Diversity issues

With the recent suggestion that immigrants should agree to ‘‘New Zealand’’ Values and the negative comments regarding this along with regular calls that ‘‘we should value diversity’’, I thought I would do a bit of investigating. I decided to look at the state of the various countries around the world to see what those with most diversity had in common, and what those with less diversity had in common.

The best guide to diversity that I could find was that the more languages used for day-to-day communication then the more diverse.

Language is tied intimately with culture so the number of languages used is a good guide to diversity.

Those countries that use multiple languages are: most of sub-Saharan Africa, Much of the Middle East right across to Bangladesh and onto to Myanmar, Indonesia, Sarawak, Borneo, East Timor and parts of the Philippines.

Next comes Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador,Guyana, Mexico and (unexpectedly) – Canada.

Most of Europe has low diversity by the language measure (Yes they know several languages – but use their own language for communication) and Scandinavia is very much a one language part of the world.

In general what can one conclude from all of this. Well if one is looking for country that has high levels of crime, corruption and violence, that has a financially poor people, that is always calling for aid – then a country with more diversity is the one you want.

Tribalism and religious intolerance are also very high.

On the other hand if you want a relatively safe community that is comparatively wealthy, has a good health system, has low corruption and is run by a democratic government then one language countries should be considered first.

To all those people who cite Scandinavia as a place to emulate – maybe think again if you also think diversity is desirable.

And it will be interesting to see how Germany and other ’open’ countries of Europe find themselves in another 20 or 30 years.

Barry Burke, Hamilton