Please see the February 4,2000 issue of the Virginia Tech Conductor for the complete article. There's a TV commercial that shows a good ol' Texas boy drawling out his thanks in Japanese as we receives a large machine parts order over the internet. Let's emphasize this lesson in diversity training workshops. The appeal to upgrade our collective humanity through prejudice reduction will only benefit those capable of enlightenment, and many people aren't. It's irrelevant anyway.
Diversity is the flipside of elitism which is the way the world used to work.
Self preservation is a good motivator. At the same time, the proportion of women in the workforce has also risen dramatically. That minorities and women, who make up the large majority of the population, are underrepresented in science, mathematics and engineering professions does not bode well for the country's future economic prosperity. So here we are women, minorities, immigrants, increasing faster in population than inheritors of the power structure. The majority of the future workforce.