DOING DIVERSITY work in the Obama era felt like being not only part of the zeitgeist but the telos. History was bending toward an interfaith, multicultural future, and we were part of it. There was a long way to go toward the finish line, but the road was downhill and paved and our leader knew the way. There might be some disagreements in emphasis and in tactics, but generally speaking we believed we were heading to the same place.
Boy, how things have changed, both in the White House and in how we see the bend of history. The changes in the political sphere have had important reverberations in the diversity movement. It feels like there are two schools of diversity work these days.
On the one hand there is the Protect and Resist School. This type of diversity work emphasizes creating safe spaces for marginalized people (women, people of color, immigrants, LGBTQ folks, Muslims) and resisting the power structure in any way possible, from furious tweetstorms to Black Lives Matter protests to shouting down conservative speakers on campuses.
“We tried the Martin Luther King Jr. way with Barack Obama,” this school seems to say, “and you racists rejected him as a radical when really he was as moderate as any human being God ever created. You have the weapons of power; we have the weapons of resistance. To paraphrase James Baldwin and the Bible—no more water, the fire this time.”
The other school of diversity work can be called Reach Out and Build Bridges. This school is equally horrified by the racism of Trump world but doesn’t believe that all Trump voters are incorrigible racists. It leans in the direction of marginalized minorities, but it attempts to sympathize with all people—police officers and BLM protesters. “How do we convince more people?” this school wonders, not just how do we resist them.
Reach Out and Build Bridges types may participate in a protest or two, but they are also willing to work through institutional channels. They wonder, too, what comes after the protest? When the demonstrators from elsewhere leave Ferguson, what will the schools, the community organizations, and the police force look like? Somebody has to pay attention to that, after all.
In other words, how do we prepare for the day after the day after? How do we build a new and better world, not just resist the old one?
The tension taking place in the diversity movement right now is not new. One can see it in the civil rights era, between Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael type figures vs. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis type figures. It existed in the struggle in South Africa, with Mandela and the African National Congress believing in a Rainbow Nation and more radical movements that called for throwing white South Africans into the sea.
Anybody who has been reading this column over the years can tell that I’m a Reach Out and Build Bridges type. I appreciate the keen sense of justice of the Protect and Resist school, but I think more bridge builders is the great need of the moment. I appreciate the fire of the early Malcolm X, but I prefer the inclusive progressivism of Jane Addams, Martin Luther King Jr., and Barack Obama—leaders who convey that in their world people of all backgrounds can thrive.
Eboo Patel (@EbooPatel), founder of the Interfaith Youth Core, writes about social justice from his perspective as a Muslim American of Indian heritage.
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