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Is cultural/societal diversity an ideal to strive for or something to avoid? (1 Viewer)

adonis

adonis

Footballguy
The prevailing thought on this that I've run across seems to be that diversity is a goal that we should all strive to achieve.  Cross-pollination, multiculturalism, different experiences and more all come together to create a fruitful, diverse, and flourishing society.  

I haven't really had much of an opportunity to question this until recently.  To some degree, I think it's a result of Trump and folks with like-minded views gaining a prominence they haven't had in my adult life before, but I am kicking around the question of whether cultural/societal diversity is really something our country should strive for or whether it's something that causes more damage than the benefits it brings?

Ran across this link to an article summarizing/editorializing a Harvard study on diversity in America: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/fragmented-future/ .

I'm not endorsing it, and I'm not coming down on one side or the other here in terms of diversity (although twist my arm, I LOVE my indian food), but I find it to be an issue I've always taken for granted as being a net positive.  And yes I know it's easy to suggest there's a small step from this to nationalism or racism or whatever, but perhaps we can try to stick to speaking about this in terms of benefits or drawbacks for society.  Does it lead to a more stable culture, or less?  Does it affect long-term prospects for a country, or not?  What about cities? Communities?

Is it a net positive and a goal we should strive for, or is it something less desirable?  What are you views on diversity at all levels?

 
adonis said:
The prevailing thought on this that I've run across seems to be that diversity is a goal that we should all strive to achieve.  Cross-pollination, multiculturalism, different experiences and more all come together to create a fruitful, diverse, and flourishing society.  

I haven't really had much of an opportunity to question this until recently.  To some degree, I think it's a result of Trump and folks with like-minded views gaining a prominence they haven't had in my adult life before, but I am kicking around the question of whether cultural/societal diversity is really something our country should strive for or whether it's something that causes more damage than the benefits it brings?

Ran across this link to an article summarizing/editorializing a Harvard study on diversity in America: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/fragmented-future/ .

I'm not endorsing it, and I'm not coming down on one side or the other here in terms of diversity (although twist my arm, I LOVE my indian food), but I find it to be an issue I've always taken for granted as being a net positive.  And yes I know it's easy to suggest there's a small step from this to nationalism or racism or whatever, but perhaps we can try to stick to speaking about this in terms of benefits or drawbacks for society.  Does it lead to a more stable culture, or less?  Does it affect long-term prospects for a country, or not?  What about cities? Communities?

Is it a net positive and a goal we should strive for, or is it something less desirable?  What are you views on diversity at all levels?
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Members of "majority" races/religions/ethnicities that live in the most diverse places also tend to be the people who most strongly favor policies that make us more diverse. That tells me pretty much everything I need to know about whether diversity is a strength.  IMO asking people in Nebraska what they think about immigration policy is like asking people in Manhattan what they think about corn crop yields.

 
We can go back to all white football teams!

ETA:  no LeBron’s, no NBA!

 
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TobiasFunke said:
Members of "majority" races/religions/ethnicities that live in the most diverse places also tend to be the people who most strongly favor policies that make us more diverse. That tells me pretty much everything I need to know about whether diversity is a strength.  IMO asking people in Nebraska what they think about immigration policy is like asking people in Manhattan what they think about corn crop yields.
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Seems like at least one major study shows high levels of distrust between groups in diverse cities like Los Angeles.

 
That piece is 11 years old and makes generalizations out of anecdotes in a way sure to make The American Conservative happy. 

We're only going to get more diverse. We don't have any choice but to make things work in a way that nobody has done before.

 
adonis said:
Seems like at least one major study shows high levels of distrust between groups in diverse cities like Los Angeles.
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My guess that this varies in degrees of severity based on class.   In fact a majority of conversations that talk about diversity and race should also be talking about class in the same light.

