COLUMN: Diverse Me Here, Diverse Me There

From Arne Thommessen's "Hear Me Now, Believe Me Later," Fall '93 I am coming out of the closet. I cannot continue lying to myself, the rest of the world and the Board of Trustees. I am a straight white male. By definition, I score negatively along Penn's three dimensions of diversity: race, gender and sexual preference. I am a racist, sexist and homophobe until proven otherwise. Okay, perhaps I am a paranoid little gnome (no offense, gnomes). Please correct me if I am wrong, but somehow I have the impression that the self-proclaimed "more diverse than thou" alliances consider my very white maleness to be an insult to their sensitivities. Misunderstand me correctly. The trashy bashing of the white male is trivial compared to the historical and current discrimination of targeted minorities. However, blaming all ills of society on this diminishing breed of fair-skinned nuts and bolts leads to antagonism, not diversity. One of the more ill-informed opinions among the academically challenged diversity proponents suggests that there is little diversity among the white male population. Could they possibly be more wrong? Look at a randomly selected sample of white males: George Bush, Jeffrey Dahmer, Joey Buttafuocco and Homer Simpson. Is this the monolithic force that oppresses minorities, or merely or an enemy artifice fabricated by misguided conspiracy buffs? I may be out of the loop, but to my knowledge, none of my white male friends are currently plotting to subjugate minorities. Even in the unlikely event that we wanted to conspire, we would be too divided. A careful analysis of the white male population unveils a fertile underwood of obscure branches: white trash, neo-Nazis, rednecks, hicks, hillbillies, WASPs, and Eurofags. Clearly, a white male is not as uniformly white or male as the Office of University Life thinks he is. The second popularly-held misconception argues that minorities, being forced to combat injustice, are more likely to tolerate diversity. Unfortunately, it appears to work the other way around. In my opinion, Denmark ranks high among the most liberal countries in the world. As long as nobody denies the Dane his Tuborg beer for lunch, he can tolerate any kind of deviant behavior. Gay couples can marry with full legal rights, husbands tend to the house while the wife earns the wages, and only a minority objects to the occasional extramarital affair. Diversity is not another word for conflict, but for toleration of different lifestyles and opinions. The verbal terrorists have monopolized the concept of diversity and twisted it into a smoke screen for special interest groups. It is thus ironic, but unsurprising, that many of the groups claiming to be diverse are the least inclined to accept diverging opinions. The students who confiscated nearly 14,000 DPs last spring have more in common with the ultra-conservatives, sponsoring censorship on sexist and violent lyrics, than they care to admit. Whether one calls it "family values" or "sensitivity," the intention is the same – to hide from the unpleasant nuisances of the real world. Diverse experiences stem from interaction, not from shouting at one another from different sides of Locust Walk. Personally, I learned more about diversity during a group exercise in an international summer school in Germany than I have in two years of endless confrontations at Penn. The scenario was set in a lifeboat, and the surviving crew member's task was to rank 15 potentially life- saving objects in order of priority. As a schooled reader of several lifeboat dramas, I figured I would be able to rescue the crew from certain death. No such luck.The crew members from Cameroon, China, Iran and Peru sailed off in directions previously unheard of in naval history. A shipwrecked Cameroonian argued passionately that water was a non-essential ingredient for survival. In France, he said, he had not drunk any water at all, instead he had been drinking wine, and if worst came to worst, we could drink sea water. Finally, when a reserved Chinese woman proposed to ditch the water and keep the rum, I gave in. Better to get wasted and die, I figured, than to remain sober and survive with this crowd. I was in a truly diverse setting, but to my knowledge neither race, gender nor sexual preference played a role. What mattered was the tolerance of differing opinions. When the Penn community learns to accept and understand diverse beliefs, tolerance of race, gender and sexual preferences will follow. It may sound naive, but it certainly beats the goose-feeding habit of ramming synthetic diversity down our throats. Arne Thommessen is a senior Entrepreneurial Management and Finance major from Oslo, Norway. Hear Me Now, Believe Me Later appears alternate Fridays.