Why Diversity is Not Enough
America's healing will require more than telling everyone to get along.
"Look at those puddles man. Even their puddles are better than ours!"
The room broke out in laughter. It was 1999, and I was 13 years old. My friends and I, five or six Brazilian teenage boys, were looking at a framed picture of my family standing in the streets of New York City. We had visited New York on a family trip to the US a year earlier and were about to permanently move to the Detroit area in just a few months. The group pack leader was holding the frame, commenting on how lucky we were.
"Look at it man!" he continued. "The pot hole is perfectly round."
We laughed again, few of us hearing the irony in his mature-beyond-his-years tone, me included. Moving to the United States was a genuine dream that our family cultivated for years and the trip to NYC reinforced our desire. In some ways, The Big Apple epitomizes the picture of the US that the world often sees and craves. Like most Brazilians, I grew up spoon-fed and bombarded by a long list of movies in New York, songs about New York, famous figures from New York, and a whimsical wish to visit New York. When the wish came true, New York proved to make a spotless first impression.
I'll never forget walking through the city, staring up at the sleek skyscrapers, dazzled by the yellow taxis that danced through the roads, carried by the rich sounds of Music Row and the smells of the world's cuisines in every corner. The city I saw on TV my whole life was real and it was as diverse and glamorous as it sold itself to be. Or at least it seemed so to my young Brazilian eyes. Had New York simply put a spell on me? It wasn't any bigger than my Metro São Paulo home, the taxis were obnoxious, and Music Row's stores were dusty and dark. To top it off, regardless of the global offering of restaurants, we ate at Sbarro's and couldn’t finish our meals because we thought the sauce was too spicy. But the puddles were perfect! America was perfect... right?
The facade I really wanted to believe in was that the US, and New York City itself, was the cool diverse utopia I grew up admiring. I sincerely believed that this was a land where people from every corner of the world were warmly welcomed into so they could join the symphony of Kumbaya and soda commercial sing-alongs. Twenty years later, I now find myself as an American citizen who sincerely loves his country, his beloved state of Michigan, and all of its people. I could go on and on about all that I’m grateful for in this grand nation of ours. America is my home and I’m glad it is. But boy, was I wrong about the whole melting pot paradise thing.
I've been thinking a lot about New York lately, especially Central Park. Spring 2020 will surely go down as a strikingly defining moment in our country's history, and perhaps the world. From the continued COVID-19 pandemic, to the video release of Ahmaud Arbery's murder, to George Floyd's and Breonna Taylor's deaths and investigations, and the countless of captivating and often devastating moments from the demonstrations that followed, America was forced to take a deep look into the mirror and recognize the frail state of injustice, division, and suffering in many of our communities. In the midst of it all, one interaction deep inside of Central Park's Ramble, the heart of Manhattan, exposed a particularly complex aspect of the American struggle between diversity and division.
New York City has a diversity index score of 0.79, which means that if you randomly select two people from its population, there's a 79% chance that they will be from different races or ethnicity. That's a high number. Only three other American cities have a higher score, and they're all in California's Bay Area. Christian Cooper and Amy Cooper, two New Yorkers with the same last name and different skin colors, match that exact criteria. Christian is black and Amy is white. They are a picture of who New York sells itself to be. Diverse, young, and accomplished people sharing all of the city's postcard resources. But when they found themselves in that same iconic park that I grew up watching with a sparkle in my eye, what unfolded was far from the magical picture that I saw on Home Alone 2 and Friend's. Christian asked Amy to follow park rules and leash her dog but Amy felt that he was harassing her. She called 911 and claimed an "African American" was threatening her. The video went viral, most fully realizing that Amy's actions could have endangered Christian's reputation and even his life. Amy was fired from her job, lost her dog (and then got it back), and when asked about the incident she apologized but still believed that she was "not a racist". And there, as millions of us watched the events unfold in our screens, we were once again reminded of the American reality: we are diverse, but we are not whole.
From right to left, my brother, my mom and I, visiting NYC in 1998.