 
Japan is not diverse and it went wrong because they suffer from low birth rates and an elderly population.  Ukraine was VERY diverse and it went wrong because the Crimea was filled with Russians to the point they revolted and joined Russia.

yes/no

 
Riversco said:
Japan is not diverse and it went wrong because they suffer from low birth rates and an elderly population.  Ukraine was VERY diverse and it went wrong because the Crimea was filled with Russians to the point they revolted and joined Russia.

yes/no
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Japan's low birth rates are tied to a culture where men are still supposed to be the primary wage-earners and there is a lack of jobs for 20-something year old men.  It has nothing to do with diversity. 

 
-fish- said:
Japan's low birth rates are tied to a culture where men are still supposed to be the primary wage-earners and there is a lack of jobs for 20-something year old men.  It has nothing to do with diversity. 
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Their economy can't grow due to low birth rates.  It could be fixed with immigrants but they are not diverse.

 
Riversco said:
Their economy can't grow due to low birth rates.  It could be fixed with immigrants but they are not diverse.
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There are no jobs for immigrants to fill.   What would they need immigrants for?  Unless they're coming with their own jobs, it would just be a drain on the existing economy.

 
There was an entire thoughtful book on this written by a liberal ethnic minority (notice how identity politics has so poisoned our conversation that I feel the need to point that out), and I can't remember its name for the life of me. Its conclusion: Riversco's answer of yes/no. 

Any reductive answer to this is foolish. The book was about homogeneity. I didn't read the article you linked, as this isn't my strength, but the book got buzz from the conclusions by both the liberal and conservative press that ceded some of the author's points about homogeneous groups and the strengths they showed and heterogeneous groups and the strengths that they showed. 

 
We should strive to learn. Different cultures are fascinating, so why not? Understanding each other is the only way to live peacefully. We are a nation built on the idea that anyone could come here and have the freedom and opportunity that comes with it. We aren’t supposed to make it a diverse society, it is by nature diverse, and as a society we should embrace that. Eventually, we should stop squabbling over imaginary lines on earth and take more of a worldview. If people/nations put borders aside and started working together to solve the worlds problems together we would be better off as a species. Instead we spend a great deal of thought, time, energy, and resources on fighting with each other. Greed and power get in the way of this ever happening. 

 
Blues, jazz, rock and roll. Hello yeah diversity is good. I came up in a high school that was almost evenly split white, black, Mexican and Asian. It was a wonderful experience that I can honestly say still improves my life today. I treasure the diversity in my community. I live in a Lilly white Suburb now and I honestly pity the folks that are afraid to go into town and mix it up. It’s a tragedy what they miss out on. 

 
Snorkelson said:
We should strive to learn. Different cultures are fascinating, so why not? Understanding each other is the only way to live peacefully. We are a nation built on the idea that anyone could come here and have the freedom and opportunity that comes with it. We aren’t supposed to make it a diverse society, it is by nature diverse, and as a society we should embrace that. Eventually, we should stop squabbling over imaginary lines on earth and take more of a worldview. If people/nations put borders aside and started working together to solve the worlds problems together we would be better off as a species. Instead we spend a great deal of thought, time, energy, and resources on fighting with each other. Greed and power get in the way of this ever happening. 
Click to expand...
To borrow Tobias' analogy of Manhattan take on corn crop yield versus Nebraska take on immigration policy - we have a hard time governing diversity of geopolitical wants/needs within our own country let alone getting rid of the concept of borders and moving to a borderless worldview.  Yes it is an altruistic thought and sounds wonderful.  How would infrastructure work?  Who determines if some specific need of England outweighs a specific need of China?  Look at the electoral college.  It is really meant to appease the less populous states so that they get the illusion of not being bullied by population centers - but leads to as many problems as it solves every four years as we have seen a disparity between electoral college results versus popular vote results.

To me it comes back to "local" control with an overarching guidance from the conglomerate.  Just don't see how that works on a global scale.

