Multicultural Diversity - Better Asian Than Black, Better Confucian Than Rap, The Evolution Of A White Liberal

Vicki Barnes lived in the city and told everyone it was 'for the diversity'.  It was comforting and satisfying, she said, to be able to eat tacos, pho, and butter chicken within ten minutes of her house. 

That, however, was as far as Vicki ever got to multiculturalism or wanted to go - ethnic food and the people who served it.  She had all the diversity she needed at her lunches at Delhi Dhaba or Thai Garden. 

When the closing bell rang, the Chinese, Koreans, and Indians who worked in the mathematics department down the hall from her, left for the suburbs . When Vicki became pregnant, a Chinese colleague said, 'Why not take your baby away from here? Chinese people are very smart', he said. 'PhD, MIT. White people in suburbs smart too'. 

It was nice to hear honesty for a change.  The university like most was a liberal, politically correct place where black people could do no wrong; and despite the lowest socio-economic indicators in the city, high rates of incarceration, and dysfunctional families, her fellow white professors sang their praises.  

The Asian professors were not held to the same politically correct standard as their white colleagues and were allowed to comment on racial disparity.  Although they were in America as highly-paid researchers, many people in their countries were disadvantaged, poor, and marginalized; so they had the right to observe racial difference in a critical way.  

And so it was that Vicki did as Hong Fat said, and shortly after her baby was born, she and her husband sold their small urban apartment and moved to Lanier, one of the metropolitan area's wealthiest and best educated suburbs.  Hong Fat was right - thanks to the influence of smart Asians the schools were among the best in the state, the town was crime free, and there was the heady atmosphere of intellectual excellence. 

'I miss the ethnic food', Vicki mused to her neighbor, a Chinese bio-tech scientist.  The neighbor of course thought that the American obsession with diversity was nonsense.  'Americans eat noodles and think they're holy'. Diversity for Asians did not exist.  They had no interest in anything but their own cultural communities. American style diversity would dilute its high-value intellectual universality. If a Chinese scientist crossed ethnic lines, it was to confer with his Indian colleague about bosons or semi-conductors and nothing more. 

Bloomingdale, a formerly all-black neighborhood of Washington, DC, was noted for his high-quality housing stock, tree-lined streets, and uncluttered feel.  The old Victorian brownstones, the architectural hallmark of the city and saved from urban renewal because Bloomingdale was too far from the city center to worry about, were a marvel, and it wasn't long before urban pioneers - white families looking for racial diversity and inexpensive fix-up housing - moved in.

Racial diversity being what it is, Bloomingdale when the first white families moved in, was still the ghetto; and so these pioneers installed iron grates on the doors and windows, floodlights and police cameras over the entrance way and on the roof, kept Doberman Pinchers, mace in the drawer, and industrial sirens.  The black men smoking spliffs and drinking Colt45 malt liquor were not their neighbors but suspicious interlopers, for 9th Street and Independence was now their neighborhood. 

'When more of us move in', said one new white resident, 'the streets will be clean and the schools better', and true enough within ten years Bloomingdale became upscale, expensive, and the place to live. 

'The medium is the message', said philosopher Marshall McLuhan about the new electronic media culture in America.  Everything was about how form did not only follow function, but that 'functionality', the mediazation of culture would change everything from family order to principles of social interaction. 

Cultural environment is the new message; and it didn't take long before Vicki had jettisoned her wokeness and adopted a very Chinese, disciplined, centered, and ambitious ethos.  The sound of children practicing piano scales or the greetings of mothers welcoming sons and daughters home from after-school Russian math programs, or the squeak of violins and lights on after midnight were parts of the influencing environment which changed Vicki from a passionate social reformer, to an academic disciplinarian, an Asian philosopher, and a purposeful parent. 

Playmates for her children were selected for seriousness and an intellectual intensity inherited from their parents - children who could solve Rubik cubes in minutes, who mastered multi-thousand piece Legos, for whom chess was a pastime not an obligation.  At the same time Vicki and her husband became perfect fits for the rarified atmosphere of PhD, tech savvy Lanier residents. 

'Now this is diversity', Vicki said to her husband, referring to the Chinese, Indian, and Korean families in Lanier, and not a pho place or Chinese take-out in sight. 

The old adage - 'Give a progressive enough time and he will become conservative'  - is amplified and intensified by cultural environment. Living in the intellectually rich, academically ambitious, and socially demanding Asian environment accelerated her political transformation.  Identity meant nothing.  Excellence meant everything.  In time because of the shared cultural environment of academic pursuit, creativity, and disciplined work - hallmarks of Chinese Confucian culture - the racial distinctions between her and her Asian friends and neighbors disappeared. 

Lanier is one of the wealthiest suburbs in the state, and the old Vicki would have thought twice about moving there.  The three and four million dollar homes would have been a symbol of capitalist greed, unnecessary bourgeois excess, and a clarion call for the redistribution of wealth.  They were now simply a part or the landscape - affordable for the two high-income earning families, reasonable for four, practical, and convenient. Her neighbors were highly productive, contributing far more than their share to American productivity and competitiveness.  Their wealth was not misspent and squirreled away - it was a means to an end. 

Vicki had indeed become a suburban mom, but not just anyone.  Rather than the caricature of the American suburb - settled, predictable, uninspiring, and insular - Lanier was the new American model. Diversity exchanged for universal excellence. Intellectual homogeneity, cultural unity, a common place. 

Her son could have been Chinese if mentality, ambition, cultural respect, Confucian principles, and respect were the criteria; but perhaps more importantly he - and his Asian classmates - were the new Americans.