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Notes -
On Free Association vs. Exclusion, or: can white people just do stuff together?
Yesterday I went to church. I would estimate that there are about 150 people at my church. There are exactly three people of color there:
One black teenaged girl, who I believe is the adoptive daughter of a white couple there.
One old guy called Antonio, who I think came from Argentina a long time ago.
A Hispanic woman who is the wife of an old white guy.
The demographics of this church are, basically, the demographics of the immediately surrounding neighborhoods and of this demonination nationally: the people who go there go there because A.) they live close by and B.) they think the EFCA has good teachings to offer about God, the world etc. Everyone comes there of their own free will; all are explicitly welcome. We have never turned anyone away - I am one of the greeters and I try to take seriously my responsibility to make anyone that arrives feel welcome.
Still, when thinking about this, something apparent to me is that this church has no racial diversity. Are we under a moral obligation to try and change that?
If we are: why is that? How did we incur it? Is it not enough to be welcoming, do we need to actively change our demographic composition? What if, as seems to be the case, there are hardly any non-white people that want to come to our church?
If we are not: why is that? Other voluntary organizations come under pressure to diversify, all the time - see "knitting too white," "hiking too white," etc. Would our church not qualify because it's too small? Because it isn't a business? Because we do not have any status to award? Because we have no social media presence?
There is a black church less than four miles away - I cannot imagine them ever coming under pressure to diversify, even though they have the same level of diversity as my church does. Why should that be? I can already think of the Conflict Theory explanation - but what would the Mistake Theory explanation for that be?
I guess what I'm wondering about or driving at is, as my title indicates - is there any limiting principle to the drive for making groupings reflect the population distribution of the country as a whole? Are there organizations for which it would be unreasonable to ask this - or are there simply only organizations whose undiversity hasn't been noticed? I'm not asking this out of any animosity towards any racial group; we would really just like for everyone to come to our church. I just find myself wondering why similar bodies, who didn't choose their racial composition at all, nevertheless come under criticism for that, and some don't.
The word 'diversity' as it is used by the woke and Critical Social Justice activists does not mean the same thing as most people use the word 'diversity' in the common parlance. This is also true for a whole range of woke buzzwords - inclusion, liberation etc. This is part of a deliberate linguistic motte-and-bailey strategy, probably most easily demonstrated by the word 'equity' replacing the word 'equality' and relying on the average person to not know the difference in meaning between the two.
'Diversity' as used by the woke really just means 'differing from and against that of (what they perceive as) the hegemonic oppressive system'. Diversity for them means increasing the representation of 'marginalized peoples' who are necessarily marginalized by the oppressive system. The oppressive system (in your example it's 'whiteness') does not need to be represented as it is both omni-present as it is a hegemonic system, and is oppressive and therefore morally shouldn't be represented. 'Diversity' (the good thing) can only be achieved when whiteness (the bad thing) is completely removed, by conventionally authoritarian means if necessary. Therefore reducing or suppressing the presence of whiteness and its primary vector of white people will always increase diversity. A group with no white people (or white adjacent) and only 'marginalized peoples' is maximally diverse. It doesn't particularly matter which marginalized peoples they are (barring some progressive stack infighting).
It driven by Conflict Theory in the same sense that all of Critical Social Justice (and its Neo-Marxist base) is driven by Conflict Theory. All the believe exists is power dynamics and conflict between groups.
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