The unknown creates wars and divorces. i believe more people, today, are better informed, concerning racial diversity, than ever before. Yes, racial diversity gives a whole new meaning to sensitivity and the understanding of different races.

The more interaction between the races, the less strife there is between them. Mere diversity doesn't help if everyone's keeping on their sides of town. This also goes for sexual and gender identity divergence. The more we work together, the more we see that we're all just people in the end. Stereotypes are also more easily dispeled when you have plenty of examples around you to counter them. Racially integrated neighborhoods foster cooperation between ethnic groups, particularly in the young people who grow up there and see it as normal. This mostly only happens in the big cities, and certainly not in all of them. Housing segregation is still very common and allows people to go through their daily lives without ever really interacting with someone different from themselves. Areas where you live and work with people from around the world do exist, though, and people can live together happily in them. I wouldn't live anywhere else, personally. SalientAlien: I don't feel that a reality tv show, that one in particular, is a good example of what happens in real life. TV is often calibrated specifically to reinforce the stereotypes that people hold in their daily lives. Reality TV is carefully formulated by its selection of participants and manipulation of events to present to you a specific set of players that are supposed to represent "types" that often have no correspondence to actual reality. TV is no replacement for living with, working with, and speaking with real people.

Statistically, it can be shown that in places with less diversity, people have typically more stereotypes and prejudices than in places with more a diverse population. This can be attributed to the simple fact that those people usually don't know anyone who isn't "like them" and thus have no reason to doubt the stereotypes and prejudices which they hold. Somebody asked: "But why would someone have a stereotype about a group they don't interact with?" Wikipedia defines stereotypes as "ideas held by some individuals about members of particular groups, based solely on membership in that group." The whole point is that they don't apply to somebody you know, but to a whole group. These stereotypes are usually not based on personal experience, but on what people read, hear or see in the media or from other people. Steretypes are generalizations. If you know people from a certain group, you're less likely to make generalizations about the group as a whole.

"We hate because we do not know, and we do not know because we hate."

I speak as an employee of a large global corporation that mandates diversity in their hiring. The result is a widely diverse population. Yet in the cafeteria, people always sit with their own racial/ethnic group. The tables look like separate countries. My conclusion is that forced diversity is merely tolerated, as evidenced by the choices people make when left to their own free will. People are not more sensitive and understanding seeing as they won’t even sit together for a meal.

Maybe if you do it with children. In other words if children are exposed to the diversity from infancy then we will be more successful in acceptance of all races. But if you are ecpecting old folks or adults with no tolerance for others then no it will not help. People are set in their ways and they do not care to change that. If anything I have seen companies hire a diverse group of people and all you have is a bad work enviroment. Harrassment and discrimination runs wild in this type of situation.

Of course. It's a small world, and it's what we do in America. If you're a white racist, go back to Europe. Black racists go back to Africa, and so on.

It depends largely on the *type* of interaction between the races.

No. You get to know people, but we as humans don't stretch our feelings of that one person to the entire group or race. We have a concept of "Muhammad's great, but Muslims suck". Sort of like we do with our representatives in Washington - my Rep is great, but Congress is useless. Diversity for diversity's sake doesn't work, in general.

Like someone said before, maybe with children. The thing about rcial diversity is that it doesnt force people to be together and interact. And most people, even with a diverse group of people will still hold their past assumptions about a race but once they begin talking to somene differnt form them they'll get to know them on a friend level and thats when things start to change.Too many people, for some reason, find it hard to truly understand the issues/feelings that a race has and how to be sensitive to it (not that the race is one perosn but that depending on the culture it can shape how they are). Race does not define the person(culture may though). When people figure out how to REALLY be colorblind, then they'll get it. But until then, racial diversity is certainly helping.