So apparently it's National Diversity week starting on Monday where people are supposed to appreciate different cultures, sexual orientations, race and so on. I was just wondering what your thoughts were on the event, and if this is done in other countries.
Well, I think it's kind of tokenizing and fake. Appreciating diversity is gag reflex triggering liberal gibberish. What we need is anti-oppression education year-round. Diversity just means that people are different. Not all differences are good. Some differences, like religious and political beliefs can be catastrophically bad and worth opposing. However, race, sex, culture, sexual orientation and gender identities aren't the source of differences that have moral value (they are characteristics that make people neither inherently better or worse). "Acceptance" and "toleration" are both buzzwords part of a poisonous mindset in my view, because that mindset asks people to like things they find objectionable. But what they find objectionable are immutable differences about people, and they are differences people have no moral grounds whatsoever for finding objectionable. Therefore, this mindset says "you can continue to be a terrible person without having to examine yourself at all, just as long as you don't vote for or advocate restricting the freedoms of people you hate." What we need to do is go farther than "appreciation," "acceptance," or "tolerance." What we need is for people to value, venerate, and love. We need a stronger, more morally demanding mindset that says "if I have bias, I need to realize that's a deep character flaw that I need to put in a good faith effort to correct. Eventually, I need to eradicate that bias." I don't really think that a diversity week really invites people to ask important questions about privilege, oppression, or liberation.
I accept and tolerate stupidity. But not too much. I guess I am intolerant :lol: So... as tokenizing and fake as it is, I am celebrating Diversity week by coming out to my parents. Happy thanksgiving, Mom and Dad, your boy's a Queer!! Can't wait But on a serious note, I agree (as usual) with Pret Allez. Well, mostly. I think diversity week is good, but it's the approach to it that is flawed. I think we should celebrate having so much diversity in our nation, because there are plenty of other countries that don't. Or if they do it isn't acknowledged. It makes people think about the issues facing other groups that they aren't members of. Celebrating a love of diversity is grand, celebrating tolerance is not. We aren't a group to be tolerated like we are some mutant stain on the population, unfathomably far from the ideal of "normal". Rather we are another shade of normal, someday sexuality will be regarded in such a way that there is no gay or straight, just who you love and who you don't. "Coming Out" will be considered an archaic term at best. So celebrate diversity week by counting yourself lucky to live in a place that is a melting pot of the entire globe, celebrating it by loving others and commiting random acts of kindness, but don't use it to preach tolerance. We are normal, we are human, and we love eachother. Period. Peace and Love, The Seeker