 
Jackstraw said:
Blues, jazz, rock and roll. Hello yeah diversity is good. I came up in a high school that was almost evenly split white, black, Mexican and Asian. It was a wonderful experience that I can honestly say still improves my life today. I treasure the diversity in my community. I live in a Lilly white Suburb now and I honestly pity the folks that are afraid to go into town and mix it up. It’s a tragedy what they miss out on. 
Click to expand...
That was one of the beautiful things about serving in the Air Force - and having been raised in a military family.  Diversity was a given with the common bond being service.  So when my Dad got out of the service and we settled in a significantly less diverse community it seemed so foreign to not experience diversity on a daily basis.

 
TobiasFunke said:
Members of "majority" races/religions/ethnicities that live in the most diverse places also tend to be the people who most strongly favor policies that make us more diverse. That tells me pretty much everything I need to know about whether diversity is a strength.  IMO asking people in Nebraska what they think about immigration policy is like asking people in Manhattan what they think about corn crop yields.
Click to expand...
This is an odd statement. I know people in Nebraska (myself included) have strong opinions (both positive and negative) about the immigration policy. While I'd believe people in Manhattan are mostly indifferent to corn crop yields.

 
Mr. Know-It-All said:
To borrow Tobias' analogy of Manhattan take on corn crop yield versus Nebraska take on immigration policy - we have a hard time governing diversity of geopolitical wants/needs within our own country let alone getting rid of the concept of borders and moving to a borderless worldview.  Yes it is an altruistic thought and sounds wonderful.  How would infrastructure work?  Who determines if some specific need of England outweighs a specific need of China?  Look at the electoral college.  It is really meant to appease the less populous states so that they get the illusion of not being bullied by population centers - but leads to as many problems as it solves every four years as we have seen a disparity between electoral college results versus popular vote results.

To me it comes back to "local" control with an overarching guidance from the conglomerate.  Just don't see how that works on a global scale.
Click to expand...
Yes I know it’s unrealistic without an alien invasion (which riversco is probably predicting soon) but eventually it will become inevitable that problems will reach a more global scale. When things like gas and water become more scarce we will have to find ways to work together to solve these problems on a global scale. Think of what the world collectively spends on defense from other humans- it’s pretty mind boggling. And a lot of those resources just sit around. How many troops are sitting on bases in places that are simply strategic locations? 

 
Riversco said:
Japan is not diverse and it went wrong because they suffer from low birth rates and an elderly population.  Ukraine was VERY diverse and it went wrong because the Crimea was filled with Russians to the point they revolted and joined Russia.

yes/no
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I wasn’t really aware Japan had gone wrong.

Crimea has a sizeable Tartar population. It went ‘wrong’ because Ukraine was invaded.

 
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KCitons said:
This is an odd statement. I know people in Nebraska (myself included) have strong opinions (both positive and negative) about the immigration policy. While I'd believe people in Manhattan are mostly indifferent to corn crop yields.
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He’s referring to whether those would be informed opinions, not how strong they are.

 
-fish- said:
He’s referring to whether those would be informed opinions, not how strong they are.
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It's still an odd statement.  People who live in Manhattan know what it's like to live in a very diverse community, and they mostly like it.  People who live in rural Nebraska know what it's like to live in a monoculture, and they mostly like it.  (You could substitute Japan or Korea or probably some of the Nordic countries for Nebraska here).  I don't see how this settles much.

 
-fish- said:
There are no jobs for immigrants to fill.   What would they need immigrants for?  Unless they're coming with their own jobs, it would just be a drain on the existing economy.
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Their economy hasn't grown.  If you aren't growing, you are falling behind.  That affects everything.  Other nations that grow wildly will eventually dominate you.

 
IvanKaramazov said:
It's still an odd statement.  People who live in Manhattan know what it's like to live in a very diverse community, and they mostly like it.  People who live in rural Nebraska know what it's like to live in a monoculture, and they mostly like it.  (You could substitute Japan or Korea or probably some of the Nordic countries for Nebraska here).  I don't see how this settles much.
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Nebraska is not comparable to Japan, Korea, or the Nordic countries in terms of ethnic diversity. 

