Don’t be the same; express yourself
The biggest surprise to me in the long runup to the 2024 election was the hit that the word ‘diversity’ took. There was a campaign set in motion by the Republican party to change the character of that word, to strip it of its good aura and wrap ominous connotations around it. The idea is to no longer consider it proper or American to believe that attending to diversity would do the country’s benefit. It now supposedly does us harm.
The Republican argument goes that the focus the Democratic left puts on diversity creates a wedge in society. It separates; it doesn’t bring people together. It makes a person’s differences more important than their underlying bond as American human beings and it fosters dislike, not allegiance. From this premise, they broaden their argument. They say that in the wider scope of American history diversity paints the country as mean and hard, emphasizing our flaws. It ignores the ideal that lies at the heart of the Constitution–that all men are created equal.
It’s undeniable that the country is diverse though. We are people of different races, different faiths, different occupations, different preferences, different allegiances. It’s all obvious, especially in our larger cities. You only need to look at who’s walking next to you on the street or who’s sitting next to you on the bus. It’s just to be expected in a country that throughout its history has taken in people from around the world.
Our diversity cannot be denied. It’s a fact. But what good is it as we move forward? Why do Republicans give it the stink eye and Democrats go all out to promote it?
Traditionally, our diversity has been praised as something that is defining about the United States and something that we have taken pride in, so much so that it shows up in our history books in the meme of the ‘melting pot’. It’s implied in the welcoming message of the Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island, our traditional gateway to immigration. It’s also been perceived as a plus by much of the rest of the world. We have almost always been a bright destination when people have found it necessary to leave their home for elsewhere. It’s why the United States is still a magnet for immigrants, in contrast to countries where the resident population is more homogeneous, or where the native culture is not welcoming to outsiders.
Many countries–China, Russia, Japan, Korea, Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, among others–with declining populations are facing poor prospects in sustaining their social and economic status. They face futures with lowered standards of living and heightened prospects for civil unrest. Some of these countries are busting themselves now to increase native birth rates, trying to convince, even coerce, their native populations to reproduce more. Yet few of them attract potential immigrants, at least those they consider ‘desirable immigrants,’ either because they are unfriendly to immigration generally (Japan, Hungary) or are averse to particular immigrants (Western Europe to Africans). In some cases, potential immigrants themselves avoid certain countries, especially those lacking economic opportunity or those undergoing internal conflict (Belorus, Haiti or Syria, as examples).
The United States finds itself, like most Western countries, as a low birthrate country. You can see the effects of it more pronounced in certain states, notably West Virginia, which is experiencing the heaviest decline. Yet the U.S. has so many wannabe immigrants that in the minds of many they make up a “crisis on the border.” This in spite of the fact that we have a strong economy, well able to integrate newcomers into our workforce. We’ve been doing so for hundreds of years. Republicans will argue about the strength of the economy, because there are native born Americans who are struggling financially. But to the Democrats, the reality of high costs is more a result of severe income inequality. None of our billionaires worry about how to pay for their next meal or to afford housing.
So what’s the problem? Why aren’t we welcoming these needed workers into our society when historically we have opened our arms to them? It apparently has more to do with social attitudes, than economic issues. We don’t want to share what we have, because we see ourselves as declining. Our small towns are withering. Our prices are rising. Our opportunities are narrowing. There are homeless people living on the streets. There’s no money to upgrade our schools and medical services. Our population is aging and our young people are not reproducing. The trends are especially evident in poor states, like West Virginia. So even though we’re losing population, we’re not especially friendly to immigrants settling here.
The Republican voter is of a mind that immigrants will only compound our problems, though the economic data shows that immigrants largely pay their way, giving more than they get. Data shows that immigrants are even majorly responsible for keeping certain industries viable.These include home building, road maintenance, home health care, hospitality, food processing, and agriculture. The availability of these services in some areas would collapse or the prices we would pay for them would soar without immigrants.
But it’s not just immigrants that contribute to our diversity. We manufacture enough diversity on our own in the bodies of those who fit into different racial, gender, sexuality, and counter culture categories. The diversity these people exhibit is also undergoing ‘review’ by the anti-diversity people, under the argument that they are contributing to population decline and the erosion of accepted standards of behavior.
Even women, hardly a minority category, fall into the diversity mix. Women are the key to reversing our declining population, particularly if we’re going to exclude immigrants. But women working, because they want to or because they have to to provide for their family’s finances, comes at the sacrifice of having the 2.1 children needed to balance the population. So part of the Republican push against diversity is aimed at getting women out of the labor force and back into maternity clinics, Hence, the anti-abortion thrust.
But the war on diversity doesn’t end there. We also have book burning, socially accepted discrimination, ostracizing, outlawing certain types of physical expression, reinterpreting and suppressing the history of our diversity, The reality, though, is that our diversity has contributed in one way or another to creating the America we idealize as ‘great’, the America we see in books, films, art, and music. The America that was us in 1950 or 1900 or 1850 or 1800 had the same diverse palette of people we have among us today. You can’t be proud of who America is without recognizing the contributions that all of our ‘born equal’ people have made.
I can’t imagine America without its diversity. I can’t visualize it as a monochrome population.