Part 1 Introduction and Background to Intercultural Communication

become more "functional." The soldiers' return prompted a social, governmental, and educational awareness of a global society, and this enthusiasm quickly worked its way into school curriculum, though mostly as foreign language studies.

In the larger development of cultural studies, the geo-political aspects and needs presented awakened a segment of the academic culture to the ongoing work of the British and European social anthropologists, such as Malinowsky. Soon, the work of American cultural anthropologists such as Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict become known, as well as the linguistic work of Edward Sapir and Dell Hymes.

As our national attitudes of the world began to change toward a more global view, the U.S. government's understanding about domestic cultures also began a gradual change that many experts conclude was long overdue. In 1909, for in­stance, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, working with other persons had arranged "The Last Great Indian Council," a meeting that was supposed to be a type of farewell to the "vanishing race" of Native Americans, despite the fact that Na­tive Americans had been increasing in numbers, not decreasing (Faherty 1976). This lack of cultural awareness and denial was augmented by various national programs intended to assimilate the Native American into the dominant Anglo society. For instance, the handling of educational, welfare, and medical pro­grams on reservations revealed little awareness of certain Native American cul­tures. Such examples involving governmental policy were said to typify the way in which a number of programs involving cultures were handled in the United States, including minority programs.

The 1960s in the United States also marked a cultural awakening. With the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, the nation discovered its minorities. The same decade gave birth to many human rights issues in the United States. The questions, and sometimes the conflicts, made us painfully aware that communi­cation between groups and cultures was no longer a matter of international expe­diency, but a problem of domestic urgency. Events in the 1990s will cause us to determine our future in part by our abilities to understand and to interact inter-culturally, a point well illustrated by riots in the Los Angeles area following the outcome of the first Rodney King beating trial, where police officers were on trial for beating a black motorist.

Another salient event with severe repercussions for intercultural communi­cation was the Vietnam War. The interactions with Southeast Asians under the conditions imposed by the war overwhelmingly influenced the participants. The consequent overflow of refugees thrust a new generation of Americans into cul­tural contact never before known to them—overnight, elementary, high school, and college students were in classrooms with counterparts from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. Educators faced a challenge with a cultural group with whom they had no experience, and communication challenges soared.

Of ongoing importance, too, are the continuing intercultural demands of growing multicultural societies throughout the world. In the United States re­gional demographic changes mean that groups once considered minorities will be the majority, a fact already having occurred in some areas and soon to occur

Dealing with Domestic Diversity