At some point, diversity becomes destructive. In the US, that is driven by population and geography. Population especially magnifies differences.
In 1969, when I graduated from high school, the US population was about 203 million. Now it is about 325 million. A 122 million increase. Wherever I look, there are three people standing where there used to be two.
Until 1965, US immigration law strongly favored Europeans. America was largely white. The 1965 law changed that. People from Asia, Africa, as well as Mexico and South America began to arrive. A trickle at first, it became a flood. This changed the very complexion of the country.
At the same time, the US economy fundamentally changed. From the 70s on, the heavy industries of the Rustbelt, which had fueled the post-WWII boom, vanished.
Population began to concentrate on the coasts. Now 64% of Americans live in coastal states and their large urban enclaves, most within 200 miles of the coast itself. Almost all of the new immigrants live in these areas.
So the “hollowing out” of America took place. Densely populated, immigrant laden, more affluent coastal concentration became predominent. The interior of the country got emptier, older, whiter and poorer.
Eventually, it got angrier too. It looked at the hordes on the coasts and no longer saw itself. Basically, it saw a different country. One it didn’t like much. That anger and alienation drove some portion of the last election result.
We like to think of ourselves as “one nation, indivisible.” That’s just not true anymore. We are deeply divided. There is great danger in this new, heightened sense of difference.
Consider the former Yugoslavia. Once Tito was gone, its diversity exploded into one of the most brutal European civil wars in history. In a very real sense, diversity killed Yugoslavia.
Diversity is not a virtue. In fact, it is a real liability, unless accompanied by tolerance. You don’t have to be a guru to see that tolerance in America, across the entire political, racial, religious, geographical spectrum, is in decline today.
All of what I have written is necessarily over-generalized and over-simplified. I know that. But it is also generally true.
What you sensed on your road trip was real. People in San Francisco, LA, Portland, Boston, NYC, DC, etc. simply do not live in the same “country” as people in Gary, Omaha, Cleveland, Morgantown, KC and other “heartland” cities, much less their rural areas. Diversity in this case has become “difference.”
No nation state can survive without a strong, shared sense of common identity. Ours is slipping away. What happens when it is gone, it’s hard to say. I’m willing to speculate that it won’t be pretty.
