The Value of Human Difference: Why Diversity Isn’t Enough

When I was in college, one of my graduation requirements was a class in “philosophy around the world”, a semester-long crash course in the thought of the non-Western world, from Confucius to Aztec mythology. One of the books the professor assigned—without reading it, as she later admitted—was an anthology called Native American Philosophy. Once she read it, she said it wasn’t what she was expecting: instead of Native American philosophy in the sense one might expect, it was little more than a set of applications of progressive ideas developed mostly by White Westerners in the States and France.

This illustrates the nature of today’s talk of diversity. Diversity is a common buzzword today: there are diversity offices in just about every college, diversity initiatives in businesses, and even ‘superdiversity’. But what the activists and bureaucrats who agitate for ‘diversity’ want is a state of affairs where everyone looks different, but thinks the same. The difference between Ta-Nehisi Coates or Suey Park and a White talking-head writing for the same site as them is hardly a substantive one: they merely apply progressivism differently, and prioritize the issues of different demographics.

Diversity is about spoils—not about substantive difference. The exception that proves the rule here is Jonathan Haidt’s call for more conservatives in social psychology: despite a degree of underrepresentation that would legally be considered prima facie discrimination, despite evidence that systemic discrimination does exist within the discipline, the call to address this discrimination and this underrepresentation, unlike the many calls for greater diversity, has hardly gained either traction or publicity.

It’s clear that what Haidt is advocating for can’t be called diversity in the progressive sense. While the regional and cultural differences in political alignment make it something of a demographic issue, it’s calling for something more than what diversity calls for: heterogeneity.

Diversity calls for everyone to look different, but think the same. Progressives believe that progressivism is a universal truth, and that all serious cultural differences are relics of an unenlightened past, to be destroyed by righteous crusades. Progressivism is a missionary religion, just like the Puritanism that spawned it: it wants to convert the world. And its marketing tactic is to promise all adherents a share of the spoils of Western civilization.

Haidt’s proposal is one for heterogeneity, not diversity, because it rejects the missionary commandment of progressivism. As he says, “the left and right in this country are two separate cultures”—and what he wants is for them to understand that they are two separate cultures, not for one to be crushed beneath the boot of the other.

And he’s right. Contra the progressives, culture isn’t a math problem with one objectively right solution, nor is it merely a matter of appearance. The call for diversity is really a call for diversity of appearance: different melanin levels, different types of food and music, on top of one underlying value system that is to be spread to the whole world. But different cultures have different value systems, and while some work better than others, there isn’t one that’s obviously, objectively best for everyone everywhere in the world. (For that matter, progressivism doesn’t seem to work well for anyone, except the vast legions of bureaucrats and victimologists who derive their employment from it while escaping its negative consequences.) Utah isn’t Germany, Germany isn’t Iceland, and Iceland isn’t Singapore, but all four do well nevertheless.

Diversity says to Utah, Germany, Iceland, and Singapore: “Become ’70s New York! Become South Africa! Become progressive, become identical in all but appearance, obliterate all of your traditions that stand in our way, and while you’re at it, institute affirmative action, put a diversity office in every institution you have, and pay us six figures to run them.” Heterogeneity, on the other hand, says to let Utah be Utah, let Germany be Germany, let Iceland be Iceland, and let Singapore be Singapore. Culture is an engineering problem, and there’s more than one way to build a bridge.