This is the real Central Park; a true reflection of our society. Hidden behind its glitzy image sold by Hollywood, Central Park is another home to a long history of racism and division in America. Unfortunately, few of us have shed enough of our privilege to see what others have been forced to live through. I had never heard of Seneca Village, but I did watch countless couples riding on Central Park horse carriages in American rom-coms. Instead of learning about the The Central Park Five, I watched American cartoons with Central Park hot dog carts and family pic-nics. I still love visiting Central Park whenever I'm in New York. It's a beautiful place to connect in and I'm sure many have made pure and fond memories there. If Central Park is America, then its there we find its beauty, its admirable inventiveness, its balance of urban modernism and nature escapism, its past and its future. Should it be shut down or canceled? Or does Central Park, like America, need real healing? However you see the dilemma, one thing we can be certain of is that we won't find the right solutions until we take the first step and admit that our diversity experience is broken.
Here's what I've learned from Central Park, New York, and America itself: diversity is not enough. As beautiful and absolutely necessary as diversity is for the flourishing of any healthy society, we cannot settle for it. Our nation, and let's be honest, our entire world, needs to come to grips with the fact that diversity isn't going to magically make everyone get along and give every community a fair shot at life. Diverse mega-cities and suburbs keep growing but prejudice hasn't disappeared. We've hidden our divisive prejudices under a thick layer of Pepsi and Coke commercials and hoped that it would go away on its on. Something's missing, and no amount of multi-colored-hands-holding stock photos will fill the gap.
Gathering is fun. It's part of End Prejudice's DNA. But we can't stop there. It's not enough to open your doors to the world and hope everyone gets along. We have work to do, and that encourages me. I sense the overwhelming energy of voices crying out for better ways to connect deeply, fix broken systems, and destroy unnecessary barriers. That relentless drive for self-improvement is what America should be deeply proud of and earnest to preserve. If you're determined and ready to go beyond diversity, here's what to keep in mind:
DIVERSITY WITHOUT ACCOUNTABILITY = INJUSTICE
I want to start with unity. I really do. I love talking about unity... like, a lot. But we can's start there. First, we've got to talk about justice. How often have cries for justice been shot down with "let's all get along" and "we're all in this together"? A society that truly asserts the worth of every one of its individuals cannot resort to lazy delay tactics. Unity is too beautiful to be used as a simple distraction away from justice work. For diversity to arrive at unity, justice has to be our fist priority. An unjust system won't even allow the unity conversation to occur because injustice shuts some groups out of the dialogue completely. In much of our storied American past, that shunning happened through an open and accepted prejudice that categorized certain groups as less-than others. Pride and false religious narratives were misused to justify white supremacy, indigenous peoples genocides, the African slave trade, and the mistreatment of women to name a few. Thankfully the America of today is one that began a path towards self-improvement. In theory, our laws no longer allow discrimination between any people groups. So why do so many still experience unequal treatment? Our laws shouldn’t discriminate but what if some of the people with the authority to write them and enforce them still do? That's why we need widespread accountability in all levels of our society and governance. The many changes our country has experienced would not have occurred without the accountability that was demanded by the justice workers of yesterday and today. We should be encouraged by our progress, but not blinded by it. The timeline of the West's history abuse and neglect is still much longer than our short history of emancipation and reform. We can disagree on how this is accomplished, but we can't delay it. All of our communities need a clear path towards full accountability that will assure justice for all.
What you can do: demand systematic change and reform. Get educated on local and national candidates' stances on justice reform, and vote accordingly. Stay in touch with the important justice organizations who are leading this conversation, like the AND Campaign and The King Center.
DIVERSITY WITHOUT LISTENING = NOISE
Can we talk about unity now? Nope. Trust me, I'm ready too! But not yet. We have another important step to take: listening. I still remember the fist time I walked into my High School cafeteria after moving to the US. I couldn't believe my eyes. This page of the American story was precisely like what every Hollywood High School movie I watched as a kid showed me. Every table was different: the jocks and cheerleaders, the nerds, the Black students, the emo crowd, the hippies, etc. I sat on the immigrants table. South Koreans, Mexicans, Taiwanese, Polish, Albanians, Argentinians, Germans, Chinese, Thai, Micronesian (yup) and a few Brazilians. Do you remember High School cafeteria noise? Everyone talked at the once, every table talked about the other tables, and not a single table listened to the other tables. That's my memory of it, plus the 10 or more languages being spoken simultaneously. America is still like a giant High School cafeteria, and that won't work for a country as diverse as ours. Our neighborhoods, both real and virtual, have sat us down with people just like us and we've been talking among ourselves for generations. There should always be room for like-minded living and dialogue. I love entering a room full of other Brazilian-Americans. We can see each other's points without always having to explain ourselves. We put our guards down and just live for a minute. And yet, I've grown tremendously from friendships that ask me questions I never had to answer before. When everything isn't implied or assumed, real conversations require processing and listening. The cry we hear right now is one of an unheard people. Our Black brothers and sisters have been crying out for justice for generations. Are we listening? When we don't, we can't even take the first step of accountability. "What injustice?" some of us ask. "Everything looks fine to me!" If we listen, then we will learn and grow. And if we listen to those who are most different than us, than we will grow exponentially.
