The More Things Change, The More Things Stay The Same

THE MYTH OF DIVERSITY

by Jared Taylor American Renaissance (Part III of VI)

Advantages of Diversity

On those rare occasions when people actually attempt to defend diversity, the one claim they make with any semblance of conviction is that its advantages will become evident as the world becomes more "international." It will be a great thing to have citizens from all around the world as nations have more and more contact; specifically, our "international" population will boost American exports. Of course, since this view is based on the assumption that people communicate better with people like themselves, it is an argument against national diversity. If it takes a Korean to deal with the Koreans, how are Americans supposed to get along with the Koreans who live in America?

If anyone really thought a diverse population is good for trade, we would presumably be adjusting the mix of immigrants in accordance with trade potential. There would be no point in admitting Haitians, for example, since Haiti is a pesthole and never likely to be an important trade partner. After Canada, Japan is our largest trading partner. Does this mean we need more Japanese? No one ever talks about immigration this way, because no one really believes immigration has anything to do with promoting exports.

The example of Japan in fact shows just how little racial diversity has to do with international trade. Japan is one of the most racially homogeneous nations in the world. By American standards, Japanese are hopeless "racists," "homophobes," "sexists," and "nativists." They even eat whales. Here is a country that should therefore be a complete failure in the international economy--and yet it is probably the most successful trading nation on earth.

Taiwan and Korea are close behind, with China now recording huge trade surpluses with the United States. These countries are even more closed and exclusionist than Japan. If they could ever be made to understand the American notion of diversity, Asians would politely wait until we had left the room and then die laughing. Germany is likewise one of the world's great exporting nations. Who would dream of thinking this was due to the presence of Turkish Gastarbeiter.

The fact that millions of Mexicans now live in the United States does not make our products more attractive to anybody--certainly not to Mexico, which already has plenty of the things Mexicans know how to make. "Diversity" adds exactly nothing to our international competitiveness.
Racial diversity is also supposed to bring cultural enrichment, but what are its real achievements? 

The culture of ordinary Americans remains almost completely untouched by the millions of non-white immigrants who have arrived since 1965. Perhaps they have now heard of the Cinco de Mayo festival, but even if they live in California or Texas how many Americans know that it commemorates a Mexican military victory against the French?

Immigrants do not teach us about Cervantes or Borges or Lady Murasaki and it would be silly to think they did. Chinese stowaways do not arrive with a curator's knowledge of Ming ceramics and copies of the Tao-te Ching in their pockets. The one cultural artifact immigrants bring with them is their language--which increasingly becomes an Americanized farrago that would astonish their countrymen--but the so-called "culture" of immigrant settlements is a tangle of peasant folkways, Coca-Cola, food stamps, T-shirts with writing on them, and truculence.

High culture and world history cross borders by themselves. Who in America first learned of Tchaikovsky or the Mayans from an immigrant? Nearly every good-sized American city has an opera company but it wasn't established by Italians.

What, in the way of authentic culture have Miami's dwindling non-Hispanic whites gained from the fact that the city is now nearly 70 percent Hispanic? Are the art galleries, concerts, museums, and literature of Los Angeles improved by the fact that its population is now nearly half Hispanic? How has the culture of Washington, D.C. or Detroit been enriched by majority-black populations? If immigration and diversity bring cultural enrichment, why is that the places being the most intensively enriched are the places where whites least want to live? Like the trade argument, the "cultural enrichment" argument collapses with a pinprick.

It is true that since 1965 more American school children have begun to study Spanish, but fewer now study French, German, or Latin. How is this an improvement? People can, of course, study any language they want without filling the country with immigrants. Virtually all Norwegians speak excellent English, but the country is not swarming with Englishmen.

Any discussion of the real advantages of ethnic diversity usually manages to establish only one benefit people really care about: good ethnic restaurants. Probably not even William Clinton would claim that getting an authentic Thai restaurant in every city is a major national objective.