The Value of Diversity

"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain." ~James Baldwin


"Diversity" has been a buzzword for all of my lifetime it seems, surely coming out of the various waves of historical movements like feminism, civil rights for racial minorities, and now, gay rights. In many venues, it has been presented in such a way that diversity is good, but some diversity is better than others, i.e. we want the foreigner, but not so much the conservative Republican or even, say, the mentally ill. The extent of the diversity also seemed really limited at times with all the focus on race or nationality and not enough said about religion or socioeconomic status. (Reading Wendell Berry's The Hidden Wound serves as one of the better exceptions to these trends in my own life.) That said, surely that I am a white male affects the way I receive these conversations the way I do.

But if talking about diversity has not always been a positive experience for me, interacting with diversity almost always has, whether it was friendships with African Americans growing up, attending a wealthy boarding school as a low-middle-income high schooler, visiting and working in a Native American town a couple times in college, or teaching in a mostly-black school as a Teach For America corps member.

In a recent conversation with an African-American female friend, she offered one of the most compelling reasons for our needing diversity. She said that it was within her experiences with diversity that she is able to confront (and in the best circumstances, heal) her own biases, prejudices, and maybe even hatreds. For her, interacting with difference looks much different than it does for me because our backgrounds are not the same, but I do resonate with the need to interact with people who who are different than me. In TFA, we operated out of a similar assumption: we all have biases that affect the way we make decisions and interact with people.

It can go the other way, too, of course. That is to say, we can have a negative experience that reinforces our own stereotype. I'll offer two very different examples to illustrate my point. Let's say someone theoretically (or not so theoretically) grows up in the suburbs. As they grow up, they move to a city, and are, at some point, held up and robbed at night by a black male. Such an experience may reinforce a fearful prejudice that's already there.

The same can be true from black-to-white, or name your other combination. Let's say said African American is admitted into and chooses to attend a mostly-white, elitist sort-of university. That person has trouble fitting in socially or struggles academically and maybe even bumps into a few racial incidents. Probably not going to affirm him or her that white people can be lovable or good.

As a more tangible example, think Juan Williams (an African American and former NPR employee who should never have been fired for admitting his own bias), admitting that when he gets on a plane he is consciously or subconsciously more nervous if he sits near a Muslim person. A very natural bias, birthed out of a negative experience, that can probably only be healed by interacting with enough Muslims to learn a different pattern of relational trust.

It is my theory that we develop these biases from either ignorance or negative experiences, and that the resentment builds as an avoidance of coming to grips with our own vulnerability. Most of us possess assumptions that are comparable to Williams', attitudes that can only heal through honest reflection and real interaction with people of another race or religion, or someone who has more or less money, or who plays a different sport or attends a different school. Diversity, in this sense, can make us more healthy and whole.