 
-fish- said:
He’s referring to whether those would be informed opinions, not how strong they are.
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Another odd statement. Do we need to be culturally immersed in something to make an informed opinion on the topic?

Edit: I would expect there to be some stock brokers in Manhattan that know a lot more about corn crop yields than most people living in Nebraska. 

 
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Bucky86 said:
I’m sure there are some stock brokers more knowledgeable about corn crop yields than some random dude who happens to live in Nebraska. What’s your point?
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Do we need to be culturally immersed in something to make an informed opinion on the topic?

 
Riversco said:
Their economy hasn't grown.  If you aren't growing, you are falling behind.  That affects everything.  Other nations that grow wildly will eventually dominate you.
Click to expand...
you ignored the question.  there are not enough jobs for their citizens.  what would be the point of immigration?  it doesn't grow the economy to create a larger class of unemployed or underemployed people.   you claim that their low birth rates are the problem.  their low birth rates are a direct result of a poor job market.   immigration would make that worse, not better.

 
Henry Ford said:
Nebraska is not comparable to Japan, Korea, or the Nordic countries in terms of ethnic diversity. 
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When was the last time you were in small-town Nebraska?  Not Omaha.  The parts of the state that Tobias rightly pointed out that hate immigration.

Or we change the topic to Arizona, where people live in an increasingly diverse community and want to put up a wall.  My point is that I don't think we should give these local preferences a lot of weight.

 
If a film critic for a white supremacist website says it’s so, how could I argue against it?

 
I'd say about 40% of the country doesn't see the benefit in racial/ethnic/cultural diversity. 

Overall, I think diversity is a good thing. It leads to new ideas and approaches as well as innovation. 

Rural America is just gonna have to keep taking an L, like they have the last 40 years. 

 
Gachi said:
I'd say about 40% of the country doesn't see the benefit in racial/ethnic/cultural diversity. 

Overall, I think diversity is a good thing. It leads to new ideas and approaches as well as innovation. 

Rural America is just gonna have to keep taking an L, like they have the last 40 years. 
Click to expand...
This is why I think painting with broad strokes is counter productive. Being in Omaha, could be much different from more rural areas of Nebraska. But, I don't want to speak for those people. I know living in Omaha that diversity is not as much of an issue. 

IvanKaramazov said:
When was the last time you were in small-town Nebraska?  Not Omaha.  The parts of the state that Tobias rightly pointed out that hate immigration.

Or we change the topic to Arizona, where people live in an increasingly diverse community and want to put up a wall.  My point is that I don't think we should give these local preferences a lot of weight.
Click to expand...

 
Cultural diversity is a reality in most parts of the world - and it is coming fo rthe rest. We still need to learn how to deal with that as we until now pretty much have been tribal which isn't going to work

 
msommer said:
Cultural diversity is a reality in most parts of the world - and it is coming fo rthe rest. We still need to learn how to deal with that as we until now pretty much have been tribal which isn't going to work
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Oh there is a large percentage of the population that won't give up tribalism easily.  See Trump's sycophants. 

 
Current demographic trends have the country turning minority-majority sometime around 2050, at which point most Americans who are alive now will still be alive (along with about a hundred million who won't ever have known a USA that was 70% white). We either make it work or the country fails. So who are the people we have to worry about impeding success?

 
James Michener’s Hawaii is still the best book I have ever read about racial and cultural diversity and how marvelous it is. It’s my Bible on the subject. 

 
I've blown this horn before, but here goes:

i've become of the opinion that if humans are not gods, they are bugs. Perhaps i should modify "gods" to "saints" or "citizens", but i'm trying to make a point without sounding dysgenic or eugenic or just plain racist.

Very few of us are cut out to be gods - my guess is about 5% of the industrialized world. Gods are the people who move us forward - by either brains, inspiration, will or work the human momentum lifts like a powerful car being put to gear thru their efforts. The rest are rapacious pests - unrestrained by code or creed, they take all they can, give as little as they can get away with and one can only endure these loss leaders' passing of the pain. That's how it's been since we were organic chemicals fizzing around sub-oceanic jets. Genetic and mechanical progress has shortened the godly arcs of synthesis from eons to nanos, so now is when we should most be focusing on how to harness that energy for good, for all, in the name of godliness.

