Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

“Celebrate Diversity” is the clarion call of modern multiculturalism, the 21st century rendition of “Vive la différence!”

And I hate it.

As with all slogans, it’s a massive oversimplification of a complex topic, a concept made nearly meaningless by its distillation. And, as with many slogans, it concentrates on exactly the wrong aspect, completely mis-framing the argument.

Multiculturalism, in its nominative form, describes the intention to promote tolerance between cultures, ideologies, and races. The logic behind it is that you can increase a person’s tolerance for an alien culture by pointing out the fascinating, beautiful elements that are unique to that culture. Comprehension and understanding of our differences, it states, will wash us clean of the fear that comes from the unknown and immunize us from the prejudice built on myth and misconception. While this is laudable, and while it has a certain internal sense, it is an ineffectual argument.

Imagine you’re trying to convince an intolerant person that another person’s culture is just as valid, just as worthy of respect, as his. How is pointing out all the ways the other person’s lifestyle is different going to convince him? How is highlighting the ways in which both individuals are completely at odds conducive to improving tolerance and understanding? How effective is this at making the other person’s culture seem more familiar?

That’s right. It doesn’t do any of these things. Rather, it imposes tolerance without commonality. It assumes that, for example, once you understand the symbolism of the hijab, once you are informed about the doctrine of transubstantiation, once you are acquainted with the rabbinical interpretations regarding payot, you will magically become tolerant of these cultures in their entirety.

So, what’s a better way to battle intolerance and promote good relations in a multicultural society?

Celebrate our commonality.

People in a community are not bound by their differences; they are bound by the things they have in common. Even a community of misfits is bound by a shared sense of…misfiture. (Yes, I just made up that word, right here, as I was typing. Birth of a word, before your very eyes…but I digress.)

Instead of shining our spotlight on what separates us, let’s concentrate on the things we share. Gentile and Jew, Muslim and atheist, Democrat and Republican and Independent, liberal and conservative, gay and straight and in between, there is so much more we share than that which separates us.

We all eat. We all breathe. We all sleep and laugh and cry and grieve and cherish. We all love and want to be loved. We all strive for happiness and peace. We all want our children to be healthy, safe, to grow up and have families of their own. We all want our society to be stable, our nation’s economy to be sound, our planet’s environment to be free from poisons.

You do these things. I do these things. So does every Russian, every Somali, every Bangladeshi, Maori, Cheyenne, and Finn. Everyone does these things. Even where there’s disagreement, there’s agreement. Most of us believe in a god or gods, and though our descriptions of and the words we ascribe to them may differ, what they say is remarkably similar: Do good. Be well. Don’t hurt each other.

If you and I don’t acknowledge our common ground, all we see is how different we are. When all I see are the differences, I don’t see you. I see The Other. It’s easy to argue with The Other. It’s easy to discount The Other. The Other is alien, strange, incomprehensible, and wrong. It’s easy to hate The Other.

However, once I admit that you and I are actually very similar, once I understand that deep down we really want the same things, our differences no longer seem as large. If we can keep in mind our common goals, our differences become variant views of the same, remarkable world.

k