Diversity and Its Byproduct
It may very well be true that segregation is necessarily born out of diversity, can, in fact, occur only in environments that are, at their outset, diverse. And so it stands to reason that the more “diverse” a given population is, the greater chance for segregation to exist and in increasing degrees, no matter how segregation is measured—whether by the degree of homogeneity within groups, by the extent of separation among groups, or by the number of segregated groups within the sample. Where the segregation lies, however, is relative to the diversity from which it is born, and is so determined by scale of perception, as it is with any form—like, say, a viewed painting. Think a painting considered initially on the level of its constituent color elements all the way up to the ultimate level of the constituted image whole.
Descending into the form by zooming our perception in, we experience form as it analytically dissolves into differentiated—and therefore, discrete—units of increasing homogeneity; conversely, ascending from the form by panning our perceptions outwards and wider, we experience the form as it synthetically reconstitutes itself, resolving into its heterogeneous entirety. (Whether or not the entirety of that whole results in coherence or something artful remains another matter, yet some type of whole is what we find.) Ultimately, the conundrum of form is such that the complexity—i.e. diversity—that necessarily constitutes a form is just as necessarily made from differentiated units of greater homogeneity the closer we arrive at the more fundamental levels of that form’s consistency.
Creative Process Theory as outlined above, adequately implicates other thought subsets as well— perceptual theory, form theory, for example—which, given their universal and absolutist stature, may be applied wherever form and meaning exist, which is to say, everywhere. As strict formal analyses go, these theories may be applied to schools, as these theories partly explain how, formally speaking, particular schools, while perhaps diverse in overall student body are thus prone to segregation occurring in their classrooms and social congregations. Such formal theories partially explain how our very country can exist as the most diverse republic in the history of the world, yet one that simultaneously remains intensely segregated on the level of its neighborhoods and cities. Most other places in the world would never have problems of segregation—at least racially speaking—since, ironically, there just doesn’t exist enough difference—or “diversity”—within their overall populations.
If homogeneity must exist on some formal level of our social existence as humans, then the question remains, On what level of our social existence is such homogeneity—our drive to interact and affine with exclusively “our own”—acceptable?
However we define our homogeneous units for ourselves, shouldn’t we be able to base the makeup of those units on criteria that extend beyond essentialist notions of race, ethnicity, etc? Shouldn’t we be capable of basing such social units on a shared set of values about how to treat one another for instance, and on the pursuit of self-awareness as means for becoming better citizens for one another?
No matter the criterion on which we end up basing our homogeneous social units and groups, it seems we ought to be able to transcend our tribal instincts and renounce any nativist impulses that would otherwise pave the way for segregation and inequality to exist, where “separate but unequal” seems almost inherently fated. Yet, can we really? Are we really capable of resisting that potent and stubborn instinct, that rationalist—and, I suspect Darwinian—impulse which seems to possess us all, predisposing and programming our very bodies to turn what is simply formal differentiation (and therefore, an inherent degree of separation from other units) into something more sinister? The resulting segregated effects bear one intent only—that of manufacturing advantage in the name of group concerns and, therefore, narrowly defined self-interest.
