As everyone knows, once the dubious morality, and logic, of basing solutions to problems caused by ugly racial distinctions on the enshrinement and legalization of more racial distinctions became obvious and its constitutionality……

There also needs to be forged social-culturally a stronger shared American identity that is at least as influential and valued by individuals as the separate identities of the mixed groups. That’s no simple feat and requires intensive acculturation.

How do we develop a “cosmopolitan” identity that allows us comfortably accept our other identities, but also serves to bond a diverse population into one cohesive society?

My model for effective diversity as opposed to what we’ve been doing is my Army experience – the most diverse and different-from-me community I’ve ever been a member of. When I first joined the Army as a parochial, middle class, Chinese New Yorker, I was scared of a lot of things (Basic Training, you know – not fun), and one of those things was the alien people around me in such an intimate, stressful environment. Heck, it’s possible that others felt as uncomfortable about me. Through the Army acculturation process, my fear of the other was overcome through the development of our new powerful shared identity as American soldiers.

It wasn’t just PC lip service diversity. This diversity had to be effective to the degree I could live and work closely with these people, and if it came to that, possibly give my life for them. The way I described it to my non-military friends was that when meeting another soldier, we could be strangers and completely different, even incompatible in most respects, but as fellow soldiers, I was confident that we had 40% in common with each other. And that placed us on the same side.

Diversity is incomplete if you physically put people together but don’t train them to think of themselves as part of the same identity group – again, without sacrificing our other identities. I often wonder if elements of the military culture can be used in civilian life in order to generate a stronger common identity as an American citizenry. From a global perspective, we Americans are in it together on the same team, and in this world, there are winning teams and losing teams.

“We ought create conditions for it to happen naturally. Diversity ought not be imposed – at least not in 2007.”

How do we create these conditions? Based on the comments to this thread, any “condition” we “create” will be seen as an imposition to someone.

So what are you suggesting?

The Brown decision, perhaps more than any other event in our history, gave rise to the modern conservative movement….

And “diversity” has only one meaning: skin tone. (Maybe sometimes mixing up the crazy and/or retarded kids with the rest.)

Example: my kid went to a private elementary school in a New England college town. Both school and town loved to congratulate themselves on their “diversity.”

This meant that they had both upper-middle-class liberal white lesbian parents with adopted black kids and upper-middle-class liberal white lesbian parents with adopted Chinese kids.