Is America Too Diverse?
Examining our country’s shift away from inclusivity
The U.S. of A once served as a symbol of diversity, inclusivity, and hope. A country founded by persecuted peoples, we became known around the world as a “melting pot” of cultures, where people of different cultural backgrounds came together to celebrate the shared values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Anyone could arrive in America and achieve the “American dream.”
But what changed?
Despite our economy taking off in the last few years, we have witnessed a particular shift in our once welcoming attitude of inclusivity. The concept of race now divides us more than ever. What once served as our most unique asset has now become our Achilles heel.
For some background, here is the current demographic breakdown of our country, according to 2019 estimates from the Census Bureau:
The recent pandemic has revealed and amplified how differently people around our country really live: while New York suffered our country’s first major outbreak, people in Florida called it a fake. After all, it did not affect them yet, and the politicization of the public health crisis certainly did not help either. Cases in Florida have now shot up dramatically, with at least 15,000 new cases each day. Just take a look at the graphs:
New York, as of July 14:
Florida, as of July 14:
In April, as cases in New York reached record highs, Florida was enjoying low numbers of cases and even a decline. At the time, Florida had reason to believe that its coronavirus response did not need to be as dramatic as that of New York. Unfortunately, however, Florida’s disregard for what was happening in New York resulted in a lack of caution, and cases began to take off in June and July. So much for flattening the curve.
Trends in coronavirus responses are only one of several factors that raise questions about our country’s ability to withstand change and diversity. As our political polarization reflects, we seem to view more and more people as “the other” rather than “another.”
This leads to the inevitable question: Is America too diverse for its own good?
Indeed, there are actually many reasons to believe that our vast differences may not be sustainable:
1. Physical Size
The sheer size of our country — a whopping 3.797 million squared miles — may be enough to cast doubt on the sustainability of our current republican system. We have everything from mountains to plains, cities to farms, and beaches to deserts. We even have tropical islands and frozen Arctic land.
The lifestyles of people who live around these different landforms will naturally differ, and our government may not be able to adequately address the needs of everyone at the same time.
2. Differences in Density
With a population of about 330 million, the United States is the world’s third most populous country, after China and India, respectively. However, not everyone lives equally spaced out across the map.
California, with an area of 164,000 square miles, boasts a population of almost 40 million. However, 7.8 million live in the San Francisco Bay Area while another 7 million live in the counties of Los Angeles and Orange. Similarly, 43 percent of people in New York state live in New York City, or 0.5 percent of New York’s land.
Meanwhile, Wyoming, the country’s least populated state, has an area 80.7 times the size of Rhode Island, our smallest state— that’s 5.9 people per square mile in Wyoming to Rhode Island’s 874.
City life drastically differs from rural life, and those who live in suburbs experience an awkward middle. Those of us who live in Southern California do not even consider such distinctions of city and suburb, since all cities are suburbs!
The Senate and House attempt to accommodate for such differences by offering different forms of representation. However, just as Darwin concluded that populations evolve differently when separated (note: this is NOT an endorsement of Social Darwinism), the lives of those on farms and those in high-rise apartments will continue to develop in opposite directions. The demands of both populations will reflect such change (Exhibit A: those in cities have been hit much harder by the pandemic than those in rural areas. However, the failure of less populated areas to accept the reality of the pandemic has now catapulted states such as Arizona into deeper crisis than could have been avoided).
3. A Gamut (and Blend) of Cultures
In the 17th century, the first immigrants arrived in North America from England. Of course, Native American tribes had already lived in the Americas for generations. Plymouth, Jamestown, and similar settlements (as well as those started by the Spanish) marked the beginning of American colonization. At the same time, Europeans began to “import” African slaves into the Caribbean and mainland.
The 19th century welcomed droves of Europeans, including Italians, Jews, and the Irish, as well as Asians such as the Chinese and Japanese. By the 20th century, Mexicans arrived to fill labor shortfalls during the World Wars, Cold War refugees found their way to the U.S., and Cubans fled Fidel Castro’s communist regime. Soon, more refugees arrived from Vietnam, Cambodia, and the like.
Today, our country proudly boasts people from every corner of the world: Europeans, Asians, Pacific Islanders, Middle Easterners, Africans, and Latin Americans comprise the world’s most diverse population. Interracial marriages have blended these cultures to create a unique American identity.
