The Trouble with Diversity

I often pick up books at my local library that are recommended by the librarians. They display interesting and popular books that have landed there from other branches.

This book was great because it challenged MANY of my ideas about why I am a good person regarding race and class. I don't discriminate, right? We are all the same.

He explained race isn't actually a thing. There is nothing in a person's DNA that will tell you their race. Essentially, a person's race is whatever they say it is.  I remember meeting a white skinned girl 13 year old girl who identified as African american. Her mom was white, her skin was white, but she did have some vaguely African features so she said she was black.

The author claims we have become obsessed with diversity as a marker to prove our institutions and ourselves are not racist or that they have no bias .. look! there are brown people here. That obsession with diversity allows to ignore a deep moral problem in our country: poverty and the growing income gap.

He also claimed that one culture or one language can never be superior to another. There is nothing about one that is better than another other than the fact that one is mine and the other is yours. Current debate between the left and the right on issues of culture and identity are really two sides of the same coin... and both allow us to continue to ignore the suffering of many Americans due to the structure of capitalism here. We could change what we value but we don't. So only superficial changes are made.