Problem came up, though, not uncoincidentally around the time each home got a little box that showed us for the first time what things were like in all the other homes - identity. We saw that there were as many different kinds of people as there were people. But only one kind of person was in charge - pale, squareheaded men (PSMs). Now, PSMs had been breaking barriers, finding frontiers, building institutions, making rules for an awfully long time and, except for tendencies toward war & greed, had been bringing humanity along at a pretty crisp pace. So everyone wanted to be a PSM, but everytime a supposed "bug", like a pale, squareheaded woman wanted to do what a PSM did, they were pushed back because PSWs are ugly & not at all nice. Then dark, squareheaded men tried, but they got pushed back because they were strangers or because they'd already proved themselves to be inferior by allowing PSMs to own them and use them like beasts. Then pale narrowheaded men with great ideas but poor communication skills or excellent taste made their try but they were pushed away because PNMWGIBPCSOETs.................well, you can see where i'm going.

Once that little box established for everyone to see, however, that PSMs were like a quarter of the population, 3/4 of the population set out to square things up and show the world that they were special. But they weren't special. Most every archetype had some gods in the beginning but they were not strong enough to win as gods, so they started winning as bugs, showing up at the houses and chompchompchomp til they got a corner then bug-upon-bug-upon-bug, carried away whole sections. PSMs had to either share or have bug-eaten houses.

But then bugs took their egalitarian victories to mean that bugs were as good as gods and changed the human focus from admiring gods to empowering bugs. Well, i dont care how much you pump up a bug, even Paul Rudd aint a god. Empowered bugs started to make "god" a bad name and most PSMs traded "targeted god" status in for "richest bug" status. Without gods, lots of the PSMs got shown for what bugs they actually were. They ended up disenfranchised as those they used to disenfranchise and came to resent both gods & bugs. Then a rich, fat bug came along claiming he could make them godbugs and they bought it and here we are.

So, you tattooed ground-pounding noisemaker, you're a bug. You coffee-sucking, texting hairtosser with upspeak, you're a bug. You fat-faced lawn-manicuring vacation-planner, you're a bug. You handslapping, New Puritan who thinks correct  means right, you're a bug. You eccentrically-coiffed dog pamperer to whom backsplashes are important, you're a bug. You broadshoulderd Packerfans with old-fashioned morals and SSRI-tempered souls, you're bugs. You IT-rich foodies, supermommies, basement activists, lifestyle addicts, bug, bug, bug, bug. And you will be bugs til it all comes crashing down and we need gods again to build it up.

Unless, UNLESS, we set about to rejoin each our bugly elements to a new version of the colossal US that got us to the squandering point. I saw a window to it in the Kennedy Era, when people who hadn't even had their own for a generation still dedicated half their attention to how they could give a leg up to the next level down, and the next, and the next. The reason i still write #### like this is that i've seen the window. You young'ns are going to have to trust me it's there. But the only way for this world to become godly again, except in crises (and demons outnumber gods in crisis and often win) is to start wondering how you can be a saint, a citizen, a supporter of the godliness in yourself and others which got us as far as we did and start acting on that. There has to be a revolution and the only ones of those which aren't incredibly ugly are the ones which everyone eventually joins of free will. Join -

 
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KCitons said:
This is an odd statement. I know people in Nebraska (myself included) have strong opinions (both positive and negative) about the immigration policy. While I'd believe people in Manhattan are mostly indifferent to corn crop yields.
Click to expand...
Keep going, you’re almost there!

 
KCitons said:
Keep reading. It will all make sense after a few more posts.
Click to expand...
Sorry, it did not.

You asked if someone needs to be “immersed in a topic” to be knowledgeable.  In this case the answer is obviously yes.  In order to really know how immigrants impact our communities, you need to be immersed in the communities they impact. 

 
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