After a recent orgy of old movies, it suddenly dawned on me that upon our innocent little hearts and minds, once again, a linguistic hoax is being perpetrated.
What’s the word this time? Diversity.
Diversity this. Diversity that. Pushing it. Legislating it. Lording over we poor fools who don’t use the word in every other sentence as if we are the moral equivalent of one-celled organisms who haven’t quite made it yet out of the evolutionary swamp.
What the High Priests of diversity are not telling us, though, is: Diversity as opposed to ... what?
First, let’s look at the word itself. According to my Webster’s New International Dictionary, diversity means: “to give variety to.” Some synonyms are: Mixture. Assortment. Variety. Multiplicity.
Which begs the question—since when hasn’t the United States of Assimilation, with our colorful cacophony of national, racial, religious, and ethnic (whatever that means) backgrounds not exemplified “diversity?” In fact, until its recent usurpation by this now-omnipresent word, we, as a country, used to celebrate the magnificent mishmash of our ancestries by referring to ourselves, much more poetically, as a “melting pot.”
Nice thought, melting pot. Put things in and they all nicely blend together. A little of this. A little of that. Lump one takes on the flavoring of lump two. Lump three take on some of lump four’s coloring. Lumps five and six get married, which horrifies lumps one and two, who promptly threaten to disinherit them. Then, lumps seven and eight – the grandchildren – are born. Who could despise their own grandchildren? Sweet little lumps who, in this great melting pot of ours, have acquired the flavorings and colorings of all previous and aforementioned lumps.
Ah ... America! Or ... oh oh. America?
Why is our lovely melting pot no longer good enough? Why are we being made to think that before the word “diversity” was introduced, we, as a nation, didn’t have any? Why are we being made to devalue the glorious cultural hodgepodge of previous generations who fled to our country in search of life, freedom, and opportunity? People who contributed everything to our culture, our national identity, our strength, and our exuberance.
