Cultural Homogeneity

I've been thinking about France and French culture, and why it is that a country that only recently in the broad scheme of things adopted more equal policies around gender, is also a nation where anti-immigrant sentiment runs so deep. This is a problem that is growing in the world right now at an alarming rate. Anti-immigrant policies are splattered all over the world, and they are growing at an alarming rate.

What does this have to do with France?

So one of the repeated themes in Bringing up Bébé is that French parents don't have to worry about parenting styles for the most part, because they all use the same one. Their children all learn at the same state funded pre-schools and develop the same palettes for food.

It is because of this homogeneity that the French are able to have the obedient, and creative children that they do. But is there a cost? Is there a cost to having only one style of doing things? Of only having one way of teaching, and learning, and experiencing the world?

Is it dangerous even?

I think it maybe dangerous for societies. Not because common culture is bad. But because a closed culture, held so much in common makes it easy to excuse excluding a child who does not know the cultural norms. It makes it easy to remove a person from a friend group because they are "uncivilized" or "badly raised."

And then what?

Those ideas are going to show particular bias against immigrants who are familiar with their own culture, but not the dominant one. They will hit hardest on kids moved into a nation with dramatically different expectations and cultural norms, then what they are used to. And mistakes are painful.

So let's all take a look around, and see what aspects of our team's, or our own, or our family's, or our friend's, culture is closed off. What parts make us look at someone else and discount their humanity. Discount their worth. And let's work to remove those.

Innovation often happens through cross pollination of ideas across disciplines. Social innovation is likely similar. And just like we need generalists to help drive that innovation (see this New York Times article), we need immigrants (who are cultural generalists, or must become them) to drive cultural innovation.

We need new ways to solve our problems more than ever. This is not the time to be looking askant at the groups of people who, by their very nature, think differently than we do. We need to welcome them, help them, and learn from them. Not because of mystical wisdom, but because they have different experiences, that can be brought to bear on our problems.

So open your arms, and your hearts. Let's figure out how to solve problems together.

Originally published in my newsletter.

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