# Is diversity good for all nations, or only white nations? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 12, 2015, 2:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-diversity-good-for-all-nations-or-only-white-nations/722310 "2015-06-12T02:48:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2015, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-diversity-good-for-all-nations-or-only-white-nations/722310/101 "2015-06-13T14:53:14Z")
Economic prosperity is not the sole metric by which a nation or \*politeia \*is deemed “good” or “bad” though. ---
**Author:** ![Shodan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9f8e36/32.png) [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2015, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-diversity-good-for-all-nations-or-only-white-nations/722310/102 "2015-06-13T17:11:26Z")
True - crime rates, life expectancy, political and individual freedom, lots of other ones. Which measurements are correlated with diversity IYO, and which ones are not? Or is the answer to the OP “only white nations”? Regards, Shodan ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2015, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-diversity-good-for-all-nations-or-only-white-nations/722310/103 "2015-06-13T17:40:05Z")
I think trying to ascribe this or that aspect of a nation or culture to its ethnic makeup is simplistic tripe, and that political/discussion groups amonst which this is an item are invariably cesspools of frustrated manbabies with all the intellectual acumen, emotional maturity, capacity for self-criticism and moral rectitude of a particularly dim specimen of bog sludge. Case in point, the NRx movement the OP alludes to, which I could write volumes about these days because hatereading these asinine clowns is somehow entertaining to me. It takes a very special kind of mind to proudly label oneself a reactionary. ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2015, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-diversity-good-for-all-nations-or-only-white-nations/722310/104 "2015-06-13T21:41:03Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Japan is screwed up in many ways, but I’m struggling to see any positives of Finland welcoming in massive amounts of immigrants. > > Count me on the ‘diversity is usually a negative’ side. Whoa…seriously?? 😕 ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2015, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-diversity-good-for-all-nations-or-only-white-nations/722310/105 "2015-06-13T22:26:30Z")
> [@Hector\_St\_Clare](#): > > Japan is screwed up in many ways, but I’m struggling to see any positives of Finland welcoming in massive amounts of immigrants. > > Count me on the ‘diversity is usually a negative’ side. This attitude explains why you can’t get good pad thai in Helsinki. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2015, 11:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-diversity-good-for-all-nations-or-only-white-nations/722310/106 "2015-06-13T23:12:10Z")
> [@Dr.Drake](#): > > I am glad to hear that. You are, however, suggesting that these languages be denied institutional support. This has major implications for the health of a language. Some immigrant languages can be sustained indefinitely by their home country, e.g. Spanish or Korean. Some, e.g. Navajo, cannot. Ironically, some of the languages that have been sustained the longest are ones that didn’t enjoy support from a home country such as Navajo while proportionally there are very few ethnic Poles, Italians, or Germans who’ve retained their language over the decades. > [@](#): > > _Reductio ad absurdem_. Of course not. It should, however, provide schooling in indigenous minority languages, and in other minority languages where there is a significant concentration of population. Otherwise, the dominant language exerts a subtle economic and social pressure. What happens is that language domains are gradually eroded. “Kitchen German,” for example, is a term used to describe the language for people who are fluent in their own dialect with regard to home, family, and everyday life, but who would have difficulty discussing chemistry or Russian aggression in the Ukraine because those are discussed exclusively in English. Why shouldn’t the dominant language be allowed to exert a natural “subtle economic and social pressure”? All that basically means is that people find it convenient to speak the language everyone else speaks in for social interaction, business, politics, intellectual activity etc. Again, as I’ve said I’m not opposed to such instruction provided English is still the primary mode of instruction though. Additionally, being totally fluent in two languages to be able to discuss complex topics is extremely difficult unless one has the time to be able to regularly read and discuss such works in both languages. The main exception (ironically) seems to be English since so much cultural and intellectual content currently is in that language, allowing large numbers of individuals all over the world to practice it further simply by watching movies or reading books that interest them. A few other languages have similar capabilities such