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Cultural, ethnic, racial and economic homogeneity in American social life and in our neighborhoods, says David Brooks in “People Like Us” (The Atlantic Monthly, Sept. ... People tend to find “amazingly subtle social distinctions and then shape their lives around them” Brooks says, and in so doing might only pay lip-service to the need or effect of striving to become multicultural in our neighborhoods and in our lives. ... ” It is an appalling idea, says Brooks, that we have incomplete and half-truthful conversations within our circles of homogeneity because those communities are within themselves distortions of reality, segmentations of what a truly culturally diverse political community should be. ... ” Brooks seems to be saying that our melting pot idealism is an illusion, and the result is an ethnic or demographic Balkanization of American society. ... The issue is larger than as outlined by Brooks, because what he is talking about is the larger scale of human life as it has evolved in contemporary American society, the ways in which we interact with each other, and the ways we operate within a loosely-defined social and political framework.
Brooks is correct in saying that we tend to gravitate toward what validates us. ... We do not live in culturally diverse neighborhoods for the most part, and as Brooks pointed out, Washington DC Democratic lawyers tend to live in suburban Maryland and Washington DC Republican lawyers tend to live in suburban Virginia. ... Brooks seems to be saying that we as a nation will become what we think about ourselves as a people. ...
Further, Brooks points to university faculty diversity (or, more accurately, the lack of diversity) as one example of our seeming disinterest in mixing ourselves up together. ... Since Brooks is writing in a monthly journal that is probably read regularly only by the more well-read, wealthier, stable, and more highly-educated of all social groups in America, the audience he is addressing may have the least motivation to move outside of their collective, non-diverse comfort zone to increase the neighborhood-by-neighborhood diversity of American life as Brooks advocates. ...
Conversely, although Brooks’ article is timely, important, and for the most part an accurate portrayal of contemporary patterns, he seems to overlook the fact that we celebrate our national diversity in individualistic ways- television, print media, entertainment, and even politics have all become highly culturally diverse.
Approximate Word count = 1863
Approximate Pages = 7.5
(250 words per page double spaced)
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