The opposite of diversity is oppression
The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
— Martin Luther King Jr.
Diversity, in all its forms, is under active assault by a powerful global minority that either a) do not recognize its tremendous value, or b) do and consider it a threat. Life on this planet is experiencing a sixth great extinction, driven by a hundred years or more of rapacious conversion of wetlands, grasslands, and forests to bolster a global order of power and growth that serves the few at the expense of the many. And our human diversity has for hundreds of years been experiencing an equally malicious campaign of cleansing by those promoting a rigid and singular (read: supremacist) way of being and thinking and loving and praying. These are in fact the same story, both part of a long project of oppression that has been ongoing for millennia, one born in the West and then brought to Turtle Island by settlers. They are the twin helixes in the DNA of civilization, and together they appear to be coming to a spectacularly catastrophic head.
Diversity, whether biological or psychological or cultural, is a natural and inevitable outcome of living systems. It manifests in a gorgeous mosaic of forms: the mind-boggling biodiversity found in flourishing ecosystems; the vibrancy of cultural diversity in art, music, and tradition; the richness of linguistic diversity in both ancient and modern tongues; the incredible diversity of food crops and culinary practices found in traditional food systems; the breathtaking spectra of gender and sexual diversity; and the recently recognized gifts of neurodiversity. Each of these diverse forms represents a complex tapestry of variation that makes our world more fascinating, productive, resilient, and full of potential.
The myriad benefits of diversity matter immensely to our current moment. Research consistently shows that, on balance, more diversity is better than less. Diversity leads to enhanced productivity, creativity, innovation and problem-solving by drawing on a wider range of perspectives, experiences, and expertise. Diversity is also central to building resilience in turbulent times, ensuring there are multiple pathways to thriving and recovering from crisis. Without diversity, we are far less equipped to see challenges from all angles and craft the innovative solutions demanded by a rapidly changing world.
But the profound importance of diversity extends beyond the urgencies of the present. The diversity we nurture today will shape the possibilities for our adaptation and evolution tomorrow. By protecting and expanding a rich multiplicity of human and ecological ways of being, we preserve the potential to imagine and enact radically different, more generative futures that we can scarcely conceive of now. Allowing the tapestry of diversity to fray and wither means robbing future generations of possibilities and resigning them to a flatter, more fragile world.
We see this dynamic at work over and over in cases where human activities have disrupted the habitats and ecology of other species. Pacific salmon, which have sustained and been sustained by Indigenous communities for millennia, rely on an intricate interplay of genetic diversity, habitat diversity, and variation in life history strategies to adapt to shifting environmental conditions. This “portfolio” of diversity has been honed over millions of years of evolutionary learning; they live in dynamic landscapes prone to disturbances like landslides, volcanos, floods, and fires; over the millennia, multiple highly diverse salmon species and populations that emerged that are exquisitely adapted to the unique attributes and rhythms of their natal rivers and streams.
If diversity is declining in a system, then that system is vulnerable. It has stopped doing the most fundamental things that living systems do: learn, adapt, and evolve. These require no motivation other than the light and warmth of the sun and the tick-tick-ticking of time. There is only one way to stop a living biological or cultural system from learning, adapting, and diversifying: oppression.
Oppression, for clarity, involves any condition of sustained coercion, wherein an entity is restricted from realizing its full assemblage of rights, autonomy, and agency. Any act taken against diversity or differentiation is an act of oppression.
This latter point requires additional clarity; oppression is not limited to acts taken against diversity in its present forms. It also comprises acts taken that limit future differentiation — the emergence of new forms, new practices, new ideas, new species, etc.
Our industrialized food systems, to take but one example, oppress the land with technologies of death and systems of uniformity. They oppress the worker with conditions of poverty and servitude and exploitation. And they oppress those who would do things differently by consolidating land, wealth, resources, and exerting hegemonic ideologies of productivity, scalability, and growth.
Or consider Pacific salmon. We have for decades actively oppressed salmon populations, with dam construction, fire suppression, hatcheries, and deeply extractive and unsustainable commercial fisheries. Dams, as instruments of oppression, block salmons’ access to critical spawning grounds and alter flow and sediment regimes. Fire suppression is an act of oppression, leading to overgrown forests prone to catastrophic burns that choke streams with ash. Commercial pollock fisheries, which catch, kill, and discard salmon as valueless “bycatch”, are systems of oppression. Fish hatcheries, though well intentioned, are too an instrument of this oppression, creating an artificial uniformity that dilutes locally adapted gene pools. All these drastically narrow the range of habitat types and life histories expressed by salmon, compromising their resilience in the face of accelerating climate and landscape change. Rebuilding this lost diversity through dam removal, restoring natural fire regimes, and other such actions is now an urgent priority.
