UNITED IN DIVERSITY?

UNITED IN DIVERSITY?

NICO VAN OUDENHOVEN

Only half of white Americans believe Black people face a lot of discrimination, while roughly as many say this is not the case. Majorities of Black, Hispanic, and mixed-race Americans say Black people encounter significant levels of discrimination today. Republicans largely reject the idea that Black Americans are discriminated. Most Democrats agree blacks experience a great deal of injustice and prejudice.

Daniel Cox, Rachel Lienesch, and Robert Jones

On June 9, 2017, the Trinidad and Tobago Parliament unanimously passed legislation to outlaw the practice of child marriage, changing the legal marriage age to 18 years. Harrypersad Maharaj, the leader of the Inter-Religious Organisation, opposed the change as “the state should not interfere because ‘age did not determine maturity.”’

In June 2017, Chris Christie, Republican governor of the State of New Jersey, vetoed a measure that would ban child marriages.

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In June 2017, Andrew Cuomo, Democratic governor of the State of New York, signed a measure that would ban child marriages.

“If reasonable and carried out with love, corporal punishment is an essential right given to parents by God”.

Russian Orthodox Church

“More than 14,000 women die every year as a result of domestic abuse” [in Russia].

Larisa Ponarina

In 2017, in the Netherlands, a 12-year-old boy who had undergone chemotherapy to treat a brain tumour, refused a second round, which would improve his survival chances from 50/50 to 65/35. The previous round made him almost blind and very sick. His mother supported him, his father was in favour of continued treatment. The case was brought to court, where the judge ruled in favour of the child, citing his ‘agency’.

“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

Dom Helder Camara

‘United in Diversity’: a potential good for everyone

Our starting point is that diversity, when well handled, positively impacts societies. We will not dwell on the importance of biodiversity here, important as it is. Reduced biodiversity sets in a long chain reaction with major impacts on the human condition.  Predictable effects bring about such events as involuntary migration, social instability, inter-state conflicts, food scarcity, spread of infectious diseases, bouts of extreme weather, illicit trade, and water crises. And these are only a few listed among the many other potential disasters.

“Just like the climate movement, the diversity movement has a severe impact on our growth and quality of life. And just like there is no reasonable alternative to green energy, there is no reasonable alternative to growth through diversity”.

Anna Mee Allerslev, Mayor of Copenhagen

The diversity advantage

Journalist and teacher of journalism Pascal Zachary could be credited for coining the concept of ‘diversity advantage’, which has gained a great deal of traction. He convincingly argues that nations come out on top – his emphasis is on economic performance – by embracing diversity. He says succinctly: “Diversity defines the health and wealth of nations in a new century.

Mighty is the mongrel…The hybrid is hip. In a world of deepening connections, individuals, corporations, and entire nations draw strength and personality from as near as the local neighbourhood and as far away as a distant continent. The impure, the mélange, the adulterated, the blemished, the rough, the blue-and-blue, the mix-and-match – these people are inheriting the earth. Mixing is the new norm”.

The ‘diversity advantage’ is indeed profitable on the work-floor, as successful companies such as IBM, Pfizer and Turner Broadcasting have discovered. To them, diversity is more than race, gender, ethnicity and sexual orientation; it is also about thoughts, skills and passions.

The ‘leadership and ethics’ specialist Katherine Phillips, in reviewing the literature on diversity, acknowledges that it may lead to “discomfort, rougher interactions, a lack of trust, greater perceived interpersonal conflict, lower communication, less cohesion, more concern about disrespect, and other problems” but also sees a much more beneficial upside.

It makes people not only smarter, but also enhances creativity, encourages the search for novel information, leading to better decision making and problem solving and improved financial performance. She provides conclusive evidence that the mere fact of being around people who are different ‘from us’ makes ‘us’ more creative, more diligent, and harder-working.

This is not only because people with different backgrounds bring new information. Simply interacting with individuals who are different forces group members to prepare better, to anticipate alternative viewpoints and to expect that reaching consensus will take effort.

Diversity, as reflected in children’s literature, enhances the young readers’ self-worth and, importantly, their sense of empathy, provided these books respect such essential criteria as: does the book ‘present a dynamic range of people and characters’, ‘are different voices part of the conversation or are racialised people the object of conversation’, ‘avoids having a voyeuristic gaze’?

Noteworthy is also that mixed juries, rather than all female or all white, make fewer errors in recalling relevant information and exhibit greater openness and diligence.

Industrialist cum philanthropist Loek Dijkman notes that in business the greater the pluriformity of a group, the higher the quality of its activities. Diversity counsellor Cathy Gallagher-Louisy gives evidence of the dramatic increases in income when companies diversify the composition of their executives, both in terms of gender and ethnicity.

Sociologists Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev support this view and contend that diverse staff, at all levels, is a precondition for commercial success. Economist Marcus Noland seems to confirm this; he and his coworkers looked at the functioning of 21,980 companies from 91 countries, especially with an eye on gender diversity. Their findings strongly suggest that the presence of women in corporate leadership positions improve performance.

