The Case for a Common Language: On “Diversity”
When working towards a common goal, communication is indispensable. Indeed, the word “communication” comes from a Latin root word meaning in part “to make common.” While communication is not limited to an exchange of words, sharing a language removes barriers that would otherwise hamper progress. In the Old Testament, when God scuttles the plans of humanity to construct the Tower of Babel as a kind of shortcut to heaven, he does so by confounding their languages and effectively scattering them across the earth. Lack of a common language is a serious handicap.
Culturally and politically, the United States is experiencing its own Tower of Babel moment. Rather than an attempt to take the literal heaven by storm with a futile and delusional building project, we have the more noble goal of continuing to build a unified, just and prosperous society for all: e pluribus unum, if you will.
While ideas of how best to accomplish that goal vary widely, the primary method of disseminating and discussing those ideas — language — should strive for universality, or at least be readily translatable. But increasingly, communication of political and cultural ideas is happening with shared words but disparate definitions. It is difficult to imagine substantial progress being made when each side is hearing something different than the other side is saying.
My inaugural post on this site attempted to bring some clarity to the meaning on the relatively new yet already ambiguous term “cancel culture” (“Generally characterized by disproportionate, punitive, coordinated, personal destruction and discrediting for a real or perceived offense with no offer of redemption”.) Theoretical discussions of how to move towards a common language can perhaps provide a framework for change, but rather than simply addressing the issue conceptually, I intend to approach it more practically by proposing, in a series of essays, limitations or refinements to definitions of some of the words most likely to suffer from competing interpretations in the public discourse. The first such word I will address is ‘diversity’.
The phrase “our strength is our diversity” does not enjoy universal agreement, but it does at some level reflect the ideal of the United States motto e pluribus unum. Certainly, it is not our only strength, but from relationships to finances, diversity is surely an asset. While there is little dispute about the “differences” or “variety” meaning of “diversity,” it is the “diversity of what?” question that can cause us to talk past one another. Rather than drill down to diversity of thoughts, ideas, beliefs and experiences that are more likely to be significant in terms of relationships, decisions and problem-solving, we often resort to more visible markers such as race, ethnicity, sex and/or gender preferences as a proxy for the inner diversity we should value.
One need only to Google the word “diversity” to find dozens of recent news articles about corporations, news outlets, publishers, law firms, and other non-academic institutions announcing diversity initiatives or responding to criticisms over a lack of representation. But again: representation of what? This March, a group of filmmakers signed a letter to PBS expressing concerns that white documentarians like Ken Burns receive too much airtime on the network. In February, The New York Times issued a self-flagellating report arguing that the paper had failed to maintain a working environment that championed diversity. While the report paid lip service to “many types of difference: race, gender identity, sexual orientation, ability, socioeconomic background, ideological viewpoints and more,” it concluded that problems at the Times were “particularly true for people of color[.]”
Diversity is misused by many ideologues, but that misuse isn’t always necessarily purely cynical. Often, demographic diversity is a kind of shortcut for other kinds of diversity that matter more but aren’t as easy to identify as other differences that are literally skin deep. With our words, we reject stereotyping, but with our actions, we risk reinforcing them by granting them an outsized priority. In the short term, this stereotyping may produce some nominally “good” results, but long-term may simply drive us further apart by emphasizing the visible over values, characteristics over character.
At the same time, we should appreciate the limits of diversity. When it comes to staffing an accounting firm, a firm wants to hire accountants. Similarly, a church is going to seek ministers and staff who hold the same core values and beliefs as the organization. And a political party doesn’t want too much diversity in political affiliation and positions; they understandably want people who will largely toe the party line.
More simply: even if diversity is an important value, it isn’t the only important value. The liberalism we are interested in defending on this site was founded in diversity. Indeed, it’s a kind of solution to diversity, to the challenge of a polity made up of people with ultimately different, and occasionally irreconcilable, definitions of the good. Demographic diversity may well be a critical part of giving different groups in that polity a sense of ‘equity’ (another term for another essay) in shaping important institutions. But if it is emphasized to the point that it undermines other important liberal values — like freedom of association and contract, the freedom to make choices for oneself, and the freedom to be treated as an individual and not a demographic by the state — then it comes at too high a price.
Note, too, that often those who push the strongest for demographic diversity often also reject the notion of ideological diversity. On college campuses, Diversity Officers produce guides and hold seminars to police so-called “acceptable” speech or concepts. They deem certain ideas or phrases as “oppressive” or “patriarchal” or “triggering,” or they say some language is “non-inclusive.” In June 2020, the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture released (and later removed) a chart pointing out that some ideas and phrases were “assumptions of whiteness.” This included shocking and controversial assumptions like “intent counts,” “be polite,” “emphasis on the scientific method,” and “hard work is the key to success.”
In this view, even the language we use and ideas we share can threaten diversity. In a 2015 New York Magazine article, Jonathan Chait discussed how “language police are perverting liberalism.” Chait noted how political correctness had returned to college campuses through efforts by professors and administrators to deem certain ideas as off-limits because they would offend certain groups and harm the school’s diversity initiatives. As a society that values liberalism, we should question whether removing certain language or ideas for the sake of diversity will threaten the very mechanism by which open and vibrant discourse leads to societal progress. Being presented with challenging ideas fosters critical thinking, which is necessary for scientific inquiry as well as entrepreneurial and technological advancement.
But we shouldn’t settle for this. Rather than the boilerplate collage of individuals of various skin colors, manners of dress, and hair styles that accompanies most articles on “diversity,” we should dig deeper. We should ask how others look at the world? Did they suffer from want? Or benefit from wealth ? Do they believe in God? Which god? Were or are they discriminated against? What are their views regarding the opposite sex? Or those whose views on sex and gender are far afield from their own? Was their culture a welcoming one, or insular? What kind of pain have they known? What is my common ground with them?
In his classic Surprised By Joy, C.S. Lewis wrote of a particular friend who often drove him up the wall. Lewis describes his friend’s type as follows [emphasis mine]:
“[T]he Second Friend is the man who disagrees with you about everything. He is not so much the alter ego as the anti-self. Of course he shares your interests; otherwise he would not become your friend at all. But he has approached them all at a different angle. He has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one. It is as if he spoke your language but mispronounced it. How can he be so nearly right and yet, invariably, just not right?”
But rather than throw in the towel, Lewis and his friend continued to sharpen one another, and it paid off:
“Actually (though it never seems so at the time) you modify one another’s thought; out of this perpetual dog-fight a community of mind and a deep affection emerge.”
While ideological, political, religious, cultural, moral and other differences are inevitable and even to some degree desirable, a commonly shared vocabulary through which to defend, explain and communicate our disparate ideas and ideals is one avenue that could help us develop a “community of mind” and, if we’re not careful, even an occasional “deep affection” for those with whom we disagree.
