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Thursday, September 23, 2010

Homogeneity has its place, but sometimes diversity is better

Just finished skimming the "Pledge to America" released today by the Republican Party. Putting aside the policy questions (interesting proposals to "change" Obamacare and replace them with basically the same provisions!), what really struck me was the care with which the document was prepared: every other page was full of action shots, of members of Congress with their constituents, at meetings, in the workplace, and on the campaign. However, conspicuously absent in these pictures is anyone whose skin isn't the same color (or lighter!) than mine... that is, the country is 65.4% white, but 100.0% of the people in the pictures were white. Where are the blacks? The Asians? The hispanos? Like the title says, homogeneity has its place (especially when trying to discern statistical trends in meteorological data... we want the dataset to be homogeneous!)... but perhaps the homogeneity of race of the people in the 2010 Pledge is curious in its omission of the other 34.6% of America, those whose skin isn't like mine....

1 Comments:

At 10:37 PM, September 23, 2010, Blogger Saintly Nurse said...

I read over it too, and am not really impressed. It's about the same thing the Republican party has always put out. What struck me the most was the mention of 'faith-based' organizations. In themselves I really have no problem with them and would agree they're generally more efficient than government. But what one of my friends pointed out has stuck with me. Are they going to be as supportive of, say, Muslim 'faith-based' organizations, or Unitarian faith-based ministries that reach out to immigrants who may or may not have papers (to use two examples)? Given the GOP's recent history, it's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt on this one.

I remember watching the RNC a couple years ago and being struck by the sea of white faces when that is NOT what this country is. Things are going to get really interesting (and I look forward to it!) in the next few years when white people are no longer a majority.

 

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