Thinking more about the comments by the wannabe Pittwater MP Natasha McClaren Jones and others, both in the political and corporate orbit about diversity and what a “wonderfully diverse community” Pittwater is, it occurs to me that this is the language of the political hustler who for political expediency, breaks the community down into segments of identity and the varying characteristics of race, colour, gender, religion and sexual orientation.
They are purveyors of the grotesquery of identity politics.
I don’t know anyone who walks around the local mall thinking about or preoccupying themselves with the degrees of diversity around them. They simply don’t care. Life’s busy enough as it is.
Apart from that, Australia had the ethos of diversity and “a fair go” long before it became popularised and weaponised as part of the political lingua franca in the last fifteen or twenty years.
In Canberra last night we went Chinese because A, it was 3 floors down in the same hotel and B, because we felt like Chinese. No other consideration about culture or diversity entered into the equation.
Apart from the off the wall weird who are more about narcissistic, attention seeking and shock value, people simply don’t care about or analyse the degrees of diversity of a society or whether there’s too much of this or too little of that.
People see through and beyond colour, race, religion and sexual orientation and see other people as simply, other people and not as human units to be exploited and milked politically for their differing characteristics or predilections.
As for equity (as opposed to equality) just appoint the most qualified on the basis of merit nothing else should come into it. Colour, religion, gender…none of it.
Those that talk about and see society through a lens or prism of diversity (and its twins equity and inclusion) are simply using the language of identity politics because they think it will lift their image and standing in their target market.
They are identity, race and gender hucksters and hustlers.
They believe that it will demonstrate just how warm and “inclusive” they are and in the case of NMJ, believe it will help ingratiate herself by grovelling and using the language she thinks the community wants to hear.
They don’t.