"Diversity is our Strength" is a motto popular today. It’s the default “good” position to have in the Western world—to embrace and welcome refugees and immigrants, to be open-minded and tolerant. It’s what’s on bumper stickers, stated by Progressive politicians, and is rampant in today’s advertising.
Of course, the truth is more nuanced.
Diversity can be straight up be bad.
Observe the various ethnicities in a city and how they concentrate in their neighborhood. To disperse and diversify would be like embers spread about the hearth. Unity is what allows the blaze of culture. Uniformity, then, is at least as necessary and good as (and is, in fact, the foundation for) diversity. Just don’t go driving around with a “Uniformity is Our Strength” bumper sticker.
The truth is, however, ethnic minorities the world over, for the good of their culture, live by this motto. Even from the population in America whose mouths most often state the preferred motto, does uniformity also provide at least some advantage. Look at neighborhoods and even whole states that are the “whitest” and observe alongside higher rankings in quality of life.
I know it’s apples and oranges to compare whites in America with any other racial/ethnic/religious group. Whites have created the default national culture, and they’ve done so by letting go of their specific ethnic one (Irish, Polish, etc.) Yet at least in cities in America, where white people are often a minority, those who practice the same religion and/or customs also find that uniformity is a strength. This is particularly true when they try to maintain a specific culture (Russians, Italians, Jews, etc.)
The truth is more complicated than “Diversity is Our Strength”. This was clear as day yesterday when teaching in Minneapolis. A Hmong-focused school in ethnically diverse north Minneapolis needed a gym teacher.
This area’s Hmong community created this K-8 charter school not many years ago. Naturally, it began with an almost exclusive Hmong student population, where they celebrated Hmong events and taught their language. They built a good school in an area lacking many other good options. So, despite the cultural focus, many non-Hmong families wanted to enroll their kids. After some years of this trend, the school is now about half Hmong, half non-Hmong according to two staff members who shared with me about their school.
This stat was evident in gym class. For each grade I taught, two classes arrived. One was the Hmong language immersion class. The other was in the standard English-only curriculum. The racial makeup was as you would expect. One class was all Hmong kids; one class a mixture of almost all non-Hmong. Despite being on their way to losing a majority Hmong base, this school has maintained its identity partially through the concentration of Hmong students. This isn’t to racially segregate the school. It’s a natural result of having a Hmong language focus. The school seemed to operate, then, with a blend of diversity and uniformity. I’d just never seen it under one roof like this before. In America where racial separation is a taboo, this was strange to see.
In this live social experiment measuring the strength of diversity, guess which classes in this school were “stronger” (or at least more unified and orderly)? Luckily, I taught gym, so orderliness wasn't so vital. But even for gym class, the non-Hmong classes were a handful.
Accentuating this social experiment was the fact that yesterday happened to be a special one at this school. It was their annual Hmong New Year celebration. The event filled the gymnasium with the entire student body and parents coming to watch their children perform. Dressed in traditional bright colored Hmong clothing, kids from kindergarten to middle school got up and sang and danced to Hmong songs.
Meanwhile, there was an obvious disinterest in the air filling that gym. Many of the non-Hmong students chatted about. This disinterest was loudest in the silent performance of a middle school class of mostly Somali, black, and other ethnicities. As their teacher tried to conduct their choral number, the students stood on the risers without opening their mouths. I kept waiting for the piano intro to be over and the singing to begin. The intro had ended long before I realized these kids were simply waiting out these three or four minutes of awkwardness.
I flashbacked to a couple of years earlier.
Back then I worked fulltime at another Hmong-focused charter school in the Twin Cities. Their Hmong New Year celebrations were an all-day extravaganza, where literally all the students and staff wore a Hmong outfit. I still have my Hmong vest and necklace from those days. This school’s daytime celebration was followed up with a nighttime event with an enormous, decorative Hmong-styled meal. Outside performers arrived to the school to complement the children on stage.
Over 90% of this school’s population were Hmong. And even the other 9% of students, made up of Karreni students, were able to perform traditional song and dances from their culture during this event. At yesterday’s school in north Minneapolis, with such a diverse population, there’s no way such cultural representation was possible for their event.
It’s an uncomfortable truth that the various cultures we enjoy are products of uniformity. We then ignore the truth that uniformity is needed to maintain these cultures. So out of fear of being seen as discriminating or intolerant, we’ll sacrifice culture—the very thing we were supposed to appreciate a variety of.
Diversity is our strength—only if balanced with adequate uniformity. I say this as someone who moved abroad a couple of times to immerse myself in other worlds. I loved experiencing my previous school’s Hmong New Year’s celebration. I love New York City because of the variety of people to encounter. Meanwhile, I know that if the Hmong school I worked at yesterday becomes a non-plurality of Hmong students, the beauty of that culture and identity in that school will be snuffed out. The embers will be too scattered to create a blaze.
I have nothing but appreciation and empathy for the position this school is in. They’re in the middle of storm of social issues besides culture such as the state of education, poverty, and broken homes. There are laws and ethics that complicate their place as a Hmong-focused school (and a quality one at that) in this part of the city. The irony is that their identity as a Hmong school is a key ingredient in the recipe that makes it attractive to non-Hmong families. Hopefully they can reach some balance to maintain the best of uniformity and diversity. After all, it was heart-warming to see a little black boy smiling in his Hmong clothes and dancing, experiencing something he’d never be able to do if not for the existence of this school and community.
Whatever the future of this school, these paradoxes within the continuum of uniformity and diversity are a part of life in a diverse planet—particularly in a diverse country like the U.S. We’re better served by dropping the absolutes of bumper stickers and appreciating the nuance needed to secure that which we claim is our strength.
Happy Hmong New Year (Nyob Zoo Xyoo Tshiab!)
Happy Thanksgiving