「違い」が共存できない理由じゃない

私は2002年にアメリカのテキサス大学オースチン校というところで博士号を取得しました。博士号取得時に完成した博士論文のタイトルは

Intercultural Experiences and Practices in a Chinese-Japanese
Joint Venture: A Study of Narratives and Interactions about and
beyond “Chinese” and “Japanese.”

ひょんなことからこの論文のPDFに遭遇しました（簡単にサーチはできるのですが、気分的には『遭遇』した漢字でした）。下記は論文本体のい〜っちばん最後の締めの部分で265ページ目です。なんか・・・我ながら、アツいf^^;

今読むと青臭い気もするのですが、本気でこう思って書きました。
そして自分で書いたことに今も共感します（いや、っていうか、自分で書いたことだから当然なんですが。笑）。

英語のままですが、以下、紹介。

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Differences often serve as reasons, in both experiential and practical
terms, why we cannot live with particular groups of individuals. Especially when we refer to “cultural” differences, regardless of what we exactly mean by “culture,” such reasoning seems to have power over us. By having demonstrated how capable and flexible individuals actually can be in dealing with the cultural factors of their intercultural experiences and practices, I hope my dissertation has put forth a caveat against such an excuse. The final point I would like to make is that it is not because we are different that we cannot better live together with particular groups of individuals; it is because we do not deal with the differences in better ways—despite the fact that we are indeed capable of doing so when prompted by our own needs. Given this, now is the time for intercultural communication researchers to move beyond identifying cultural differences as the reasons for problems in intercultural communication. An important task for intercultural communication researchers in the future is to explore various and meaningful ways in which we as theorists and practitioners of intercultural communication can appropriate cultural differences into our lives and better live with individuals who may be “different” from us in some ways, but are the same in many other and more important ways.