Reading this article by David Frum (yes, THAT David Frum) which posited that diversity and equality haven’t gone together as equal goals for the political left until very recently. He argues that xenophobes have historically championed equality as a means of drawing citizens together to the exclusion of foreigners and foreign contributions, while cosmopolitan advocates of diversity and immigration have traditionally looked down upon equality.
This reminds me of how White suffragettes at the turn of the century found the means to advocate for women’s suffrage by way of subscribing to fears of domination by Black voters.
This reminds me of how so much digital ink was spilled in arguing that the White working class needs to be won back through social policies which center citizens over (undocumented) immigrants, rural dwellers over urbanites, “Middle America” over the overeducated “bicoastal elite”.
It gives us a dichotomy: either equality (of citizens) or diversity (of resident labor), one of which we can esteem over the other.
But I think separating the two is unwise. The men who separated the two lived in a time when colonialism, racism and imperialism were rampant. They lived in a time when people had much less connection and access to each other.
While we live in a world where the United Nations, the Internet, automobiles and jet planes exist, along with many more nation-states diplomatically recognizing each other in areas once under colonial or imperial rule, we’re still not much more tied to each other or aware of what bridges us beyond these borders. As our species’ population and diversity has grown, our equality has no kept apace. Our lack of equality has resulted in a resurgent xenophobia seeking to reclaim the equality of a bygone era against the diversity of the present.
An equality which is compatible with the diversity of the present, or even with our awareness of diversity in the world around our countries, is struggling to be birthed. We still fear foreign or immigrant competition for jobs, factories, trade, unemployment benefits, taxpayer-funded resources and votes.
Labor unions, shying away from organizing internationally in developing countries, exemplify an anti-diverse equality, while multinational corporations, shying away from paying living wages and corporate taxes in favor of cheaper labor in developing countries, exemplify an unequal diversity.
We can, like the short story by Larry Niven, invent displacement booths which allow for instantaneous teleportation across the world for the masses, exposing people even more to the affairs of other countries than we are exposed right now, but what about an international universal basic income to allow refugees from impoverished, war-torn countries to escape more easily (through these booths) to more well-off countries and afford standard amenities to help themselves and others bring peace and prosperity to their native and adoptive countries?
Technological bridges will continue to further our awareness of diversity, but socio-economic equality must also follow along those bridges.
We need diversity and equality to keep apace together, and we can dare to make equality as real and available as the diversity we see in the world right now. It takes a reassessment of how we view ourselves in relation to this planet.
This is why I don’t think xenophobia, a sibling of racism, works as an equalizer of “citizens”. Xenophobia is easy and regressive. The equality of the 21st century is difficult but liberating.
