killing 3000 people from various cultural backgrounds,  is that multiculturalism and diversity,  previously lauded as the objectives of a shining new global society, are now viewed as tarnished extensions of a terrorist threat.

A marriage of diverse cultures, once viewed as the underlying fabric of a strong and vital society, like that found in the urban landscapes of the United States and Australia, seem doomed for all the familiar products of separation and divorce: isolation, suspicion, territorial imperatives and the like.

In a thoughtful reflection on the legacy of 9/11, Waleed Aly, of the Sydney Morning Herald, extrapolates on the theme of multiculturalism as terrorist threat. He cites the warnings of Samuel Huntingdon, in The Clash of Civilizations. During the Cold War, conflicts between nations bore clear ideological differences and were confined to distinct geographical boundaries. But once globalized economies changed the look of the world map, "conflict would continue but it would cease to be driven by ideology, instead being expressed through culture and religion."


The current wave of right wing xenophobia witnessed in response to immigrations in general, and Muslim immigrants in particular throughout Europe, the UK, and the United States, seems a sorry legacy  to the events of 9/11. The tenth anniversary of the attacks should be marked by the fact that the victims of the 9/11 attacks did not represent a homogenous group, but rather a culturally diverse group of people living and working within the geographic confines of New York and Washington. The enemy cannot be defined as "the other" in cultural and religious terms. 


The policy from which nations must divorce themselves, is that which supports the notion that immigrants pose some sort of global terrorist threat. Instead, policy should be shaped on building the resources to combat a clear ideology that is linked to those responsible for the 9/11 attacks. The enemy that those who mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11 continue to face, is the ideology supported by al-Queda and its continued clash with anything that represents the United States. 

The Garden And Its Enemies: Abating Conceit

 The lowly weed is the object of a kind of racial discrimination in the domestic garden, yanked from rows of cultivated plants with haste and segregated to the borders of the cabbage patch. Weeds with plebeian names are viewed as interlopers, competing with more valuable plants for the soil's nutrients. But in many cases, the plants our culture views as enemies to the garden have tremendous value in other cultures.

Keeping this in mind, I was intrigued by the words of Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900)  who wrote about the effect of one week of rain on his dried garden plot in the Northeast United States in an essay entitled, The Garden and Its Enemies.*

Warner's produce bearing plants thrived from the soaking, as did the "propagatious" weeds. One weed in particular, called the "pusley", outgrew his ability to keep it at bay; but he noted that in a neighbor's garden, a Chinese worker harvested and prepared a savory meal by boiling the weed with eggs:

Who can say that other weeds which we despise may not be the favorite food of some remote people or tribe. We ought to abate our conceit. It is possible that we destroy in our gardens that which is really of most value in some other place. Perhaps, in like manner, our faults and vices are virtues in some remote planet. I cannot see, however, that this thought is of the slightest value to us here, any more than the weeds are.

In fact many of the most common weeds throughout the U.S. have an enormous value in other countries and cultures, like quinoa,  filaree, and lamb's quarters or goosefoot. Common weeds, like milk thistle and St John's Wort, contribute to the quality of the soil, while providing homeopathic remedies for depression and lack of energy.

So, is it possible to cultivate weeds alongside more productive plants? Not always. Weeds contain the same mechanisms to thrive as vegetables, but in most cases, the weeds are more efficient at germinating and reproducing than their cultivated cousins, therefore they grow faster, resist common pests and other obstacles to growth, and sometimes they even produce substances that inhibit the growth of surrounding plants.

Any successful gardener will tell you that plants thrive in gardens that resemble diverse communities. "Companion planting" is a practice learned from indigenous tribes in which plants like squash, corn, and pole beans are planted side by side to promote the growth of each other. As one faithful farmer described it:

Plants thrive because of the community they live in.

For the gardener, whether in an urban plot or a rural setting, weeds arrive by their design, not ours. It would serve our gardens and our harvests well if we took a good look at the potential value of a weed before letting it fall prey to our own conceit.

* From Mark Twain's Library of Humor, Steve Martin, editor, Modern Library of Humor and Wit, Random House, NY, 2000 p.386

Civil Rights: Cultural Diversity Within Gun Cultures

 ~Gunfire scatters citizens across a market square as they run head on into a freshly detonated bomb. Shouting matches lead to pushing and shoving between parents at a school board meeting. A church preacher burns a holy book. An idealistic boy in a town square hurls a rock in an act of civil disobedience as a woman runs into a hotel lobby crying rape. These are all scenes from recent media coverage, cataloging outbursts of violence here at home as well as across the globe. It is hard to believe that any society would try to promote violence as a lifestyle of choice, but for many people living in culturally diverse regions, violence comes with the territory.

