Pluralism is our strength

In 1992, while Los Angeles was seething with race riots over the police killing of the black ex-convict Rodney King, Vice President Dan Quayle of the first George Bush Administration visited Japan. While there, he tried to justify America’s state of civic disarray to his mystified hosts.

“From the perspective of many Japanese, the ethnic diversity of our culture is a weakness compared to their homogeneous society,” Quayle later told an audience back in California. “I explained that our diversity is our strength.”