{"id":21003,"date":"2015-03-20T05:45:05","date_gmt":"2015-03-20T09:45:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=21003"},"modified":"2015-03-19T20:11:25","modified_gmt":"2015-03-20T00:11:25","slug":"diversity-and-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2015\/03\/diversity-and-empire\/","title":{"rendered":"Diversity and Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Which is better?\u00a0 A society characterized by cultural diversity?\u00a0 Or a society in which its many different kinds of people are assimilated into a single nation characterized by cultural unity?\u00a0 Today, the former view dominates, but the goal through most of history throughout the world has been the latter.\u00a0 More to the point, cultural diversity has always been the characteristic of an empire.\u00a0 Republics have always been built around national unity.\u00a0 The Claremont Review of Books <\/em>discusses a new book on diversity, William H. Frey\u2019s\u00a0 Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics are Remaking America<\/a>\"\", delving into these topics and other provocative questions:\u00a0 such as, how will affirmative action laws work when white people become the minority?<\/p>\n

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From Christopher Caldwell, The Browning of America, the Claremont Review of Books:<\/a><\/p>\n

Christopher Caldwell<\/div>\n

\u201cWe believe our diversity, our differences, when joined together by a common set of ideals, makes us stronger, makes us more creative, makes us different,\u201d Barack Obama pronounced at a citizenship ceremony last Fourth of July. Until half a century ago most serious historians would have called such an opinion ignorant or na\u00efve. Ethnic diversity implies cultural diversity\u2014if it did not, ethnic diversity would soon disappear. Cultural diversity means division, division means weakness, and weakness means, eventually, unfreedom. Such, at least, is the traditional view, and history appears to vindicate it. \u201cDiversity\u201d has been an attribute of subject populations: medieval elites communicated in Latin, laborers in various vernaculars. Diversity has been the form of belonging that typifies empires, just as nationality has been the form that typifies republics. The British Empire, the Roman Empire, and the Habsburg Empire\u2014these were diverse. England, Italy, and Austria, until recently, were not. The motto E pluribus unum<\/em> is a sign that the founders saw diversity as a challenge to be mastered, not a resource to be tapped.<\/p>\n

[Keep reading. . .]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n