Article content continued

Which is behind the underthought insistence that all public and private institutions must always make sure they are “representative.” That there must always be on a board, panel, commission or court, persons who come from the specific set and subset of each chosen category of race and sexual orientation. How, after all, could a female judge from Ontario possible rule in a case on man from B.C? Since there is no possible overlap of experience, sex, or background, because there is such a void between the two, obviously we need more male loggers on the bench, or more female judges with chainsaws in B.C.

All this forgets two obvious considerations. One, that we are all human, and two, that we — at least most of us — try to educate ourselves. Instead of diving into the defining boxes of race, sex, orientation and sealing the lids, why not start at the higher level of what all of us have and are in common: we are human, we have moral faculties, we are gifted with the capacity to lead ourselves out of our narrow, restrictive particular facts of circumstance and race. We transcend our local boundaries through education and reflection.

Why not remember, too, that we all share on this planet the common heritage of collective history, the cross-fertilization and harvest of all the great and good people who preceded us. The combined wisdom of philosophy, history and science doesn’t come with sexist or racist tags: every race and people of both sexes have added to our common inheritance, and that inheritance, with application and study, is open to the heads and hearts of every human being. Diversity, as it is narrowly understood, and the identity politics that has grown out of that narrow, corrupt understanding, breeds identity politics — which is a form of collapse of our common humanity.

National Post