Unborrowed Vision

“Diversity Week” is a week that is set aside by my school in order to celebrate our diversity.

What is diversity, and why does it warrant celebration? Diversity is the state of being diverse. In order for a thing to be diverse, it must necessarily be made up of distinct characteristics, qualities, or elements. What does diversity mean in reference to a community, such as my school community? First we must define community. A community (in this context) is an interacting population of individuals in a common location. In such a context, diversity would then mean that these particular individuals, who make up our community, hold distinct characteristics, qualities, or elements. What is an individual? An individual is a single human, regarded as possessing a unique personality, who is considered either apart of or apart from a society or community. The above process of logical deduction shows us that every community is necessarily diverse; every person is an autonomous, unique individual that posses distinct characteristics, qualities, or elements. Diversity Week spits in the face of the true meaning of diversity, declaring that the only true standard of diversity is ethnic background, which is a racist and offensive claim.

To set the standard of diversity as one’s heritage and nothing more is to claim that it is only this trait that makes an individual unique. In other words, this means that as a school we are promoting a perverse form of racism that looks at people not as individuals with unique personalities and traits, but “groups” that are different from each other—why? Because of the color of their skin, and for no other reason. We do not celebrate people who enjoy different kinds of music or books or games or fashions or TV shows or ice cream flavors during diversity week; why do you think that is? I’m a white guy, and I’d be willing to bet that there are plenty of black guys out there who watch the same TV shows that I do, and who derive the same pleasures from the same kind of ice cream that I do—why then, during diversity week, are blacks singled out along with Hispanics, Asians, and all the other various groups? What do these arbitrary groupings mean about a person? Nothing. But the implication that is given every year during Diversity Week is that because a person looks different, they must think different because of it—otherwise why place an Asian girl in a different group than me? What makes the two of us different?

You might say to me, “But Bill, Diversity Week isn’t really about all that idealism you’re preaching of ‘diversity of character,’ or any such nonsense; I mean, what you say—it sounds nice in theory, but its really not very practical… And besides! Everyone knows that what Diversity Week is really about is celebrating the minorities in our school!”

These arguments are weak.

If what I am saying sounds nice in theory, then why hasn’t it been tried? Could we be so slothful as a society that we abandon true diversity, the diversity the individual human spirit and mind, as our ideal and replace it with the false diversity of the skin and the body simply because it is somehow more practical? Doubtful. It is far more likely that most of us have been deceived into believing that diversity is something that it is not. Celebrating diversity is not equal to celebrating “minorities” in our school. Who are these “minorities” and why do they deserve celebration, then, while I or some other white person does not? Here’s a fact that many of the proponents of Diversity Week are unaware of and fewer care to acknowledge: the smallest minority is the individual, the single person, and all true diversity flows from him—or her. Until we recognize this fact, there can be no celebration of diversity of any kind, anywhere.