By Victor Davis Hanson
Defining Ideas
America is experiencing a diversity and inclusion conundrum—which, in historical terms, has not necessarily been a good thing. Communities are tearing themselves apart over the statues of long-dead Confederate generals. Controversy rages over which slogan—“Black Lives Matter” or “All Lives Matter”—is truly racist. Antifa street thugs clash with white supremacists in a major American city. Americans argue over whether the USC equine mascot “Traveler” is racist, given the resemblance of the horse’s name to Robert E. Lee’s mount “Traveller.” Amid all this turmoil, we forget that diversity was always considered a liability in the history of nations—not an asset.
Ancient Greece’s numerous enemies eventually overran the 1,500 city-states because the Greeks were never able to sublimate their parochial, tribal, and ethnic differences to unify under a common Hellenism. The Balkans were always a lethal powder keg due to the region’s vastly different religions and ethnicities where East and West traditionally collided—from Roman and Byzantine times through the Ottoman imperial period to the bloody twentieth century. Such diversity often caused destructive conflicts of ethnic and religious hatred. Europe for centuries did not celebrate the religiously diverse mosaic of Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant Christians, but instead tore itself apart in a half-millennium of killing and warring that continued into the late twentieth century in places like Northern Ireland.
In multiracial, multiethnic, and multi-religious societies—such as contemporary India or the Middle East—violence is the rule in the absence of unity. Even the common banner of a brutal communism could not force all the diverse religions and races of the Soviet Union to get along. Japan, meanwhile, does not admit many immigrants, while Germany has welcomed over a million, mostly young Muslim men from the war-torn Middle East. The result is that Japan is in many ways more stable than Germany, which is reeling over terrorist violence and the need for assimilation and integration of diverse newcomers with little desire to become fully German.
History offers only a few success stories when it comes to diversity. Rome, for one, managed to weld together millions of quite different Mediterranean, European, and African tribes and peoples through the shared ideas of Roman citizenship (civis Romanus sum) and equality under the law. That reality endured for some 500 years. The original Founders of the Roman Republic were a few hundred thousand Latin-speaking Italians; but the inheritors of their vision of Roman Republican law and constitutionalism were a diverse group of millions of people all over the Mediterranean.
History’s other positive example is the United States, which has proven one of the only truly diverse societies in history to remain fairly stable and unified—at least so far. Although the Founders are now caricatured as oppressive European white men, they were not tribal brutes. The natural evolution of their unique belief that all men are created equal is today’s diverse society, where different people have managed, until recently, to live together in relatively harmony and equality under the law.
Unlike present-day Mexico, China, or Japan, America never developed a fixed idea, either culturally or formally in its written constitution, that race or religion de facto defined citizenship. Instead, an imperfect America was always being reinvented in dogged pursuit of the Founders’ promise of equality and the toleration of difference.
Despite a Civil War that took over 600,000 lives, years of oppression and segregation, dozens of major riots, and thousands of court cases and legislative fights, our American exceptionalism held that America alone could pull off the bizarre idea that diverse peoples could eventually live together as a single people in brotherhood. But the American experiment is not static, nor is it settled. The nation’s racial, ethnic, and religious diversity is by nature volatile, and prone to exploitation by demagogues and opportunists.
A diverse America requires constant reminders of e pluribus unum and the need for assimilation and integration. The idea of Americanism is an undeniably brutal bargain in which we all give up primary allegiance to our tribes in order to become fellow Americans redefined by shared ideas rather than mere appearance.
Unfortunately, there are increasing signs that our political, religious, ethnic, and racial diversity is overwhelming our shared but fragile notion of national unity. Growing geographical separation into blue coastal liberal states and red interior conservative counterparts is starting to mimic the North-South regional divide of the Civil War, a split in national geography that is fueling political differences. Not surprising, there is talk of a Calexit, or a Confederate-like secession of California from the United States—and during the Obama administration, there was news of a secessionist movement in Texas.
There is currently little real free speech on American campuses. A new kind of racial segregation is occurring in college “theme” and “affinity” houses. Recent street violence in places like Charlottesville between extremists of the left and right resembled the brawling between totalitarian Stalinists and racist brown shirts of 1930s Germany. The successful melting pot is caricatured; the unproven salad bowl is canonized.
Almost everything in America today is politicized and thus polarized, from the fundamental to the trivial: sports events, music, art, Hollywood movies, mute statues, cable television, university curriculums, Silicon Valley corporations, and now even the names of horses. Fewer people are unified. The schools and the media do not remind Americans that their country can be quite good without having to be perfect—and is far better than the contemporary alternatives elsewhere. At the same time, these institutions have convinced Americans that the evils of human kind—racism, sexism, homophobia, slavery, serfdom, and class oppression—are the unique sins of democratic America. Few today appreciate that only in America has there been a culture of self-critique, introspection, and dissent—and thus remedies for the nation’s shortcomings, a self-correcting culture not known elsewhere.
