Peter M. Rojcewicz, PhD

A vibrant nation needs communities possessing limiters and inhibitors of concepts, values, structures, and practices in order to sustain themselves as living interdependent entities. There can be neither lasting cultural transformation without inclusiveness nor whole-person development without difference.

Our socio-political views are, in the words of J.S. Mill, but ‘dead dogma’ even if they are true, until we defend them when challenged by someone holding the opposite position as fervently. We witness unhealthy social systems where a single group wields dominant, widespread influence that prevents consideration of divergent possibilities or information from different sources. In such systems, a fragmented part subverts significant difference and thereby traumatizes the community as a whole.

On the other hand, healthy, diverse communities provide historically slighted groups meaningful assurance that ‘community’ is an authentic value of collective membership and ownership with accessible plans for implementation of inclusion and redress of grievances and not code for racism, colonialism, chauvinism, or xenophobia.