Values:

Is it racist to question diversity?

In “a country that holds the melting pot among its foundational myths,” who could have a problem with diversity? asked Gabrielle Bruney in Esquire .com. “Tucker Carlson, that’s who.” On his Fox News show, the anchor railed against the idea that diversity is good for America. “How precisely is diversity our strength?” Carlson asked. “Can you think, for example, of other institutions, such as, I don’t know, marriage or military units, in which the less people have in common, the more cohesive they are? Do you get along better with your neighbors or your co-workers if you can’t understand each other or share no common values?” Unbelievable. The immigrants and refugees demonized by the Right risk everything to come to America precisely because they share our values: freedom and opportunity for all. Carlson’s bigotry is the same as that of the Ku Klux Klan. He’s now “traded dog-whistle racism for bullhorn racism.”

Carlson isn’t being racist, said David French in NationalReview.com. He’s asking a legitimate question: “How does a nation of 325 million people hang together?” Conservatives are skeptical when they hear liberals talk about diversity because progressive institutions are remarkably uniform. Silicon Valley companies try to recruit a workforce that “looks like America,” yet Christian conservatives working in those companies are afraid to speak freely. Liberals talk about diversity to promote their tribe. But genuinely diverse communities need to have a common purpose to succeed. The U.S. military is a good example. It welcomes people from all walks of life but “everyone adopts the same Soldier’s Creed.” Do we still share a “unifying American idea”?

“Let’s pretend” Tucker Carlson really cares about the answers to his question, said Max Boot in The Washington Post. Really, of course, he doesn’t: There’s a reason white nationalists and neo-Nazis regularly praise Carlson’s assaults on multiculturalism. But if he did care, he’d see that immigration gives our country a “competitive advantage.” The U.S. is flourishing compared with homogenous nations like South Korea and Japan. Diversity makes us appreciate individual differences, said Noah Smith in Bloomberg.com, and Americans like that. Americans, on average, have been moving to more racially diverse neighborhoods since the 1990s; interracial marriages are now more than a sixth of new unions. Carlson’s audience may be skeptical of diversity, but “the country as a whole has embraced it.”