Reply #26: Are you suggesting that white people can't be diverse? Is race all that matters? [View All]

[Bucky]

Even if the movement was 100% white, that wouldn't mean it's not diverse. There are so many more factors to what makes people who they are besides race. I rarely find race to be even an interesting point of looking at people; it doesn't say anything about the choices they make with their lives. It doesn't tell you anything about who they are. It's a convenient hook for hanging sweeping generalizations on, but I think it tends to blind people to other more useful information. Sadly, introducing race into a discussion, or at least into an American discussion, is usually a quick way to (a) stopping the usefulness of the dialogue and (b) getting someone to say something remarkably stupid.

I see it as this: The Tea Partiers are just plain wrong and almost to a person dramatically misinformed about the role government plays in making our lives better and our communities functional. But beyond that, there's not much you can generalize about them. Some of them are violent, but some of them are peaceful. Some of them are racist, but I'm betting most of the ones who voted for Obama are not. Some are dumb, but many are just intellectually "compartmentalized"--that moral condition that creates seeming anomalies like great moral leaders who are serial philanderers or Republicans who want to protect the environment. There's a variety of issues that will trigger their passionate embrace of this movement. There's certainly a good number for whom there is no issue--they're just angry and scared and want to vent it all at a convenient "enemy." There's going to be different income levels, education levels, professions, geographies, lifestyles, religions, levels of anger, feelings about immigration or abortion or taxes or the Patriot Act. They'll have a diversity of family situations among them. That's what you get when you gather up any group of people.

So you may want to laugh at the notion that a group that's only 12% minority is "diverse." You are free to look at that great sea of pink and quit being curious. I prefer to understand people as people, not as de facto representative of their race. I think my way makes it easier to find convincing counterarguments, or, failing that, wedge issues, when I find myself in a conversation with people I disagree with.

After all, who ever won an argument about race? Who have you ever convinced they need to rethink their position because only 12% of the people who agree with them aren't white? Conversations flow a lot better if you don't start by telling someone they're not able to think for themselves because of their race.