   ~The desire to live in a zone free of racial hostilities and daily violence is a cultural preference that cuts across all cultural, ethnic, tribal, and racial divisions. Advocating a violent and turbulent environment as a lifestyle choice runs against a Darwinian need to protect and promote subsequent generations of citizens. But in the spring of 2011, the causal relationship between cultural diversity and recurring hostility is evident across the globe. Armed conflict, once confined as routine to historically turbulent zones, surges within formerly peaceful communities.

   ~From U.S. immigrant populations in an economically strapped community in Indiana, to citizen activists of the “Arab Spring” uprisings across the Middle East, as well as uncontrolled violence in the Ivory Coast, the act of sustaining and promoting one popular or indigenous culture over another requires protective measures. Protection, however, implies the defensive tactics employed to achieve a “hostility-free zone”. Therefore weapons, and the desire or preference to use them to protect or promote one group of civilians against the other, becomes an unyielding element in each conflict. Can cultural diversity be maintained when a citizenry wields guns and ammo? The Constitutional right to bear arms is protected here in the U.S.; can we say the right to cultural diversity is as well protected?

~Fully Automated America (Current TV) describes  U.S. "gun culture", and compares the use of weapons within and outside the restrictions of the law. Guns are employed “to keep the peace” by police patrolling the streets. Civilians guarding their own properties do so armed. But what happens when property lines converge into whole communities? In Indiana, Hispanic immigrants express their fear of hostilities aimed at what non-Hispanic members of their community portray as an invading culture. Police and civilians use methods within the confines of the law to repel the “invasion” of one culture by another, behind the façade of immigration law. One culture seeks to remain dominant rather than embrace diversity. Meanwhile, the Indiana Center for Cultural Exchange promotes cross cultural tolerance and cooperation programs like that of the USport program in Lebanon.

~In Europe and North Africa, a decision to militarily aid a resolution to the Libyan crisis has an underlying theme, according to E.J. Dionne on NBC Meet the Press(April3,2011),  fear of a mass wave of Libyan immigrants into France and other countries with former colonial ties to North Africa. Cultural diversity is seen as a threat to community peace. The true nature of the conflict in Libya is anybody’s guess, but it is clear each side wishes to protect a zone free of hostilities for those of their own culture. And the defense contractors behind all sides of the equation are willing to help them achieve this “peace” by force.

~So is cultural diversity a civil right? Do the benefits of opening gates outweigh the need to keep them closed? Can a society exist in a homogenous vacuum or is a diversity of genes and cultures a benefit that cannot be denied? Evolutionary and biological science would respond with resounding applause for diversity. But science has the benefit of remaining free of a political agenda within the science itself, even though it continually collides with cultural and religious beliefs. A free society is strengthened by its diversity and tends to erode or explode when diverse groups are restricted from moving freely within the society.

~Globalization and technology has provided citizens of the world with a choice to “freely move about the cabin”. (Except in the case of North Korean, Cuba, and American travelers wishing to enter Cuba). The desire to exercise free will remains the main impetus for people uprooting themselves from one culture to enter the realm of another, even at the risk of being exploited or met with hostility.

~The territorial imperative compels one group to protect itself from the invasion of another. Therefore, the presence of diverse cultures in one particular region will always have the potential for conflict. The key to avoiding that conflict is overcoming rigid orthodoxy with a flexible willingness to compromise and share the best qualities each culture has to offer, while trying to tolerate the worst. The desire to live in a hostile-free zone is shared by all. When a culture gets their arms around that concept, the need to bear arms diminishes. Life threatening violence does not exist without the choice for a life sustaining alternative – peace.

Cultural Competence as a Tool to Providing Effective Healthcare

Mary Therese Keating-Biltucci presents a thoughtful look at cultural competence as a useful tool for healthcare providers. Most importantly, how respect for differences in the healthcare workplace is one of the many ways to acquire cultural competence in a multicultural society.

Growing demand in the U.S. for culturally competent individuals across a wide range of professions can be reflected in recent results of the 2010 Census, which shows the U.S. as being less of a melting pot, and more of a diverse garden. People from a broad scope of cultural backgrounds share the same soil. And caring for those individuals requires the same thoughtful approach as caring for a rich variety of flora in a flourishing landscape.

Of Gods and Men - The Scope of Culture Clash

Should I stay or should I go? Trappist monks in Algeria make a stand against encroaching fundamentalists in this 2010 Grand Prize Winner at Cannes. Of Gods and Men is a take on the polarizing effect of extreme fundamentalism at both ends of the spectrum.

