Diversity+Proximity equals War?

College Life
1

As I approach my college years, I am kind of excited about the opportunity to meet and mingle with other students that may come from a very different cultural, socio economic, racial and religious background than I. I feel that I will become a better person for it. My high school is mostly a homogeneous boring suburban school.

I also know universities are trying to improve diversity on campus with varying levels of success.

I recently got into a discussion about college selection with one acquaintance at school and he surprised me by saying that he didn’t think diversity was such a good thing. He pointed to all the recent problems on college campuses and also across our country and in Europe to deliver his opinion that forcing a bunch of people who are very different from each other to live in close proximity to each other and interact frequently is a recipe for disaster and has often led to armed conflict in the past.

He feels that contrary to promoting an understanding of each other’s values and priorities it just riles everybody up and causes a lot of friction. He actually prefers that we all stay in our own circle and hence is going to choose his college based on it being more like his high school which is basically largely rich, white and culturally Christian.

He suggested that I was romanticizing diversity. The discussion was civil and intellectual but it left me a little depressed and unsettled and even questioning myself.

Do you think he could be right? When I look at what is happening in American politics today, I feel very unsure. Maybe I am just looking for some comforting validation here but I’m hoping to hear a strong counterpoint here.

Shouldn’t we go beyond our comfort zones and try to grapple with and reconcile with foreign ideas and values, even ones we think are strange? Is engaging in such an exercise setting us on a slippery slope towards conflict?

Please help me sort through this.

2

As an adult who grow up in a conservative, white, culturally southern Christian area (in a positive home environment) and then went to a fairly diverse university then moved to a very diverse city I am a living experiment of this situation. While I am only one person and this is not based on research I can’t begin to tell you how beneficial and positive my experience has been living with people who are different than me whether by race, nationality, religion, gender, etc. It has led me to a culturally rich and thoughtful life. I feel that because of these experiences and despite being over 50 I continue to grow intellectually each year. Instead of hate or negativity towards others or the condition of the world today my heart is full of love and hope. I wish everyone could have such a life.

3

Well, this question risks skirting two rules: to skip politics in discussions and to leave diversity arguments to the one allowed thread where folks can argue to their heart’s content, well founded or not.

You friend advocates homogeneity. We are not a homogeneous society. You don’t learn, broaden, or grow, by sticking to your cocoon.

4

On a different thread a person posted this article
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/

5

What a disingenuous way to introduce the alt-right perspective into these forums.

6

@“Snowball City” Thank you! That was a great article

@NCMOM24 Thank you! It’s great to hear from somebody who has much more accumulated wisdom than I have at this stage. It was reassuring to hear your perspective!

7

I’m another person who grew up in a very homogeneous town and was delighted to head to a college where people came from lots of different backgrounds. Learning about other people’s experiences and backgrounds is interesting and broadening. It’s also worth noting that, especially if you go to a college that attracts people from all over the country, diversity (i.e., people of backgrounds different from yours) ends up meaning more than just the differences people are talking about when they talk about diversity in college admissions.

I grew up in a white, UMC, Massachusetts suburb. I fit the town’s demographic profile, except that I was one of the relatively few Jews in town, making me the diversity element for all the Christian kids, I guess. Anyway, going to college with kids of other races was absolutely that broadening, diversity element it’s meant to be and I liked it. But other people who exposed me to different backgrounds and experiences and who weren’t who you think of when you say diversity on campus included the blonde from a midwestern farm and my best friend in college, the ultra-WASPY, Texan descendant of a couple of signers of the Declaration of Independence who went to debutante balls over Christmas break freshman year and who OWNED A GUN. To my knowledge, I had never before known someone who owned a gun and it freaked me out a little. The deb balls were a pretty weird idea, too. But, because of her, gun owners and people who go to deb balls are real people to me, not just stereotypes.

Meeting people who are different from you and the people you know is interesting and will broaden your horizons. You won’t like them all and you won’t agree with them all, but assumptions you didn’t even know you had will be challenged and you will learn new points of view. You will be the better for it, both intellectually and as a person. You’ll also discover that you share some things with people who are differ from you in significant ways and that’s an important experience also.

I’m in my 50’s. I have friends who are similar to me (straight, married with children, Jewish, suburban, northeastern, UMC, college educated professionals) and friends who differ from me in some or all of those respects. I value them all.

Based on the admittedly very little information I have about your acquaintance, he strikes me as some combination of poorly informed, out and out prejudiced and so uncertain of his own ideas that he’s afraid to have them challenged. Ignore him and stick with your original instincts.

8

The argument for a military draft is that a lot of zip codes learn to get along with each other - because they have to. It’s a pretty compelling argument, I think.

9

I guess he will never want to go anywhere near California, Hawaii, New Mexico, or Texas.

10

Look up “group status threat” to get an idea of where he is coming from.

11

It’s a two way street - people from both coasts reject the Midwest and deep South for essentially the same prejudices. It’s different and therefore easier to dismiss as either backward or provincial than it is to go, see, and learn.

About once a week I read a thread where some kid rejects a school because “they’re culturally, ethnically, or politically different from me” followed by a straw man on a high horse declaring the moral inferiority of “them.” It’s wrong no matter who “them” are.

The military’s good about that too - the guy from Baltimore will room with the farm kid from Iowa while they both report to their LT from Puerto Rico on some base in California, Guam, or England.

12

Another parent agreeing that diversity, and the initial discomfort and unease that it can cause, is part of a “real” education. One reason I am impressed by my kid’s school is that the administration talks (and supports through funding priorities etc.) about the idea that it is not enough to simply “be” diverse since that can mean everyone continues to inhabit their silos, but that it is necessary to “live” a diverse experience. By engaging with difference, we learn tolerance, respect for difference, and civility – to my mind, not just prerequisites for a democracy, but also for a successful career.

13

It is not about any particular region, since pro segregation and anti other attitudes can be found everywhere, and not just among white people. But it is these attitudes that cause the conflict that people who hold them fear.

With respect to the military and conscription, the US military does not have the need for the numbers that would produced by universal conscription, and would have to relax standards to do so (only about 30% of young people in the US are eligible under current standards).

14

Thank you @intparent, as I was reading this I was thinking “isn’t this like verbatim the argument used by modern white supremacists?” I’ll give OP the benefit of the doubt though that this is an interaction with someone else.

15

Some of this goes both ways. There’s a very long thread in the financial aid section from a poster who is horrified NE kids might have to go to Alabama to get merit scholarships.

16

I wouldn’t want to live in the bible belt either, especially given current political / religious things going on in it

There’s other cheap state schools one can get merit from besides Alabama anyways

17

OP does your friend perhaps believe in separate but equal?

18

Yes, it is true that many people on these forums (probably not just in the northeast) would not even consider going to / sending their kid to a school in Alabama like Tuskegee that offers a full ride merit scholarship.

19

Assuming this post is legit, I am sick to think that there are teenagers, our future leaders, who buy into this crap. OP, diversity is necessary to humanity. Literally, at the most basic level of procreation, it’s why inbreeding doesn’t work. It’s why Darwin was able to prove his theory of survival of the fittest. So your friend is poorly informed at best, and at worst, is being manipulated by the current nationalistic fervor espoused by the president.

20

I find this scenario to be entirely plausible.

Back in the winter a newspaper writer went to a town near mine. The people whose feelings were reported in the paper were upset that their town was “only” 85% white now. They felt things were changing too fast and that the US needed to put a “pause” on other cultures coming.