Bagehot last week ( 22nd May 2021 edition of the Economist ) suggests that a multi-ethnic society makes for more complicated when it should make for better foreign policy making; linguistically, historically and by experience, particularly when we have a pivot to Asia.
Many things can be lost in translation. So having ethnic communities maintaining their linguistic knowledge is something to value in a society where other languages are not valued in the way they should be and thereby assist our adaptation to the Easternisation of the world economy.
The same applies to history. Would the world not be better for an understanding of how Chinese see themselves during the second world war where they lost up to 14 million with their battle against the Japanese starting earlier than in the European field of the second world war by a few years. A forgotten ally and unsung role indeed.
And finally there is the experience of many ethnic minority communities in the development field, many of whom maintain those links for the betterment of the places they left behind usually via direct investment involving money transfers which are usually in total annually greater than any bilateral aid flows. Something the NGOS ignore completely while pretending to represent the South!
So a multi-ethnic society should make for better foreign policy making and not just more complicated ones.