Diversity, if we take that to mean the richness of experience and ways of life, requires people to stick with their own to some extent and exclude others from some things.
I was born and bred in majority white towns, a proud member of Generation X who grew up in the 1980s. Throughout my grade school and high school career, there were only a handful of students who were of black, Latino, and Asian descent. My world was admittedly so limited, that when a friend of mine informed me that she was Pakistani instead of Indian, I wasn’t sure what the difference was as late as my junior year in high school. Of course, I knew they were two different countries on the other side of the world from geography class, but this was book knowledge rather than the real thing, and besides, both were somehow far, far away, and therefore not likely to impact my life in any meaningful way. Given that I went to New York University, one of the most liberal schools in America at the time, located in a true international city, one might think this dynamic changed when I began my college career, but far from it. There might have been a few more Asians studying business or at the college of liberal arts, but the vast majority of my fellow film school students were as white as I was, from either middle class or upper class backgrounds. To be sure, I was exposed to broader points of view because politics was discussed more frequently as we all became more aware of the country and world we inhabited, but the first time I really encountered true cultural and ethnic diversity was in the car business of all places. At the time, the car business in New Jersey was one of the few actual melting pots, boasting salespeople – who granted, were predominantly men – from almost every conceivable background, all united in our desire to fleece unsuspecting customers. There, I was exposed to Middle Easterners, Russians and other Eastern Europeans, Hispanics, black and brown people from America and beyond, Philippinos, Indians, and more for the first time.
Unfortunately, the business wasn’t exactly dominated by upstanding members of society, exemplars of their culture and way of life. Many or even most tended to be lost souls of some kind, either those like my father who had another career and blew it, or those who had no other options in the first place. Some were actual criminals who had served significant jail time. Cultural awareness, in general, wasn’t particularly high on either their agenda or the American agenda in the mid-to-late 1990s. I learned a few things here and there, but mostly how to get along with people who didn’t look like me and that whether you were good or bad at your job, trustworthy or untrustworthy, a decent person or the scum of the Earth, had little to do with your cultural heritage or ethnicity. As impossible as it might be to believe in our increasingly woke era, that’s what people did once upon a time. We did not lament our various privileges and oppressions. I was not a better salesperson because I was white or middle class. I had my own strengths and weaknesses, as did everyone else. We had a job to do and we found a way to do it in a business where sales and profit mattered more than anything else. There was no ethnicity on the leader board or in your commission-based paycheck, and it didn’t matter what color my boss was as long as he helped me close deals.
It wasn’t until I began working in technology in my mid-20s that I found myself increasingly the minority on teams that were rapidly becoming more and more Asian, Indian to be specific. Suddenly, I found myself adrift in a cultural ocean far bigger than the (relatively) small world I grew up in. Fortunately, we had some common ground beyond our chosen professions. My colleagues from halfway around the world shared a general entrepreneurial spirit, a work ethic and a desire to serve our customers, and a language we could converse in – mine not theirs, but even in India there’s a good chance two people do not share the same common tongue outside of English. At least those that came to the United States were also keenly interested in participating in the American experience, adopting our major holidays and pastimes, eager to try everything and delighting in how they could assimilate. This to me, at a young, inexperienced age seemed the natural order of things. After all, they came here, we welcomed them, they should love it, and try to fit in as best they could. There were obviously huge differences beyond names I could barely pronounce. Holidays and traditions I didn’t understand, up to and including arranged marriages that occur to this day. A female colleague a few years older than me once mentioned that she was lucky to meet her husband in person before they were married. They were part of extended families and a global network that went far beyond my own. Parents in India, brothers in Australia, and more, it seemed all of them had traveled the world whereas I lived less than 50 miles from where I was born and had seen only resorts in Mexico at the time. An old boss told me that he and his brother sent 10% of their income back to their parents in India and asked if we did the same with ours in the US. He said that was only fair given how much his mother and father invested while they were growing up and now it was time to pay it back. I replied, no. In America, funding in families only goes one way and it’s not from the children to the parents. There were foods I’d only heard of in passing, much less ordered and eaten. A style of dress that seemed strange, if not alien at times. Mannerisms and figures of speech I wasn’t familiar with at all, and so much more. I observed this in passing for a time, picking up a few things without even realizing it, but then something strange, at least to me, happened: I was learning as much from them as they were from me. Granted, the knowledge I was imparting might have been more useful in their day to day lives as immigrants, but knowledge is knowledge all the same. I began acknowledging their holidays, even celebrating them at times. I started to get an understanding of their system of government and the collection of states that comprise India as a whole. I even donned semi-Indian dress for a birthday party earlier this year. Today, I am the only white person in a company of Asians, and there is no doubt the experience working side by side, celebrating success and failure, and as time went on, family milestones, has enriched me and made me a better person. I’ve even been lucky enough to travel to India twice and observe this tremendous, vibrant country with my own eyes, so much like us and yet so different.