They argue that this correlation could reflect either the payoff to non-discrimination or the fact that women increase a firm’s skill diversity.  Importantly for national policy: they further found that women’s presence in corporate leadership is positively correlated with a country’s features such as girls’ math scores, the absence of discriminatory attitudes toward female executives, and the availability of paternal leave.

HR specialists Tony Bingham and Marcia Conner foresee “a workplace [and implicitly a society] that uses the talents of everyone, connecting them in meaningful ways, regardless of differences in generation, gender and consumer outlook”. It involves acting together in defining problems and finding solutions, optimising skills, talents, building relationships and creating contexts in which social awareness, reflection and working together are at the centre.

A caveat is made, though, by Erin Meyer, an academic and consultant to international businesswomen and -men. Her take is that, indeed, diverse groups are more creative but need careful managing and people in mono-cultural settings work faster and more efficiently.  She gives an illustration how even relatively small cultural differences may lead to confusion.

Thus, when the British say: “That’s an original point of view”, they mean: “Your idea is stupid”; what the Dutch understand is: “They like my idea”.

Political scientist Scott Page, in his The Diversity Bonus and drawing on research in computer science, psychology and economics, among others, shows that cognitive diversity – the way information is perceived, analysed, structured, and processed – combined with differences in gender and ethnic background produces ‘bonuses’ in all major fields, not only in organisations and business enterprises.

The literary critic Parul Sehgal frames ‘diversity’, and especially the contribution made by immigrants, in less commercial terms. She quotes Salman Rushdie who embraces immigrants for they teach us to be human, as they lost everything that gave shape to their humanity – roots, culture, social knowledge.

The deeper value and benefits are indeed well formulated by UNESCO, the organisation that counts almost every nation among its members. Interchangeably using the labels ‘culture’ and ‘diversity’ and ‘cultural diversity’, it does recognise the economic benefits of diversity, but goes beyond these and adds that “[cultural] diversity is…a means of leading a more fulfilling intellectual, emotional, moral and spiritual life” …and “a driving force of development…of economic growth”. And also: “…diversity is thus an asset that is indispensable for poverty reduction and the achievement of sustainable development”.

The study of Muslim communities in Great Britain by political scientist Shamim Miah appears to support this positive vision on diversity but also offers pointers to optimising it.  His conclusions are that most Muslims seek to be integrated in the wider society and do not wish to remain insulated from mainstream activities.

Poverty, marginalization, and social inequality rather than self-segregation are the main forces that keep them on the sidelines. He further shows that faith-based schools actually help children to participate and relate to non-Muslim children and young people but can only do this from feeling secure with their own identities.

People belonging to minority, refugee and migrant groups are usually actively looking for ways to ‘have a say’ in their communities and to better understand, participate in and contribute to the larger societies.

 Internships in governmental agencies, such as the Muslim Youth Fellowship programme in Toronto, in which young people pair up with councillors during a couple of months, is an attractive and feasible example of what local authorities can do to accommodate these wishes.

Forced assimilation easily recalls the nightmare scenarios of the so-called residential schools in Australia and Canada, where aboriginal or First-Nation children were brutally removed from their families to be given ‘proper’ education with the aim to become like the dominant white community.

The same notion applies to the compulsory use of the dominant (second) language for children who come to school speaking their family tongue.  The current Chinese policy which forbids Uyghurs to use their language in all education institutions on pain of severe punishment is a case in point. There is now plenty of evidence that allowing children to use their home language is indeed far more beneficial for their overall development than immersing them in the official language.

A similar argument goes in favour of being part of communities with patterns of strong social cohesion.^[i] In this context, it is easily forgotten that, for example, in the Netherlands, faith-based schools, as well as tightly-held-together groups, neatly catering to the myriad of religious denominations, were the order of the day only a few decades or so ago, and in many locations still are. Then and as is the case now, nobody saw any harm in it.

Miah lists five conditions for effective social contact and to widen common interests this common territory: real acquaintance with each other, freedom from prejudice, regarding people as equals and entertaining a sense of interdependent relationships and equality. He is totally right. The issue, of course, is how to attain these.

The wish by minority groups to be fully part of the whole is also nicely illustrated by a recent event in Los Angeles. Here, more than 500 Muslim volunteers gathered on a hot day on Skid Row, best-known for its thousands of homeless people. This during Ramadan, thus without having taken in any food or liquid themselves, volunteers distributed clothes, hygiene essentials, food, water, and other necessities to the people who live their lives on the street. Backpacks and school supplies were also provided.

When local actions like these – of reaching out and meeting the needs of each other – become embedded in national policies, then the dangers of populism, which sets up people against people, could be mitigated.  Human rights lawyer Amanda Taub, writing about emerging populism in Europe and USA, shows how this may explain Canada’s fairly strong immunity to anti-democratic movements.

As main contributing ingredients she sees the official policy of including immigrants in all aspects of society, helping them at their arrival and, notably, the point system, which allows only qualified people to enter. Taking a broader global view, the Social Progress Index uses, as one of its main indicators of social progress, a nation’s capacity for inclusion of diverse people and groups.

Nico van Oudenhoven is the Senior Associate International Child Development Initiatives [ICDI] See: ICDI.nl; Leiden, South Holland, Netherlands

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