Diversity concepts and applications

Diversity

Exercise 5: Population Survey

It was in October 1997 that the Office of Management and Budget or the OMB announced that the standards for the gathering of federal data on race and ethnicity in the United States of America would be changed from thenceforth, and that the minimum categories for race would be form then onwards, divided into the following categories: American Indian or Alaska Native; Asian; Black or African-American; Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander; and White. This meant that any individual, when choosing to self-identify himself, would not have to place himself according to the multi-racial perspective that had been in use earlier, but rather; he could select one or more races when he would have to identify himself for any purpose. In addition, the OMB has today made an added provision, which is known as the 'Some Other Race'. (Racial and Ethnic classifications used in Census 2000 and beyond)

According to the U.S. Census definitions, 2000, each race can be definitely defined. For example, 'White' would mean those people who have their roots and origins in any of the original people of Eurasia or Europe, the areas from Turkey to Northern Africa, and East towards Iran, and those people from Phoenicia and Babylon and Egypt, and also the people from the Middle East and from North Africa. The term White would also include those people who have indicated that they were Irish, or German, or Italian or Lebanese, or if they had indicated that they were White. Arabs and the Polish would also be included in the same category. (Race, U.S. Census) Whites are also known as 'Caucasians' in several parts of the country, because this is the general term that is used to describe people of ethnic European, Middle Eastern, and North African descent, all of whom have 'fair skin'. (Whites: Categories: U.S. ethnic groups, Ethnic groups)

As late as in the year 1986, the Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone is known to have made a comment that the average American intellectual standard is definitely lower than that of the Japanese because of the proliferation of Blacks and Hispanics in America. In answer to this remark, the University of Texas Law School Professor Lino Graglia said that in general, in the United States, Blacks and Hispanics are not really academically at par or in the same level of competition with the whites, in cultural institutions, and even then, failure is never frowned upon in the United States, and in the same way, cultural achievement is not really encouraged to the extent that it should be. Some individuals have even gone so far as to state that 'race' is the plague of modern civilization, and in countries like Australia and in Great Britain, entry to other races is severely restricted, thus avoiding any sort of controversy or racial conflicts and problems, unlike as in the United States, where there are no real restrictions for any particular race. (Race and Ethnicity)

In the case of America, this country has indeed been 'enriched' by the waves of immigrants of all races and of all colors who entered the soil of America on an equal footing, and started to make a living there, with a memory of old traditions, in combination with the newly acquired ones. The American Census Bureau predicted in 2004 that in the year 2050, minority groups would effectively comprise one half of the total American population of 420 million people; Hispanics would make up to one quarter of the population, Blacks about 15%, and Asians, about 8%. Whites would make up the rest of the population, and this would mean that half of the United States of America is comprised of whites, and this would be the antithesis of the general opinion that there are more minorities than whites in the U.S.A. However, it must be noted that as the population of Hispanics and Blacks and Asians keeps growing, the population of Whites would start to decrease, as is feared by most Whites of the U.S.A. (Race and Ethnicity)

As a matter of fact, the world population has grown by about one billion people, in the past twelve years only. In 1999, the figure showed a staggering six billion people in the world. Out of this, half of the population is under the age of twenty five, and more than 90% of growth is in fact taking place in the developing countries of the world. This is in sharp contrast to North America, Japan and Europe, where the growth of population has virtually come to a slowdown, or even to a standstill. If there is a growth projected in the United States of America, then it would most probably be due to increased immigration population. In 1999, the population in the United States was estimated at about 272.5 millions, and this made it the third most populated country, after India and China. While the population in America increases annually by about 0.6%, because of births, legal immigrations contribute to another 0.3% in growth, that is, about 800,000 people every year. Executive Summary: A Population Perspective of the United States)

It is also estimated that of these additional people entering the United States, ethnic and racial minorities would comprise more than 90% of the total, by the year 2050, making it over 90% of the 130 million additional minorities who would have entered USA at that time. Some statistics show that minorities would make up about one third of the entire population of the United States, and this would lead to minorities making up about half the population of the U.S.A., in comparison to the Whites, by the year 2050. Today, the current U.S. population is "72% non-Hispanic white, 12% African-American, 11% Hispanic, and about five percent Asian and other." (Executive Summary: A Population Perspective of the United States) Therefore, it is clear that the Whites are today making up almost three quarters of the population in the United States, as against the popular misconception that minorities have a larger share of the population than whites.

