Intercultural Communication Makes a World of Difference : Education to bridge the racial, gender, social gaps is often expensive. But the consequence of failing to connect with each other carries too high a price.

Communicating with people who share language and background with us is easy and comfortable; they fill in the blanks or adjust for our communication errors.

Communicating with people who are not “like us” is much more difficult and uncomfortable, even frustrating. Words and gestures suddenly become more like weapons in a battle than the means of reaching out and sharing some important idea or feeling with the other person.

The cultural diversity of our nation, and especially of Orange County and Southern California, means that we are increasingly likely not to understand one another.

Worse, some episodes of communication across cultural boundaries have become dangerous, from ugly “hate speech” on the streets to seemingly insignificant (but actually intensely meaningful) gestures such as a Korean shopkeeper’s placing the customer’s change on the counter, rather than in the hand.

People of all colors are feeling pain and fear, and a good deal of that pain comes from the feeling that nobody is listening to them, that nobody hears their complaints, much less their hopes and fears.

Maintaining a healthy, creative, dynamic, multicultural society requires that we pay careful attention to communication across differences of gender, race, social class, sexual orientation, religion, and other elements of our identities as Americans.

Attending to communication across these boundaries will not solve all our social and cultural problems and tensions, but we must attend first to the problems of communication if we are to fashion collective solutions in which everyone feels some “ownership.” Public schools, corporations, and community organizations are making some good beginnings.

Public schools in Southern California are as multicultural as one could imagine. In Orange County classrooms alone, fifty-two different languages are spoken. Some local school systems have turned to specialists to train teachers in the dynamics of communication in culturally diverse classroom, and the teachers, in turn, teach students how to communicate effectively in the face of misunderstanding.

Unfortunately, only the more affluent schools can afford assistance in intercultural communication. We need to extend this sort of training to all schools at all levels. Investing in communication could avoid the more expensive consequences of failing to understand one another.

Corporations and other community organizations face similar intercultural communication challenges.

As the workplace becomes more culturally diverse, the likelihood of misunderstanding runs high. More and more corporations and organizations are realizing the importance of training their leaders and members to communicate effectively across cultural differences, thereby creating more cohesive work groups.

But what sorts of training are we talking about? There are several practical steps we can take toward improving communication across cultural differences. First, we can listen to the other person. Communications students are often surprised that we take as much time teaching them to be good listeners as good speakers. But real communication requires good listening.

We can also learn how to change our communication habits in order to operate better in the multicultural environment. There is a desperate need to improve intercultural communication in both public and private spheres.

People who come to university campuses and other training sites seeking assistance in intercultural communication have made the most important leap; they have understood that there is such a problem. Many more people feel only a vague unease, and we must work to make clear both the source of that unease and one route to its resolution.

We must also make clear that the more common response, denying that prejudice and intolerance exist, is unacceptable and inappropriate. The reality is that America, its institutions and their practices have not changed enough in the last 40 years.