Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 17, 1993 TAG: 9301180340
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARSHALL W. FISHWICK
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
`PLURES' VS. `UNUM'
AT YEAR'S end, families counted their blessings, bankers their money, and historians their cliches. It can be a useful exercise.Because 1992 was an election year, laden with cliches and sound bites, the task wasn't easy. But one word and its accompanying "ism" stood out in anybody's list: diversity and multiculturalism.
A mighty army stands ready to protect and expand these values. For too long, runs the official line, has unum held sway. We are becoming every more diverse and it's time to emphasize plures. Let every subculture wake up, protest, and have its say.
But are we becoming more racially and culturally diverse? On television, maybe - but what do the statistics show?
A smaller percentage of our population is foreign-born than in the 1920s. The country, according to the Census Bureau, will maintain its present racial percentages (with 80 percent of Americans identifying themselves as "white") well into the next century. Over 90 percent of Americans say they are religious, and 93 percent are Christians. The real change has not been ethnic, racial or sexual, but economic.
The poor get poorer, the rich richer. Poverty is truly multicultural.
"Diversity" as a cultural fact is one thing, but quite something else when it becomes an ideology, even an obsession. Look what "diversity" has done in Bosnia-Yugoslavia, India, the former U.S.S.R, Ireland, and Palestine - and tremble.
Instead of being our main problem, diversity may divert our attention away from real problems, both at home and abroad. "For the past few years," writes Louis Menand from London, "it has seemed as though Americans could talk about nothing but race and sex."
Desert Storm in Iraq and a presidential election at home took our minds off them for a few months; but we move quickly to our favorite topics, urged on by special-interest groups. "Sex" - a mediocre book by and about Madonna - is a best seller at $50 a copy. Anita Hill's case against Clarence Thomas takes on a life of its own. So does talk about Robert Mappelthorpe, Magic Johnson, Tawana Brawley, Spike Lee, Malcolm X, the Mike Tyson case.
But why so little talk of the runaway deficit, savings-and-loan scandals, medical-care chaos, the abandonment of the homeless?
And are we, with all the rhetoric and tension, becoming ever more tolerant and multicultural? Could it be that when people get so self-consciously and dogmatically "diverse" that real diversity diminishes? Is it happening today?
One can recall an earlier America in which there was more ethnic, racial and sexual diversity than exists now - and more tolerance too. I do not defend that past, which had obvious flaws and shortcomings. I do say that those pockets of cultural privacy produced great art, literature, leaders. Now that privacy is branded "segregation," and will not be tolerated.
Everyone has a right to be in the American mainstream. But if everything is mainstream, what happens to diversity? Of course most of us, from whatever background or subculture, still want to be "American," and enjoy all the physical and economic benefits thereof. But we want to stress, and insist that others pay full homage to, our ethnicity, gender, religion, lifestyle - and to get fighting mad if they are slighted.
Hence the mushrooming of racial, sexual and cultural conflict and violence throughout the land. Can one be proud to live in a state, Virginia, where guns and gun-smuggling are so prominent that the only restriction that can get through the state legislature is "no more than two guns per person per month?"
Mainstreaming minorities and their special cultural traits changes not only the mainstream, but the minority cultures as well. We can all see what we get from massive legal and cultural assimilation - but what do we give up? In some perverse way, the diversity crusade may backfire. What it may really produce is a bland, unconvincing conformity enforced with an iron hand.
The more the outside becomes the inside, the more everything begins to speak the same language, repeat the same cliches, send the same message. Diversity may be our battle cry, but sheeplike conformity is our refuge.
In the '50s, we lamented such conformity in cliches like "Organization Man" and "The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit." But now we see that the hippies of the '60s were no less conformist with their shaggy hair, earrings and tie-dyes. The obvious follow-the-leader mentality of the Yuppies in the '80s, shackled to their jewelry, cuff links, white wine and brie cheese, has been exposed frequently for all to see.
Now, "diversity" has become the academic buzzword of the '90s. What does this mean for our educational system? The numerical gains are highly touted. What about the less visible dilemmas and losses? What about the new mediocrity?
No one stated that dilemma better than Alexis de Tocqueville, whose descriptions of 19th-century America still resonate true. The United States is a country, he observed, in which people, encouraged and allowed to say whatever they want, all somehow end up saying the same thing. Is that what's happening in the 1990s?
Marshall W. Fishwick is professor of humanities and communication studies at Virginia Tech.