San Jose neglects ethnic tourism.

Byline: Katherine Corcoran

Oct. 10--Tourists and business travelers at San Jose's downtown visitor kiosks can learn all about the Tech Museum, the Winchester Mystery House or Raging Waters.

But at a time when multicultural tourism is on a dramatic rise nationwide, there is nothing to alert San Jose visitors that they're in the childhood home of Cesar Chavez, the epicenter of a worldwide protest by black Olympic athletes, or a place with one of the nation's highest concentrations of Vietnamese-Americans.

"The single-minded focus has been on attracting tech visitors," said John Templeton, who was editor of the San Jose Business Journal and a San Jose Museum of Art board member in the 1980s, when redevelopment was taking shape. "By and large the city does not appreciate the value that its diverse neighborhoods can bring to its tourism promotion."

San Jose's Convention and Visitors Bureau and ethnic businesses and organizations admit they have done little to showcase the cultural mix in one of America's most diverse cities. San Jose has a population that is 30 percent Latino and 27 percent Asian and is home to a small but high-profile black community. As a result, the bureau is not tapping into one of the …