The fashion today is to identify yourself by your ethnicity, race, or sexual preference—as something that transcends both being American and a unique individual. In contrast, there are vanishing incentives for people to simply call themselves Americans, allowing the content of their character to trump the color of their skin. In this regard, we can welcome the recent change in name of the preeminent Latino lobbying group from the racialist National Council of La Raza to Unidos US. (Raza is a Franco-era chauvinistic buzzword meaning “The Race.”)
If America is to survive this fourth century of its existence, it will soon have to recalibrate from “celebrating diversity” to “celebrating unity.” The bleak alternative is history’s long list of genocides, tribal feuding, ethnic warring, religious conflicts, and pogroms. In sum, the United States will at some point have to subordinate the fad of multiculturalism to the ideal of multiracialism: many different-looking Americans who are nonetheless one in their shared customs, citizenship, and culture, while holding diverse political and cultural views not predicated on identity politics.
“Difference” is a plus when it is a matter of enjoying diverse foods, music, fashion, art, and literature that enhance a central, shared, and unchanging set of values based on the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.
We all enjoy Mexican or Chinese food, but not Mexican or Chinese ideas of democracy and human rights. We all are enriched by Caribbean music but not by Caribbean notions of law and justice. We all value political and ideological diversity—but only when they rely on collective tribal allegiances. And we are impressed by Middle Eastern hospitality and family solidarity, but not Middle Eastern treatment of women, minorities, gays, and diverse religions. What makes millions of immigrants strive to reach and stay in America at all costs is not our racial make-up or our many languages but the racially-blind promise of freedom, liberty, the rule of law, prosperity, and security which are the dividends of Americans abiding by the precepts of the U.S. Constitution.
If America’s set of values becomes a pick-and-choose potpourri, there is no unity. And then America will certainly become yet another one of history’s casualties of diversity.
Discussion (15)
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Excellent...Thank you!
All this is true. We seek others as ourselves. But Texas has always been secessionist due to its over-worked pride, but more particularly in response to size, centralization and tyranny of Washington DC. Just imagine how intolerable Texans would be if they had listened to Sam Houston's exhortations to stay the hell out of the war between the states. They would not have suffered the humility of defeat and being wrong and kept true to their own independence, even from others' independence. . During Obama years I daydreamed of a new nation forming from Texas due north through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, all the way to South and North Dakota. Aggregating to that spine could be any number of contiguous states that had their fill of the east and west coasts and might find reliance in international supply and demand being satisfied through the Gulf Coast. Several states might split apart to join or not join. Oh to be rid of Washington DC, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, LA, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle. Texas might lose El Paso or even San Antonio somehow. . Then the duties of the day pop my dream bubble and the reality is that Obama is still our tyrannical communist-trained president working feverishly to saturate the central state into every space of our lives. What? Trump is president now? . Well, then live life with hope for a cure, but still prepare for the civil war and appropriation of private property.
This is brilliant, and just re-enforces my skepticism r.e. 'moral progress' and historicism. Are you ever likely to visit Australia? It'd be good to have you hear to do a series of lectures , etc. Keep up the good work.
"Rome...managed to weld together millions of quite different ...peoples through the shared ideas of Roman citizenship...and equality under the law." ???This from a great military historian! Wasn't it rather the superb Roman legions which created and held the Empire together? What about the crazed Jewish uprisings. The zealots, driven by their demanding and intolerant faith, had no interest in Roman citizenship and equality under the law. They were only inspired by religious nationalism. (Rome until our time was the most liberal society as far as religious worship.The authorities did not care who you worshiped as long as you made a perfunctory bow to the state gods). This is only one example,though a very vivid one, of Rome's constant military struggle to keep the Empire together. The United States has managed to be a non-authoritarian melting pot of diverse European peoples(except for a relatively small African population) because of very specific conditions. 1. Immigrants came to a mostly empty continent so there was not much conflict over land, which was wealth at that time. New groups could always move West for more land. 2. The continent was separated from Europe by an ocean, which means that groups could not call on their compatriots for military help if they needed it. 3. Most immigrants came to create wealth for themselves,so assimilation was in their best interest. 4. The various European groups brought many of their prejudices about other Europeans but they were the same race and after a generation they all spoke the same language and looked pretty much the same. 5.Most Europeans immigrants were Judaeo-Christians,even if of different denominations The conditions which created the American melting pot are rapidly disappearing. New immigrants are not Europeans. They do not have the appearance, values,religions or histories of the legacy population. Many come to the USA for the benefits they can receive rather than for the opportunities that might be available. As little as one hundred years ago there was no safety net for even citizens. The number of immigrants is overwhelming the ability of the country to assimilate them, even if they wanted to be assimilated. Demagogues and political opportunists are using these divisions for their own gain. They have also aroused the Black population by blaming slavery and Jim Crow for Black shortcomings. The words of The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution( which few of these immigrants know or would understand--and that holds true for the legacy population also) will not keep the USA from continuing to spin out of control.
