Interesting Read...
Very interesting article, in the New Yorker of all places, on how mainline America has real trouble embracing diversity when the diversity is obnoxiously so, a la David Koresh.
"Mainstream American society finds it easiest to be tolerant when the outsider chooses to minimize the differences that separate him from the majority. The country club opens its doors to Jews. The university welcomes African-Americans. Heterosexuals extend the privilege of marriage to the gay community. Whenever these liberal feats are accomplished, we congratulate ourselves. But it is not exactly a major moral accomplishment for Waspy golfers to accept Jews who have decided that they, too, wish to play golf. It is a much harder form of tolerance to accept an outsider group that chooses to maximize its differences from the broader culture. And the lesson of Clive Doyle’s memoir — and the battle of Mount Carmel — is that Americans aren’t very good at respecting the freedom of others to be so obnoxiously different." (emphasis mine.)
It is worth a read.
"Mainstream American society finds it easiest to be tolerant when the outsider chooses to minimize the differences that separate him from the majority. The country club opens its doors to Jews. The university welcomes African-Americans. Heterosexuals extend the privilege of marriage to the gay community. Whenever these liberal feats are accomplished, we congratulate ourselves. But it is not exactly a major moral accomplishment for Waspy golfers to accept Jews who have decided that they, too, wish to play golf. It is a much harder form of tolerance to accept an outsider group that chooses to maximize its differences from the broader culture. And the lesson of Clive Doyle’s memoir — and the battle of Mount Carmel — is that Americans aren’t very good at respecting the freedom of others to be so obnoxiously different." (emphasis mine.)
It is worth a read.
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