Book Review/Heather Seggel

On Diversity

Several years ago I attended a night of stand-up comedy at a resort north of the Bay Area. One of the comics talked about living near the Castro district, San Francisco’s gay neighborhood that is also a tourist destination. He spun out a perfect riff about how it was the kind of place where you could eat a rainbow-striped cookie, wash it down with coffee in a rainbow-festooned mug, pull on a rainbow hoodie and jump in your car that sports a rainbow bumper sticker proclaiming “CELEBRATE DIVERSITY.” Point made, succinctly and beautifully.

I wish even a fraction of that light touch informed “On Diversity: The Eclipse of the Individual in a Global Era” (Seven Stories Press). Author Russell Jacoby argues that “diversity boosters” and liberals cherry-pick the kinds of diversity they support, ignoring the march of fascism and instead valiantly trying to save languages that have only three native speakers remaining. He sneers at academia and it’s highfalutin ways...in a book that reads like a dry, cranky thesis, from it’s lengthy introduction that plots out all the chapters that lie ahead to digressive discussions of playground design and the writings of John Stuart Mill.

Jacoby, who teaches history at UCLA and is credited with coining the term “public intellectual,” leans heavily on old stories to make points about the present day, a historian’s prerogative. Louis Napoleon, nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, came to power after the revolution of 1848. He was “a peripheral figure who had never held a political office, had a somewhat disreputable past, and made vague promises to everyone,” and quickly shot to power as a populist who then ended the republic with a coup d’etat. Every group of people seemed to feel Napoleon was one of them, an impression he successfully nurtured, though his actions did not support it. But once you’ve won the group, singular will doesn’t register. “Democracy rests on the resilience and autonomy of the individual. If the individual loses individuality, democracy becomes imperiled.”

These are serious arguments, to be sure. But Jacoby undermines his premise when he showers people with disdain using lazy generalizations. “The evidence for the weakening of diversity is everywhere. Today’s celebrants...serve English-spoken-only diversity as they wear Nike garb, check their Facebook pages, and text their friends. Dwindling biodiversity makes no impression.” Really? My own experience says otherwise, and leads me to wonder why such a grim forecast holds appeal for anyone.

Here’s the thing: For what it’s worth, Jacoby makes a case worth hearing. But his heavy-handed attacks on “boosters” and “celebrants” don’t come with clear and specific examples from the present day. And they’re not hard to find! This afternoon I listened to two podcasts. On one the author Susan Neiman discussed how we’re losing the battle against Trumpism by dismissing his followers as unintelligent; it may feel good, but it ignores people whose financial interests are served by Republican policies, and those are voters who may be swayed by a compelling moral argument. She dipped into history to parallel the rise of Hitler, and the many ways that public demonstration curtailed Nazi Party actions prior to the Holocaust, then looked at how Germany has worked to make learning from that dark time a priority, while here in the US we still have “monuments” in the South to men who fought against their own country.

Later the same day, I heard comedian Larry Wilmore deliver a short rant on “Democrats and Diversity,” in which he offered white liberals a facetious nine-month pass on racism; he was addressing the political infighting taking place during the primary, especially hand-wringing by whites over black support for Michael Bloomberg. His call was to set aside race and “focus on the race for the White House,” a line that got a generous round of applause.

If Jacoby is serious about what he says, we are in dire circumstances. Would it not be more constructive to call readers to a common cause? Instead, “On Diversity” seems to delight in painting everyone, liberal and conservative, as unequal to the moment. It feels like an argument for apathy, which I would argue is the greatest danger we can succumb to.

Heather Seggel is a writer living in Northern California. Email heatherlseggel@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2020

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