One of the unfortunate by-products of our current approach to diversity has been the creation of an enclave society. Since the benefits of diversity are apportioned by group identity, diversity encourages us to find our own group and then "stick with our own kind." The result is inter-group rivalry and a deeply-divided society, one based on separate enclaves of identity that rarely if ever interact. If diversity is supposed to provide a way for us to understand each other, then the rise of an enclave society is perhaps the central example of the extravagant failure of diversity in America. Liberating the Enclave, which is Part 2 of the four-part series Ourselves Among Others: The Extravagant Failure of Diversity in America and An Epic Plan to Make It Work, offers a critical tour of several of these enclaves and also provides a different version of diversity that helps lead us out of our enclaves rather than, as we currently have it, sheltering within them.
Diversity is the most important social issue of our time. The rise of identity-based enclaves represents the biggest threat to the success of diversity, since those enclaves in essence institutionalize the divisions that exist along the fault-lines of things like race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, and so other forms of identity. Diversity is supposed to create an understanding of others that tears down the walls that divide us. What we have instead is a diversity that builds ever stronger and ever higher walls between the enclaves that separate us. Liberating the Enclave presents an unflinching look at the construction of these enclaves and the divisive politics that created them and that they in turn have exacerbated and entrenched. This is a book that breaks through the silence and breaks down the walls. Getting diversity right and creating a social justice that works for us all will not be an easy task, but this book has the grit and ambition to show how it is possible and how to get it done right.