Libya: Negotiating Fault Lines by Creating a Culture of Change

The culture clash between extreme groups like those using the terms "jihad" and "crusade" to define an agenda of violence picked up steam this month as uprisings across the Middle East and Africa continued to dominate media coverage. It appears that when any one cultural group underestimates its influence on a populace - it resorts to violence to further an extremist agenda. Libya is the latest example of this: a push by a floundering antagonist to resist the groundswell of change rising from the least represented members of a society.

Clearly, when a wave for change is fueled by the underclass, the differences between cultures and classes gets lost in the undertow, as middle class workers and empathetic members of the elite follow the tidal surge, shoving the political extremists to the outer banks where they flounder in a lack of credibility. The violence subsides as the populace becomes united in one culture - that of change.

Once the tyrannical regime is flushed out, the task for the authors of change in Libya is to form the tactical and strategic initiatives to encourage Libyans to be agents of their own destiny and not rely on foreign political interests to shape the foundations of a new government. It is vital that Libyans achieve an inalienable right to a direct relation with their country's own resources - mainly oil. Otherwise the people of Libya will once again face the risk of falling prey to the old tactics of intervening actors from the exterior, bent on exploiting a country's resources by polarizing a populace against itself. These tactics have worked quite well throughout history, especially when a country finds itself in economic duress as Libya does now.

The biggest challenge to a new Libya, then, may be negotiating the "fault lines" between the extremists that continue to use antagonistic terms as a blanket formula to resist mediation and compromise. It is only through mediation and compromise, keeping the turf between antagonists free of landmines and barbed wire, that a democracy can exist. If that is what the Libyan populace truly seeks, it will need to build a strong framework for a constitution of laws that allow rule by tyranny to be transformed to rule by democracy.

Keeping Cultural Conflict to Scale: How to Use Racial, Ethnic and Tribal Terms

The biggest setback to political, social and economic gains in ongoing tribal conflicts like that of the Northern Sudan is the lack of common goals for opposing sides to share, according to a recent article in the Sudan Tribune. Illiteracy and lack of common language increases the failure of laying any groundwork on which to build a durable conflict resolution that resists eruptions of violence. But in order to reach a resolution, it is important to be able to accurately articulate the structure of the conflict's origins.

Keeping Conflict to Scale
Conflict is inevitable and is almost impossible to prevent, but it can be managed. In order to pick apart the cause of conflict, it is first important to describe the framework within which tensions arise. The terms used in describing this framework can be misleading and tend to change the scale of the conflict. To define a conflict to scale, it is important to understand the difference between three terms which commonly appear as interchangeable adjectives:

1. racial
2. tribal
3. ethnic

Racial Tensions Carry a Specific Weight
Using any of these terms when describing conflicts tends to detour around the actual political or economic forces at play. And swapping one term indiscriminately for the other is equally dangerous, as each term carries a different specific weight within the framework of a crisis or conflict. For instance, the word "racial" has a genetic or biological weight, and is the most specific of the three terms. A racial conflict is limited to one issue: the discriminating factor of race.

Tribal Interests Add More Weight to the Issue
The word "tribal" is less specific, and carries more geographic and territorial weight than the word racial. Tribal refers to a social division within a larger group that includes families of common geographic origin or lineage but does not exclude individuals that have been adopted or enslaved into the group. The group shares common characteristics amongst its members that distinguish it from a larger social group within the society at whole. Tribal interests are not limited to one specific geographic area, especially in the case of nomadic tribes, but tribal culture remains constant.

Ethnic Conflicts Involve a Broader Scale
Using "ethnic" to describe a conflict employs the broadest term of the three and views the conflict on a larger scale. Ethnic conflicts involve classifying large groups of people by a common background, including common origins of language and culture, religious, tribal or national interests. Ethnic conflicts appear to be more severe than those involving racial or tribal tensions. Former colonies, like those of the African and American continents in the 18th and 19th centuries, have long histories of conflict incited by colonial powers that chose to pit ethnic groups against each other in order to diffuse a united effort to overthrow the imperial power. The footprints of those old conflicts remain today.

Conflict Resolution Depends on Clarity of Terms
Conflict resolution methods have been successful in resolving issues that involve racial, tribal, or ethnic tensions, but only when the terms are clearly defined and one term is not "swapped" for another indiscriminately. The use of each term changes the dimension in which the conflict is viewed and helps to clarify the role of outside political and economic forces involved. Once the terms are clear, it is easier to shape shared goals and manage the conflict in ways that avoid the outbreak of violence.