Celebrating Diversity: Coexisting in a Multicultural Society, offers pragmatic ways to replace conflictive behaviors between diverse peoples with coexistence alternatives. Coexistence-partnership values and skills help us to outgrow ways of the past--competition, suspicion, manipulation, isolation, victimization. These skills enhance our own lives as well as those of future generations.In Celebrating Diversity, author Benyamin Chetkow-Yanoov asserts that the increasing religious-ethnic-linguistic pluralisms of the twentieth century requires that we cease lumping people different from ourselves into an “other” category. He identifies classical elements of a coexistence model and suggests various strategies and tactics for implementing coexistence in modern societies. Among the many insights you will find are:
- the definition of coexistence
- an analysis of past patterns of majority-minority group relations, such as segregation, tolerance, and integration
- models of majority-minority relations, participation, and coexistence appropriate for the twenty-first century
- illustrations of the coexistence model through examples of places where it is flourishing
- action steps for leaders and citizens to put the idea of coexistence into practice
- a range of research findings that help us determine what is effective in promoting coexistence
In the pages of Celebrating Diversity, you can learn social skills for preventing conflict escalation, for finding areas of common interest, and for working cooperatively. As more of us become informed about alternatives to violence, hopefully we can find ways to bring peace to areas of unrest, such as Algeria, Ireland, Israel, Nigeria, Rwanda, Serbia, or the former Soviet Union.
