America is experiencing a
diversity and inclusion conundrum—which, in historical terms, has not
necessarily been a good thing. Communities are tearing themselves apart over
the statues of long-dead Confederate generals. Controversy rages over which
slogan—“Black Lives Matter” or “All Lives Matter”—is truly racist. Antifa
street thugs clash with white supremacists in a major American city. Americans
argue over whether the USC equine mascot “Traveler” is racist, given the
resemblance of the horse’s name to Robert E. Lee’s mount “Traveller.” Amid all
this turmoil, we forget that diversity was always considered a liability in the
history of nations—not an asset.
Ancient
Greece’s numerous enemies eventually overran the 1,500 city-states because the
Greeks were never able to sublimate their parochial, tribal, and ethnic
differences to unify under a common Hellenism. The Balkans were always a lethal
powder keg due to the region’s vastly different religions and ethnicities where
East and West traditionally collided—from Roman and Byzantine times through the
Ottoman imperial period to the bloody twentieth century. Such diversity often
caused destructive conflicts of ethnic and religious hatred. Europe for
centuries did not celebrate the religiously diverse mosaic of Catholic,
Orthodox, and Protestant Christians, but instead tore itself apart in a
half-millennium of killing and warring that continued into the late twentieth
century in places like Northern Ireland.
In
multiracial, multiethnic, and multi-religious societies—such as contemporary
India or the Middle East—violence is the rule in the absence of unity. Even the
common banner of a brutal communism could not force all the diverse religions
and races of the Soviet Union to get along. Japan, meanwhile, does not admit
many immigrants, while Germany has welcomed over a million, mostly young Muslim
men from the war-torn Middle East. The result is that Japan is in many ways
more stable than Germany, which is reeling over terrorist violence and the need
for assimilation and integration of diverse newcomers with little desire to
become fully German.
History
offers only a few success stories when it comes to diversity. Rome, for one,
managed to weld together millions of quite different Mediterranean, European,
and African tribes and peoples through the shared ideas of Roman citizenship (civis Romanus sum) and
equality under the law. That reality endured for some 500 years. The original
Founders of the Roman Republic were a few hundred thousand Latin-speaking
Italians; but the inheritors of their vision of Roman Republican law and
constitutionalism were a diverse group of millions of people all over the
Mediterranean.
History’s
other positive example is the United States, which has proven one of the only
truly diverse societies in history to remain fairly stable and unified—at least
so far. Although the Founders are now caricatured as oppressive European
white men, they were not tribal brutes. The natural evolution of their unique
belief that all men are created equal is today’s diverse society, where
different people have managed, until recently, to live together in relatively
harmony and equality under the law.
Unlike
present-day Mexico, China, or Japan, America never developed a fixed idea,
either culturally or formally in its written constitution, that race or
religion de facto defined citizenship. Instead, an imperfect America was always
being reinvented in dogged pursuit of the Founders’ promise of equality and the
toleration of difference.
Despite
a Civil War that took over 600,000 lives, years of oppression and segregation,
dozens of major riots, and thousands of court cases and legislative fights, our
American exceptionalism held that America alone could pull off the bizarre idea
that diverse peoples could eventually live together as a single people in
brotherhood. But the American experiment is not static, nor is it settled. The
nation’s racial, ethnic, and religious diversity is by nature volatile, and
prone to exploitation by demagogues and opportunists.
A
diverse America requires constant reminders of e pluribus unum and the need for
assimilation and integration. The idea of Americanism is an undeniably brutal
bargain in which we all give up primary allegiance to our tribes in order to
become fellow Americans redefined by shared ideas rather than mere appearance.
Unfortunately,
there are increasing signs that our political, religious, ethnic, and racial
diversity is overwhelming our shared but fragile notion of national unity.
Growing geographical separation into blue coastal liberal states and red
interior conservative counterparts is starting to mimic the North-South
regional divide of the Civil War, a split in national geography that is fueling
political differences. Not surprising, there is talk of a Calexit, or a
Confederate-like secession of California from the United States—and during the
Obama administration, there was news of a secessionist movement in Texas.
There
is currently little real free speech on American campuses. A new kind of racial
segregation is occurring in college “theme” and “affinity” houses. Recent
street violence in places like Charlottesville between extremists of the left
and right resembled the brawling between totalitarian Stalinists and racist
brown shirts of 1930s Germany. The successful melting pot is caricatured; the
unproven salad bowl is canonized.
Almost
everything in America today is politicized and thus polarized, from the fundamental
to the trivial: sports events, music, art, Hollywood movies, mute statues,
cable television, university curriculums, Silicon Valley corporations, and now
even the names of horses. Fewer people are unified. The schools and the media
do not remind Americans that their country can be quite good without having to
be perfect—and is far better than the contemporary alternatives elsewhere. At
the same time, these institutions have convinced Americans that the evils of
human kind—racism, sexism, homophobia, slavery, serfdom, and class
oppression—are the unique sins of democratic America. Few today appreciate that
only in America has there been a culture of self-critique, introspection, and
dissent—and thus remedies for the nation’s shortcomings, a self-correcting
culture not known elsewhere.
The
fashion today is to identify yourself by your ethnicity, race, or sexual
preference—as something that transcends both being American and a unique
individual. In contrast, there are vanishing incentives for people to simply
call themselves Americans, allowing the content of their character to trump the
color of their skin. In this regard, we can welcome the recent change in name
of the preeminent Latino lobbying group from the racialist National Council of
La Raza to Unidos US. (Raza is
a Franco-era chauvinistic buzzword meaning “The Race.”)
If
America is to survive this fourth century of its existence, it will soon have
to recalibrate from “celebrating diversity” to “celebrating unity.” The bleak
alternative is history’s long list of genocides, tribal feuding, ethnic
warring, religious conflicts, and pogroms. In sum, the United States will at
some point have to subordinate the fad of multiculturalism to the ideal of
multiracialism: many different-looking Americans who are nonetheless one in
their shared customs, citizenship, and culture, while holding diverse political
and cultural views not predicated on identity politics.
“Difference”
is a plus when it is a matter of enjoying diverse foods, music, fashion, art,
and literature that enhance a central, shared, and unchanging set of values
based on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of
Rights.
We
all enjoy Mexican or Chinese food, but not Mexican or Chinese ideas of
democracy and human rights. We all are enriched by Caribbean music but not by
Caribbean notions of law and justice. We all value political and ideological
diversity—but only when they rely on collective tribal allegiances. And we are
impressed by Middle Eastern hospitality and family solidarity, but not Middle
Eastern treatment of women, minorities, gays, and diverse religions. What makes
millions of immigrants strive to reach and stay in America at all costs is not
our racial make-up or our many languages but the racially-blind promise of
freedom, liberty, the rule of law, prosperity, and security which are the
dividends of Americans abiding by the precepts of the U.S. Constitution.
If
America’s set of values becomes a pick-and-choose potpourri, there is no unity.
And then America will certainly become yet another one of history’s casualties
of diversity.
