Is diversity good for all nations, or only white nations?

Great Debates
61

[QUOTE=Rune]
But for some reason when whites are doing it, it’s called cultural appropriation. Lego got a shit storm their way a few years back when they made a series about Mauri warriors. But when you google Valhalla or Ragnarok you get a shitload of stupid Japanese Manga, and Hollywood took Thor of thunder and war, and turned him into a goddamn girl – and that’s called progressive.
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Well, I’m sure that because the names “Valhalla” and “Ragnarok” have been used as item/weapon names in a number of manga and video games. Without any of their attached meanings or symbolism, or any real cultural tie. It just sounds metal as balls, y’know ?

That being said, and while it is not entirely devoid of shonen silliness particularly when it comes to the protagonist, I have to say that not only is Vinland Saga not cultural appropriation in the least, it’s rather better researched and more representative of historical Viking culture and mores than 90% of Hollywood’s portrayal of such.

[QUOTE=Left Hand of Darkness]
I just love the underlying argument in some of these posts. "If diversity is so great, why do people complain about European colonialism?
[/QUOTE]

I know, right ?
Tell you what, guys. When foreign ethnic minorities come with superior weaponry ; steal our land and resources by force of arms ; appropriate the exclusivity of administrative, financial and industrial power as well as a privileged legal status ; and maybe start lopping off the hands of children when their parents don’t meet their rubber quota, I’ll be sure to voice my tentative concerns with such a conception of “diversity”. It wouldn’t be quite right. There, I said it.

62

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.

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.

I can see the difference. My ancestors could not. In the 20th century, they made an effort to stamp out anything other than English in their children, because they wanted to fit in. I just find it sad that there were family members with whom I could not speak. I only met them a few times, though.

True. Demographic overwhelming happens, and it’s how a lot of minority groups go extinct. I happen to think that since we have the means to reduce this unconscious tyranny of the majority, we should, but other people, secure in their own experience, do not.

I am biased because I work with a population, the Welsh, who were actively prevented from speaking their language by government policy, sometimes kindly mean and sometimes cruelly enforced. The rhetoric there was always that people must speak English, and if they want to speak Welsh, they can—on their own time, when no English people are around to be bothered. I know that’s not what you’re saying, but the lines of argument have more than a few points of intersection.

63

Diversity, per se, is neither inherently good nor inherently bad.

It’s not at all obvious to me that, say, Japan or Finland would be better off if they started admitting huge numbers of Third World immigrants. There would be positive AND negative repercussions if they did so.

64

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.

65

I feel that fits within the context of the thread. I acknowledged that not all cases of different ethnic groups living together are good; there are numerous examples of ethnic hostility. Diversity, as I defined it, is the situation when different groups are able to live together without conflict - and I say that’s a good thing.

The question of the OP was whether diversity like that was good for all countries or just something that was good in majority white countries. I feel it’s good for all countries. I think Japan, to use an example already mentioned, would be better off with more diversity.

66

Guy. One guy said that. Sheesh.

67

Yeah, I was in those meetings, too. But you’re missing the point. The Japanese are doing very, very well. Could they do better? Maybe. But they are one of the least “diverse” nations and yet they come out near the top on most measures of success.

At any rate, diversity is a plus when you have a stable, democratic society with the rule of law. Take away those things, and diversity can become your worse nightmare. You’ve got plenty of diversity in Syria-- and that’s the problem.

68

Are you saying it’s neutral because the good and bad balance out or it depends on how it’s handled, or that there aren’t any tangible benefits and it’s just feel good policy? Because there’s a lot of evidence for the practical benefits of ethnic/gender diversity.

It’s not all rainbows as the article points out, but generally companies with more social diversity perform better. This also applies to small groups, diverse ones perform better at a given task than homogenous ones.

I think the offered psychological reasons are interesting. For example, I’d tend to think people would discount the opinions of the perceived outgroup, not take it more seriously than fellow ingroup members. Like when white people don’t believe something about minorities/women until a white man talks about it.

