Take Down the Rebel Flag

… by Buffalo Nickel:

Catchy.

Diversity: What a Confederate Heritage Apologist Believes (Part Two)

Here’s how a Confederate heritage apologist blogger (seen here) answered the second of the questions she posed of a fellow Long Islander:

And do you consider it superior, morally or otherwise, to prefer dissimilarity over similarity? That a group of people who are diverse is better — in some ways, in all ways? — than a group of people who are alike? I’m sure you’ve heard the meme, “Diversity is our strength.” Would you say that diversity is always strength, and homogeneity is always a liability?

On an individual basis, I don’t think it is morally superior to prefer either similarity or dissimilarity, they are simply personal preferences. IOW, an east- or west- coaster, or upper midwesterner, who prefers living in areas with large foreign or ethnic subcultures, enjoys a variety of ethnic cuisine, a population that speaks different languages, enjoys different music and entertainment, and accepts varied religious expression, is no better than a Southerner who prefers to live in the South, enjoys his Southern friends and neighbors, loves Southern food, speaks Southern language (yes, we have our own English down here), enjoys Southern music and entertainment, and reveres Southern religious expression, which is overwhelmingly Christian and largely protestant. 

Can any cheerleader for diversity explain to me why a enjoyment of Turkish lamb by a New Yorker is superior, for some reason, to a Southerner’s enjoyment of barbecued pork and ham sammiches?

I don’t believe America is strong because we have worked at ways to incorporate folks from very different backgrounds. In fact, large immigrant groups from other cultures are increasingly not “incorporated” into America. They are in fact encouraged to retain their cultural identities and reject American identity, to scorn their host culture as oppressive, and to try to supplant it with their own imported culture. This diversity is the second greatest cause of the weakening of America; the greatest is the internal moral rot, which is also largely the handiwork of the left and is accomplished mostly by the popular culture, centered around turning children against church and other religious traditions of previous generations.

Once more, we see fear and loathing creeping throughout these questions, as well as a propensity to erect more strawmen.

First, of course, the questioner botches the term “Southerner.” Let’s be honest: she means white Southerners of northwest European descent. Second, note that diversity has shifted from race to region, and assumes that “Southerner,” whatever that is, is an ethnicity. So much for intellectual rigor and consistency.

No one has argued that a person who accepts diversity is “better” than a person who rejects it in their everyday life. How one decides to live their life is up to them. As someone who likes some Turkish food as well as BBQ, I find the culinary debate a bit bizarre (and I don’t think dining choices are a meaningful marker of diversity, although they say something about one’s willingness to try something different). I happen to think that you shut out a lot of humanity from your life if you restrict yourself to circulating around people just like yourself, and I find that diversity enriches my personal experiences. However, I don’t ponder much about superior or inferior cultures; I leave that to Nazis and white supremacists like Flagger favorite Matthew Heimbach. Our questioner seems rather obsessed by such issues.

I’m not sure what makes our questioner an expert on children. I understand that she’s unable to bear children, but she’s not unable to adopt them. One would be interested in learning more about her efforts to protect white children from the world she fears. My own experience is that children don’t start out drawing many lines, and the lines they do draw are rarely racial. They learn to do that from adults.

In short, the questioner’s questions have become ridiculous. They erect strawmen (who argued for the inherent superiority of one form of cuisine over another?). They equate the acceptance of equality and diversity with an effort to destroy white culture, when it might be more accurate to point out that accepting diversity questions white privilege and rejects white supremacy. Finally, as I’ve said before, equating diversity with race seems a rather limited definition, and it’s one the questioner can’t apply consistently, as she veers into region and nationality that betrays a fundamental ignorance about the world around her. Not all southerners are alike … and neither are all folks in Turkey, as anyone who knows something about Turkey can testify (and this includes regional cuisine).

What do you think?