[REWIND] The Diversity We Choose
Equals the Vulnerability We Embrace
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I wrote this originally in April of 2023 and posted it on Linked In. It meant enough to me then — and still today — for me to “rewind” it here on our nation’s birthday as a reminder of what makes us truly great.
I grew up in a completely White family in a virtually all-White small town. Everybody was Christian, except for the town's sole atheist family. I had several gay friends — unbeknownst to me at the time. When I was 12, I met my first Black person: an African immigrant during a long bus ride to Michigan to see my cousins.
As a child, I couldn't have been actively racist if I have tried; there was nobody around who didn't look like me. But I had plenty of biases built into me, and I passively accepted plenty of discriminatory ideas on the basis of no experience whatsoever. Nothing that my parents ever taught or would allow. Just stuff I ran into day-in and day-out and never questioned and so let seep into my mind.
That was my childhood, and it was a happy one.
Now, looking back, I find myself amazed to realize that my nuclear and extended family is full of diversity beyond my wildest childhood imaginings: Africans, Asians, Latinos, Native Americans, gay, lesbian, non-binary, questioning, Jews, Muslims, Catholics, Lutherans, Unitarians, autistics, dyslexics, immigrants, and — I am embarrassed to say — several Chicago Bears fans.
I don't how we did it — honestly. It just sort of happened. I personally had zero expectations for any of it.
I should feel genuine joy at how much I've learned and come to accept, thanks to all this diversity — and I do. I love all the directions I've been pulled into as a husband, father, uncle, great uncle, cousin, and so on. I shudder to think if my narrow childhood — as wonderfully small-town idyllic as it was — had somehow extended itself across the whole of my life and denied me these new experiences and understandings. With only one life to live, I am grateful to have experienced all that growth. Why skip any of it?
But I have also struggled lately with a growing sense of vulnerability — part of the classic midlife crisis that informs you that the rest of your days are now a losing battle to retain, preserve, and protect everything that you are and everyone whom you care for. You want to be there for everything and everyone and that grows less possible and less likely with each passing year.
Most pointedly, I find myself realizing that I have all sorts of loved ones viewed by some of my fellow citizens as bad, or evil, or enemies they would gladly harm if given the chance and thought they might get away with it. Just as saliently, these same “patriots” pass laws that directly target my loved ones’ freedom in a nation built around the individual pursuit of happiness.
That really scares me.
My loved ones have suffered instances of clear racism, homophobia, and hatred from strangers who have no idea of, or respect for, their value as human beings. In my dreams, I find myself worrying that one of my kids will be violently targeted simply because of who they are. I have had conversations with them about scenarios I never would have imagined facing in my life — because, as a White male, I have never faced those scenarios.
Frankly, I find this to be the only downside to my family's growing diversity. But it's a huge one in today's America, and it constitutes the primary fear I feel for my country's future.
I wrote America's New Map, in many ways, to address my own fears, which is why I found the writing process so cathartic. Winston Churchill's true faith was the British Empire; mine is the United States and all the good it has done by propagating its model of integration across the world (i.e., globalization). So, when I found myself feeling too down about America's current period, I looked to surmount all that negativity by projecting something better, and kinder, and more truly American about our shared national future — and that of the world as a whole. I tried to tamp down my own fears about my loved ones by willing into reality a better and bigger and more inclusive United States.
It is important to understand one's motivations in life, and these are mine.
Have a happy and safe 4th of July.