69

The benefit of diversity is in having different points of view in decision making. These come from different backgrounds. I’m not sure how much religious diversity in Syria would contribute to different points of view, even if they are not killing each other. Ethnic diversity doesn’t help much if different ethnic groups stay separated. A southern town - even most northern towns - in 1960 might look diverse at the town level but none of the decision making bodies looked diverse at all.
While democracy and stability are important, and diversity of a population is no guarantee of this, pre-invasion Iraq seemed to be more diverse than it is now, with women and Christians occupying positions of real power. But diversity driven decisions are not necessarily good ones.

70

Surely, the problem in Syria is that they don’t have a stable, democratic society with the rule of law? I mean, if tomorrow Syria suddenly held free, open elections where everyone voted in a strong, liberal, Western-style constitution, then the diversity in the country would no longer be a problem. On the other hand, if tomorrow Syria suddenly became culturally and religiously homogenous, but was still ruled by a brutal, mass-murdering autocrat, it would still be a pretty fucked up country.

71

I honestly have no idea what your point is.

72

I think Miller’s point is that Syria’s problems are unrelated to its diversity. Syria’s main problem are that it’s ruled by a brutal dictatorship. If everyone in the country was the same religion and ethnic group it would still be a fucked up country because of that dictatorship - as evidence, look at North Korea.

73

Exactly.

74

Syria is no longer ruled by a brutal dictator. Part of Syria is, but a good chunk is controlled by various rebel factions. The idea that “diversity” isn’t a problem in Syria right is mind boggling. Or, is this a No True Scotsman thing where ethnic fighting doesn’t count as diversity?

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In other words, Syria has a diversity of leaders.

Diversity is inherently a good thing when creativity is needed. Diversity is not great for stability. So in literature, the arts, science, business: diversity = good. In politics, for problem-solving, diversity = good. But there are plenty of areas where diversity is neutral, or actively undesirable.

Half of the trouble is that “diversity” has become a code for “includes non-white people.” That makes it difficult to discuss diversity, because if you say “sometimes it’s a bad idea,” it can be read as “I’m a racist asshole” if someone isn’t paying attention.

76

The way I see it, diversity does for culture what a free market does for the economy. You give people a variety of choices and let them pick out the ones they want. In a multicultural society, each group would feel free to develop its own cultural ideas and to take cultural ideas from the other groups it lives alongside. That way, each group has not only the good ideas it develops within in its own group but also the other good ideas that other groups developed.

White people see black people playing rock and roll. Black people see white people playing basketball. Each group says “Damn, that looks like fun. We should try that.” And each group ends up better than it would have been just by itself.

77

I’ve addressed that issue twice already in this thread. As far as I’m concerned what Syria has isn’t diversity, it’s ethnic conflict. Diversity is when different groups are living together and that’s not what’s happening in Syria. In my opinion, you’re trying to redefine diversity to discredit a good idea by falsely associated it with something bad.

78

Always glad to boggle your mind, John, but in this case, I’m proceeding directly from the logic that you laid out. In a country that has a strong, democratic rule of law, diversity is a good thing. In a country that does not have a strong, democratic rule of law, diversity is a bad thing. Clearly, then, the problem in Syria that needs to be fixed is the lack of a strong, democratic rule of law. Which is good, because if the problem that needs to be fixed in Syria is that there’s too many different kinds of people there, the only way to fix that is to start handing out machetes to everyone until there’s only one group left standing.

79

Well, it’s not exactly John who’s redefining it. “Diversity” has simply meant, “a lot of different kinds of things,” long before it every took on a social science dimension. But the concept, when used in that social science context, does generally mean, “Different people living peacefully together.” When people talk about how diversity is a good thing, they are self-evidently not talking about what’s going on in Syria right now. They’re using a narrower, and newer, definition of the word.

80

I never said that. I said it CAN be a bad thing, not that it MUST be had thing. Always glad to clear up your logical errors, M. :slight_smile:

But, yeah, I think we in Western Style Democracies have a rose colored view of diversity, because we live in countries where a strong civil society exists. Take away the veneer of that civil society, and “diversity” can very easily turn into ethnic strife. I don’t expect it always happens, but I think more often than not. If you have some examples where diversity thrived when there was not a strong civil society (either democratic or autocratic), I’d love to hear about it.