Diversity: Good for Us, Bad for You?

Liberals seem to have very different views of diversity in foreign and domestic policies. For our own population, diversity is wonderful, and should always be promoted. Schools, workplaces, neighborhoods, and all other facets of community life should be more diverse and integrated. However, when it comes to foreign policy, liberals often advocate countries practice no diversity, and instead separate themselves based on ethnic group.

Take Presidential candidate Joe Biden, currently a Senator from Delaware. Biden has been pushing to have Iraq partioned into three regions "divided on ethnic lines". That sounds amazingly non-diverse to me. Now, compare Biden's plan for Iraq with his June 28, 2007 Press Release, which states, "As I’ve always said, diversity in our public schools enriches our classrooms and makes America a better and stronger nation."

So I guess according to Biden, diversity in US classrooms makes the US a better and stronger nation, but in Iraq, diversity makes the country a worse and weaker nation?

It's not just Iraq that liberals seem to have this amazing double standard about diversity. Take Africa. A common reason cited for Africa's dismal economic performance is that the colonial powers -- mainly Britain and France -- drew the borders without any thought to the ethnic groups and where they lived. If countries had been separated along ethnic lines, that would have supposedly made the countries wealthier. It's strange that suggesting that Africans in Africa should be politically separated along ethnic lines is a perfectly socially acceptable position to advocate, but if you said that Alabamans should be separated along ethnic lines, with political boundaries separating them, you'd be shunned by nearly all elements of our society.

When someone advocates that we can do diversity and they can't, I wonder what their true feelings are. Why can the US do more diversity, while the Iraqis or Africnns cannot? Is it that we have a superior form of government that alows ethnic minorities a voice in the court system and political system? If so, they why not simply encourage these other countries to adopt our form of government? Or is it that there's something culturally about us that allows us to be more receptive to diversity than the peoples of Iraq or Africa? Somehow I doubt a liberal would ever make this claim overtly. So I'm left to ponder why diversity is a good thing for us, but not for them.