as Japanese, French, and German-not so much Navajo. > [@tomndebb](#): > > What is supposedly “common sense” about this? (Unless one is using the definition of common sense: the sum total of one’s prejudices.) Well for one, I think its pretty much common sense that the various European (and later Asian and Hispanic) ethnic immigrant population learning English helped them become part of American society, allowing them to join the ranks of the middle class by the millions and eliminating (or at least reducing) prejudice against them. > [@](#): > > Many nations survive with multiple languages. Having a _lingua franca_ is useful, but it hardly is required for government, economics, or other social functions. Well I guess its true since “required” is a fairly low threshold. But why shouldn’t the state promote policies that strengthens both itself and the citizen body as a whole? > [@](#): > > Your claim of “linguistic imperialism” demonstrates a lack of historical awareness. The vast majority of native languages in North America were forcibly suppressed with students punished (or removed from their families) for continuing to speak them. I’m well aware of such policies and obviously would have opposed them. It was pretty clear from what I said in my post that the policies I advocated was not of that nature anymore than the people I’m debating here are calling for ethnoracial separatism that has been supported by an odd coalition of both white “nationalists” and “Black Power” advocates. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [June 13, 2015, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-diversity-good-for-all-nations-or-only-white-nations/722310/107 "2015-06-13T23:24:36Z")
> [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](#): > > That’s an anecdotal record, and the case study listed is a kid who started in an immersion program in kindergarten and who is evaluated for reading skills two years later. That’s some pretty shaky evidence, for several reasons: > > 1. Kids age 3-8 are in their prime language-acquisition years. If you are going to have an immersion program, that’s going to be the best age for it. An immersion program for kids ages 12-18 is going to run into a lot more problems. > 2. An anecdote does not provide clear across-the-board data. Nor do the experiences of a single superintendent. > 3. The most pressing problem with immersion programs is that students in them will undergo months or years of instruction in math, science, social studies, etc. in a language they do not completely understand. While they may catch up in reading after awhile (especially at young ages), they lose major chunks of knowledge in other subject areas. > > Tell me that you support immersion in reading and even writing, and I’m willing to accede to that, provisionally. But in math? No way. Math is so, forgive the expression, additive, that if you miss a concept like place value because you can’t understand the language it’s taught in, by the time you catch up linguistically, the rest of the class may be multiplying two-digit numbers, and you have no idea how to do so because you never got a chance to practice place value in a language you understand. Or you hit fifth grade having no clear understanding of plant life cycles and therefore can’t understand the unit on how plants adapt to their environments, or the unit on the constitution makes no sense because your instruction about the differences between public and private institutions back in third grade was incomprehensible to you. I agree that’s definitely problematic, although as the author of that article points out having bilingual education may simply push back those difficulties later on. Its much more difficult to hire a full set of college instructors or teachers for various specialized vocational professions than for an elementary or middle school teacher. Or for that matter, it may become a problem in the workplace. That also probably wasn’t the best evidence to have shared (although for this I’m not sure what grades are covered): [http://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/CA-Test-Results-DEC-02-2.pdf](http://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/CA-Test-Results-DEC-02-2.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2015, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-diversity-good-for-all-nations-or-only-white-nations/722310/108 "2015-06-14T03:19:06Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > . . . Japan is not an ethnically diverse nation. They are nonetheless an economic powerhouse - the second largest economy in the world. . . . [Third.](http://money.cnn.com/news/economy/world_economies_gdp/) ---
**Author:** ![handsomeharry](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e9c0ed/32.png) [@handsomeharry](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/handsomeharry)\ **Post date:** [June 14, 2015, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-diversity-good-for-all-nations-or-only-white-nations/722310/109 "2015-06-14T04:55:16Z")
How are we defining "diversity’ and ‘good’? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-diversity-good-for-all-nations-or-only-white-nations/722310.md?page=5)