Diversity is Over Valued

So my skin is a different color than someone else’s, along with my hair and eyes. So I have less money than some and more money than others. None of those keeps me from finding where others and I intersect and start building community.

Have we focused on diversity to the detriment of community? Back in August 2007 I wrote about a diverse community being an oxymoron. The American tradition has been to celebrate the individual, how we are all different, diverse. If we keep looking at the differences how do we ever have time to find the connections, the touching points?

Geographic communities have lost their binding agents and we have moved away from supporting one another. Areas of synergy go undiscovered. It is through our building trust and finding that deep inside we are one that we are able to stand against our fears and move forward.

Moving from Diversity into Community

Recently there was discussion on the blog site Brewed Fresh Daily about diversity. It got me thinking about the phrase “a diverse community.” For me that is an oxymoron in that diversity addresses differences whereas community talks about a oneness.

Perhaps many who use the word diverse actually have something else in mind but aren’t saying it. If so, I believe it is better to say racially diverse, or ethnically diverse, or economically diverse, or whatever diverse. We also misuse community, assigning a much higher connotation on a group of people who live in geographic proximity to each other.

Whatever we are saying or whatever we mean, we all need to be moving into community where we learn share hopes, dreams, fears, expectations, and joys. We become community through open conversation, honest conversation, whether we agree or agree to disagree, we agree to continue moving forward in conversation.