What you can do: listen to the voices saying "I can't breathe", "I can't eat", "I can't speak", "I can’t hear", "I can't work", "I'm left out", etc. Enter stories of those crying for help. And if you are one of the brave voices crying out for justice and freedom, thank you for your commitment and care. We commit to listen. Our circles experience is designed with listening in mind, and we are hoping to launch more opportunities for you to dive into one later this year. If you'd like to learn more about it, please let us know today.
DIVERSITY WITHOUT ADMIRATION = "TOLERANCE"
We're really going to have to wait on the unity chat fam. Soon! Just one more, I promise. And this one is so important too. It’s time to admit that our bar for what to do with diversity has been set so low that we've been tripping on it. I'm talking about the false-positive words and phrases we've used for generations: "coexist", "color-blind", "get-along" and my least favorite of all , "tolerance". Is there a less loving word to use as an attempt to show kindness towards an entire people group than "tolerance"? “Dear, so-and-so, I... tolerate you”. Nope. That won't do. That’s neither the reality that we were called towards, nor is it what actually works. As usual, my model for righteous diversity returns to Jesus' circle of friends and the movement of followers that came after: men and women who crossed class, ethnic, and ideological lines to revolutionize the way the world lives. They went far beyond "tolerating" each other. Saul of Tarsus, who was trained and coached by some of Jesus of Nazareth's original Apostles, encourages the local churches he visited to do the same. He insisted, with great visual, that diverse communities need to realize that every group different than our own has something to teach us: "The eye cannot wail at the hand, 'I have no need for you,' nor could the head bellow at the feet, 'I won’t go one more step with you.' It’s actually the opposite." We need each other. Instead of simply tolerating each other, diversity will only lead to harmony when we open our eyes and admire one another. The temptation of tolerance is most deceitful because it still sees others as less-than. The "others" are not inconveniences. They are gifts.
What you can do: this will only come with commitment and relationships. No shortcuts. And be vigilant with your heart. Any time you sense feelings of indifference toward a people group, be honest with yourself and pause. What false ideas have you come to believe about others and how can you replace said ideas with truth about the gifts they bring to the table?
DIVERSITY WITHOUT UNITY = TENSION
Yes! Let's talk about unity! If we complete the vital steps above, then we go ahead and pump the volume on any cheese guilt-pleasure Beatles and Black Eyed Pea song you choose and wave our united flags on high! And honestly... that's it. Oneness is not really human work. It goes beyond our simple desire to be united. It's about the pursuit of the higher bar set by a Higher Voice and the commitment to submit our diversity to His greater purpose. Diversity without true unity just stirs more tension, more conflict and more hate. Diversity without God's idea of one new humanity is a deadly dead-end. When Jesus prayed for His friends to "be one", He was talking to His Father. He was asking for a miracle. Our prayer and the purpose of our work, is that our generation will see that miracle come true.
What you can do: first, admit we are not united yet. We are broken. And then, believe! If you believe God is a miracle worker, as many of those taking the streets and asking for a better way do, and you commit to listen to one another in inter-cultural friendships, cry out and work for justice for those afflicted by pain, then we can finally, be one.
When we are truly one, justice is easy because we feel each other's pain. When we are truly one, listening is easy because we can hear our own voices clearly. When we are truly one, admiring is easy because it will be impossible to look in the mirror and not love the incredibly beautiful and diverse world that God has brought together. Getting there is what isn’t easy. Maybe not even likely. But it is possible.
Hebert “H” Cabral
Learning to be. In love with my wife, our three children, and our Savior. Serving End Prejudice as a leader and communicator.