First Things RSS Feed - Barry Bercier https://www.firstthings.com/author/barry-bercier en-us Copyright 2025 First Things. All Rights Reserved. ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) ft@firstthings.com (The Editors) Mon, 20 Jan 2025 16:51:34 -0500 https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon-196.png First Things RSS Feed Image https://www.firstthings.com/rss/author/barry-bercier 60 Diverse Diversities https://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/01/diverse-diversities https://www.firstthings.com/article/2004/01/diverse-diversities Thu, 01 Jan 2004 00:00:00 -0500 Diversity can rightly be called a value-free term. All it does, ordinarily, is identify a condition of unlikeness between or among things. It reports this difference as a fact and by itself indicates nothing of the goodness or badness of that fact. Rather, the happenstance of goodness or badness depends on factors other than the diversity itself. The population, for example, is marked by diverse conditions of physical and mental well-being among its members. Some are healthy, others are sick. Better if all were healthy and there were no diversity on this score. Diversity here happens to be linked to a deviation from the normative conditions of health and well-being. It’s bad. The presence of physical suffering and mental anguish does not ground the “celebration of diversity” recommended by bumper stickers and university administrators.

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