Like many other things in today’s polarized climate, “diversity” has become an attack word used by those on the political right. This demonization of people unlike us is one key reason why we cannot unite on the greatest threat facing us—global warming that may destroy our beautiful planet.
Current wealth and income disparity in our country has placed millions in great danger; one in eight families struggles to buy food each day. The pandemic and loss of jobs means that many Americans face exhausted savings and fear eviction for non-payment of rent or mortgages. For the first time in US history, a majority of Americans fear their children will not do as well as they have.
This is why many of us and some of our European neighbors have lost confidence in their government’s ability to help them and turned to far-right nationalist populist parties. What these parties promise is not a real solution to their problems but rather the emotionally comforting assurance that they are the truly worthy people who must unite against them. Them are the feared “others”—ethnic, religious, or gender minorities who are blamed for taking their jobs and causing them to lose status and respect.
Diversity: Then and Now
We now have many new categories of diversity, far more than in my youth, when the term “mixed marriage” in my family referred to a Catholic marrying a Lutheran, or maybe a German Catholic marrying an Irish Catholic.
In addition to the fundamental economic, racial, or religious distinctions, we have a growing variety of gender differences, as the acronym LGBTQ in its several forms indicates. Our religious categories have expanded, both in the number of world religions and faiths of which we are aware, as well as in the distinctions we make between religion and spirituality, (the “spiritual but not religious” category, for example). We have identified many new cultural forms, in language, music, ways of dressing, working, and being in community or partnership.
While these differences existed before, the ballooning of TV channels from three to over a hundred and the birth of hand-held computers (aka, cellphones), made us much more aware of them.
The sobering truth is that diversity poses problems for us, even in the best of times. We humans lived in small tribal units and related clans for most of our existence, and we do find it difficult and uncomfortable to adapt quickly. Especially when times are troubled, as is the case now, we are even more inclined to stick with “our own.”
I admit that too often my professed admiration for diversity was “honored more in the breech than in the observance,” as someone (probably Shakespeare) once said. After all, the categories we are taught as children remain buried deep in our brains and become stereotypes. I never fully escaped the notion that Germans are generally more efficient than other ethnic groups, or that those of Irish descent often drink too much.
However, as I came to understand the many ways humans differ, the many ways we classify ourselves, I also accepted the notion, urged by my religion, that we are all equal in some fundamental ways just because we are human and children of God. This is emphasized in society today by the repetition of the word “inclusion.” Yet, too often, talk of diversity triggers defensive emotions rather than feelings of inclusion.
Diversity has historically been used to magnify differences and to create hierarchy rather than equality. The differences among us are often used to proclaim (privately, of course) our superiority over others.
Although many of us like to say that we are “enriched by diversity,” our actual interactions with others suggest that we don’t really believe that.
Despite our talk of America as a “melting pot,” or, more honestly, a “salad bowl” of differences that make our society more interesting, there are still many of us who just don’t like carrots or green peppers or onions in our salad.
Is There an Answer?
Is there a way to “escape the horns” of this dilemma? Can we value differences without making value judgments about the moral, legal, social, political superiority of one group of people, however defined, over another? Judging from history, such is rare.
But it can and has happened. People appreciate diversity when it is to our advantage. We join those we may not like when we have a common enemy. Winston Churchill detested communism, but when, confronted with the opportunity to join the Russia to defeat Nazi Germany, said that “if Hitler invaded Hell, I would put in a good word for the devil in the House of Commons” and join in alliance with the USSR.
Despite of, or perhaps because of, my self-identification as a somewhat naïve, progressive (really incarnational) Christian and liberal Democrat, I see a way that we can be hopeful instead of judgmental about our differences.
It is encouraging that young people are much more accepting of diversity than their elders. They have less fear of change. What is discouraging is that many young Americans are among those least likely to vote or be politically active. Their disdain for politics is what allows people like Trump to secure power in the first place.
Unfortunately, the major threat to all humanity comes from climate change which will have the most serious on the young. Scientists tell us that, without a significant decrease in the heat-trapping greenhouse gases in our environment by 2030, we may reach a tipping point beyond which we will not be able to reduce global warming enough to survive.
This is our common human enemy, an urgent problem that will require intense cooperation by billions of people of many colors if we want to pass on a livable planet to our grandchildren by 2100.
Four years ago, an article in Scientific Reports warned that temperatures in the tropics, from 23 degrees north of the equator to 23 degrees south, would soon become uninhabitable by humans. “Once it is 95 degrees, one more degree can be very damaging to crops, very damaging to human health,” according to Solomon Hsiang of Berkeley, lead author of the report.” This will happen when the average annual temperature on Earth rises by 2 degrees Celsius.
This rise will occur sooner rather than later, given the failure of the Paris Accord to lower our carbon emissions. The human population of this tropical zone as of 2020 is over half a billion people, according to the current World Factbook found on StatisticTimes.com. They will be retreating both north and south to cooler climates. Walls will not to stop these climate refugees. The 276 million in Indonesia will head to east and central Asia. The 216 million in central Africa will likely head south to find fertile land. The 49 million from Ecuador, Brazil, and Columbia may well come north.
If North Americans do not learn to accept the many differences—in culture, skin color, and agricultural and work and life skills that these people will bring as they migrate and if we maintain our current divisive leadership, there will be conflicts all the problems of 2020 seem like a tea party.
That nightmare might give, especially young people, the ability to finally see hope in our diverse global population and help us create a community of many colors to save our planet!
The only other choice would to accept our extinction. This has happened five times before in the history of our planet. The only difference this time may be that, in the image of an old friend, we will run off the cliff, with the last person pointing a finger backward to blame someone else.
(Written with significant editorial assistance from friend Greg Cusack)