Community vs. Diversity
This has been on my mind for some time, so I'm going to touch on it though not in as much detail as it might take since this is a blog and not a book.
We often hear slogans and phrases talking about diversity and how we need to celebrate it, and how important it is in the work place as well as in our daily lives.
What these slogans do not specify is what type of diversity is to be celebrated and embraced.
The more that 'diversity' come into the focus the starker it looks. It is not diversity of opinion since our universities certainly are not diverse in opinion.
Studies like those done by The Chronicle of Higher Education have found that only 15 percent of the professors consider themselves conservative. Also cited in that link is data from Frank Luntz - a pollster - who found that only 3 percent of all Ivy League professors consider themselves conservative. With these numbers the nation needs to understand who is an elitist and why.
The diversity they wish for is only skin deep. Diversity of opinion is shunned because after all, conservatives are all stupid (who was the last smart Republican president according to the press?), all conservatives are mean, and of course all conservatives love to send others off to die for the same of treasures in foreign lands.
At my former place of employment (I do not work there due to relocating a few states away) there was a poster with the slogan, 'Celebrate our shared and unshared differences'. This was proudly hung in the lunchroom for all to see, cherish, and contemplate. It is also idiotic and impossible and I wish more people did actually contemplate the 'meaning'. How do you share a difference? It is better to share a difference, or to have it unshared? Completely idiotic, but HR needs something to do.
So now we see diversity in action, we're told it is good, we have seen posters telling us it is good, but yet for so many of us we still come away as if there is something missing at a quite basic level.
Fear not, for you are not insane. Let us, like good little conservatives, look not only for facts but for context and relationships and see why we are at ill ease.
The dictionary defines diversity generally as "The fact or quality of being diverse; difference." (1a)
Not bad. We can agree to this. With diversity comes one nasty problem that is hard to get around: Relativism.
On the surface this isn't too bad, it doesn't matter if someone is black, white, a Latino or an Eskimo. Everyone is basically the same. Everyone is the same relative to skin color or racial background. At this time in the United States it is safe to say that almost all people feel this way, so why keep saying it?
Perhaps it is because there is another agenda. Before all the music and the looks of 'ooh and ahh' come over you, this isn't some McCarthy-type of situation, but there is an agenda none the less.
This relativism is used as an excuse to break down communities and traditional values. This is how it works:
The best part is what we have for the primary definition of community in the dictionary: (1a) "A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government. "
This is not the original definition of the word for it has more to do with fellowship than with just happening to be in the same location or under the same government. The root of the word is common. You now need to go down to the 3rd definition to find it, "Similarity or identity (a), Sharing, participation, and fellowship (b)."
Why has the definition changed? Because it serves diversity better if community does not mean common. After all, it is not what we all have in common that is important - whether it be family values, how to raise our children, morality, a sense of accomplishment, work ethic, or anything else. To the diversity crowd, how children are raised is relative. Morality is relative. and since the family is usually not there, family values must be relative as well.
It all comes from the fact that no one can tell you that a brick is not a brick because it is there in real life. Put together with many bricks it will build a house, if you drop it on your foot it will probably hurt, etc, etc, etc. A brick is not relative to anything else. It is a brick.
This where dictionaries - especially old ones - come in handy. Miriam Webster has the first definition of community as, "a unified body of individuals", listing the much more familiar "the people with common interests living in a particular area" BEFORE, "broadly : the area itself".
In this case we can see that two different sources have two different primary meanings for the same word. Check out some other terms that have come under fire like marriage. Then, if you have an older dictionary look at the definitions there as well.
This is the agenda. If community means a group of people living in the same area, then diversity is fine and dandy and things will start to look like all those areas where diversity is maintained and no one has a sense of community.
If community means what most people still think it means, then diversity only goes so far before someone says 'misfit'. This is not referring to race, this is referring to diversity of the ideological kind.
Diversity should be permitted, but to be forced to accept it, and even celebrate it or be called intolerant? It doesn't work. Because this approach does not work an effort is made to make everyone confused about what means what so that there can be no steadfast argument against them.
Another example, a bit older, is the term Fascist. Without looking... What is a fascist? Where did the term originate? How has that definition changed? When did it change? Who changed it? George Orwell explains it far better than I can.
In the end, diversity and community, as well as terms like morality, ethics, and so many others have been tagged for alteration whether or not anyone even know it for certain. Languages change with the times - which is why we use Latin for legal terms since it is a dead language no one comes up with new or misleading definitions for words. Is this nothing more than a simple evolution in our language or is this something else, something different?