Final Paper- Movie: 'To Kill a Mockingbird'

The movie 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is based on a Pulitzer Prize winning novel that had been written by Harper Lee in the year 1960. The novel deals with the story of the racially divided town of Alabama during the 1930's, and how when a black man is accused of raping a white woman, the lawyer Atticus Finch decides to take up the case and defend the young black man, in the midst of stiff opposition from the people of the town who make several intensive attempts to force Atticus to withdraw form the case. The movie as such is told through the eyes and views of six-year-old 'Scout', who carries the viewer through the entire movie, and into the middle of the raging racial prejudices and controversies that ruled Alabama at that time, that is, during the 1930's, in which the movie is set. The movie is presented at the beginning as the sweet and lovely reminiscences of the narrator Scott, who thinks about the various events that occurred in her childhood, and then what happened when her father, Atticus Finch, the lawyer who decided to defend the accused black man, took up the case. What is predominant throughout the entire movie is the fact that not one single person is ready to believe in the actual and true guiltlessness of the accused black man, and this is the theme of To Kill a Mockingbird. (Plot Summary for To Kill a Mockingbird)

The viewers of the movie To Kill a Mockingbird are made to appreciate and admire the movie's excellently sensitive and probing treatment of race and racial relations and diversity, and also to admire the deep insight into human relationships and basic human behavior. Even today, both the movie as well as the novel continues to be a real inspiration for millions of readers all over the world. As stated earlier, the movie opens with the adult Scout Finch reminiscing fondly about her childhood that she spent in Alabama, a small town in the United States, during the 1930's, also the time of the famous Great Depression. The technique of 'flashback' is used throughout the movie whenever there is a need to go back and explain things further and in greater detail than what the narrator has been saying. The child Scout develops her basic values and ideals by interacting with the various people in Maycomb at that time, and she happens to learn about the values of justice and the evils of injustice when she watches the trial of an African-American man who has been accused of having raped a white woman, it is Scott's father who takes up the case, and this is also the time when she starts to recognize the basic divisions in her town that have been made on the basis of race and creed and class. (Study Guide for To Kill a Mockingbird)

Through her experience, she discovers courage in herself, and in the people around her, and she also discovers the very diversity of the various people with whom she has been living all her life, with characters such as Tom Robinson and Boo Radley. The magic of the movie lies in the fact that at every single juncture in the film, Scout happens to learn another and yet another new thing about issues like education, superstition, cowardice, prejudice, courage, diversity, and so on. The evolution of the lot happens with the young Girl Scout gradually losing her innocence when she encounters the prejudices related to race and color in her own home town, but the movie is also about how she accepts the extremely harsh realities of life as she encounters them. She also learns to accept people for what they actually are, regardless of their skin color, like that of Tom Robinson, and regardless of their eccentricities, like those displayed by the character of Boo Radley. (Study Guide for To Kill a Mockingbird)

The first scene of the film is about 6-year-old Scout and her 10-year-old brother immersed in their own world of play, innocently and guilelessly. Their perceptions about their widowed attorney father are also revealed in the opening scene. Their childhood fantasies and fears include fantasizing about a recluse, Boo Radley, who supposedly inhabits a mysterious house in their neighborhood. The girl draws a symbolic mockingbird in the first scene, and shades it in her childlike way, and then proceeds to tear the picture up into small pieces, thus signifying that there is a portent of racial tensions and divisions yet to be shown in the movie, that would tear the entire town part, in much the same way as Scout Finch had torn the picture of the mockingbird. One morning, as Scout and her brother play in their backyard, a poor and impoverished farmer from the countryside, named Walter Cunningham, drives by in a horse drawn wagon, bringing a sack full of hickory nuts to the Finch residence as a part of his entailment for the legal work that he had done. (To Kill A Mockingbird (1962): Review by Tim Dirks)

This makes Scout curious, and she questions her father Atticus Finch, the lawyer, about their financial status as compared to that of the Cunningham's. She asks her father, if they are as poor as the Cunninghams, and when her father says that they are not, she appears to be relieved. The imaginative children Scout, her brother Jem, and their common friend Charles Baker Dill Harris, expect to have a great time of their summer vacations, making plans of swinging in their tires, and playing in their tree house, and also fantasizing and spinning imaginative tales of the terrible man Mr. Radley who lived in that creaky and old wooden place, with his crazy and terrifying and eccentric son, Boo Radley. When Mr. Radley happens to walk by their house and Jem happens to spot him, they all quiet down, and rush to stare at that old house, Jem makes the comment, "There goes the meanest man that ever took a breath of life." (To Kill A Mockingbird (1962): Review by Tim Dirks) When Dill asks him why he said that, Jem says that he keeps a boy named Boo chained to the bed at all times, and that the boy gets up at night and walks around screaming and scratching. The children then go on to make up tall tales of what the boy Boo looks like, that he is six feet tall, and that he eats squirrels and cats. His eyes are popped, and that he drools all the time. (To Kill A Mockingbird (1962): Review by Tim Dirks)

Dill's aunt too adds to these images by saying that Boo is a dangerous man. Meanwhile Jem makes up another story about another neighbor, Mrs. Henry Lafayette Dubois, who is cared for by a black woman named Jessie, by saying that he himself had seen that lady with a Confederate pistol in her lap. All this disrespect for unknown people on the part of the children is beautifully counterbalanced when the children's father Atticus comes back home and point out that the flowers in Mrs. Henry's garden are magnificent and wonderful, and that the children must notice that above anything else. A poignant message is conveyed here, wherein one is made to understand that one must indeed look beyond external appearances to find the real person underneath.

