In this video, I suggest that we focus on the similarities and differences we can see when we look at ethnicity and race issues in different countries. Managers must be able to understand the cultural complexity of their social environment. For companies seeking to explore and expand their products and services, as well as markets and talent pools, this aspect of diversity offers unexplored opportunities. Ethnicity and race issues occur in different ways in different countries. For example, do you know how many official languages are spoken in India? Or how many ethnic groups are officially recognised in China? Or also what terms exist to describe skin colour in Brazil? Regarding the first question, how many official languages are spoken in India, the answer is 122 languages. India is a highly diverse country in terms of regional castes and dialects. It is not uncommon for someone to be multilingual even when there at home. Although India’s caste system is highly complicated, lower castes are generally associated with a lower economic status and little prospect of improving it. India has addressed this problem by introducing a quota system that reserves higher education places and public sector positions for lower castes. Lower castes make up 69% of the total population. Interestingly, the reservation system, an example of affirmative action, was introduced in India in 1935, three decades before similar programmes appeared in the United States. As for the second question, how many ethnic groups are officially recognised in China, well, the answer is 56 groups, including the majority group, Han. The Han ethnic group is by far the largest and accounts for just over 91% of the population. The following five ethnic groups, Zhuang, Manchu, Hui, Uighur and Miao, represent only about 4% of the population. However, due to the size of the Chinese population, the 5 minority ethnic groups making up this tiny percentage still represent 60 million people. Can you beliveve, this is almost as many as the total population of the UK or France. China has also introduced a system to encourage ethnic minority students in universities by awarding them extra points. This system is considered important for the integration of minority ethnic groups that might otherwise be isolated by being stigmatised. This is because education and a good knowledge of Mandarin are the main requirements for job opportunities. Finally, let’s answer the third question I asked you, do you remember it? The question is what terms exist to describe skin colour in Brazil? Brazil is considered one of the most racially diverse countries in the world and has the largest number of people of African origin outside the African continent. In the IBGE (Brazil's equivalent of INSEE) national census, Brazilians self-categorize themselves as "white, parda (or brown skin), black, yellow and indigenous. However, studies indicate that Brazilians can use up to 136 different terms to describe skin color. This is the heart of the subtlety of the racial issue in Brazil. There is the way in which each person perceives and refers to him or herself, and then there is the way, often diverse, in which he or she is perceived by others. A comparison between how ethnicity is categorised in the United States and Brazil enables us to highlight two very different ideologies and their impact on race relations. In the United States, ethnicity and race are based on ancestry, so Americans are classified as “something” American: Afro-American, Asian American, Native American or Hispanic American, with more detailed categories such as Caribbean American, Mexican American, or combinations of different origins. These categories make sense as part of an ideology of segregation and a clear definition of differences, which some believe is the foundation of race relations in the United States. Despite these ideological differences, the two countries have favoured people of European origin throughout their history, meaning that, as in the United States, we can see that in Brazil, skin colour is closely correlated with economic status. In Brazil, with the same qualifications, blacks earn half as much as whites on average. Like China and India, the race issue has been placed at the centre of Brazil’s social policy agenda in order to combat social and economic inequality. To combat structural discrimination against ethnic minorities, countries such as the United States, Brazil, India and China have established official affirmative action programmes or ethnic minority quotas for university places. In Brazil, 25% of all places in state universities are reserved for students whose family income is less than 1.5 times the minimum wage (€250). The goal of this move is to level the playing field for ethnic and racial groups that are under-represented in higher education because of historically unequal opportunities. These measures are often controversial, such as in the United States or South Africa, where counter-examples of students denied entry to university due to their ethnicity have hit the headlines. For companies seeking growth, it is important for them to look beyond the dominant population to find new opportunities and potential. The first step consists of understanding the ethnic diversity present in the different countries and becoming familiar with the different ideologies relating to race and ethnicity there.
