Diversity talk can go beyond balderdash

I'm going to confess a guilty little secret: I enjoy reading the Tory. I'm pro-choice, pro-affirmative action and gay, but there's something about their infuriating little publication that fills a hole in my life. After mulling over it for a while, I realized what it was: They engage me in real argument. Their writers have been known to make clear claims and back them up. And sometimes I even put it down feeling like I understand those I disagree with more fully. Don't get me wrong; I'm not suggesting that we give the Tory a dialectic medal. They could do far more to address possible objections and thoroughly examine their premises, but the meat is occasionally present.

Almost a year ago, Carlos Ramos-Mrosovsky '04 published an article on this page bemoaning the "cult of dialogue" on our campus — a certain fixation on acknowledging often broadly-worded points of view rather than stating positions and making strong arguments. I sympathize with his concerns, though I found his claim that debate must entail a process of "banging two arguments against each other until one gives way and a conclusion survives" to be somewhat misleading. Debate does not always amount to survival of the fittest. It can also be a way of learning that your opponent isn't simply an irrational bigot — even without giving into extreme subjectivism. Furthermore, it is wrong to assume that dialogue cannot be as well-reasoned and truth-seeking as debate, even if much of ours is not.

As you may have gathered from the title, I find much of our diversity talk to be far too mired in Mrosovsky's "cult of dialogue" — plump with calls to embrace it, but slim on discussions of what that might require. The word diversity is, in fact, a very broad term; it swallows a whole mess of complex, divisive and highly personal issues. And until more of our public discourse is devoted to exploring and discovering those issues, we have no grounds on which to contest the Tory's — and others' — accusation that diversity talk is overly glorified, and no right to claim to be dedicated to embracing it.

I am certainly not implying that discussions regarding the merits of diversity are worthless. Far from it. But these platitudes should only be the introduction to a far more idiosyncratic learning process. Unless our primary aim is to convince others of our own tolerance, it is not enough to simply affirm the existence of the distinct experiences and concerns of Latinos, Blacks, Catholics, Zoroastrians or Gays. We have to delve a little deeper into what those experiences and concerns consist of. I, for one, know very little about the dynamics of the Latino community on campus or what it means to be Zoroastrian in a country dominated by a Judeo-Christian ethos.

I am also not implying that meatier conversations never take place at Princeton. Wonderful events are held; eloquent articles are written. But when it comes to the mainstream, discursive spaces on campus, spaces like the Prince, these issues become special features — diversions from a norm represented by too few voices. We shouldn't have to go to the Carl Fields Center or turn to a specialty publication to hear about the intricacies of being Jewish and Gay or to debate the pros and cons of the creation of an African-American Studies department.

Ironically, by writing an article like this, I am doing exactly what I disparage: talking about diversity in the abstract, rather than plunging into specific issues. My intention, however, is not to increase the quotient of complaining and critiquing on campus, but to encourage more new and knowledgeable voices to join the opinion page. In this attempt to move beyond simply critiquing, I've asked the editors to let me help them recruit more diverse guest columnists this semester in the hopes of setting a precedent. My goal is for complex issues of identity and affiliation to find their way onto this page more frequently even once I've stopped personally pressing people for articles, and for the quality and interest of our campus dialogue be improved as a result. As the editors wrote in last week's inaugural issue, this is your page. Use it! Lispeth Nutt is a Religion major from Phoenix, AZ. She can be reached at lnutt@princeton.edu.