From Tibet to Chicago

With his usual wit and irreverence, John Derbyshire brilliantly disembowels the bankrupt concept of "strength through diversity" by comparing two very different cultures. I have briefly excerpted the article below, but do yourself a favor and read the whole thing.

The Tibetans at least have a clear goal, which I am sure they will attain one day: the repossession of their ancestral homeland. For black Americans there is no such hope. No hope, either, for us nonblack Americans, that the hatred felt by the likes of Jeremiah Wright and his congregants towards us and towards the country we love — by most of them only some of the time, but by some of them most of the time — can ever be extinguished. It cannot even be completely contained, only part-contained. There will always be those occasional explosions. Our nation was born with this. It is our birthright. We have no choice but to struggle on as best we can under this great burden of "diversity" and mutual dislike.

We should, at least, though, in the interests of clear thinking and intellectual integrity, acknowledge this burden as a burden, and stop the absurd and dishonest pretense that this "diversity" our nation was born with is a blessing. It is no blessing. How on earth is it a blessing? It is a congenital and incurable defect, which can be arrested and contained, but never healed.

Say what you like about Jeremiah Wright's congregation, for a few hours on a Sunday they are not complicit in the lies. For those few hours they discard the infantile elite-fostered illusions about "celebrating diversity." It is possible to respect them for that, at least, and I do. What they are celebrating in those video clips is their own ethnic pride, and their rage at those of a different ethny who, in their perception, dominate them.

For American patriots it is not pretty, but it is true and real none the less, in Chicago as it is in Lhasa. It is true and real because it belongs to us, to humanity, to our actual human nature, not to the vapid manufactured idiocies of political ideology, Chinese or American.

And that's the real weakness of political correctness: its inherent dishonesty. You can feel it every time you are forced to utter asinine phrases like "African-American" or "differently-abled." It's not just stupid; it's a lie. It's a lie we've been conditioned to tell. Unfortunately, some of the less bright among us actually believe it.