The University of Idaho Argonaut

Diversity is not, on its own, a worthy ideal. Do not mistake me; diversity is not bad, and there is nothing wrong with it. Personally, I happen to like diversity. I find that culturally and religiously diverse cities, towns, organizations and groups can be very enjoyable and fascinating. However, while there is nothing wrong with diversity as a state, there is something wrong when diversity becomes a rallying cry.

Diversity cannot hold its moral ground when it becomes a broadly sought-after ideal because it places subjective social engineering above the value of individuals. It tells us that our statistical position in society is more important than who we are. It says that someone of a comparatively or locally rare race or religion is worth more to society. It focuses a person’s value on that person’s race, religion or gender, rather than character, actions and abilities. It fosters discrimination against unoffending majority groups, simply because they are the majority.
Not only does the cause of diversity gauge a person’s value based on religion or race, it determines value depending on where the person is. Someone who is valuable for contributing to diversity in Moscow, Idaho may be perfectly average in Delhi, Lagos or Taipei. Are we really willing to make our measure of an individual’s worth dependant on where they live or who their neighbors are?

What does the cause of diversity tell us? It tells us that some people are worth less than others because there are too many of them. I am a white, Christian man. I realize that I will probably not be asked to speak at events showcasing multiculturalism, but in the battle for diversity, there is a sense that it is almost immoral for me to be who I am. White Christians (especially men) are not exotic at all; we are too common, and we therefore hurt the cause of diversity simply by existing. Perhaps the goal is to make us feel bad enough for being non-diverse that we just leave, increasing the relative diversity. However, I do not feel bad for being who I am, because I am not championing the cause of diversity (on the contrary, I write columns against it). If the university wants to be honest in pursuing diversity, then it should instruct recruiters to tell most prospective students “We’d rather you weren’t white.”

The western world made great strides in the past 100 years away from racial discrimination, and now we seem to have found our way back to it from the opposite direction. The message of the Civil Rights Movement was not that each business and school should have a certain proportion of each race, it was that race should not be considered a factor.  Martin Luther King, Jr. did not dream that one day skin colors would be distributed evenly, he dreamt that one day we would not be judged by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character.

The Bible teaches us to love diversity but to remember our equality before God. We look forward to the day when those from every nation, tribe, people and language come to worship Christ, but we also remember that in Christ there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor free. Diversity looks nice in the brochures, but we should not find our value in our race, for while man looks at the outward appearance, God looks at the heart.