Later that same night, Scout sits reading to her father form the pages of Robinson Crusoe, but she appears to be perturbed by what Jem had told her earlier about the eccentric Boo coming and looking into her windows in the middle of the night. Her father corrects her and asks her to leave those 'poor people alone', and 'stop tormenting them', revealing his basic attitude towards people in general, and his unprejudiced nature, which he then passes on to his children. Still later in the night, as Atticus sits on his porch, he happens to overhear a deeply moving conversation between his son and his daughter, talking about their dead mother, whom they miss. The fact is that the scene conveys an impression that these are two children who are trying their best to come to terms with the various uncertainties and unfairness that life seems to have brought them at this young age, and how they try to deal with the injustices of the world. The next day, the seventy-five-year-old Judge Taylor stops by Atticus' house and informs him that the grand jury would charge the black man Tom Robinson the following day. Atticus being a deeply principled man who stands up against prejudices of any kind, thinks deep and hard, and decides to take up the case and defend the black man in the case. (To Kill A Mockingbird (1962): Review by Tim Dirks)

This is the time when almost the entire town happens to turn against Atticus, just because he happened to have the courage to stand up for what he thought was right, in this case, that he believed that a black man was being persecuted just because of the fact that he was black, and not because he may have committed the crime that he was being accused of. One of the most vicious characters is the supposed victim's father, Bob Ewell. He violently opposes the fact that Atticus would dare to take up the case of a mere black man, and this was the same though that was running through the minds of almost all the inhabitants of the town Maycomb. However, Atticus stands by what he believes in, and for him, the entire controversy was about Tom's innocence, and about the injustices that were being heaped upon him, and not about Tom's skin color. It must be remembered that at that time, in the South, there were more numbers of men like Ewell, and less like Atticus, and a large number of these men were quite inordinately scared and frightened of black skinned people, and they would therefore take the defensive against them. (To Kill a Mockingbird, all time 100)

The tragedy of the story lies in the fact that although Atticus presents a good and strong case, which proves Tom's innocence beyond a reasonable doubt, the unfortunate black man is nevertheless found guilty by a jury. The jury, which refuses to take the word of a black man as against that of a white, finds Tom guilty, and therefore, justice is not served, and tragedy results at the end. The Director of the movie To Kill a Mockingbird has taken pains to make sure that the pint of view of the movie is not changed throughout the movie, that is, the point-of-view of the narrator, who relates the entire story in a flashback and the result is that almost all the actions that take place in the movie are seen filtered through the eyes of the two children Jem and Scout. Atticus is seen as a good lawyer and an excellent father, while Bob Ewell is seen as a monster, Tom Robinson is a tragically innocent figure. (To Kill a Mockingbird, all time 100)

Due to this particular approach, the way in which fear is perceived by adults, and by children is seen clearly in one particular scene, wherein an angry mob that opposes the defense of the black man Tom by the white man Atticus advances upon the lawyer as he stands waiting outside the Court. Atticus is scared for his two children and tries to usher them to safety, but the children are not at all frightened, and this is because they feel safe and protected because they are standing near their own father, who, they believe, would do anything to look after them. At the same time, the children are frightened witless of the perceived danger that they sense in Boo the bogeyman, but their father Atticus, being an adult, and therefore able to perceive things much better than his children, is not scared at all.

The most touching scene of all through the movie is when Atticus, upset at having lost the case, slowly gets up and gathers all his papers which have been scattered everywhere. He feels depressed and sad for not having been able to save the black man, Tom Robinson. He leaves the building, but not before he is a witness to the salute that the black observers of the courtroom drama give him. This in itself is enough of a tribute to Atticus and people like him, who are able to see beyond prejudice and recognize the value of things when they see them, despite the outer covering of skin color or eccentricity, and so on. (To Kill a Mockingbird, all time 100)

The movie To Kill a Mockingbird is a legendary one and it is a strong and sensitive tale told realistically about racism, segregation, diversity of people, and moral values and tolerance. It is also a treatise on the old ways of the South, and the life of the average American during the Greta Depression. When Atticus steps forward to defend the black man who has been accused of raping a white woman, he is a man who is fully and completely convinced of the man's innocence, and he in fact creates a major stir in his town as he has the courage to stand up and fight for what he thought was right, that the black man was innocent, and he has the conviction to fight against the trial's foregone conclusion. The lawyer's two small children aged six and ten, watch with a growing admiration and appreciation as their father makes many attempts to break away from all the established convictions and prejudices that had been reigning in the country at that time. (To Kill a Mockingbird: Universal Home Radio)