This video is a part of the Healing the Heart of Democracy Discussion Guide and can be found with more videos and resources in our “Healing the Heart of Democracy Hub.” You can explore the hub, download the guide, and find all of the videos along with additional resources here.
———
American democracy at its best is like that island of restored prairie. In a world where human diversity is often suppressed—where authoritarian regimes have kept people lined up like rows of cultivated corn, harvesting their labor and sometimes their lives to protect the interests of the state—the diversity that grows in a democracy delights the heart as well as the eye.
Our diversity consists only in part of demographic differences such as race, ethnicity, and social class. Equally important are the wildly different lenses through which we see, think, and believe. At the center of America’s public life is a marketplace of ideas that only a free people could create, a vital, colorful, chaotic bazaar of religious, philosophical, political, and intellectual convictions. . . .
Just as a virgin prairie is less efficient than agribusiness land, democracy is less efficient than a dictatorship. We often move too slowly on matters of moral or practical urgency. And yet this loss of efficiency is more than offset by the way human diversity, freely expressed, can strengthen the body politic—offering resilience in the face of threat, adaptability to change, creativity and productivity in everything from commerce to science to culture. (12)
Q. In making a case for “creative tension-holding” amid our differences, Parker likens social diversity to the biodiversity of a prairie, with its resulting capacity for resilience, adaptability, and productivity. How does this analogy fit with your understanding and experience of American diversity? How do you understand and weigh the benefits of diversity versus efficiency when it comes to urgent social issues?
