Celebrating Diversity!

Friends of mine have asked me "How can someone who loves Latin-American literature, Turkish and Persian Music, Korean food and Balkan history have such a negative view of diversity? And how can someone who has friends and family from every imaginable cultural background look down upon diversity?"

My answer is "I love the phenomena of diversity, but as an ideology and mantra , I find it particularly vacuous. Free and spontaneous exchanges between individuals of diverse cultural backgrounds have greatly enriched the visual, musical, literary and culinary arts. But, when governments, universities and corporations plan and mandate diversity as a form of social engineering, it becomes mindless and undemocratic, because:

1. The claims that an individual automatically adds value to an organization because they "increases diversity" through their racial identity is presumptuous and negates their individuality.

2. Paradoxically it negates the wonderful individual and intellectual diversity found within groups by implying that (for example) Jews and African-Americans as groups have specific traits that will enrich an environment. This of course implies a belief that intellectual and cultural homogeneity predominate within groups. A more reasonable position would be that the unique talents and insights of individuals, regardless of their ethnic identity, enrich a learning environment.

3. By "celebrating" a culture we avoid a complete, honest assessment of its strengths and weaknesses.

4. History shows that diverse nations can socially and economically thrive only when they have a dominant, unifying culture.

And in most cases their ideology is filled with contradictions. For example, schools like the University of Berkeley at California offers student housing that fundamentally encourage segregation, such as separate dorm halls for African-Americans, Asians, Latinos and Native-Americans. This shows that they value reinforced ethnic identities over true integration. Or perhaps they encourage this form of segregation because they believe that the benefits of diversity flow in one direction: European-Americans benefit from exposure to other cultures, but other cultures do not benefit from exposure to European-American culture.

So, next time someone asks me to "celebrate diversity" I will tell them that I am too busy cooking Israeli food, while listening to Greek music, while speaking Spanish with my beautiful, brilliant Mexican wife, to listen to their boring marxist propaganda.