The Rise of Dishonest Diversity
A white man walks into a bar. Perhaps he's wearing a "Make America great again" cap or a Red Sox T-shirt or a crucifix. Maybe he has a tattoo sleeve or a nose ring or a yarmulke. Whatever the signifiers, you consciously, or subconsciously, have decided he is one of Us or one of Them.
According to researchers humans are hard-wired for tribalism. Labeling is biological. Minorities have put up with it since America's founding, of course, but, as Irshad Manji argues in her new book, Don't Label Me (St. Martin's), the "loathed white guy" isn't the only one stuffing others into boxes now. Everyone is at it, even those who, like Manji, champion diversity. "Well before Trump," says the author, "so-called progressives were labeling swaths of Americans as racists and rednecks." A lot of those people, she adds, "support Trump—as payback."
Manji is well-situated to argue for what she calls honest diversity. An Oprah award winner and founder of the Moral Courage Project, she has struggled with tagging all her life: a refugee from Africa; a Muslim who happens to be gay; an advocate for liberal Islam and a vocal critic of mainstream interpretations (as in her best-selling book ). But three decades of debating people ensconced in rigid identity; of, "I slumped into pessimism."