To be sure, I certainly didn’t expect any of this in my 20s, but if this is diversity in action, I am all for it now. At the same time, there are obvious limits both in my own experience or more generally speaking. As America has become a more diverse country and many have had experiences similar to my own, some things remain constant. Last year, as I was heading for India, my Uber driver was Indian himself, though he had been in the United States since he was a child. He thought of himself as half-Indian and half-American. His parents, however, still thought of him as Indian, and as such, he would have an Indian bride. They were, in fact, arranging one for him as we spoke. He was given the opportunity to video chat with her, but not much else. She might come to America and they might raise their children here, but the match would be between two Indians – and he was prepared to accept it, whether he liked it or not. He might gripe a little to me as we drove to the airport, but to his parents, he would do what they said in a way foreign to most who grow up in the United States. While this might seem strange in an interracial democracy where mixed race couples are (thankfully) no longer frowned up, is it really? Why should we be surprised that when it comes to major choices in life, many people choose to keep to their own? Aside from being of Indian descent, there are shared connections between friends and family, a shared history, culture, language, and values that – for many people at least – are essential in a lifelong partner. If a white person were to insist upon the same, some may even brand them racist, but in reality it should not be surprising at all that people choose partners that look like them and are from the same general place with the same general attitude. Even in my own home town, I had a close high school friend of American and Israeli Jewish descent who fell in love with a Christian in college. He wanted to marry her and did – after she converted to Judaism as his mother simply couldn’t abide her son married to a gentile. Some may choose differently, and they should be respected for those choices, but we should not be surprised that cultural diversity doesn’t automatically translate to marriage diversity. Life can be hard enough. Living it with a mate from a completely different background can, in some cases, make it much harder. There is comfort and peace, to many, in similarity, and there’s nothing wrong with that provided we respect and welcome others. This seems to be reflected in the interracial marriage rate, which has risen steadily over the past few decades, but remains at approximately 20%, and when interracial couples were once outlawed in some states, only to be celebrated by most today.
Likewise, over the course of my career, the technology industry in general has become more and more dominated by people of Indian and other Asian descent. When I first started working with colleagues in India, the idea that we would produce websites and other technology projects for hospitals in the United States in Pune close to 10,000 miles away was so strange, even my Indian boss, also from Pune, felt we needed to hide it from customers. We preferred not to lie, of course, instead we didn’t mention where they sat and assigned a “proper” American as the customer interface, but over the next two decades, working with Indian people on technology projects has become the norm. Many are new immigrants, some have been raised here, but regardless, if you have a call with someone in the Information Technology sector, there is a much higher chance of them being Indian than the average population would suggest. Rarely, does one consider why that would be the case. Why do so many Indians choose technology in particular or STEM fields in general, even those that were born here and are native speakers? I cannot answer this question, nor do I think the answer really matters except because the world is what it is in some cases. This too might change somewhat over time, especially in the second generation, but once again, the real question is, why is this surprising at all? As Bruce Springsteen sang over 40 years ago in “The River,” “I come from down in the valley, where mister when you’re young, they bring you up to do what you’re daddy done.” Much has changed in four decades, but many people of similar backgrounds congregate in the same fields – except by choice, rather than necessity. It might seem surprising, but once again it really shouldn’t be when people raised in similar households, from similar backgrounds, in similar cultures gravitate to the same field and way of life, the same as they gravitate to the same partners. In today’s world, fields should welcome those from all backgrounds, but accept the underlying reality that family and culture matter in the decisions people make even if they cannot explain them themselves. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Asians are significantly over represented in management, professional, and related fields. Close to 60% of those of Asian descent enjoy the highest paying major occupational category compared to less than 45% of whites. Unless we are to believe there is some vast Asian conspiracy for supremacy, not all disparities stem from discrimination, nor are all disparities bad.
Some just are, and no matter how diverse we become – or even aspire to be – there will never be a point where everyone and everything is blended evenly together. In fact, one can ask, why would we want it to be that way in the first place? To a large extent, diversity requires a reservoir of culture and enclaves of similar people. In New Jersey, the first wave of Indian immigrants settled in Edison, a town which even in the 1990s was colloquially referred to as Little India. Since then, Indians have dispersed throughout the state and beyond, but many still choose to congregate at primarily Indian temples, churches, social groups, and more because if they didn’t do so, their heritage would be lost in a couple of generations. Preserving these traditions by who they choose to socialize with and who they choose to marry – even if, at times, they exclude white people like myself – is preserving their way of life and the diversity of America. If they all decided to break these cultural bonds, socialize only with white people in their new neighborhoods, and marry outside their heritage in mass, all of it would be gone and America would be less diverse, not more. Counter intuitively, diversity, if we take that to mean the richness of experience and ways of life, requires people to stick with their own to some extent and exclude others from some things. This doesn’t mean that anyone is better or worse than anyone else, or that this exclusion should be allowed by law, merely that maintaining traditions requires the practicing of those traditions and traditions cannot be practice without a critical mass of people doing the practicing. As much as I have learned to love Indian culture and have learned from it, me and my family – much less my extended social circle from high school – aren’t going to start celebrating Diwali, Holi, or Pongal, replacing our own Christian-inspired and American traditions, nor should we. Despite what some might insist, I have just as much right to my heritage as my Indian colleagues and every other immigrant group – and therein lies the tragedy of diversity today. In principle, diversity enriches experience, broadening your world, abandoning some of your biases to appreciate the similarities and differences in others, but in practice diversity, at least in recent years, has translated into some cultures being more equal than others. An Indian can proudly declare their heritage – as they should – but somehow, when a white person does it, it becomes white nationalism or even white supremacy. It’s not. It’s human nature. We may live in a more diverse, smaller world, and that’s a good thing, as is slowly but surely erasing the biases of the past, but diversity doesn’t mean equivalence or sameness. It doesn’t mean people cannot congregate – by choice – with those that look and think and were raised by them. It means that we should all learn from and respect one another, not that we should all be interchangeable.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 