Several weeks back, I published a column in this space suggesting that in our current pluralistic, multi-cultural worship of the alienated, victimized “other,” some are more “other” than others. Some “otherness” gets you respect and a kind of special veneration, while other sorts of “otherness” – uncool “otherness” – earns you contempt.
It’s simply not true that our culture embraces all diversity; no, people usually embrace the sorts of diversity they like or that make them feel especially “open-minded.” And to be especially “open-minded” and “accepting” of “otherness,” one has to embrace things distinctly different from oneself, which tends to make us look too kindly on some groups just because they’re different, while looking with contempt on others closer to us for no other reason than they’re not different enough.
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