“Diversity” Is An Assault On Human Nature
By Margaret Snyder (08/28/03)
Human nature has never changed. The Ten Commandments given to the Hebrews thousands of years ago are still relevant today precisely because human nature has not changed one bit in all those years.
Communism was nothing less than an attempt to force a change in human nature and its results were disastrous. Any attempt to change human nature is doomed to more or less tragic failure.
The diversity movement is such an attempt. Why is that? Because it is a universal trait that we look for ourselves reflected in others. Human beings feel more comfortable with those they perceive as being like themselves. Consider what happens when you meet someone new. The first thing you do is seek common ground. “You’re from Pittsburgh? My sister used to live there, she loved it.” “You love ’56 Chevys? Hey, me too. Ever go to the old car shows?” And so forth.
The diversity movement attempts to institutionalize stereotyping by making assumptions about people based on their race. It tells those in the racial majority that if they fail act in accordance with officially sanctioned stereotypes they are being disrespectful of differences.
What does it do to those in the racial minorities? They are told that they are different in important ways from those in the racial majority. Since, by virtue of being a “minority”, they are bound to be often in the company of many who are “different” from them, and it is human nature to be comfortable with others like oneself, how can they ever feel comfortable?
We must ever keep making “safe” places for minority students in colleges and universities, so they can be comfortable. What will they do after college? Are they never to feel comfortable in this country?
Is there no hope?
Yes, there is hope. Human nature is immutable, but human attitudes are not.
Martin Luther King’s I Have A Dream speech resonated not only with black Americans but with white Americans as well. White attitudes towards race had been steadily changing since the 1940s, so that by the sixties most whites were already regarding racial differences as not important. Many, many white Americans shared King’s dream.
To them, to see someone of another race was not to assume a profound difference but to ask, “I wonder what common ground we will find?” Once you find common ground to stand on with someone, there is always time to discover differences, sometimes interesting ones. But it is human nature to need that common ground.
By hindering the recognition of common ground the diversity movement has, I believe, served to slow down and perhaps reverse the trend in change in attitudes toward race that began in the 1940s
Proponents of “diversity” frequently use “diversity” and “community” together, as in “Diversity is the strength of our community.” Or “We must seek diversity and community.” This is Orwellian doublespeak. The concepts of diversity and community are at odds with each other. Every community of human beings is of necessity diverse since human beings are infinitely diverse. But it isn’t their differences that make them a community. They are a community in spite of their differences.
The students at University X can be a community in spite of their differences, but not if University X insists upon sorting students by race and emphasizing and elevating their differences instead of letting students find their common ground.
America can be a community if government stops sorting people by race and treating them accordingly. People will find common ground to stand on if they are not constantly being told (directly or by implication) that there isn’t any. It is the awareness of common ground that makes some people refuse to check off a “race box” on forms and write in “human” instead.
An agenda that constantly draws distinctions between people on a visible basis such as apparent race can only serve to diminish the common ground we share, to increase our wariness of each other. To treat people based on what race they belong to will no more solve our problems and make us one people today than it did under Jim Crow.
People will never embrace difference for difference’s sake. But they do change their notions of what constitutes difference. Race need not be considered a difference, at least not a meaningful one. To use it as a proxy for cultural or personal characteristics defies the belief in the dignity and worth of the individual without which there can be no democracy and no freedom.
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