Yet this diversity has caused much strife.
Every immigrant group has faced discrimination and continues to do so today. Most famously, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 barred Chinese nationals from arriving legally. It was our country’s first law directed at a specific racial group.
Today, such discrimination and resistance against immigrants has not ceased. In the 2000s and into the 2010s, Muslims and Latin Americans became unwelcome. President Trump’s “Muslim Ban” and his wish to “build a wall” simply embody the modern-day versions of the since-repealed Chinese Exclusion Act.
Furthermore, since immigrant groups generally gather together, such diversity has drastically changed the demographics of coastal states while leaving middle states untouched. This has resulted in completely different attitudes between those who tend to live in cities (Democrats) and those who often do not (Republicans).
4. Our Exacerbating Wealth Gap
America is no stranger to wealth inequality. Built on a model that fosters competition for innovation, the existence of winners also ensures the existence of losers.
Consequently, the gap between the rich and the poor has been increasingly widening:
The exacerbating wealth gap has many implications for our society. While no one should be able to dictate how wealth should be distributed, an increasingly severe imbalance creates a surplus of wealth (and power) for a few while a shortage of resources for many. This shrinks the market due to less demand for goods and services, hurts businesses by reducing trust, and creates deadlock in our government system by increasing political volatility. On a micro scale, fewer resources correlate directly with more crime and social instability.
Furthermore, economic disparity drastically diminishes widespread access to quality education, one of society’s most powerful tools for social advancement. With fewer paths and opportunities available, society can be at risk of backtracking on contemporary progress.
5. Increased Political Polarization
Unfortunately, while (hopefully) all of us may agree that increased poverty is a problem, we are extremely divided on how we can mitigate it. We are also extremely divided on seemingly every other issue.
As explained in my conversation with a Trump-supporting relative, the lack of dialogue between people of differing views is detrimental to our democracy, a system that requires disagreement, debate, and compromise to function.
Indeed, “purple” ideology is slowly but surely vanishing:
We also know that corruption among politicians leads to an erosion in the trust of government. When this happens, people tend to divide themselves by exposing themselves to select types of media and surrounding themselves with like-minded individuals, which further perpetuates our self-constructed echo chambers. Of course, it becomes a positive feedback loop — our echo chambers will only create more echoes.
Future generations may one day look back on 2020 and laugh: how could something as neutral as a public health crisis — something that can potentially affect anyone of any demographic or political background — become so political that we prioritized our politics over our lives and the lives of our loved ones?
There is no doubt that our political polarization, a culmination of our differences, will continue to cause strife in our country’s near future.
Despite my perhaps dismal outlook, I still disagree that these concerns will deride the end of our inclusive country. The last few years could just be a bump in the road of our shared journey, as long as we recognize our challenges and make an effort to regress.
Regarding our size and unbalanced density, our democratic republican government system — unlike any other in history — can disprove the narrative that every great empire will fall. We are not an empire, but rather a nation that, despite differences, believes in shared values. We can harness our diversity of culture and thought to identify the best (or best blend of) practices that can mitigate our immediate problems of wealth inequality, but also confront more challenging, wide-spanning issues such as climate change.
As recent protests have shown, we are stronger when we stand together (not a ripoff from Hillary Clinton’s campaign, but rather a fact). Although many may debate the trivialities, specifications, and technicalities of various social movements, America prides itself on a history of change through collective action — a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
At times when we feel angry over what we believe to be others’ ignorance, we should ask ourselves a few questions:
— What are their backgrounds?
— What are the experiences they have had, that I have not?
— What are the reasons why others would say or think such a thing?
— Am I confident that I am 100% right and others are 100% wrong?
— If I were in their shoes, would I think the same thing?
By performing these simple checks on ourselves, we can contribute to guiding our nation back on course through the factors that we can control.
America is not too diverse, but the widening gaps among socio-economic statuses, lifestyles, and races have caused a resurgence in the us-versus-them mentality. We should keep the existence of difference in mind throughout all our interactions, but remember especially that some differences really are not differences at all. After all, race is a social construct — something that affects only a fraction of a percent of our DNA. (In fact, humans share 99.9% of our biological makeup.)
At the end of the day, our shared values will be the glue that keep us all bound together under one flag. If we view diversity as an asset rather than a liability, we can truly reclaim our country’s prized virtue of inclusivity.
