Unity or Diversity?
Recently The Statesman asked some students whether unity or diversity was more important. While I feel that diversity is very important and I feel lucky for the opportunity to have friends from many different cultures, I do not feel that the question was an appropriate one. By presenting the question “Which is more important unity or diversity?” it is implied that we have to choose between the two. Is it impossible to have diversity and still be unified? Is it impossible to be both united and diverse? Of course not! To think otherwise is absurd. All the great leaders and movements of the past have had one thing in common, they were able to unify diverse groups of people. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was able to unify different groups of African-Americans so that they could gain civil liberties, the women’s suffrage movement won for women the right to vote because they unified. Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were able to unify different Lakota tribes, something no other chief was able to do. Mahatma Ghandi, George Washington and others are good examples. Caupolican in Chile was able to unify the Araucanian tribes to fight the Spanish for more than three-hundred years. In a stunning show of unity among diversity the US Senate recently passed a bill unanimously. All of these great leaders of the past had at least one thing in common, they were able to unify groups of people behind a common goal and I think that we can agree that the world is better because of what they did. So which is more important unity or diversity? We can try to become more diverse for the rest of our lives, but until we learn to unify behind a common goal and for the common good we will accomplish little. One of the salient values in recent history is that of teamwork, which is just a new way of naming unity. When we learn that we are all more similar than we are different then we will truly achieve diversity and be unified. Diversity without unity is divisiveness.
Trevor Warburton787-2951trewar@cc.usu.edu