An article in Monday’s Times describes the current state of affairs in Rwanda. It has been a full sixteen years since the challenges of multiculturalism got out of hand there, but for some reason the blessings and benefits of Diversity — despite the vigorous application of exactly the sort of enlightened government measures that always become necessary when social heterogeneity reaches a certain level — have as yet failed to materialize.
We read:
As presidential elections approach and the nation has grown more repressive, the campuses have become tense. Students say that they are being watched, and that the laws aimed at suppressing ethnic differences have made them afraid to speak openly.
How awful that must be: imagine a college campus where people are discouraged from speaking openly, for fear that someone might take offense!
While students make acquaintances based on their interests, he says, campus life ultimately divides itself along linguistic lines, and friendships across those lines are rare.
Yes, language has an almost matchless power to divide, and unite, human societies. How fortunate we are, here in America, that everyone agrees on the importance of cultural oneness for the continued well-being of our great nation, with English as a vital, unifying aspect of our commonality.
Colleges have reconciliation clubs, started on government advice ostensibly to combat ethnic hatred, which reinforce the new non-ethnic narrative. Stickers posted on walls urge unity and warn against “divisionism’…
Good idea! That should work. Fortunately, the tendency for human beings to associate along racial and ethnic lines, and the tensions that can arise from that thoughtless habit, are just the sort of things — nothing more than superficialities, really — that are easily corrected by government-sponsored remedial instruction, and stickers.
Students say the universities are crawling with spies.
Again, reason to be thankful you aren’t attending college in Rwanda. Just imagine if some innocent remark you made to a friend about this or that group of people — in presumptive confidence, or maybe in an e-mail — were reported to the authorities, and then used against you. Just imagine!
Anyway, you can read the whole article here, and you can thank your lucky stars we’ll never have any of these problems here at home.
One Comment
i so thankful i is.