People should be celebrated for individuality, nor for race or ethnicity
Call me old-fashioned, but I think pride and honor should be reserved for things that require you actually having done something, some conscious action.
Not things that you just had handed to you in the crapshoot of the genetic lottery.
Having pride in something you couldn’t have played a role in deciding isn’t just intellectually dishonest, it’s also a destructive idea since it encourages people to tie up their personal identity with what essentially amounts to trivial cosmetic particularities.
We need to replace diversity with a more constructive and positive notion.
We need notions that recognizes variation in human culture but at the same time does not divide people into groups according to ethnicity and then tell them to be proud of the outcome of what is, in essence, a genetic accident.
Not a colorless world, just one in which color is no longer important.
If we are ever to get down to solving the really difficult questions of our world, we must first recognize and celebrate what brings us all together.
The heroes of humanity may have had different journeys but, at the end of the day, they were first and foremost part of the human family.
The sooner we recognize this, the sooner we can create an environment in which pride and honor results from real work and achievement.
It should not come from a random spin of the genetic wheel of fortune.
This is the promise of humanism and it is exactly what this university needs.
Though I am certainly willing to admit that I could be wrong and am open to suggestions.
Nicholas Cavallo California graduate student