Front of mind for me, and my motivation for writing this essay, is the troubling, misguided current in today’s political discourse that aims to discredit the efforts of people around the world to protect, restore and promote diversity in our communities and workplaces. The flawed argument, rooted more in fear than fact, claims that proactively fostering diversity and inclusion is somehow a form of reverse discrimination, counter to lofty ideals of equity and equality. They argue, without any basis, that Diversity Equity, Inclusion, and Justice programs (DEIJ) are inherently racist and unjust, because they allegedly elevate certain aspects of human difference above others. And many other people believe it, for reasons that would require a whole other essay to explore.
This shortsighted and, frankly, fearmongering perspective (fearmongering is an effective political strategy) gets it entirely wrong. The fundamental purpose of DEIJ work is not to elevate certain types of difference as being inherently more valuable or important than others, but to recognize that the presence of difference itself, and lots of it, is essential to the thriving of any human or natural ecosystem. It isn’t the specific differences, but the presence of difference, that makes a difference.
Movements to diversify our food systems provide an inspiring example. Alternative food networks and community-based fisheries are working diligently to build resilience into how we produce and procure nourishment by decentralizing control, re-localizing flows of resources, and radically expanding the diversity of foods and food sources.
Community supported fisheries, for example, forge direct relationships between fishers and consumers, creating much shorter, simpler, and more transparent supply chains than the globalized seafood market. This proximity allows for a revival of place-based fishing cultures and practices attuned to the unique species, seasons and ecosystems of a given region. It incentives stewardship, since destructive practices directly harm the fishers’ social and economic standing. Importantly, by offering fishers a higher price point and committed local buyers, CSFs also enable them to target a wider variety of species and to fish in lower volumes using lower-impact gear. The net effect is a diversification of both the “what” and “how” of fishing.
When the COVID-19 pandemic massively disrupted the mainstream industrial seafood system, these alternative community-based fisheries proved remarkably quick and nimble in adapting to meet the crisis. Overnight, many were able to shift from restaurant sales to direct-to-consumer models, keeping their businesses afloat and their communities fed with healthy local fish. In Washington and Oregon, for instance, CSFs saw demand surge by up to 400% in the early months of the pandemic. This resilience in the face of disruption flows directly from the diversity and decentralization inherent in the alternative seafood sector.
Claims that DEIJ efforts to proactively restore diversity and dismantle injustice constitute a form of “reverse discrimination” profoundly misunderstand what is at stake. Steadfast initiatives to uproot the entrenched barriers of systemic racism and other forms of oppression does not deprive anyone of fundamental rights — it strips away unearned privilege held by a dominant group. This work to expand diversity and inclusion is directly analogous to rewilding rivers by removing dams to revitalize salmon habitats or freeing our food system from the suffocating monopolistic control of industrial agribusiness.
Regardless the context, oppression is a recipe for death, whether the death of agricultural soils or rural communities or market economies. Oppression can not be sustained because it is anti-life. It will always fail. Sure, the modern systems of oppression many of us fight against have become so global and pernicious in nature that they may well last a while longer before they burn themselves out. But they will burn themselves out. It is a matter of thermodynamics.
I do not believe it hyperbolic to say that the future of our society and our species hinges on our willingness to re-write our oppressive civilizational DNA, to learn to not only embrace but actively nurture diversity in all realms. If we suppress difference and enforce sameness, we sow the seeds of our own downfall, both democratically and biologically. If we create a space for diversity to flourish, as conservation biology has proven possible for imperiled species and ecosystems, we can reclaim lost possibilities and set the stage for a more vibrant, resilient, and open-ended future. The choice between diversity and oppression could not be more clear. Every ecosystem revived, every local economy rebuilt, every language and cultural tradition preserved, every child supported to develop their individuality— when we see diversity as a vast reservoir of imagination and wisdom, we re-open those amazing but unknowable possible futures that lie ahead.