Ann Coulter's book, Adios America, clarifies how the chant for multiculturalism has come from the left. It is an excellent read. The concept might work if there is respect for each other's culture and religion, but there is very little respect shown these days from the left - only to other cultures, not to our own culture. It is incredible that so many people just swallow the Left's agenda.
Here's calling on all hyphenated Americans to drop the hyphens once and for all.
Its interesting to note that the Sumarians, often depicted in pottery and other sculpture, as blue eyed and blondish, were over run by men "with dark eyes, and dark features!" ..^ this caused the demise and destruction of one of the most prolific societies in history. ..a golden age died ..but sure enough it became racially balanced...
"History’s other positive example is the United States, which has proven one of the only truly diverse societies in history to remain fairly stable and unified—at least so far." We were not really diverse. The massive immigration during the late 1800s and early 1900s was of Eastern Europeans, Italians, and Irish; America was founded of the English, Scottish, and Western Europeans. Africans and Mexicans (or "Hispanics') did not. We were a homogeneous culture, but with a small unassimilated African population (and with some Hispanics). Today, we are not a homogeneous culture, and we are exacerbating this in-homogeneity by allowing the large presence of illegal immigrants from Mexico, Central and South America, plus the legal immigration of Muslim refugees. We continue to have an unassimilated Black population. Unless we take measures to insure an American-European demographic, we are doomed; we will not last 500 years as did Rome.
Vic ..where do what left of the Indian "Nations" fit in the three century diversity saga? More to the point, though is the lady still hanging-on under the lip of the jar or has the free market flushed her out: For ere this the tribes of men lived on earth remote and free from ills and hard toil and heavy sickness which bring the Fates upon men; for in misery men grow old quickly. But the woman took off the great lid of the jar (3) with her hands and scattered all these and her thought caused sorrow and mischief to men. Only Hope remained there in an unbreakable home within under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door; for ere that, the lid of the jar stopped her, by the will of Aegis-holding Zeus who gathers the clouds. But the rest, countless plagues, wander amongst men; for earth is full of evils and the sea is full. Of themselves diseases come upon men continually by day and by night, bringing mischief to mortals silently; for wise Zeus took away speech from them. So is there no way to escape the will of Zeus.
Dr. Hanson, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I teach high school social studies in Washington State and I have wanted to email you for quite some time asking that you write a piece such as you wrote today. You have written several times on American culture and the notions of diversity over the last few years but today's piece is what I have been waiting for you write. Thank you so much. I wish your voice could reach more wanting hearts and ears. Especially in the other Washington where we seem to be leaderless.
Dr. Hanson, you said, "But the American experiment is not static, nor is it settled." Precisely. An experiment does not have a predictable outcome. If the outcome is predictable, it is a procedure; one may confidence in the outcome. I fear that this Great Experiment may prove the inverse of the desired outcome. It may prove that man is incapable of governing himself. Certainly, no society has ever had a better chance at doing so.
Just end the totally unnecessary mass immigration of recent decades and things will settle down in most of the country, California excepted. California is probably gone, doomed to a Latino majority and a one-party system, socialism and government bankruptcy. A shame - it was a civilized place as recently as 1980.
But instead today if we celebrate others we are stealing their culture in "cultural appropriation", if we celebrate the individual, we are disgusting in not recognizing that certain lives are more important than others, if we value free speech, we have to get with the program and learn that some speech is more free than others. Everybody, reread the Federalist Paper on Factionalism. That warning against factionalism and the reason we need a strong central figurehead in a strong nation to love is one of the most important in those papers. Please, professor, repeat your column on gratitude. All of these whiners looking for safe spaces, all of these violent, unhinged jerks destroying our peace with their ridiculous complaints, all of those who want to stop other points of view from being heard - all ought to get jobs and do productive things with their lives. Primarily, they ought to thank G-d they live in this blessed free country. Bring back gratitude!
Multiculturalism can work very well to everyones benefit until Islam is introduced, then its a potential blood bath; historically and currently. Islam has been politicised ever since its inception.
Outstanding summary using world history rather than me having to endure the loudspeaker of the news media, Twitter, Flitter, et al reptilian brain trust.