We often hear slogans and phrases talking about diversity and how we need to celebrate it, and how important it is in the work place as well as in our daily lives.
What these slogans do not specify is what type of diversity is to be celebrated and embraced.
The more that 'diversity' come into the focus the starker it looks. It is not diversity of opinion since our universities certainly are not diverse in opinion.
Studies like those done by The Chronicle of Higher Education have found that only 15 percent of the professors consider themselves conservative. Also cited in that link is data from Frank Luntz - a pollster - who found that only 3 percent of all Ivy League professors consider themselves conservative. With these numbers the nation needs to understand who is an elitist and why.
The diversity they wish for is only skin deep. Diversity of opinion is shunned because after all, conservatives are all stupid (who was the last smart Republican president according to the press?), all conservatives are mean, and of course all conservatives love to send others off to die for the same of treasures in foreign lands.
At my former place of employment (I do not work there due to relocating a few states away) there was a poster with the slogan, 'Celebrate our shared and unshared differences'. This was proudly hung in the lunchroom for all to see, cherish, and contemplate. It is also idiotic and impossible and I wish more people did actually contemplate the 'meaning'. How do you share a difference? It is better to share a difference, or to have it unshared? Completely idiotic, but HR needs something to do.
So now we see diversity in action, we're told it is good, we have seen posters telling us it is good, but yet for so many of us we still come away as if there is something missing at a quite basic level.
Fear not, for you are not insane. Let us, like good little conservatives, look not only for facts but for context and relationships and see why we are at ill ease.
The dictionary defines diversity generally as "The fact or quality of being diverse; difference." (1a)
Not bad. We can agree to this. With diversity comes one nasty problem that is hard to get around: Relativism.
On the surface this isn't too bad, it doesn't matter if someone is black, white, a Latino or an Eskimo. Everyone is basically the same. Everyone is the same relative to skin color or racial background. At this time in the United States it is safe to say that almost all people feel this way, so why keep saying it?
Perhaps it is because there is another agenda. Before all the music and the looks of 'ooh and ahh' come over you, this isn't some McCarthy-type of situation, but there is an agenda none the less.
This relativism is used as an excuse to break down communities and traditional values. This is how it works:
The best part is what we have for the primary definition of community in the dictionary: (1a) "A group of people living in the same locality and under the same government. "
This is not the original definition of the word for it has more to do with fellowship than with just happening to be in the same location or under the same government. The root of the word is common. You now need to go down to the 3rd definition to find it, "Similarity or identity (a), Sharing, participation, and fellowship (b)."
Why has the definition changed? Because it serves diversity better if community does not mean common. After all, it is not what we all have in common that is important - whether it be family values, how to raise our children, morality, a sense of accomplishment, work ethic, or anything else. To the diversity crowd, how children are raised is relative. Morality is relative. and since the family is usually not there, family values must be relative as well.
It all comes from the fact that no one can tell you that a brick is not a brick because it is there in real life. Put together with many bricks it will build a house, if you drop it on your foot it will probably hurt, etc, etc, etc. A brick is not relative to anything else. It is a brick.
This where dictionaries - especially old ones - come in handy. Miriam Webster has the first definition of community as, "a unified body of individuals", listing the much more familiar "the people with common interests living in a particular area" BEFORE, "broadly : the area itself
In this case we can see that two different sources have two different primary meanings for the same word. Check out some other terms that have come under fire like marriage. Then, if you have an older dictionary look at the definitions there as well.
This is the agenda. If community means a group of people living in the same area, then diversity is fine and dandy and things will start to look like all those areas where diversity is maintained and no one has a sense of community.
If community means what most people still think it means, then diversity only goes so far before someone says 'misfit'. This is not referring to race, this is referring to diversity of the ideological kind.
Diversity should be permitted, but to be forced to accept it, and even celebrate it or be called intolerant? It doesn't work. Because this approach does not work an effort is made to make everyone confused about what means what so that there can be no steadfast argument against them.
Another example, a bit older, is the term Fascist. Without looking... What is a fascist? Where did the term originate? How has that definition changed? When did it change? Who changed it? George Orwell explains it far better than I can.
In the end, diversity and community, as well as terms like morality, ethics, and so many others have been tagged for alteration whether or not anyone even know it for certain. Languages change with the times - which is why we use Latin for legal terms since it is a dead language no one comes up with new or misleading definitions for words. Is this nothing more than a simple evolution in our language or is this something else, something different?
posted by Edward W. Prather at 22:06
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