Peter M. Rojcewicz, PhD December 5, 2014
He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that… Not the violent conflict between parts of the truth, but the quiet suppression of half of it … is the formidable evil: there is always hope when people are forced to listen to both sides; it is when they attend only to one that errors harden into prejudice. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
Multiple perspectives inform broad understanding. Possessing a repertoire of true but partial worldviews is an essential part of social literacy for diverse communities. When human action is viewed through the lens of perspective taking, caring, understanding, and inclusion, we may achieve a picture of humanity transcending bigotry, sexual minority harassment, neglect of people with disabilities, nationalism, economic chauvinism, and misanthropy. Diversity is an educational issue and social justice issue, a key to learning about our full humanity in community.
Race, class, sexuality, and gender are unstable categories whose nature and influence are not fixed. Holding global perspectives can make clear that we possess fluid, malleable identities and possess simultaneous group memberships that can serve as starting points for understanding others. Geneticists who gather data about genetic variations and diversity insist that there is greater difference within races than between races.
An intimacy of self and other is inherent in the African word Ubuntu, translated as, “I am because we are.” Similarly the Japanese word Ningen means “between or among people” and points also to our inter-relational nature as beings who do not fully realize ourselves alienated from others. Thich Nhat Hahn argues that intersubjectivity emerges when self-regarding impulses are modified by knowledge that we are simultaneously intrapersonal and interpersonal. But while our human condition is “diverse,” it hardly guarantees racial harmony.
Dissent is kin to diversity, and so a diverse community is not conflict free; it is a place where conflicting perspectives offer opportunities to learn and change. “No” may be the start of a conversation about what constitutes someone’s commitment. People can let go of doubts that lead to violent resistance only if they can name and express them. Voicing dissent may lead to alternatives as to how we see, structure, and value things. Affirming “No” may start a conversation about what constitutes commitment, one’s constructive first step toward finding a positive role within a troubled context.
A healthy diversity-activated community provides historically slighted groups meaningful assurance that “community” is a living and authentic value with a plan of implementation of inclusion and not code for paternalism, colonialism, or chauvinism.
A community as a living system needs limiters and inhibitors of dissent and difference to grow and sustain itself as an interdependent entity. There can be no lasting transformation without inclusiveness, nor holistic learning without diversity.
A living system that has but one party empowered in ways that others cannot bring new and different information forward becomes pathological. Homogeneity means the part subverts difference and traumatizes the whole.
John Stuart Mill argued that any position, even if correct, is a “dead dogma” until one has to defend it against someone who believes the opposite just as fervently. Likewise, the Colville tribal people from Okanagan value a perspective referred to as En’owkin, understood as “Give me the viewpoint opposite of mine to increase my wisdom.”
We are in deep need of communities of vision beyond separate enclaves of unchallenged perspectives. For as Cass R. Sunstein, Law Professor, University of Chicago wrote, “There is the general risk that those who flock together…will end up both confident and wrong, simply because they have not been sufficiently exposed to counterarguments. They may even think of their fellow citizens as opponents or adversaries in some kind of ‘war’.”